The Gather Community Center

Nikki Blackman

Community - a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. It means an area with different languages, cultures and religions, generations and ideologies coming together to better their neighborhood not just right now but for the future of the residents and children that grew up there. With their common interests and goals at hand they will fight to seek change for the betterment of their community.

With this idea in mind, I think back to my trip to Illinois where I visited an armory that was converted into a community center. It was called the “GivingGarden.” It had a community-based kitchen and garden on the site. The building housed a pantry for those to donate food and supplies as well as having a kitchen to cook food and teach children the benefits of having fresh food. The Giving Garden has a program with the neighboring high school and middle school to allow students to come during and after school hours to plant fruits, vegetables and flowers. This showed them two things: 1. putting positive intentions, consistency and working hard can lead to something beneficial and 2. the program brought together groups that didn’t speak to one another within the school and unified them through this beautiful project.

This is what I intend on doing with my community center design: Gather: to bring people of all walks of life together and gather around for events, learning of cultures, foods and how to produce them, whilst also gathering around the kitchen and giving back to your fellow neighbors and those who are less fortunate.