Junior Studio: Designing for Wellbeing

Lynne Dearborn (Coordinator), Paul Armstrong, AnnaMarie Bliss, Andrea Melgarejo de Berry, Andrew Nuding, High Swiatek, Spring 2020

The ongoing transformation of Champaign’s Midtown area, from small-scale commercial-industrial to a vibrant mixed-use district, following the completion of the Boneyard Creek 2^nd Street Basin green storm-water infrastructure project, provides an opportunity to reimagine housing and mixed-use development in the area. On a 1^st Street site adjacent to the Boneyard Creek Park, students in these six junior-level studios designed multi-unit residential buildings. The building program incorporated multiple unit types, as well as community and outdoor spaces, underground parking, and ground-floor non-residential uses. The project addressed support for human wellbeing in everyday life on a site that students visited, experienced, analyzed, and reassessed. Design work responded to the concept of community resilience.

Designing housing appropriate to the needs of future occupants is one of the most important responsibilities an architect can undertake as it shapes the context of daily activities and provides important individual and community-building opportunities. Designing for Wellbeing required students to employ an evidence-based design process, apply concepts from the preceding course, Architecture, the Environment, and Global Health, and work with and meet the requirements of the 2015 Enterprise Green Communities Checklist. Students addressed the needs of a diverse group of users, including children, youths, adults and those with disabilities, responded to building and zoning code requirements, and demonstrated understanding of concepts represented by the term “healthy community.”