Georgia Tech’s Flourishing Communities Collaborative

What if you could intertwine education and professional practice to do good? That’s the concept behind the Georgia Tech School of Architecture’s Flourishing Communities Collaborative, a unique academic lab that partners faculty, students and professionals to take on real pro-bono design projects. On this episode of Speaking of Design, we’ll hear about the benefits of that immersive educational experience and the experience of designing a new healthcare clinic for Clarkston Community Heath, a free healthcare clinic for uninsured and underserved residents of Clarkston County.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Have all these different opportunities,
not only in school, but in life, so
long as we take them to grow ourselves
and to learn and to have experiences that
we may not have if we don't say
yes to something. So
being able to say yes to this class
and have the opportunity to work in health
care work with clients, I think it has

(00:21):
helped for me to grow as an architect,
but also as a person, knowing that we're
helping other people and we're doing something that's
good for our community, just making a change
and doing something for others that will benefit
them long after I'm gone, long after all
of us have gone.
I'm John Torrick. And I'm Danny Sullivan. And

(00:44):
you're listening to Speaking of Design, bringing you
the stories of the engineers and architects who
are transforming the world one project at a
time. Today, we'll take an inside look at
Georgia Tech's Flourishing Communities Collaborative,
a unique design studio that gives students a
chance to work alongside
design professionals.

(01:05):
We'll hear about how that immersive educational experience
is also helping to strengthen neighborhoods in Atlanta
through collaborative design.
I think we're in great hands. I think
we have more citizen architects
evolving. They're much more involved

(01:27):
and they understand
the overall challenges of their future. That's Michael
Street, a health planning principal who works in
HDR's Atlanta office.
More than twenty five years into his career,
Michael recognizes
a different mindset in the generation of architecture
students currently in college or just beginning their

(01:48):
careers.
And I think they wanna be proactive
in trying to make the world a better
place. I really think that they're citizens
first and designers second. In college, I was
all about trying to create a great design
first and then solve the world's problems. So
I I think they're acutely aware of their

(02:08):
future and the the challenges, local and more,
you know, existential challenges that we have. I
think they want to find architectural solutions or
parallel solutions. An early up close look at
design and construction
started the wheels turning for Michael as a
boy. When I was very young, my father
built an addition to our house, and I

(02:29):
actually helped him build a barn at our
house. So I had a love for general
construction and putting things together and seeing progress.
I
also used to watch a lot of TV,
so I'd see mister Brady and and the
models and things. It seemed like a pretty
cool job
somehow led to the decision very young that
I would become an architect someday. Michael earned

(02:50):
a degree in architecture from Roger Williams University
in Bristol, Rhode Island,
where he was also the soccer team's starting
goalkeeper for three years.
After beginning his career, he was quickly drawn
into health care design. There's the basic aspects
of health care that, you know, you feel
like you're doing something great for the community
and for helping making people's lives better, but

(03:13):
there's a lot of complexity to the projects.
Every project has so many aspects, be it
from a planning perspective, from an engineering perspective.
It's like a giant three-dimensional
puzzle that you never can seem to find
the perfect solution. It's always trying to find
the best compromise
for all the factors driving the design decisions.
And I think that is probably what drives

(03:34):
me most is is searching for that, some
sort of perfection. Michael's portfolio includes designing patient
care units, surgical and emergency departments,
and other health care services in both outpatient
and inpatient facilities.
He's designed hospitals stretching from Toronto to San
Francisco
and even as far as Shanghai and Abu

(03:55):
Dhabi. As he advanced professionally, Michael began to
find meaning offering guidance to younger designers who
were new to the field.
You can build a lot of relationships that
focus on educating and and developing
emerging talent, but it really it really retools
the way that the mentors
themselves actually think.
So I've really tried to learn from the

(04:18):
whole process.
Through mentoring, Michael got to know Jessica Flake,
who worked alongside Michael at HDR,
before becoming a project manager at Studio Sogo,
a small Atlanta based architecture studio that specializes
in commercial and residential design. They shared a
similar background with Jessica's interest in architecture also

