YCCS-CCA Academy HS

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Grant Amount: 10,000

Our students will collaborate with area designers, engineers, architects and specific School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) classes to design and fabricate architectural elements for a community food forest project. The project is an extension of a partnership initiated in the fall of 2017 with SAIC and a senior architecture capstone studio taught by architect Odile Compagnon.

During the fall of 2017 and the spring of 2018, Odile Compagnon and the students of the SAIC capstone studio collaborated with students from CCA Academy to create an overall design for a community food forest.

CCA students attended capstone classes; participated in discussions and critiques; learned the design process; met with experts in the field of permaculture (permanent agriculture) and landscape restoration; researched plants, plant guilds, permaculture and modern agricultural practices and then returned to CCA to create their own designs and models for the project.

At the end of the semester students came together for the final critique and to choose a winning design for the food forest.

Over the summer months, CCA student summer interns continued to work on the project by following the architectural plans and breaking ground on the city lots acquired for the project. They studied plant care, drainage, measurement, building bench seating, tree pruning and reading architectural plans.

This school year we are continuing our partnership with SAIC and Odile Compagnon, and expanding to include Lynette Stuhlmacher, restoration and sustainability consultant and teaching artist, as well as designer and teaching artist Eric Hotchkiss. All three artists and their students will learn and work with our students in furthering the artistic and architectural project elements such as: signage, seating, murals, planters, outdoor sculptures, interactive objects and espalier, for the six city lot food forest site.