New Houses Bring Hope to 2 Families : Architecture: Homes designed by Cal State Northridge students will be built by Habitat for Humanity.

There are few familiar things left in the life of Rudy Mendoza. The 27-year-old diabetic’s last vision, three years ago, was of a blood-red stain growing larger and larger in his right eye. He woke up blind the next morning and fumbled along in the strangeness that followed.

Then came the Northridge earthquake. It destroyed the old house where he lived with his mother, who also is blind. The house had a proud pedigree--a 19th-Century duplex that Mendoza’s father, a builder, methodically took apart, transported from Long Beach and rebuilt in the 1000 block of Griffith Street in San Fernando.

But in a startling change of fortune that Mendoza said he still doesn’t quite believe, he and his mother will move back to familiar ground this month--back to the same old plot on Griffith Street, into a new, two-bedroom house custom designed by students from Cal State Northridge and built by volunteers from Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that builds affordable housing.

“I can’t say how much my mother is looking forward to this,” said Mendoza, who now lives with her in a San Fernando apartment. “She was so happy when she heard we were going back. For a few months after the quake, she was saying, ‘What are we going to do? We have the land, but we don’t have the money to build up a house.’ She wanted to go back.”

The Mendoza house is one of two that Cal State Northridge students designed and will help “blitz build”--construct within one week--in San Fernando beginning June 17 during Habitat for Humanity’s annual Jimmy Carter Work Project. Carter will visit Watts that week to help build more than 30 homes.

The other house to be built in San Fernando, a three-bedroom dwelling on Mott Street, will become the new home of Mariana Arias, 89, her daughter, Ramona Duenas, 67, and Duenas’ mentally disabled daughter, Blanca, 34.

Ildiko Choy, an instructor of advanced interior design at the university, notes that his students are preparing to be interior designers, not architects, “so this has been a particular challenge--for them to understand building technique. This is the first time they’ve actually designed two houses. And they are going to help build them. They are part of something that is actually happening--real clients with real needs and real questions to answer.”

Tina Reicharz, 20, of West Hills won a class competition for design of the two-bedroom house that will become the Mendozas’ home. She followed guidelines set by Habitat for Humanity and the city of San Fernando and visited the Braille Institute in Los Angeles to learn how blind people live. The floors will be have different textures to help the Mendozas know which room they’re in. Oversize bookcases will hold bulky Braille books.