Title

A School Design: for homeless children in NYC

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Tingjie Zhou, Syracuse UniversityFollow

Document Type

Thesis, Senior

Degree

M. ARCH I

Date

Spring 2019

Keywords

homeless children, NYC, architecture, Oklahoma city school, whirlpool care counts program

Language

English

Disciplines

Architecture

Description/Abstract

By the end of 2017, more than fifteen thousand homeless families with over twenty-three thousand children lived in shelters in New York City (Coalition for the homeless, Facts About Homelessness). Receiving education in a school, a daily activity for school age children, can easily become an unachievable thing for homeless children. Though many programs and acts are carried out to help these children, their educational situation is still severe.

Noticing the circumstance that homeless children are facing, I’m interested in the role that architecture can play in responding to homeless children’s educational concerns. When looking at the schools with high percentage of homeless children, it’s notable that most of these schools have family shelters nearby. Considering this as a point of departure, this thesis seeks to address the challenges of providing a quality education for homeless children broadening its architectural scope to the surrounding community.

In terms of the social and technical complexity of school design for homeless children, my inquiry is applying an evidence-based and data- driven design method to school design. The data relevant to this thesis will include social data on homeless children’s education concerns and technical data on building environment. Led by the collected data and the hypotheses based on evidence, the school design proposal aims at discovering opportunities to improve the quality of education and retain homeless children in school. Meanwhile, the process of the school design proposal will be complied into a textual and graphic documentation, which can serve as a design methodology reference for designers, architects and students.

Additional Information

Thesis Advisors:

Brian Lonsway

Terrance Goode

Recommended Citation

Zhou, Tingjie, "A School Design: for homeless children in NYC" (2019). Architecture Senior Theses. 453.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_theses/453

Source

Local Input

Creative Commons License

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