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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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
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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.