(04:39):
taking root as a child when she observed
her father's home projects.
I've known I wanted to be an architect
since I was probably 11.
I think part of that probably had to
do with my dad building our family cottage
on the lake. Him and his best friend
built it, and I can still remember
the

(04:59):
trucks kind of rolling in with all the
lumber and materials. And seeing him and his
friends construct this little cottage was really just
a influential moment in my life that kind
of drew me to construction and architecture.
While working on her master's degree at Georgia
Tech, one of Jessica's favorite projects was a
design research studio

(05:20):
where the entire class traveled to New Orleans.
There, they studied some of the quirky architecture
that gives the city its character. So what
I had chosen
was the balcony typology.
I really did a deep study of all
the different balconies that were throughout New Orleans
and then designed
a

(05:40):
hospital that had balconies on all of the
patient rooms and different areas of the hospital
and tried to tie it into kind of
the regenerative
and recovery
that comes with coming out of a a
hangover from Mardi Gras. Right? So there are
a lot of people that are always in

(06:01):
that city that are partying and having a
good time. And
so there was just kind of this energy
and quirkiness about the project that was kind
of wrapped up in the Mardi Gras culture.
Jessica began her professional career working on a
number of education and science related architecture projects.
And as she reflected back on school, she

(06:22):
thought about how that college experience could have
been even better. So when I was in
school, I
always really longed for
an understanding of how what I was learning
in the classroom was gonna translate into the
real professional world. And I felt like at
the time, there weren't a whole lot of

(06:44):
resources through the school that were providing me
that. So
I really had to take it upon myself
to go to different networking events and make
sure that anytime
professionals were coming in for critiques
or for lectures that I was building relationships
with them so that I could really pick

(07:05):
their brain and get advice on
that transition into the real world. As she
gained experience and benefited from mentors like Michael,
Jessica thought about how she could share what
she'd learned with the next wave of students.
While attending an American Institute of Architects Women's
Leadership Summit in Minneapolis,

(07:25):
Jessica met Julie Kim,
associate chair of the School of Architecture
and director of undergraduate
studies at Georgia Tech. Soon, Jessica saw an
opportunity.
I knew that when I got to a
point where I felt like I could share
my own experiences with students that I wanted
to be accessible, to be an advocate for

(07:47):
them. And so when Julie approached me with
this opportunity
to be a part of the teaching team
and advise the students through this very real
world process where they're working with a real
client who has a real budget and scope
and
really needed
somebody to help guide them through that process.

(08:08):
I wanted to do that.
Good design should be available to everybody
no matter matter the amount of resources. And
so I ended up kinda taking on the
idea of flourishing communities really is kind of
a way of reaching out to those communities

(08:30):
that are traditionally
underserved
and under resourced. That's Julie Kemp, who also
serves as the director of Georgia Tech's Flourishing
Communities Collaborative.
It's a unique academic lab that partners faculty,
students, and professionals
to take on real pro bono design projects
that will strengthen neighborhoods in Atlanta through collaborative

(08:50):
design.
In addition to her career at Georgia Tech,
she's the founder and principal of c two
architecture studio. We're really trying to think about
how flourishing communities operates as a way of
serving the community through education, through leadership, and
through service,
and then really fundamentally offering a bridge between
the academy and practice. We talk about how

(09:12):
it's similar to, like, a teaching hospital that
sort of is one of the unique identifiers
that in the same way where residents will
work alongside attending physicians in a hospital,
but here we have students that work alongside
practitioners and faculty.
The program is certainly an immersive educational experience,
but the community impact of their work is

(09:33):
equally,
if not more, important. The framework is elastic
enough that allows different ways in which it
can unfold, but ultimately was the kind of
aim to offer meaningful
experiences for the students that they gain
expertise and knowledge and skills
that is ultimately useful for them as they
can apply in in future practice.

