Core of the Community

Over the course of a month I utilized drawing, painting, and sculpture techniques to examine space and convergence. The studio professor provided time and energy conducive to exploring ideas on design through art. Over the course of a month I utilized drawing, painting, and sculpture. These selected pieces show the results of my exploration into spaces and movement that converge into one another. These works and others helped to create the main design concept that influenced the design of the community center. Communities all throughout time have had space in which people can come together. The Romans had their forum’s, the 19th century had parks, and squares, the 20th Century had libraries and malls, and now in the 21st century city we find the Community Center, a place for resources for the surrounding communities. Surrounded by non-for-profit low-income housing, the Dewitt Community Center is in the Lower Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. This space provides a place for people of all ages to come to work, play, learn, and most importantly to interact. The building, clad in split-faced travertine, reveals many of the welcoming and inviting space like an all-purpose room, classrooms, after school rooms, and digital design and fabrication rooms. The building’s purpose isn’t to be a place in which people need to or have to go, but one in which they want to go to learn, play, create, and interact with one another.

Space Explorations

Original Concept Drawing

Final Design

Model