Small Project Design Grant Recipients
The Small Project Design advisory group is pleased to announce the recipients of the Small Project Design Knowledge Community Grant. The purpose of this grant is to provide financial support for non-profit organizations working with architects on community-based projects. Along with supporting the work of non-profits, we want to demonstrate the value of hiring an architecture firm (and AIA member) for community projects, by helping cover some of the costs associated with hiring the design team.
2024 Recipients
Building Bridges: Shaping Spaces for Family Permanency
Organization: Bridges Homeward
Architecture Firm: Architecture for Public Benefit
Bridges Homeward is committed to advocating for the well-being of children, teens, and families, ensuring they reside in stable, safe, and loving homes while nurturing healthy, permanent relationships. Permanency lies at the heart of their mission, empowering individuals to advocate for themselves. Through five specialized programs—Adoption, Developmental Disabilities Services, Family Services, Family Support and Stabilization, and Intensive Foster Care—Bridges Homeward takes a comprehensive approach to addressing diverse needs and situations. From facilitating children remaining with their biological families to supporting individuals with developmental disabilities to live within familial environments instead of institutional settings, their interventions are tailored to individual circumstances. By fostering environments where families can thrive, providing resources to strengthen familial bonds and resilience, Bridges Homeward has built a legacy of transformative impact spanning 150 years. Collaborating with the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Developmental Services (DDS), their programs ensure that every child, teen, and family receives the support necessary for lasting, positive change.
Black Regional Food Hub
Organization: Feed’em Freedom Foundation
Architecture Firm: Ink: BRIC Architecture
After more than a decade of supporting emerging farmers around the Portland metro area, we are working to purchase land and build a home base for our community programs. Funds from the AIA Small Projects Grant will support a feasibility study for the purchase and renovation of a 5-acre site in Gresham, Oregon for our future Black Regional Food Hub.
This project will impact and benefit emerging Black farmers, youth, and food-insecure families in our community through apprenticeship programs, youth education, culturally-relevant food pantries, and food box deliveries. Black families in Oregon face unprecedented food insecurity that has only heightened in the years since the pandemic. Currently, 1 in 5 Black families in Oregon experience hunger, with 18% of Black families experiencing high food insecurity – a statistic that is three times higher than White, non-Hispanic families. To meet this high need, we have deepened our program capacity and our partnerships with other Black-led organizations, including the Black Oregon Land Trust, and we are now ready to secure land for a permanent home to better serve our communities. The Black Regional Food Hub will be a community center to grow and store food, build intergenerational skills and knowledge, aggregate small producers’ crops, and form growing contracts in collaboration with BIPOC processors to build sustainable community wealth.
2022 Recipients
The Garden Gateway
Organization: Center for Court Innovation Neighborhood Safety Initiatives
Architecture Firm: Interboro Partners
The Garden Gateway is a community-led micro-project to enliven a precious public space at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)-owned Patterson Houses in the South Bronx, NYC, undertaken as a collaboration between local residents, the NYC Center for Court Innovation (CCI), and Interboro Partners, our AIA-affiliated architecture and urban design firm. This 1,750-sf intervention includes the transformation of an underutilized paved area into an adult exercise space, as well as a gateway pavilion that creates a new entry into an existing community garden and storage for exercise equipment and gardening tools. Through these simple design moves, the Gateway maximizes residents’ vision for a more socially, environmentally, and physically healthy neighborhood.
The Blue Bird Inn
Organization: Detroit Sound Conservancy
Architecture Firm: Quinn Evans Architects
Detroit Sound Conservancy, a nonprofit community-based music archive, will redesign The Blue Bird Inn, a former working-class, African American owned and operated jazz club at 5021 Tireman on Detroit's Old West Side, into a music venue, gathering space, and cultural education center. All uses will be welcoming, accessible, and intergenerational with an emphasis on preserving our heritage for an innovative collaborative future.
Sioux YMCA Tiny Home Community
Organization: Sioux YMCA
Architecture Firm: Siris Coombs Architecture
The Cheyenne River Reservation faces critical needs for both housing and employment. Designed through community engagement with Lakota elders and youth, the YMCA Tiny Home Community aims to meet both of these by offering transitional housing alongside support for equitable access to employment. The project will empower residents with the resources to live independently and support for spiritual and mental healing.
2021 Recipients
Cedar Lee Mini-Park
Organization: Future Heights
Architecture firm: Kordalski Architects, Inc.
FutureHeights, a nonprofit community development corporation, plans to transform an under-utilized public right-of-way, into a welcoming and inclusive park for the Cedar Lee Business District and surrounding residential neighborhoods of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The site, roughly 50’ wide x 150’ deep, currently serves as a pass-through for visitors, connecting a public parking lot and garage to Lee Road businesses. Working in partnership with an AIA architect, FutureHeights will enhance the site to create a public, ADA-compliant gathering space for the community.
Cedar Lee Mini-Park
SAF Office & Farmworker Housing Advocacy Center
Organization: Student Action with Farmworkers
Architecture firm: Katherine Hogan Architects, PC
The project is the design of new a new office to support the work of Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF). The SAF Board and Staff wish to create a unique space that not only reflects their values but also the values of the farmworker communities that they support.
SAF Office & Farmworker Housing Advocacy Center
Safe and Healing Studio Sanctuary
Organization: Firebird Community Arts
Architecture firm: Wrap Architecture
The feasibility study for the renovation of the Firebird Community Arts studio will assist with strategic planning for potential studio improvements that can be implemented over time as funding sources become available. Project goals include creating a visual connection to the outdoor classroom, increasing natural light, improving indoor air quality, toilet room and breakroom upgrades, accessibility, signage, energy efficiency measures, and potential sources of renewable energy.
Safe and Healing Studio Sanctuary
2020 Recipients
Watershed Conservation Resource Center
Organization: Watershed Conservation Resource Center
Architecture firm: University of Arkansas Community Design Center
This small facility for an emerging river institute combines a private office/workshop space for a design-build operation in river restoration with a public watershed education/event seating 100 guests. The challenge is to accommodate conflicting requirements between both programs on a spartan budget. The WCRC facility must balance the need for a private and quiet work environment with the objective to project hospitality among community stakeholders in building watershed stewardship.
Watershed Conservation Resource Center