Stay Over Program Mobile Folding Beds

This story was featured in the NBC Bay Area news segment called Bay Area Proud. See the story at this link:

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/bay-area-proud/san-francisco-college-students-design-construct-dozens-of-beds-for-homeless-students-and-their-families/3465493/

Undergraduate students conducted research with faculty guidance to co-author a peer-reviewed academic paper presented at the ACSA conference.

Micro-interventions can powerfully disrupt the systems that preclude an empowering experience in family shelters. Through co-creation, families can actively participate in the design research process. Valuing lived experiences of unhoused families removes the power imbalance between those with and without design training. Co-creation at the micro-scale prepares architecture students with skills to usher in change in the design practice.

Undergraduate students in a collaborative studio fabricated 66 folding beds on wheels with storage compartments incorporating the suggestions of the families at an emergency shelter. Extensive prototyping was the primary method of co-creation. Students held themselves accountable to the families and developed a shared purpose to guide the process.

Unhoused families at the Buena Vista Horace Mann K-8 Community School in San Francisco led to the creation of the Stay Over Program. It is a first-of-its kind emergency family shelter that uses the school gym to house 69 beds which comprises 79% of all available congregate family shelter beds in the city. The program required a complex partnership between the school, a non-profit shelter operator, SFUSD, and San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The non-profit supports the families transition to stable housing.

Operationally, the dual use of the school gym is difficult - during the day the gym is used for PE classes and at night it is used as a shelter. The daily set up and break-down of beds is labor intensive. Additionally, the Stay Over Program, the most innovative component of this Community School, stays hidden from the day users of the space. The lack of visibility isn’t representative of the deep sense of community among the families.

Recognizing that levels of design literacy can create a power imbalance, full-scale prototypes were used to remove barriers to co-creation. Most of the families at the shelter were not English speakers which made the prototypes the most effective means for communication providing direct hands-on experience.

To build trust with the families, and with the non-profit shelter operator, we documented our observations and presented design proposals as direct responses. Documentation of previous workshop sessions provided continuity when there were no returning participants.

Co-creation is not new, but it should be more widely embraced as one approach to tackle systemic problems. Paired with micro-interventions, it can reach those who are furthest away from the design process. Humility is needed to develop a co-creation method that fully benefits from widely different lived experiences. Architecture students who develop co-creation skills can lead the change to include more people we advocate for in design processes.

When the distance between the students and the families, the end users, is removed, design clarity is sharpened. The schedule and budget helped the team reach consensus efficiently. With such a small team, each student needed to identify their strengths to contribute which in turn allowed a variety of soft skills to be valued in addition to design and technical skills.