Design Considerations

Key design goals and considerations for Self exploration Centers include the
following:

CREATE A HOMELIKE ENVIRONMENT

While meeting the durability requirements for a public facility, the finishes,
furnishings, fixtures, and equipment in self exporation Centers should be
comfortable and have a homelike quality:

• Provide ample natural light

• Provide a sense of welcome and arrival at the entrance, lobby, and control
desk
• Use residential-style doors and windows
• Use indirect lighting as main ambient lighting, and
• Avoid institutional, unnatural finishes, textures, and colors.

ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY
Part of the facility's mission is to encourage creative development. The project
development process and final design can help accomplish this in several ways:

• Carefully consider interior colors and textures. Design the self exploration
Center to communicate a sense of fun, but use restraint (e.g., neutral tones
for backgrounds and ceilings, with warm colors for accents). Consider wall
murals in some common areas.
• Particularly for the teen room, consider guiding a teen focus group to select
an interior color scheme
• Provide space and consider various techniques to display and celebrate youth
artwork, and
• Design display areas to be easily changed and updated, minimize permanent
graphics.

ENCOURAGE AUTONOMY
Self exploration centers are not schools. While supervision must be maintained at all
times, the design should accommodate autonomy in the unstructured activity areas.
The people patrons should have independent access to the following:

• Snack bar and toilets

• Games, computers, and TV
• Friends and companions, and
• Quiet space for solitude.

INCLUDE APPROPRIATE SPACE FOR STAFF

Provide space to assist staff in developing and maintaining the center's programs
and business. Outside of normal day-to-day operations, staff must be able to
accomplish the following:

• Think and plan

• Meet and communicate
• Host visitors, and
• Store equipment and records.

AREA PROGRAMME