(09:55):
But then also the community groups, they they
really are kind of the first and foremost
kind of critical piece of it so that
they were able to offer something to them
that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. Ennis
Parker works alongside Julie as the managing director
of the Flourishing Communities Collaborative.
Ennis has nearly fifty years of experience

(10:15):
managing large design and construction projects, But he
was drawn to return to his alma mater
where he also serves as the Nios Boulton
professor of practice with a joint appointment in
the school of architecture
and the school of building construction.
And I really enjoyed it. I I love
I love being around the students. I'm as
you can tell by looking at me, no

(10:35):
spring chicken,
but the students keep me sharp and they
keep me
they are inner energizing to be around. As
Julie was developing the concept for the flourishing
communities collaborative,
Ennis was co teaching a class that had
received a grant to work with a nonprofit
to design a low barrier homeless shelter.
That essentially served as a pilot for what

(10:57):
would become the Flourishing Communities Collaborative.
And nowadays, a lot of students work while
they're going to school, and so they're getting
a a different kind of experience while they're
working. But this is different because this allows
them to directly interact with the clients as
if they were the principal of a firm
at a point in their career when they
otherwise wouldn't be doing that. So they get

(11:19):
to see what it's really like, and and
they get to make decisions and make recommendations
that really have an impact on a real
project, which also has a social component to
it. That's an experience you rarely get at
such a young age. That's not something you
get to do even early in your architecture
career. You you're sitting at some desk, drafting
or operating a computer doing film work, not

(11:40):
really getting the interaction the conversation
with the client or or having an opportunity
to hear that. Well, here, they were exposed
to that, and and they it was they
found it very exciting. In addition to interacting
with a real client on a real project,
the students get to learn by working alongside
design professionals throughout the process. They get to
see how it really works. They get to

(12:02):
hear people who really know what they're talking
about in very specific areas.
So it's very different from the normal studio
experience. It's very different from the normal academic
experience. It's like being an intern in a
firm being exposed to a real project and
participating with real professionals. And I haven't had
a single,
student in the four or five classes that

(12:23):
we've that we've conducted in this way say
anything other than that it was one of
the most exciting and enriching experiences they had
as a part of their education. Past semesters
in the Flourishing Communities Collaborative
have designed affordable housing for people with intellectual
disabilities,
an environmentally
responsible community recreation center that could double as

(12:43):
a neighborhood disaster response space, and the redevelopment
of a property adjacent to a historic church
into a mixed use neighborhood
with affordable housing.
For the fall twenty twenty studio,
Julian Ennis identified
a unique client,
Clarkston Community Health Center.
The nonprofit
runs a free health care clinic for uninsured

(13:06):
and underserved residents of Clarkston County. Clarkston, Georgia
is, according to an article in the New
York Times, the most diverse square mile in
The United States. It was a recipient community
for refugees from all over the world. Going
back to the Jimmy Carter administration back into
the seventies, and so they have 50 different

(13:26):
ethnicities speaking 60 different languages within this one
square mile area. And if you go there,
you'll see Thai restaurants and Ethiopian restaurants and
and Cambodian restaurants and all kinds of different
groups. And a lot of the people there
are below the poverty line as you might
expect because they're struggling to assimilate into The
United States. Clarkston was subleasing office space and

(13:48):
ready to build its own facility. With a
client lined up and Jessica and Michael ready
to bring their health care design insights to
the class,
it was time for the semester to begin.
This is gonna sound really cheesy, but,
I was in Scottsdale, Arizona visiting a friend

(14:11):
over the summer. And for anyone who doesn't
know, Scottsdale is, like, a 20 degrees in
August. And so it might have been the
heat a little bit, but I had visited
Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West, and there was
just something about it. I guess it's kind
of like a house museum, but about the
energy there that made me decide to apply
to graduate school in the fall for architecture.

