First Followers Learning Lab

Champaign, Illinois | 2017-

Aneesha Dharwadker, Conor O’Shea

FirstFollowers is a non-profit based in Champaign, IL, that supports young people with re-entry into their communities after incarceration.

In 2017, a community member donated a home to the organization. The Learning Lab is a renovation of that home into a shared neighborhood asset, using design-build principles to teach carpentry, residential construction, and landscape skills to young Scholars in the program.

Construction began in Spring 2018 and is ongoing. Our role has been to provide design concept ideas, facilitate charrettes, and frame landscape interventions as flexible and evolving throughout the seasons. In addition to technical drawings, an Ideas Book guides FirstFollowers as they develop the project in the future.

Photos: Aneesha Dharwadker