"By U.S. standards it doesn't look like much," says Weaver, 54. "It's a big sleeping room, actually, since most of the cooking in El Salvadoran villages is done outside. But it gives people a safe place to hang their hammocks at night."

Weaver, a partner in the firm of Barany, Schmitt, Summers and Weaver, had never given much thought to designing such ultra-low-cost housing. Then an intern in his office, who is from El Salvador, began telling him of the turmoil that had wracked her country in the aftermath of the earthquakes. She put Weaver in touch with family members who work on a coffee plantation north of the capital city of San Salvador, and in late March he went there to devise a rebuilding plan.

"In the week I was there, everything I knew, everything I had been taught and had learned over the years, just came together," Weaver says. "The people showed me what they had to work with and we came up with a plan to turn it into a house."

Weaver plans to return to El Salvador in October to see how additional projects are progressing and to help pick sites for more houses.

"We are starting on a small scale," he says. "But we think it is something that has broad application for others in similar plights."