Participatory and multi-disciplinary design for a community center’s outdoor spaces
Coddington Road Community Center (CRCC) in Ithaca offers high-quality, low-cost youth programming in a known childcare desert. To better serve its community, it has recently been undergoing a $4.8 million, state grant-funded building expansion. Now the nonprofit organization is collaborating with faculty in the Cornell landscape architecture, architecture and civil engineering departments to create a design that maximizes the use of its exterior property for all-seasons programming.
CRCC executive director Heather Mount wants the community to be involved in the redesign to best reflect its needs. For three dozen undergraduate students this presents an opportunity to help shape the outdoor space as “citizen architects.” Two courses will coordinate their syllabi: a landscape studio led by Jennifer Birkeland to conceive of a holistic site plan, and a participatory methods seminar led by Emma Silverblatt to develop a co-created, biobased structure. Students in Qi Li’s fluid mechanics class will support site research through augmented-reality fluid and microclimate modeling. As students design play structures, gardens, trails and outdoor rooms, they will practice hands-on, participatory design pedagogy and cross-disciplinary thinking for tackling the kinds of complex challenges they will face in their future careers.
Participatory and multi-disciplinary design for a community center’s outdoor spaces
Coddington Road Community Center (CRCC) in Ithaca offers high-quality, low-cost youth programming in a known childcare desert. To better serve its community, it has recently been undergoing a $4.8 million, state grant-funded building expansion. Now the nonprofit organization is collaborating with faculty in the Cornell landscape architecture, architecture and civil engineering departments to create a design that maximizes the use of its exterior property for all-seasons programming.
CRCC executive director Heather Mount wants the community to be involved in the redesign to best reflect its needs. For three dozen undergraduate students this presents an opportunity to help shape the outdoor space as “citizen architects.” Two courses will coordinate their syllabi: a landscape studio led by Jennifer Birkeland to conceive of a holistic site plan, and a participatory methods seminar led by Emma Silverblatt to develop a co-created, biobased structure. Students in Qi Li’s fluid mechanics class will support site research through augmented-reality fluid and microclimate modeling. As students design play structures, gardens, trails and outdoor rooms, they will practice hands-on, participatory design pedagogy and cross-disciplinary thinking for tackling the kinds of complex challenges they will face in their future careers.
- Jennifer Birkeland: Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
- Qi Li: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell Engineering
- Emma Silverblatt: Department of Architecture, College of Architecture, Art and Planning
- Community Partner: Coddington Road Community Center
Providing seed support for a wide range of community-engaged learning projects