Another One?

The Community Center is a funny concept— the idea of inviting a specialized stranger to propose a building design for a community, who then might invite local community members for their input. With innocent intentions, designers like to utilize their skills to contribute to a community and create spaces of gathering and joy, but it’s also a strange practice to design spaces of expectation, assign spaces towards specific functions, and await their isolated use.

What is the primary value of community-based design?

Community is something that cannot be expected, cannot be generated, and cannot be designed. Community is a spontaneous function that forms wherever and whenever it sees fit, characterizing a place rather than assimilating into one pre-established. There is no patterned typology with community-centered design nor a repetitive precedent of what community looks like. As designers, we shouldn’t impose our expectations of community practice upon a site.

The service of design should provide amenity to an already-existing community and strengthen its identity situated with a physical presence.

The form becomes this aggregation of activity, similar to how the activities within a growing community occur informally, spontaneously, and instinctively.

Since this is a class based on modeling, my primary section model is represented as a sketch model, implying that these present activities will not last, and are always subject to change, to evolve, or to be replaced. The model is casual, being a tool to question the building’s capacity to serve community needs, and to conceive of its future versions adjacent to the future of community.

The images below star my good studio buddy Jillian Edwards.