Concourse House

Jun 2

Client

Concourse House

The Concourse House is a nonprofit transitional home for mothers with young children coming out of homelessness. The Concourse House gives women the space, support, and tools they need to transition into permanent housing.

Project Brief

During COVID, the activities of the Concourse House took place in the garden. D/A tried to help them make this garden better suit their needs.

Design Approach

Through a series of workshops and community engagement activities we came up with three sensorial pavilions that would help them continue existing programming outside.

During the D/A led workshops, residents create unique pieces of art as a means to explore how they experience space through senses. These handmade art pieces give a sense of life and ownership to their personal space, as well as the Concourse House at large— something new to many of these families. The workshops inspired the idea of creating outdoor educational and experiential pavilions that not only provide shelter for more garden activities but the process also has become a model for how we believe community engagement and design processes should be modeled for all projects.

We designed three pavilions, each one born from the products of the workshops. Each pavilion focuses on engaging different senses through touch, sound,

and light. The art pieces resulting from the workshop will become a part of the pavilions— the stained glass will be included in the light pavilion, and wind chimes will hang from the sound pavilion.