Design Brigade: Getting Started

Part 1 of a Series on Creating a Design Program for COVID-19

By mid-March, it was clear that our summer plans were off. In the New Haven office of our small architecture & design firm, Atelier Cho Thompson, I had been thinking that summer of 2020 would be much like last year: a bustling crop of interns would fill our New Haven office to work on a mix of projects in our community, from non-profits to restaurants to offices. By the time we decided to close the office, I was receiving a deluge of hopeful internship applications and emails from clients cancelling their projects. Projects were on hold, and there was no way we’d continue our summer internship program.

After a few weeks of scrambling and getting into the rhythms of remote work, we finally got our heads above water, and we found ourselves in a unique position. First, like a lot of architects, we’re part of a creative community in our city; we’re tied to businesses, institutions, and individuals that all needed help responding to the design challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis. Second, we’re connected to a talented crop of design students coming out of Yale; they are a tremendously bright group of young people eager to solve the world’s big design challenges. And here we are in the middle, with an opportunity to connect problems and problem-solvers.

As practicing designers, we have a responsibility to mentor and cultivate the next generation. At the same time, as citizen-architects, we should be using our skills and training to help our communities address their design challenges.

Out of this idea, we created Design Brigade as a way for designers to give back to their community and as a means to offer mentorship and real-world education to design students. We are hoping that this program can serve as a testing ground for a new kind of community-based design internship, carried out remotely, involving a range of partner organizations, and rooted in a nimble, open, and inclusive approach. We plan to share our progress with you online so that we can share our process and gather feedback from you. We’re launching Design Brigade in New Haven on June 1 with fifteen students working on three projects. Students will be sharing their work with the world, and we’ll be documenting our progress in creating and developing this program. Here’s how we got started:

1. Find a Partner

Design Brigade emerged as a partnership between our firm, Atelier Cho Thompson, and Yale’s Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. As a small architecture & design firm, we have community-based knowledge and a strong network across the city. What we didn’t have was funding for internships, an institutional framework to support the logistical and technical parts of the project, or the manpower to quickly erect the structure to support this idea. I’m a strong believer in building partnerships: we can move faster alone, but further together.

I reached out to Dana Karwas, the Director of CCAM at Yale. She saw potential in the idea: “At CCAM we have been very interested in working with the community on our programming and we were thrilled to come together with ACT for this project. As COVID-19 put a halt to our exhibitions, events, and programming, I wanted to listen to the students. Instead of stretching my team to go online with what would have traditionally happened in the space, we pivoted toward supporting the students. It is CCAM’s mission to collaborate and this project in my mind is a super collaboration- and a new model for interdisciplinary work.”

2. WFIO

My father-in-law uses this acronym from his years in experiential learning programs like Outward Bound. Simply put, it means “We’ll figure it out.” This crisis has rapidly transformed our lives and our cities, and many of our new design problems demand rapid solutions. We are in truly uncharted territory. This crisis has created a vacuum as all our normal rituals and behavior have been upended, demanding new solutions to fill this void.

From the start, we knew that if we linked a thoughtful and talented team with challenging and rich projects, good work could happen. We planned to form a framework with just enough structure to launch this collaboration without being too prescriptive about the process or outcome. We wanted our team to approach the project with a nimble, open-minded mindset to see where the project might take us.

3. Form a Framework

Dana and I began with a list of potential design problems that had emerged in the era of COVID-19. How would customers return to restaurants? How could libraries continue to serve the public? How could we continue annual cultural festivals in a time of social distancing?

We settled on a list of three problems, guided by an urgency to work with the communities most hard-hit by this crisis, including older residents in care facilities, black and brown neighborhoods, and children across the city.

Problem 1 — On Memory — How can we use design to memorialize our collective experience of this crisis and pay respects to those we have lost? This Design Brigade team will work to design a memorial, physical and/or digital, to commemorate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the people of New Haven.

Problem 2 — On Family— In an age when families are separated by COVID-19, how can we facilitate family togetherness for one of our most vulnerable populations? This Design Brigade team will work to design a solution that facilitates family visits to nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

Problem 3 — On Learning— How can we bring learning resources to out-of-school students in their communities? This Design Brigade Team will work to design a solution to bring in-person educational opportunities from New Haven’s cultural institutions to neighborhoods throughout the city.

4. Find Collaborators

In order for any of these projects to become real, we need involvement and buy-in from many collaborators.

First, we recruited students. With support from CCAM,we found funding to support fifteen students. Seventy bright applicants submitted, and we selected an exceptional group from a broad range of disciplines, including psychology, music, and architecture. You can learn more about the students here.

Second, we found community clients. For the Memorial project, we are working with City Hall in New Haven; we’d previously discussed an idea for a virtual and physical memorial with their Office of Cultural Affairs, and their team is eager to bring this project to reality. For the Assisted Living project, we’re working with Tower One; their facility is grappling with how they can safely bring family members into the building and have opportunities for families to gather. For the Learning project, we’re working with a multi-headed client of museums and cultural institutions; with their doors closed, each is struggling with how to bring their wealth of resources to students throughout the community. You can learn more about the projects here.

Lastly, we’re creating a Professional Advisory Board of artists, designers, writers, and community leaders. This group will check in with the teams on occasion to offer advice and an outside viewpoint. And we’re hoping to help the students build their professional network across the country as they emerge into an uncertain labor market.

Now what?

We’d assembled an incredible group of clients, designers, and collaborators, and we’d laid out the framework for design problems to solve together. Now it was time to create a process for collaborative real-world problem solving. Come back next week, when my partner Dana will share some thoughts on creating collaboration.