(14:31):
That's Jill Ginger, one of six graduate students
who were part of the fall twenty twenty
Flourishing Communities Collaborative. One of Jill's classmates,
Alex Watson,
described the appeal of the studio. For me,
it was an opportunity
to work with clients inside of the school
year, whereas it feels like when you're in
architecture in undergrad and graduate school, you spend

(14:52):
all your summers at a firm, and then
you kinda have to put that in the
back of your mind while you're at school.
So this class was a nice refresh
to be able to keep that going throughout
the school year, but also apply a time
when we're learning and have a chance to
work a little deeper with the client themselves.
Plus, as Jill reiterated,
the project was real. It was really like

(15:13):
the first time that I got to work
with an actual project that wasn't just paper
architecture. The higher purpose of the class added
to the appeal for both students. I think
part of the reason why I got into
architecture was because of this community based development
and these kinds of ideas that are not
necessarily
new, but they feel innovative in a way

(15:34):
in today's environment, both economically and socially. So
that was something that I really was craving
to learn about. It's this chance to also
feel like we're really making a difference in
in a sort of way while we're in
graduate school for something where we know the
budget is limited. And the ability to have
graduate students be at a resource that maybe

(15:55):
in another sense would have to be paid
for, I think, really is giving something to
the client, but also allowing us
to experience
situations that we might not have been able
to be in just because it is us
donating our time on top of it being
a class. Because it was 2020,
most of the meetings took place over Zoom.
Once a week, Michael and Jessica would meet

(16:16):
the students and faculty for about three to
four hours. Jessica said that began with a
kickoff Zoom meeting with Clarkston Health for everyone
to meet and learn about the project.
During the first meeting that the students and
faculty had with the client,
we helped them
kind of determine
what the scope of the project was, get

(16:37):
a little background
on how they had gotten to
the point where they were ready to build
their own facility. They had just purchased a
new site and were kind of filling us
in on all of the expectations.
From that point on, we really helped
the students in programming
and planning exercises,

(16:58):
pulling up floor plans from our previous projects
and
helping them kind of set up Excel spreadsheet
with
all of the information,
tracking the number and sizes of spaces. Jill
immediately felt the difference in learning about the
project
from a real health care client. It had
a different energy, and the,

(17:19):
excitement of meeting with clients was definitely
there for me. But also working on the
project, it was less about solving
an aesthetic or design problem and really kind
of learning about the building typology
of health care center and
kind of the different inputs of what goes
into thinking about the beginnings of a project
like that versus

(17:40):
the kinds of projects that you would typically
work on in an architecture studio. During that
first meeting, staff members from Clarkston Health presented
a robust list of services
they hope to include in the new building.
Jessica and Michael explained
how that created a design challenge for the
students. So they had
a lot of items on their wish list.

(18:02):
I think they wanted
something like 12 exam rooms,
four or five dental rooms, the flexibility to
have some mental health room.
They really wanted to make sure that they
had
a compounding pharmacy.
And then they talked about also having
imaging and X-ray, ultrasound,

(18:23):
lab facilities,
and
some other diagnostic
features as well. And they were looking at
an 8,000 square foot building that they could
accommodate.
And the the program needs they had, if
we were to design it for traditional client
that we would have, it would be over
20,000 square feet. So it it was more
than they could accommodate less than half of

(18:45):
what they truly wanted.
So it was a challenge, and I I
think it was a great exercise in reality
for everybody involved. Ennis said that the project
site also added a real world constraint to
the design. The other thing that happened was
they bought the piece of property before they
contacted us, and it wasn't big enough. They
didn't realize how much parking and engineering components

(19:07):
that they would have to consider
in working the design of the site. So,
you know, had we gotten through them earlier,
we would probably have advised them to try
and decide if it was a little larger.
But, you know, that just becomes one of
the constraints that you design to as part
of the process. You always have those. Much
different than designing a theoretical project for a
class, Alex said. When it came to the

(19:28):
square footage, one of the big things I
saw is in school,
we have our programs,
but if your design is good enough, you
can make a good enough argument. Usually, you
can get away with pledging things here and
there, whereas in this case, they needed the
amount of exam rooms they needed. And it
was hard to be able to make an
argument for shifting that just for a design

