PODCASTS > Arcat Detailed Podcast Episode

136: Trauma-informed Design | Broadway Youth Center

44m 31s |

In this episode, Cherise is joined by Emily Ray, AIA, Project Architect at Wheeler Kearns Architects in Chicago and AIA Chicago 2024 Dubin Family Young Architect Award winner. They discuss the Broadway Youth Center Project, also in Chicago.

Planted in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, just steps from the Sheridan Red Line station, the Broadway Youth Center (BYC) stands as a safe and welcoming space for the city’s LGBTQIA+ youth. Operated by Howard Brown Health and built with a trauma-informed design, this five-story, brick-clad building is more than just a healthcare facility—it’s a home, a haven, and a symbol of community care.

Emily Ray, AIA, Project Architect at Wheeler Kearns Architects

Emily Ray is dedicated to equity-driven design for nonprofit and community-based clients in education, arts, and social services.

A Project Architect at Wheeler Kearns Architects since 2017, her award-winning work includes Broadway Youth Center, Great Lakes Academy Expansion, and the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School Expansion.

As a founding member of AIA Chicago's LGBTQIA+ Alliance, she mentors as well as advances inclusivity in architecture.

AIA Chicago honored her with the 2024 Dubin Family Young Architect Award.

Project Name and Location: Broadway Youth Center, Chicago, Illinois

The new facility for Howard Brown Health's Broadway Youth Center (BYC) provides a home for Chicago's young LGBTQIA+ community to access comprehensive social and medical services in spaces that are liberating and dignified.

The program includes clinic spaces, a pharmacy, a daily 'drop-in' center, a dance and movement room, and private spaces for counseling, career, and social services, including a teaching kitchen for job training and a clothing 'store'.

Unique Highlights:

BYC provides a home for Chicago's young LGBTQIA+ community to access comprehensive social and medical services in liberating and dignified spaces.

BYC incorporates trauma-informed design principles and a welcoming, cafe-like entrance to lower the barrier of entry to young people who may be wary of institutional buildings.

As Howard Brown's first new ground-up building, it was important for the project to weave the unique values and identities of the communities it serves into the physical fabric of the building.

At the outermost layer, a facade composed of a patchwork of large masonry panels, made with varying shades and patterns of bricks, wrap around and knit the building together like the patchwork of a quilt, representing BYC's unique identity and community it serves.

Inside, warm, welcoming and safe spaces allow young people to express themselves.

Upon entry, smiling faces immediately greet visitors to help them navigate to their destination, whether the cafe, clinic services, pharmacy, classrooms, or daily drop-in center on the top levels.

Accent colors and murals on each floor coupled with warm maple wood doors and millwork, airy spaces, and comfortable furnishings bring the community's artistic, youthful, and energetic spirit into peaceful and therapeutic spaces.