January 8, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Placing a game room near the entrance of a Boys & Girls Club can help convey a sense of fun from the moment a child walks in the door, while comfy couches, beanbag chairs, and rugs can make a club’s homework and study areas more appealing.
These and other tips and information can be found on KidBuilding, a Web site created by the building-services department of Boys & Girls Clubs of America, in Atlanta.
Design plays an important role in helping clubs achieve their mission, says Jan Still-Lindeman, a spokeswoman for the organization.
“We always somewhat jokingly say, ‘Kids don’t come to the clubs to have their character built,’” she says. “They don’t want necessarily to replicate their classroom experience, so you’ve got to work to design something that is really inviting and engaging and compels them.”
KidBuilding features a calculator that helps clubs figure out how much space they will need based on the number of children they expect to serve and the programs they plan to offer. With that information in hand, the calculator estimates the size of the lot that the organization will need and how much the building will cost. The Web site also offers sample floor plans, color schemes, and a photo gallery showing examples of well-designed clubs.
The site is an effort to get important information out to clubs and their architects early in the planning process, says R. Leslie Nichols, vice president of architecture and risk management at Boys & Girls Clubs of America. He says the organization’s rapid growth in recent years — more than 300 new clubs opened in 2002 — has meant that the three-person building-services department has not always been able to walk clubs through the early steps.
In fact, in some cases the department would first learn about a new building when a club submitted its completed plan for approval.
“Sometimes the design would be so far along that there wouldn’t be anything we could do to help them to make it work better,” Mr. Nichols says.
About 200 of the more than 3,300 Boys & Girls Clubs across the country have used KidBuilding’s calculator feature since the site went online in February 2003, says Mr. Nichols. In that time, he and his colleagues have used the site in 60 percent of its 300 consultations with local clubs.
This year the organization hopes to expand the information on color schemes into a more comprehensive section on interior design.
To get there: Go to http://www.kidbuilding.org.
