with Sara Glee Queen and Christian Karkow of Clearscapes

It was a pleasure working with Exploris Middle School to design and build a new bus bench for downtown Raleigh.

The process began last year when we, along with Sara Glee Queen, and Christian Karkow, taught Exploris 7th graders about the principles of design. In small teams, the students researched, designed, and built scaled models of their bus benches to submit for an in-house competition. A jury of local architects, Stacey Lanning, Andrew Jamison, Giana Malak, and Henry Newell, judged the entries and selected one bus bench to build. Congratulations Olivia Diamond, Anne Freeman, Brendan Murphy, and Awvik Sarkar!

With the added support of Sophia-Ann Williams of the NCSU Crafts Center, Joell Lubell of Habitat for Humanity Restore, and Capitol City Lumber Co., we built the bench. It is installed on Wilmington Street in downtown Raleigh, within walking distance of the new AIA NC CfAD.

The dedication ceremony was a success. Attendees included dignitaries such as Lt. Governor Walter Dalton, Raleigh's Mayor Pro Tem, and two other City Council members. See local press coverage from News 14 Carolina.

To hear more about this exciting experience, contact us here.