DesignLAB helps kids explore built environment careers

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DesignLAB helps introduce kids to careers they might not have considered.

DesignLAB is a non-profit organization with close to 200 volunteers who work with students in schools and organizations across the Greater Cincinnati region. The organization’s mission is to create appreciation, awareness and improvement of the built environment through education. They work to familiarize kids with careers they might not know about in the trade industry, architecture and engineering, with a focus on socially and sustainably responsible building.

“There are all these careers that kids know about, but if you ask a fourth or fifth grader to list every career that they’ve ever heard of, not one of them says plumber, or HVAC, or construction worker or engineer,” said DesignLAB Executive Director Christen Lubbers. “All of the careers that we’re teaching them about are not the ones that they think of.”

In Northern Kentucky, DesignLAB works with Boys & Girls Club of Greater Cincinnati: Clem & Ann Buenger Club in Newport, Boys & Girls Club of Greater Cincinnati: Kenton County Club, Moyer and Woodfill Elementary Schools in Fort Thomas and St. Augustine School in Covington. They reach over 2,000 students a year in the Greater Cincinnati area.

“We work with students where they are, and we work with mostly disadvantaged students, so we want to make sure that we are reaching them where they are, not asking them to come to us,” Lubbers said.

The DesignLAB program runs from December to May. In the first eight weeks, students learn all of the foundational basics. They learn about sites and clients and how designers are approached by clients or how they pursue clients. They also learn about plan section elevations, drawings and sustainable building practices.

In the last eight weeks of the program, students switch gears to show what they’ve learned by building models based on an annual theme. This year’s theme is ‘food for thought,’ so they’re creating food spaces. Students build things like restaurants, food trucks or farm-to-table places.

“We’re really asking them to push the limits of what they think of when it comes to food spaces and to be more thoughtful about where their food comes from and understand that a little bit better,” Lubbers said. “So, there’s always a lot of things kind of woven in, but we teach them about those careers by actually giving them the ability to be little builders and little architects and interior designers and engineers and think about how the plumbing would work in their models .”

DesignLAB utilizes grants to keep the program free to its students. Teachers sign up the students to participate, and the program leads work with them inside their classroom during the school day. The volunteers who work with the students are from the built environment.

Each year, DesignLAB holds a Dine with Design fundraiser to help cover its operating costs. In addition to its Grants, Lubber said they need about $200,000 to cover expenses, and Dine with Design is the organization’s biggest fundraiser. The event raises roughly one-third of DesignLAB’s running costs.

This year’s Dine with Design and student exhibit will be at Newport on the Levee. The student exhibit will be on display from May 12 to May 18 in The Gallery on the mezzanine level. Dine with Design is on May 15, starting at 4 pm, and the happy hour will start at the student exhibit. Tickets can be purchased here.

“It really just draws everybody in,” said DesignLAB Program Manager Emily Storm. “Last year, we were there probably almost every day just checking on things, getting things ready for all of the events we had that week, and almost every day, people would stop us and say, what is this? What’s going on? What are all these models about?”

On the last day of the exhibition, students are thrown a reception and an awards ceremony, and their classmates and families can attend to support their work.

Storm encouraged the public to check out the student exhibit the week they were on display.

“The students have worked so hard on their presentations and their projects,” Storm said. “We have a people’s choice voting box. So, if they’re not able to come on Saturday, but they’re walking around, they’re able to vote for their favorite one.”

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