YouthBuild Construction Lab
Meet the Team
We are 3 individuals who similarly gravitate toward experiential and spatial design, as well as projects that incorporate potential for human advocacy and require designing with empathy at the forefront of our mindset; all passionate about designing to serve others. We connected through an introduction to Easterseals and felt this project would be a great fit for us as individuals as well as a team to collaborate with each other and work as consultants for Easterseals.
Meet the client
Easterseals is a nonprofit organization that helps locals, facing disadvantages, find employment. Easterseals currently runs a program called YouthBuild that offers training in construction and manufacturing for local youth. Throughout their time in the program, they receive opportunities to work on a home renovation, career counseling, hands on experience, and basic construction education.
Easterseals challenge
How can we design a more efficient and effective educational experience to benefit the YouthBuild program?
Potential Impact
Program need
Having a space that will allow for growing capacity and capabilities in order to increase attendance and program.
Individual need
Provide students an experience to grow their skill set, boost their confidence and gain more trade exposure than the current program, making them more attractive to future employers.
Communal need
Providing at risk youth with greater opportunities for success, while growing interest in trade labor and filling current needs for trade workers.
Stakeholders
Our stakeholders consisted of a two-sided market: Easterseals as a client and the YouthBuild program. We worked back and forth closely with both to appease the advisory board members and executives at Easterseals, as well as the educators and students of the YouthBuild program.
Ryan: EducatoR | Debbie: VP | Feargal: GranT WRITER | justice: Student | Ryan: student | Maurice: Student
PROJECT Pillars
1. Designing a learning experience
2. Designing an organizational system
3. Designing for all sides:
Students, teachers & advisory board
CURRENT PROGRAM
Participants divide their time between the Eastersales Construction Lab and the job site, where they are working on a home renovation. The current warehouse space is used for classroom education, career counseling, guest speakers and industry standard training. It is a multipurpose space that is cluttered, disorganized and uninviting.
Job site
Current workshop/ classroom space
Road map: How we’ll get there
Design goals
Education
Providing the ability for participants to learn new skills
Mobility & Versatility
Creating a flexible and adaptable working space
Engagement
Encouraging enrollment and participation on class days and the job site
Security
Ensuring the means to lock up and keep track of tools and specialized equipment
Safety
Producing a safe space to make acceptable mistakes
Cohesive
Having consistency within the space and across the program spectrum
Floor plan insights and design
Through interviews, observations and expert feedback, we categorized different sections of the space in order to lay out the floor plan to reflect the workflow in the most efficient manner. Easterseals needs an open space, accommodating for projects at multiple scales.
Organization system
A 3 part system organization in the form of secure storage, an individual workbench and a communal pegboard. The overall design & build process were created with simplicity in mind, ensuring the ability to recreate and expand in a cost effective manner.
Initial Concept
Storage
The 3 part system revolves around individual pegboards that correlate to the taught curriculum and essentially work as an open tool box to clearly organize the tools needed on any given day for specific learning tasks.
Workbench
We worked toward designing a workbench that was easily adaptable to teaching different tools and skills on any given day. The final design revolves around the peg board system and is built to be easily recreated.
Pegboard
The mobile pegboard was designed around the organization system, with the goal to be easily recreated and implemented within the space.
In context renders
Educational graphics
To make the space inviting and educational, we created a set of graphics to match the Easterseals brand language. The graphics offer students the ability to familiarize themselves with common tools, vocabulary and math aids. The content reflects the set curriculum, serving as retention tools and reminders during hands on projects.
Hands-on framing task
During interviews it became evident that there are certain skills not all students get the opportunity to practice on the job-site. In order to provide the framework for a hands on learning task, we extensively researched the processes, analyzed the tasks and created a 24 page, step by step guide to help teach the basics of framing, electrical install & drywall. The task allows students to practice skills necessary on the job-site, but not always done by the students due to time restraints or other circumstance.
Spatial Renders
Hand tool workshop
Hand tool workshop: Framing Task
Classroom A
Classroom B
Power tool workshop
Powertool workshop
Student lounge
Secure office and storage space
Secure office and storage space
Full scale build and client proposal
The team built and donated full scale, working models to propose and donate to the Easterseals program. The build process included wood working, metal working, welding and finishing.
Build process
Final products and display
Next steps
This capstone concludes the research and conceptualization phase of the project. Going forward, the project will be handed off to Easterseals, to raise funding and oversee implementation.
