This is a part two of my story about redesigning a community lounge for homeless mothers and their children and babies. It will highlight the most exciting moments of the design implementation. (Part 1 describes the design process).
One issue was that I did not know what kind of donations the children and staff from Marymount International School would bring. That meant I could not plan the design scheme in detail until the actual day of installation!
I arrived after the implementation of the design had already begun. The walls had been painted in specified colours and some furniture had been assembled. The new lighting fixtures had also been installed. The girls from Marymount were just finishing clearing the area and arranging their donations.
I brought the art prints with me, but the frames were already on site. I therefore had to frame them in situ, before hanging them on the walls. This is not an ideal situation, as commercial frames and mounts are not always exactly to size, and it is better to have a professional framer to frame art prints. On the other hand, there is a huge cost saving in using pre-bought frames and mounts, so for this project we had no choice.
There were some issues, but I got them framed and hung up on the walls.
Unfortunately there was no spirit level on site, so we had to measure from the ceiling to get the heights looking right. Always take a tape measure with you!
Next I needed to look at the pictures. This meant sorting them by size and trying to reach some sorf of balanced composition with the material available, even if it wasn’t quite my original plan.
The room dividers had not yet been attached to each other or the wall, so it was not possible to arrange everything in its final position, but it did look good when everything was finished.
The new community lounge finally felt like a well structured, living and aspirational space. I am sure it will help many homeless mothers and their kids to find hope and a sense of security and belonging in a new, nurturing environment.
The staff of the Evolve Housing + Support had been waiting for that moment for a while as it has big plans on using the lounge for builing a supportive and friendly network where the homeless mums and their children wil have an opportunity to foster their relisience and prepare themselves for a better future.
