Design Advocates Expands Mission to Provide Pro Bono Design Services to Community Organizations and Small Businesses in NYC

NEW YORK, NY - Design Advocates, a non-profit organization based in New York City, is a network of experienced architecture and design firms, advising firms, and individuals who volunteer their time and expertise and collaborate on projects, research, and advocacy to serve the public good. Originally initiated in April 2020 as a platform for collecting data and empowering design businesses in the era of COVID-19, Design Advocates has since expanded into a collective effort to match designers with those in need, by providing pro bono design services to community organizations and small businesses, while engaging in ongoing advocacy for the broader independent design industry, and in particular, pushing for equitable design and firm diversity to contribute to a more just built environment.

The “Test Fits” initiative was developed by Design Advocates as a way to leverage the creative energy and collaborative spirit of the organization’s members. In order to help local businesses, non-profits, and institutions respond to the crisis, Design Advocates is adapting their spaces and operations for reopening, and creating strategies to ensure safe and comfortable continuing operation. Test Fits is currently serving clients across New York City on a pro bono basis, assisting social services organizations such as the Bowery Residents Committee and Housing Works; community institutions such as the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce; restaurants such as Kopitiam in Chinatown, and Le Paris Dakar and La Napa in Crown Heights; as well as schools and arts organizations, to develop short-term adjustments and long-term plans in response to the pandemic.

For Kopitiam, an all-day cafe and restaurant in the tradition of Malaysian coffee houses that is located between Chinatown and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Design Advocates created a new outdoor dining intervention for the restaurant under NYC’s Open Restaurants program. The design evokes the colorful and ad-hoc roadside structures of Southeast Asia, and has enabled the restaurant to serve diners on site in a safe and comfortable manner. Another restaurant project currently under construction is Le Paris Dakar, a Black-and-female-owned cafe in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Design Advocates is creating a series of sidewalk barrier elements that help to create safe circulation throughout the cafe, and a comfortable space for customers to sit outside, apart from the highly congested corner where the cafe is located. Part barrier, part planter, part trash and recycling bin and part condiment station, the elements are designed to withstand outdoor conditions and to encourage safe social distancing outdoors.

Inherent in the Test Fits program and Design Advocates’ broader mission is a commitment to providing long-term design solutions to the most vulnerable, during the pandemic and beyond. For the Bowery Residents Committee, a leading agency providing housing and treatment services to New York City’s homeless population, Design Advocates is developing a new furnishings system for use in BRC’s transitional group shelters, that seek to humanize the shelter experience, and address issues of safety, privacy, storage, and individual agency with a design that is simple to erect and easy to maintain. Design Advocates is also assisting Housing Works, a non-profit organization that works to end the dual crisis of homelessness and AIDS, to reimagine the lobby of their healthcare center in Brooklyn, and help them to reorganize their existing offices and exam rooms to create a brighter, more welcoming arrival for all of their clients.

By pooling data and networks, Design Advocates is also able to identify ways to shift resources to benefit the community.In Brooklyn, where 40% of public schools are at or over their recommended utilization, and where there is an abundance of open office space for rent the group is working to connect developers with local school administrators to facilitate the use of these vacant spaces to get students back to school safely and efficiently. The group is also advising schools with older, over-utilized buildings and challenging layouts, such as PS 34, the oldest continuously operating public school in Brooklyn, whose railroad-style layout currently demands that large groups of students walk through other classrooms to get to their destinations. Design Advocates is helping them with their reopening plans, their outdoor learning plans, and future advocacy with the city.

Creating a seat at the table for the design community to provide input and receive work is central to Design Advocates’ mission to empower designers to help safely guide New York City into the future. Thinking creatively on behalf of all types of small businesses, non-profits, and community organizations impacted by the pandemic, Design Advocates also aims to investigate how their specific needs can be addressed through design and through advocacy on an agency or governmental level. For example, a team of Design Advocates members is also working with the Open Streets NYC program, exploring neighborhoods in NYC that are lacking in open public space and where there may be potential to propose street closures as a benefit to the residents. Layers of information, such as transportation patterns, adjacency to educational or cultural organizations, and ultimately whether the community would even want such closures, are being researched in hopes of filling in the gaps for neighborhoods that may have been overlooked.

Through the process of collaboration between all of the design firms involved, as well as between Design Advocates and their clients, the group hopes to build a new framework through which equitable design outcomes, driven by mutual advocacy, can be established.

The Design Advocates Board of Directors is comprised of a group of independent design practices—architects and designers—including Michael K. Chen Architecture, Lea Architecture, Overlay Office, Studio Fōr, and Office of Tangible Space. Founding members and participating firms are listed below, as are current Test Fits projects and clients.

Design Advocates will be honored as part of the AIA NY's Common Bond: Center for Architecture Gala on October 22, 2020. This year’s honorees comprise the Center for Architecture’s inaugural Spotlight Series honoring justice and equity advocates.

Quotes from Design Advocates Directors:

Michael Chen, MKCA:

“The Test Fits program is showing just how energetic and valuable the independent design community can be at a moment when small businesses and organizations are looking for practical solutions and not finding the necessary guidance from governmental and institutional actors who have been slow to act or reluctant to provide direct assistance where the need is greatest.”

“Design Advocates teams have been able to work on a wide range of different project types and with a wildly diverse set of clients, and in the process we are not only learning and sharing insight into issues around coronavirus, but helping businesses and organizations find ways to use this moment to rethink their spaces for what comes next. Our goal is to put design excellence into service for organizations who have not had access to it before, and to explore new ways of working through collaboration, resource sharing, community engagement, listening.”

Abigail Coover, Overlay Office:

“The Test Fits program has been a fantastic way to make small incremental change for local businesses and organizations while at the same time advocating for large scale transformation of the design profession and the communities that it serves.”

Fauzia Khanani, Studio For:

"We aim to provide a platform from which our network of small firms can advocate for an equitable design process with our clients to ultimately create a more just built environment for our greater communities."

Jane Lea, Lea Architecture:

“Our community work allows small firms to gain experience working on project typologies that they may not normally have access to while simultaneously providing design help to businesses and institutions that do not currently have the budget for an Architect. It is both a way to help our community, which we all feel strongly about, and to help our other small firms. It has created a supportive community among smaller practices, something that can be rare in our relatively competitive field, and enabled a higher level of participation in civic and community engagement. Working with schools has both made us realize how much those administrations are working for our children and how much advocacy they need on a city, state, and federal level.”

Kopitiam Restaurant