catholic charities home for children

A 24 bed dormitory project to house undocumented immigrant children ranging in age from 10 through 17, this project took an existing, but gutted, 1920's historic building in Mid Town and transformed it into a home for children waiting for deportation. We worked closely with the various stakeholders from the Catholic Charities organization including those from the administration, the facilities department, the new director of the home, and even had input from the end users, the children.  We creatively arranged spatial and sequential functions to address the small available square footage and were successful in including all the items from the programmatic "wish List".  We designed with security in mind, and arranged spaces to allow for monitoring of the children at all times.  This ensures that an unaccompanied exit would be impossible.  At the request of the client, we also designed the building to be a sanctuary in case of natural emergency such as hurricanes.

Finish materials were selected with consideration to maintenance and durability and colors were chosen with children in mind.