(19:50):
purpose rather than for the need of the
building itself. That's much different
than in school where you can usually just
make an argument and move on. The students
quickly realized that design for health care facility
brings completely different requirements from a typical building.
I don't think they had any idea
how we approach health planning and designing health

(20:11):
care facilities
as most designers don't when they first come
into this profession. I think having to learn
that on a site that's very, very challenged
from a size perspective
with the planning ahead for future flexibility
and trying to understand and doing the flow
diagrams for how patients and staff and materials
move through the facility. I I think that

(20:32):
was really more advanced than what most most
students would be doing. Alex and Jill mentioned
several examples they learned from Michael and Jessica
about programming space in a health clinic. They
were very quick in a good way to
teach us what we didn't know about health
care. I think the first big thing when

(20:52):
we made our first round of design
was
the scale of everything.
Just those the hallways.
I think everyone had their hallway set at
three feet, and all of a sudden, we
learned our buildings were going to be substantially
bigger
solely because of that one
that one detail. I think it would have
taken us a lot longer to be able

(21:12):
to move forward on design
if we had to really dive into that
research ourselves. So it was very helpful to
have them as our research
sitting there able to talk to us. I
remember
them really talking about how
much
specific equipment goes into, like, any given health
care space and how that affects the amount

(21:33):
of floor area that you're really gonna need
for a specific
program function. That was a big thing that
I had never really considered myself when I
was thinking about the difference between even, like,
a clinic versus
a hospital versus, like, someone's residential home, for
example. I mean, you talk about hallways, but
you also have to talk about exam rooms,
and you also have to talk about all
of the different ancillary support spaces that are

(21:55):
required to run even a small clinic like
the one that we were working on. Julie
said hearing actual examples from architects
help the students better understand the design needs.
Jessica
would share her screen and say, here's an
example of what a medical examination room might
look like here. The things you need to
think about is more than just the table
that the patient sits on, but the kind

(22:16):
of additional,
kinds of requirements,
your kind of adjacency issues you need to
be thinking about.
And so I think that the students
kind of understood very quickly the level of
experience of what Jessica and Michael brought to
the conversation.
The cost of the project also added a
dose of reality not often found in a
design for a class. I think it also

(22:38):
taught us that the constraints of a budget
are very real in these projects and that
kind of the way that you're innovative is
the way that you work around
those constraints or work with them instead of,
I guess, trying to work against them. While
Michael said that changed some of the early
ideas, it's not uncommon for the budget to
be an educational process

(22:58):
for everyone involved. This project is a perfect
example where the students came into the project
initially where they were very creative and they
had a lot of great ideas that were
not necessarily
implementable,
certainly within their the means that the client
had. And
the client team had no understanding of the

(23:19):
reality of what it took to actually accommodate
a program in a building
and the type of spaces that they would
need, and they were miles away from their
actual budget reality.
So the entire team, the client, the students,
and the the faculty, of course, and us
as advisers, we all learned through this process.
Julie said learning to communicate with clients is

(23:42):
as much of a skill as the design
itself. One of the things that I always
start off this class by telling the the
students is that one of the skills that
they'll learn is how to become creative listeners.
And because there's a difference between listening and
hearing. I can hear you, but it doesn't
mean I'm listening to you.
And that for the students at that, the

(24:02):
skills in creative
listening will lead to creative thinking and creative
making.
As a professional accustomed to leading those conversations,
Michael said he found it difficult to hold
back and let the students run the show.
In the context of the course, we had
to be very careful during the interactions with
the clients,
speak as little

(24:22):
directly with the client as possible
to allow the students to be the voice
to prevent the client from wanting to talk
with us as design advisers. I thought that
was a really interesting aspect of the project
because you have a client with professionals in
the field on the phone, but the intent
is not for us to help them directly,
but to help the students. Leading those meetings,

