Design Corps and SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design) have released the latest installment of SEEDocs, their series of awesome, mini-documentaries that highlight inspirational stories of award-winning public interest design projects.
While June’s doc featured an incredible community garden in New Orleans, designed/built with help from the Tulane School of Architecture’s Tulane City Center, this month focuses on the revitalization of an abandoned, abestos-ridden school in Manheim Park, a low-income, neglected neighborhood in Kansas City, Missouri.
Check out more images and info about this empowering project, after the break…
Hoping to revitalize their neighborhood, Manheim Park residents approached BNIM Architects with the idea of turning a derelict, boarded-up school into a revitalized community center that would encourage community engagement. With the help of the Make It Right Foundation, BNIM collaborated with the neighborhood residents to design a multi-use center that will feature affordable housing units, a health clinic, and public gathering space.
The approach, which integrated the local community into the process from the start, epitomizes the SEED Network’s mantra: “trust the local.” The result, in the words of Saundra Hayes, the President of the Historic Manheim Park Neighborhood Association, was empowering for the architects and the community as a whole: “This project has uplifted humanity inducing dependence but creating empowerment – and that’s powerful.”
More Info at SEEDocs
