Healing Spaces For Wellness
[BROOKLYN, New York] – [May 31, 2023]- In October of 2020, Brownsville Community Justice Center (BCJC) commissioned Youth Design Center and A+A+A with a project to produce a 5-week long workshop to design and build mobile healing spaces as a response to social distancing and mental fatigue brought on by the COVID-19 Pandemic. The installation launched at Osborn Street Plaza in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The plaza, a dead-end vacant street, was activated to be used as a public space, the outcome of a partnership between BCJC and the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) to encourage community partnership and public safety through community events and public activations.
YDC and the A+A+A design firm worked with youth from different NYCHA Housing Developments to generate concepts and designs for a community sanctuary and healing hardscapes. Youth participants constructed a greenhouse-like structure for shared healing through writing, drawing, storytelling, and sharing healing objects and smaller hardscapes, providing immersive environments for solitary space to transform, calm, and rejuvenate.
The first 3-weeks of the design project focused on having youth explore what healing meant to them by providing them with the knowledge to use design as a critical thinking tool to problem-solve and use creative solutions. The process led to youth designing spaces that addressed personal and community healing that could co-exist in one ecosystem imagined through different infrastructures.
The community sanctuary focused on shared healing, self-expression, and an archive of feelings. The greenhouse is a container and infrastructure for different expressions of release - through writing, drawing, storytelling, and sharing healing objects- creating a safe space for expression.
The personal healing space proposes a space of imagination and escape - where individuals from the community can enter into unique immersive environments that can transform, calm, and rejuvenate. There is no one size fits all solution to a healing practice or space, so the project aimed to create a sense of choice or a journey through different transformational environments.
“Youth Design Center is committed to projects that champion equity-centered design and social justice,” said Quardean Lewis-Allen, Founder and Executive Director of Youth Design Center. It promotes Civic Leadership and Efficacy and empowers our young people with a skillset to change the world around them.”
In the summer of 2021, Healing Spaces 2.0 began as a continuation of the project with a 6-week design/build workshop with Brownsville’s Next Generation Gems youth group, Youth Leadership Council (YLC). Through a series of workshops and feedback from the community on the initial project, the group collaborated to design a new space to address anger called the “Release Room,” the installation featured a punch-and-paint mural on the exterior, and the inside included a punching wall with weighted bean bags to address anxiety. In addition, the new mobile healing unit launched during Brownsville’s “Be On Belmont Street Festival” in Brooklyn, New York.
About A+A+A:
A+A+A is a design studio led by Andrea Chiney, Arianna Deane, and Ashely Kuo. Founded in 2018 with the belief that design impacts all people everywhere (for better or worse), we strive to make the process more inclusive, collaborative, and joyful. Working at all scales, we create thoughtfully-designed objects, experiences, and spaces. Learn more about Healing Spaces.
About Brooklyn Community Justice Center (BCJC):
The Brownsville Community Justice Center is a multi-faceted initiative that seeks to prevent crime by investing in local youth and improving the physical landscape of the neighborhood. The Justice Center also seeks to forge better responses after a crime occurs, offering meaningful alternatives to incarceration. Learn More.
Check out the Healing Spaces feature in the NYC Design Commission’s Publication Designing New York: Streetscapes For Wellness here.