(24:43):
the students learned how to navigate and negotiate
some difficult conversations
about budget
and expectations.
Jessica and Julie said that following each meeting,
the design professionals and faculty
would spend time debriefing the conversation
with students. There were a lot of conversations
kind of after we would have meetings with

(25:04):
the client where
we would try and help the students
really dig into what they
heard from the client.
A big part of
this course for the students was just learning
how to listen
and be an active listener,
you know,
know what questions you need to ask to

(25:26):
get out the right information that you need
to take the project further. And it was
that was the first time that they had
been asked to kind of develop
their own kind of agenda and to kind
of craft a process for themselves. I think
that they start to see it in a
very
direct and tangible way, the kind of importance

(25:47):
of dialogue between client
and architect
and what their role is in participating
in design process
and and how they might
work through their what they might call real
world problem
solving that's outside of the hypothetical design
studio.

(26:09):
The students worked on teams to pursue four
different design options for Clarkston Health. In addition
to the space and budget constraints,
they had to consider the residents of the
community who would be using the clinic
as well as how health care design
might change during a pandemic.
Jessica and Alex explained.
The different

(26:30):
cultures that they have coming to this facility
means that they have a lot of folks
who do not necessarily speak English, or they're
gonna have the whole family come with them
to this appointment because somebody in the family
speaks English and they don't. So the
waiting rooms
and large open community

(26:52):
areas were one of the key points that
the students
really had to focus on because
they needed a large area where people could
gather, but we're in the middle of a
pandemic.
And, obviously,
the client was concerned with how
having large groups of people in their waiting

(27:13):
room is dangerous for everybody. Along with the
idea that a lot of people have families
because of different situations,
we were told many patients were coming,
sometimes with all their kids, sometimes with the
whole family. So we kept that in mind
with allowing spaces on the exterior of the
building for people to wait, not just on
the interior depending on the culture they're coming

(27:34):
from. With that too, because a lot of
them are coming from different countries, not everyone
can drive. So we had to keep that
in mind in how we set up the
site knowing that a lot of people
would be coming from a bus or walking.
So it's nice to know that there was
a bus stop nearby, but we had to
implement that into the site as well. They
had created kind of this open garden that

(27:56):
you can see from the main entrance that
also had access
to the pharmacy. So there was a walk
up pharmacy window,
walkability
of the site, incorporating views in nature,
a lot of the design proposals
incorporated elements like that. As a result of
the conversations about budget and space, Jill explained

(28:18):
how each design needed to accommodate further expansion.
What we thought about it is more of
like a timeline towards the kind of goals
that they had as an organization, which was
to create a larger clinic space, almost like
a mini hospital,
which was also, in my mind, a very
interesting and innovative way to think about health
care. And I guess that was a huge

(28:39):
thing that almost I had to get over
was the idea that it was like, okay.
Well, there's this one project, but really, like,
the project is gonna work in phases, and
that is the best way to kind of
tackle this.
As much as it would be nice to
build everything at once, you can't really do
that, especially with limitations to budget into floor
area. At the time, they needed this project
to happen soon too. That plan directly addresses

(29:01):
the actuality
of a real client's budget. So I think
that was a big thing that they could
get the ball rolling with 8,000 square feet,
but then double that in five years, ten
years, depending on when they needed it and
work on raising the money for that next
phase over that time period. That specifically, like,
felt like a really good way to think
about architecture because even though it was real,
it kinda felt more like a studio prom.

