This 10-week “Architecture and Design for Community impact” course was the first of its kind in ICA’s 36-year history of providing high-quality arts education to Los Angeles youth.

For the first 5 weeks, participants learned the basics of architecture an its role shaping communities with ICA teaching artist Jen Lathrop. This series culminated in the design of a model “community pavilion.” Lessons covered topics like:

• Scale: from Objects, to Buildings, to Neighborhoods,

• How to draw floor plans

• Model-Making

Then, we focused on how architecture can impact people’s daily lives at a small scale: furniture. The young artists were given the task of creating concept designs for a small-scale improvement to the ICA campus, which eventually became the stackable stools. They did this by:

• Walking the campus and observing how it was used

• Sketching ideas

• Exploring Materiality and Practical Fabrication Methods

• Creating a prototype

• Group Discussions and Voting

Based on the concept designs created by the young artists, A+A volunteers from the USC school of architecture converted them into construction drawings, refined the design for structural stability, and cut the pieces on the CNC machine. The project was brought back to the ICA campus for final assembly, and the youth artists put the finishing touches on them.

Today, the stools are stacked into new configurations almost everyday— by staff and students alike. And every time they walk by, a young artist gets to see the tangible impact they had on the world around them.