Two CU classes collaborate on designs for Boys and Girls Clubs of America

By Susan Lang

Design students in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell didn't just research and write about the activity modules they designed for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. They also sawed, drilled, sanded and constructed four full-scale models of a games corner, a technology and homework room, an art station and a young women's nook, all to be donated and used at Boys and Girls Clubs of America locations.

Design and Environmental Analysis students presented their full-scale model constructions Dec. 8 in Martha Van Rensselaer Hall to client representatives from the Boys and Girls Clubs of America's (BGCA) national headquarters in Atlanta. Here Stephanie Krieger '05, left, discusses a model with BGCA representative Beth Anderson. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

The games space, for example, consists of three rolling and stackable cabinets and two sturdy benches that youngsters can stand on to play board games with taller youths or push together to form a table. Each cabinet includes drawers, bins and shelves for storage. The young women's nook is a curved cubby decked out in bright orange, pink and lime green cushions to form an intimate, inviting "room within a room" in which girls can discuss private issues, personalize with photos and artwork and reconfigure to fit up to four or five individuals.

The modules were designed and built by two collaborating classes in Cornell's Department of Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA) whose goal was to create interiors that would help promote youth development and empower at-risk youth at Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) facilities, which target youth in disadvantaged neighborhoods throughout the country.

"We assign this type of project each year to give our students a realistic experience of a professional interior designer," said Paul Eshelman, associate professor of DEA at Cornell.

To develop the activity modules, students in Cornell Professor Gary Evans' Environmental and Social Behavior class served as behavioral science consultants on the needs of at-risk children, ages 8 to 15. They researched and provided information, for example, on human factors requirements, developmental needs and important individual differences (e.g. gender, ethnicity) of the client population. With such information in hand, students in Eshelman's Intermediate Interior Design class proposed designs. Then the student social-science consultants offered feedback by annotating the design guidelines in terms of behavior, and the designers revised their plans. This feedback loop continued until final solutions were agreed upon and the interiors were built.

Throughout the process, the students also consulted with architects from the facilities division of BGCA and representatives and children from the Syracuse area BGCA and the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC), an after-school program in Ithaca with a philosophy similar to BGCA's. "This peer and client feedback were based on a 'redo' idea rather than on any 'right or wrong' solutions," pointed out Evans.

"The student designs were very innovative, practical and applicable to any of our clubhouses," said Les Nichols, vice president of architecture and risk management for BGCA in Atlanta, who consulted with the students several times. "We plan to observe how these modules are used in our Syracuse club and then we hope to replicate them for other clubs." BGCA serves 3.6 million children at 3,300 locations throughout the country.

The Cornell students not only had to consider issues such as color, surface, storage, safety, acoustics, lighting, attractiveness, usefulness and versatility but also the behavioral and development needs of the children and even the needs of BGCA staff, such as their comfort and visual access into each space.

"They also had to consider the different kinds of spaces that BGCA uses," said Eshelman. "Some use schools, for example, and so the projects also had to be portable and easily stored."

The project involved four phases: predesign, in which the interior design students learned about building materials, hardware, tool use and how to achieve structural integrity; design, which was based on design guidelines developed by human factors/facilities planning and management students working closely with Eshelman's design students; model construction, which included ordering materials, planning tasks that involved students from both classes and building in the woodshop; and presentation.

In the final phase of the project, the students observed how youths from GIAC and a Syracuse BGCA actually used their modules, both appropriately and inappropriately, and interviewed the children about their reactions to the interiors.

"When the students realize that they're helping real people with real problems and that the BGCA designers flew in from Atlanta several times to consult with them, they have a meaningful reason to learn and become much more motivated. Their work is no longer an exercise but a project with very eager consumers," said Evans.

"What excited me about this experience was the opportunity to practically apply what I have learned in other DEA classes," said Nicole Simon, a human development senior from West Hempstead, N.Y. She helped write design guidelines for the young women's module on topics such as privacy, territoriality (personalization), flexibility and aesthetics for the designers in Eshelman's class.

In previous years, the interior design class workshops have developed indoor mini-playgrounds for child care programs housed in senior citizen centers, residential spaces for people with Alzheimer's disease living with their spouses, shared-use spaces for people with dementia residing in assisted-living facilities, and a residence hall suite for students with sensory and motor disabilities.

The project was supported, in part, by the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and the College of Human Ecology at Cornell.