(29:22):
Like, you know, it was this way of
thinking about buildings that
is realistic, but I don't think is is
thought about as often as it should be.
The students came up with interesting approaches to
a phased design, which impressed Jessica.
There was one design that was a vertical
expansion
plan. And so her design was to have

(29:43):
a smaller footprint, but two stories and to
shell out the majority of the First Floor
and have the Second Floor clinic open first.
And some of the First Floor area was
actually just covered open air so that it
could be used for any sort of community
event that may be held outdoors
or, again, for

(30:05):
patients who are waiting. So her scheme was
to develop the Second Floor in the beginning.
And then when
Clarkson was ready to expand, they would fill
in on the downstairs floor. Jill said designing
the interior space required a shift in perspective.
I also remember learning a lot related to
the way that people move through these spaces,

(30:26):
and the flow of them is extremely
specific to the type of architecture. And that's
something that I, yes,
I always
subconsciously knew as a visitor to these places,
health care clinics, but I never really recorded
that experience and studied it from the position
of a designer.
So I think that that's something that was
on top of learning about working with the

(30:48):
client and helping the client understand
different aspects of the planning process when it
comes to starting one of these projects. Alex
discovered she had an apparent intuition
for some components of the design. I remember
one day, we were pitching
some design variations we had to them, and
the group I was working with at the
time when we presented one of our scheme,

(31:10):
just how it ended up laying out is
the dental portion of the program ended up
having full curtain walls that were opposite of
the doors, and then the medical had windows
within
the exam rooms themselves. And it just happened
to be that way. It's how we set
it up, but Michael
stated we had made a really good design

(31:31):
decision because dental tend to need more natural
light when they're looking to try and match
teeth color versus
medical having the private windows that can be
frosted, and it just made sense.
I remember sitting
there thinking what a beautiful mistake. You know,
we didn't mean
for it to happen that way, and yet,
you know, we'll take the compliment when it's

(31:51):
given. But that stuck with me because it
taught me something about light and how light
can be used for one space versus another.
Lessons about the impact a space has on
a patient's care also resonated with Jill. I
also remember them kind of talking about, like,
how a building's general environment can impact the
well-being and the outcomes of a patient. The

(32:11):
amount of natural light and the way that
the space is navigated specifically by patients
can really impact their experience.
So I think that that was a huge
thing that had, an impact. I mean, it
made me kind of reconsider
thinking about health care architecture.
And the licensed architect of record who will
finalize the design plans when Clarkston moves forward

(32:32):
and signs the final drawings. We left them
with four different options for buildings that were
all very different with all different expansion options
as well. We had really positive feedback from
the architect on record, which I think is
an important one to have behind you knowing
that they're the ones having to take the
design forward once, you know, we handed it
off to them. And it was really exciting

(32:54):
to see them excited.
A lot of school and in studio,
we spend our entire year making one project.
We present it. You know, a professor may
like it. They may not. Reviewers may like
it. They may not. And then you walk
away. And though you're thinking about it, it's
kind of over. People move on from it.
But this seeing a client excited knowing that

(33:15):
we're giving them this information, we're walking away,
and they're still excited about it. Now it's
theirs to take forward as they wish.
Working alongside professional architects
gave the students a new perspective of the
field they'll be working in. Ennis Parker said

(33:37):
that Jessica and Michael each brought something different
to the class. Jessica is not that far
away from having but a student herself, so
she really could connect with them very easily.
Michael brought a certain gravitas to the process
because he obviously knew a lot about what
he was talking about, and so the combination
of the two was very effective. And and
I think the students were,

(33:58):
I don't know, sort of astonished at how
how much they knew and how their experience
could bring sort of richness to the process
that that they really hadn't been that exposed
to before. Jill said she absorbed a lot
about being an architect from spending time with
Michael and Jessica. Part of it, I think,
is just personally, like, they're the kind of
people who really care about everything that they

(34:18):
do.
But I think they may not have realized
that, like, their own values and work ethic
added so much
to the entire project for us and gave
us as students so much insight into something
that's such a highly specific
building typology and way of designing that it
grounded the project a lot more in reality
having them around. And, like, I'm hoping that

(34:40):
in the future,
students will get the same experience out of
this coursework
as I did. For Alex, some lessons about
setting realistic expectations
will carry forward into her career. After getting
over kind of the the idea of knowing
exactly what you want isn't going to help
happen, I think it was a very healthy
thing to learn, especially while we're still in

