From the Spring 2018 issue of UNCG Research Magazine
The small brick building bookended by empty storefronts on Greensboro’s West Gate City Boulevard doesn’t command much attention. With the exception of its lime-green “CC-ED” sign, you’d be hard-pressed to notice it at all. But inside, the energy is palpable as interior architecture students and their professors join forces with community partners to provide design solutions for nonprofits and Greensboro’s underserved populations.
Travis Hicks doesn’t mind the center’s physical surroundings. As director of UNC Greensboro’s Center for Community-Engaged Design since its headquarters opened in 2014, Hicks celebrates the advantages of an unassuming building. “For some community partners, it helps to have a place that doesn’t have the same institutional feel of the campus,” he says.
Plus, the associate professor of interior architecture knows good design starts from within. The most basic element of a building isn’t a brick; it’s the person who uses the building. So when Hicks and his students partnered with Peacehaven, a working farm for adults with developmental disabilities, to design a new community center, they started by talking with the residents. And when they partnered with Tiny Houses Greensboro, an organization committed to reducing homelessness, they began with a Greensboro citizen who needed a home.
“The concept of community-engaged design is a new and rising force in interior architecture,” says Hicks, who is certified as both an architect and interior designer and practiced 13 years in the professional realm before coming to UNCG in 2009. In his previous career, Hicks worked as lead design architect on large-scale projects ranging from office buildings to courthouses and schools — with little to no collaboration with the end users.
“We would work with maybe a couple of specialists here and there. But we rarely consulted the people who would have worked in or occupied those public projects,” Hicks says. “That’s not what the CC-ED is about. We want to bring our students and practitioners together with the people who will occupy and live in these spaces.”
