On Family: Design Brigade Week 1

How can we facilitate family togetherness for one of our most vulnerable populations during this pandemic?

Student Team: Ivy Li, Janelle Schmidt, Huy Truong, Vicky Wu, Sasha Zweibel

A project co-sponsored by the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and Atelier Cho Thompson.

Senior living communities and caretakers are bearing a jarringly disproportionate impact from coronavirus in the United States, further exacerbating the conditions of older adulthood. “It is a terrible irony of the virus,” writes John Leland for the New York Times, “that for older adults, steps to prevent the spread of Covid-19 increase the risks of social isolation, which carries its own devastating health effects. A study by the AARP compared the effects of prolonged isolation to those of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.” In an age when families are separated by COVID-19, how can we facilitate family togetherness for one of our most vulnerable populations? Furthermore, homes with a higher black and Latino demographic are facing even more outbreaks in a racial disparity that persists when controlling for facility size, density and rating. How can we remain conscious of systemic inequalities and their manifestations in all aspects of life, health and opportunity?

As one of three Design Brigade summer teams, our task begins with these questions and will end in actionable design proposals. We are designers from Yale College and the School of Architecture, and our client is the Towers at Tower Lane senior community near the heart of New Haven, Connecticut. To keep the community safe during the pandemic, Towers residents have sacrificed connection and independence while staff have been working tirelessly to support their unprecedented needs. We are working to design an intervention that will allow residents to safely be together with their family and with their community, and we have just finished our first week of initial research. In an effort of transparency and collaboration, we will be sharing our progress and challenges every week here on Medium.

Sites of Intervention

After interviewing our client, we were briefed on three main sites with the most urgency and potential for redesign:

1. Entrance: How can the space facilitate a hands-free screening process and safely direct traffic for people and packages? How can we create a safe mechanism for resident-visitor interaction? How can the entrance provide security without feeling like a security checkpoint? With the feeling of a home? This is our most urgent site.
2. Courtyard: How can we reimagine the courtyard as a spatially and temporally divided space that is not conducive to large gatherings? How can the space encourage social distancing while being for a community? How can it be accessible to frequent wheelchair usage and not infringe on walking spaces? How can the programming support gardening while being flexible for alternative uses?
3. Parking Lot Green Space: How can we imagine a beautiful space that welcomes the community into the Towers? How can we imagine something that residents will be proud of, something that uplifts passersby as well? This is the most open-ended space, but should complement the aims of the entrance and courtyard.

For all the spaces, how can we design interventions that provide fresh air, utility, pride and joy for residents and workers? That add beauty and interest? That are accessible and safe, pragmatic and fundable, that can endure and adapt beyond the coronavirus crisis?

Goals and Measures of Success

By the end of our six weeks, our goal is to create design solutions for the three spaces at the Towers. Once the designs are completed to the best of our ability with the feedback of the community, it is our hope that the Towers will successfully receive grant funding to implement them.

More specifically,

Short Term Goals:

• completion and delivery of actionable final designs that the Towers may use for fundraising
• our team learns new skills with which we can better serve our communities

Long Term Goals:

• the designs are funded and implemented
• residents and workers are delighted and proud of the redesigned spaces
• the spaces are consistently utilized, facilitating safe, diverse and engaging programming

Longer Term Goals:

• partnerships are established and fostered between academic programs at Yale, local architecture firms and New Haven communities

We are currently working to establish more concrete metrics to assess the performance and impact of our project and its development. At first, the task of defining our goals seemed simple, but the process forced us to deconstruct our assumptions. How do you measure success for the multifaceted and qualitative act of design?

Roadblocks

• Finding specificity is a cornerstone problem for all design ideation, but it especially applies to our project now. We need to refine measurable goals and guidelines to keep our design responsible and to successfully serve others in an urgent and difficult situation.
• We do not live in the Towers, and we do not share the lived experience of the workers or residents. Where are they from, and how do they envision the quality of home? What do they enjoy doing in their time, and what are their anxieties with the pandemic?
• To find the insights of lived experience, how do we gather community feedback in a thoughtful and sensitive manner? We can’t meet in person, and some seniors may face trouble with navigating digital tools. They may also be wary of sharing certain information. Other stakeholders such as workers and visitors may also have key information. What can we ask, who do we ask and how?
• Our team is working remotely, so we are missing the energy and rapid communication of a studio atmosphere. How can we find ways to work together that might inform future remote design dynamics?

Next Steps

Next week, we will be wrapping up our research and beginning the pre-design process. Here are the next steps looking ahead.

Site Visit. (now completed) A team member will securely visit the site, documenting the physical spaces as well as human interactions.

Diagram. Visually construct a plan of the spaces and map their usage and circulation.

Follow Up. Create questions and methods to safely and appropriately collect information from the residents, if approved by the Towers contacts.

Research. Look into existing approaches to COVID-19 around the world, taking note of relevant precedents. Consider how the designs navigate safety concerns while bringing delight to a place.

Brainstorm. Think through initial architectural and programmatic approaches to the three spaces.

Further Reading

• NYTimes, “As Death Toll in Nursing Homes Climbs, Calls to Redesign Them Grow”
• NYTimes, “‘I’m Really Isolated Now,’ When Elders Have to Fight Coronavirus Alone”
• NYTimes, “The Striking Racial Divide in How Covid-19 Has Hit Nursing Homes”
• NYTimes, “To Battle Isolation, Elders and Children Connect as Pen Pals”
• CityLab, “The ‘New Normal’ For Many Older Adults is On the Internet”
• NYTimes, “After Months Apart, Mother’s Day Visits through a Doorway”
• Senior Living Industry Rethinks Building Designs, Improvises Solutions During Covid-19
• How the COVID-19 Pandemic Will Change the Built Environment
  COVID Design Directory
• Attention to Detail: Employing Nuanced Design Strategies for Senior Living Facilities
• New Haven Independent, How To Help: Buy Meals For Seniors

Team

Sasha Zwiebel -’21 — Grad Student — MArch — School of Architecture
Janelle Schmidt — ’22 — Grad Student — MArch — School of Architecture
Huy Truong — ’19 Econ Major, ’23 — Grad Student — MArch — School of Architecture
Ivy Li — ’20 — Undergrad Student — Architecture Major
Vicky Wu — ’21 — Undergrad Student — Architecture Major