(35:02):
school. It probably would have been much harder
once we had gotten out into the real
world and all of a sudden had to
had to have that happen to us. So
having it happen in a in a class
setting, I think, was a little bit easier.
And I know for myself, because we do
have our professors there, to explain to us
what's going on,
what the most professional way to deal with

(35:24):
it is, and how to move forward. Jill
added that the experience
has impacted the type of architect she wants
to be. I don't know if I can
necessarily
quantify it as, like, a number out of
10 or give it my best,
Yelp review, but I think it was a
really beneficial experience, and it'll impact the way
I think about architecture going forwards. And it

(35:45):
has also impacted my outlook on the kind
of architect I wanna be working towards, how
it can have an impact on, like, the
greater Atlanta area is something that's really positive
and reaching out towards
the people around us and giving back in
a lot of ways. Like, I think that's
a really important and and honestly not so
difficult way that architecture can be of service

(36:07):
to the community at large to the great
to greater society. There's something about that that's
really fulfilling for me personally, and I think
other people would find the same thing as
well. However, the studio also provided a learning
experience
for the full time professionals.
You know, obviously,
they have such an open mind. You know,
we tend to be,

(36:28):
a little more defined in how we approach
things. So watching them or seeing how they
learn to approach a problem,
it really makes it makes you question the
way that you approach your problems or the
way you've done it over, you know, years
and years of refinement of your process. So
as they ask us questions about how would

(36:49):
we approach a particular problem, rather than just
doing it and trying to solve the problem,
you actually have to verbalize
the way that you would approach it. And
it and it gets you thinking, maybe I
should rethink this exact process. Maybe there's a
a newer way or a better way that
I can do this. Michael said he appreciated
stepping back to look at design with a
fresh perspective.

(37:09):
Because they're exploring and they're trying to learn
for the first time, they they really spend
a lot of time researching basic principles and
even parallel
thoughts and parallel methods that might not be
the same exact problem they're trying to solve,
but, you know, they learn from others. And,
you know, I think as professionals,
we we know what's going on in overall

(37:30):
design community, but we don't really spend a
lot of time trying to understand the methods
and and the reasoning behind.
And I I think if anything, the students
have reminded me how important that is. Jessica
Michael and several of his colleagues are returning
to the Flourishing Communities Collaborative
for an expanded role on a new project
this fall.

(37:50):
They're again working alongside Julie Kim.
This time, hosting in person visioning sessions
and critiques with students.
The new class is focused on how scalable
architecture projects
can help revive the English Avenue neighborhood on
the West Side Of Atlanta,
a community adjacent to the Vine City neighborhood

(38:11):
that once was a catalyst for the civil
rights movement. Jessica's looking forward to this next
chapter
as she reflects back on what the last
group of students accomplished.
One of the highlights for me was
hearing the students present
to our colleagues at HDR.
So
at the end of the semester, after they

(38:31):
had presented their work to the client and
the client had given them feedback and
kinda said, okay. Great. You know, we're gonna
take all of your ideas, and, hopefully,
our architect of record will
take this and and produce something
from what you've provided us, we had set
up a presentation

(38:52):
for the students to share their work with
colleagues in our office. And,
I just found so much pride and
joy from watching them present the work that
they had done
to our colleagues and
to think about how much growth that they
had experienced over the semester and just how

(39:15):
much more confident I felt that they were
in feeling like we had really prepared them
for the next stage in their careers.
For more information on this podcast,
visit hdrinc.com/speakingofdesign.
You'll find links to pictures, articles, and more
information about this project.

(39:36):
If you like what you heard, be sure
to rate us or leave feedback on iTunes,
Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I think the last thing really to say
to both Michael and Jessica, the biggest thank
you. Whether they knew it or not, they
were a very large impact on our designs
and teaching us a lot that we didn't
know and

(39:56):
a lot that we can pull forward with
us as we're in school and as we
go out of school. So it's the largest
thank you to them
giving their time to people they didn't know.