With a steady focus on progress and community spirit, Clackamas Community College (CCC) has grown to serve a diverse student body of more than 26,000 students of wide-ranging cultures, ages, and program interests. The new Wacheno Welcome Center provides a one-stop resource destination where students can have most of their questions answered in one sitting rather than moving to different offices or between buildings. The design creates a warm, inviting, uplifting, comfortable, and stress-mitigating environment, helping new students learn to navigate college success while balancing other life commitments.
How do you express social justice values in designed experiences, and how do you help amplify the voices of many individuals who, when part of large stakeholder groups, are uncomfortable speaking up and having their voices heard by the group?
During our work with Opsis at the Clackamas Community College Wacheno Welcome Center in Oregon City, we developed an anonymous, real-time survey used during presentations to gather live feedback, which was then summarized and consolidated into different themes to set direction and inform placemaking.
The final placemaking concept, driven by feedback from student stakeholder groups, used the “C” form from CCC’s logo as a building block to create a design featuring photos of CCC students combined with quotes about social justice. Designed for inclusivity, the placemaking at this facility is anchored by large-scale graphic graduated color fields and by translating the word “welcome” into numerous languages to support and honor its increasingly diverse community.
Around the time Knot Studio was developing a conceptual design framework for the Welcome Center, George Perry Floyd Jr. was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. The murder of George Floyd was the catalyst that thrust Black Lives Matter, a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and inequality experienced by black people, broadly into the public consciousness.
The impact of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter led CCC to reach out to its student groups on various fronts, including asking students to vet the design direction for placemaking at the new Welcome Center. It quickly became apparent to CCC that there was enormous pushback from its students that the focus on regional history and geography did nothing to further the powerful concepts of diversity, equity, and social justice.
At this point, it was determined that other aspects of the building, such as the design of wayfinding, would proceed but that the placemaking design would be put on hold so that CCC, students, and the consultant team could take a break to be reflective and to start entirely fresh.
After several months of reflection, the placemaking team restarted a new and redesigned process with an extensive and representative stakeholder group, including students. The team began fresh with new precedent images and a renewed commitment to listening, understanding, and reflecting on what they heard from stakeholders.
