The Corrugated Box Community bids a fond and bittersweet farewell to Amos Willis and Erin Rensink, the hip, pleasant, and productive architectural interns who came to 3north in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We hate to say goodbye, but we can appreciate what it means to be able to go home to New Orleans again.

After graduation from Tulane last spring and travel abroad all summer, Amos and Erin were headed home to their shotgun-style house in New Orleans’ historic Carrollton district when a blog break at an internet café alerted them to the impending disaster. As reports grew dire, they took detours to Ashland and Chattanooga, improbably ending up in Los Angeles, where they flocked with close friends and fellow students to commiserate. But, California didn’t feel right, so Erin logged onto “adopt an architect” at www.archinect.com and found a post by Jay Hugo offering professional refuge at 3north. They flew back east and came into Corrugated Box in tandem.

We all liked one another right away, and they were expected to stay for a couple of weeks. But, they stayed on, living in a relative’s basement, and then renting their own place. Everyday, they rode their bikes across the city to the ‘Box, where they worked diligently, contributing to one of the firm’s most complex projects with proficiency and finesse. They were the proverbial breath of fresh air at the end of a long, hot summer, subtly opening up discussions of prefabricated, sustainable housing and the origins of city planning. Experiencing Richmond anew, they pointed out things that made us look again at the city we had come to take for granted.

We secretly hoped Amos and Erin would stay. But, recently, when they took a few days off to make a brief damage-assessment trip to New Orleans, they were reunited with their beloved cat, Mr. Rags. Saved from the floods by a neighbor, Rags had gone on his own little odyssey to a wedding in rural Mississippi, to Colorado, and to Kansas. When the neighbor approached them, checkbook in hand, to buy their cat, they knew they needed to come home. We will miss them, but we take it as a sign of hope for the City of New Orleans that this energetic and talented duo is headed back.