Inclusive, Yet Confidential

When Fayez Husseini’s fifth-year interior architecture studio took on the renovation and expansion of the Cornerstone Family Counseling Center, he knew his students would have to fulfill not only the demands of the client, but also the unspoken expectations of the client’s clients.

“It gave us a look from the inside of the way a counseling service works, especially about privacy and acoustics,” said Husseini, professor of interior architecture and product design at K-State’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design. “Visual and auditory privacy are very important. For example, when clients arrive, they’d often rather not be seen by other clients. So when students dealt with the waiting room, they couldn’t have a lot of people sitting together.”

Similar concerns governed placement of windows and other openings. Pulling in natural light was desirable, yet passersby shouldn’t be able to look in. “And within the limitations of the existing building, that was very challenging,” Husseini said.

What Dr. Michael Welsh, center director, described to Husseini as “the ugliest building in Manhattan” became a candidate for the fall 2008 studio’s attention after the center’s board of directors acknowledged the need to expand.

“We’re turning people away because we don’t have the clinicians, or the space for them,” Welsh said. Plans are for Cornerstone to expand into the next-door suite of offices once the current tenant moves out.

“I found out that Professor Husseini’s studio takes on one project a year, and we applied,” Welsh said.  “It turned out to be a perfect fit.” The students sharpened their hearing along with their design skills, and Cornerstone workers viewed their tired institutional workspace through fresh eyes.

Since the students’ final presentations, Welsh and his board of directors have been interviewing local architects, including Larry Schankweiler Architecture and Planning; Reynolds Knight Anderson; and Bruce McMillan. Work should begin by spring 2010. “We’d really like to do it this fall,” Welsh said, “but I have a board of directors I have to convince.”

Getting to this point required not just students’ creative application of theory but also the utilitarian tape measure.

“They learned how important it is to be accurate, to be precise, about the building and the site,” Husseini said. The initial site visit also exposed students to the neighborhood that their ideas would have to accommodate.

After boning up on building code, the 16 students worked as a group to organize photos, drawings and the background information on client needs. “That was first step,” Husseini said.

Then the studio broke into the two-person design groups.

“After three weeks of developing rough drawings and designs, we invited the Cornerstone group to have interactive discussions,” Husseini said. From that review, students and Cornerstone staffers both emerged with a better understanding of what was feasible, what was lovely but unlikely, and which ideas were way off the mark.

“In the first phase, Professor Husseini told students to be as creative as possible, without budget or design restrictions,” Welsh said. “Then it was our job to decide what was possible. Dream big, then downsize.”

Following that, the last three weeks of the semester allowed each student to concentrate on an area of personal interest, such as lighting, arrangement of clinicians’ offices, energy efficiency and sustainability, the public areas, and branding/logos.

Ali Johnson of Topeka underwent that experience in her proposed schedule of logos.

“Cornerstone wants to be seen as a healing, professional and personal place,” she said, “so its logo, signage and its business cards and letterhead all needed to reflect this.”

Because about 40 percent of its clientele come for the center’s Christian-based counseling, the staff wanted to retain the cross in its signage.

“However, I felt that the current cross was too literal and might make people of other faiths feel excluded,” Johnson said. “This is the opposite of what Cornerstone wants to do.”

Johnson created a smooth, abstract cross of slate, accompanied by bronze lettering. The stone was an obvious material choice, given the center’s name, “and the bronze accented the slate well, while also keeping with the warm color palette used throughout the space,” she said.

Her ideas were well-received, Johnson said, “but the adaptation of the logo into other objects in the space - a large lighting fixture, a planter, the door pulls - was considered a bit too literal.”

As fifth-year students approach graduation, licensing exams and careers,  “they really benefit from this interaction,” Husseini said. “It helps them understand how their practices will work, and how important it is to understand the client’s need and to have the client’s input.”

Cornerstone Family Counseling has been in Manhattan for about 20 years, and in its current building for the last decade.

“The building’s appearance is extremely dated,” Welsh said. “It has a definite ’70s look on the outside, and inside it needs to be less institutional and more welcoming.” It’s also anonymous: “People have driven by for years and never noticed us.”

Welsh and his colleagues liked the feasibility of several K-State suggestions, including the use of frosted glass and clerestories, warmer lighting and a new exterior façade. Another good idea was to use waterfalls to mask conversation and other sounds, he said.

“There were definitely students who were more accurately able to hear what we were looking for,” Welsh said. “Others thought practically about our being a non-profit: We don’t have the budget to tear the place down and start over.

“But Fayez’s students showed us ways to make the space warm and open yet still retain the confidentiality we need in our work.” The exterior and interior plans developed by Ashley Cook of Edson and Melissa Mulsow of St. George proved particularly appealing, he said.

Even ideas that didn’t quite fit at Cornerstone have found acceptance elsewhere. Katie Gall of Independence, Mo., and Heather Wise of Bucyrus had the satisfaction of seeing their lighting plans receive an award of recognition in the 2009 Cooper Lighting SOURCE competition.

Welsh attributes Manhattan’s demand for psychological services to a mix of trends, including the stress on families of deployed soldiers from nearby Fort Riley and the difficulty of attracting psychologists to town. And as the stigma and stereotypes of mental illness continue to fade, more people seek help.

“With the expansion,  we’ll be able to help a significantly higher number of people,” Welsh said. “And by making the center more bold and more friendly, people will recognize that this is a place for hope and healing.”

 “The project was very beneficial and rewarding for the students and for me,” Husseini said. “We felt we provided this help to the community and to a non-profit organization. As designers, it is part of our responsibility to provide such a service.”

Students who participated in Husseini’s interior architecture design studio VI (IAR 708) include:

Derek Case, McPherson (reception area detail)
Ashley Cook, Edson  (lighting for offices)
Amanda Eckes, Olathe (lighting plan and detail)
Katie Gall,  Independence, Mo. (lighting for offices and courtyard)
Alexandra Garrot, Manhattan (conference room)
Courtney Geis, Marion (clinician offices)
Ashley Giroux, Topeka (lighting for offices)
Ali Johnson, Topeka (branding, logo and signage)
Abby Mann, Ellisville, Mo. (lighting design)
Melissa Mulsow, St. George (lighting plan and detail)
Allie O’Donnell, Lenexa (clinician offices)
Kara Raasch, Lincoln, Neb. (Dr. Welsh’s office)
Timothy Sherman, McPherson (sustainability issues)
Emily Weber, Olathe (building thermal performance)
Heather Wise, Bucyrus (lighting design in public areas)
Amy Wright, Manhattan (reception desk)

Click here to see some of the students’ presentations.

For more information, contact:
Fayez Husseini, 785.532.5992
Diane Potts, 785.532.1090