LowDO and FORGE Landscape Architecture have designed a new community dwelling, garden, and playscape for Casa Marianella. Casa is a non-profit that provides essential shelter and support for immigrants and refugees, and the project will create shared spaces for their Posada campus, which exclusively serves women and children who have traveled to Austin from myriad countries across the Americas and Africa. Casa promotes self-sufficiency by offering these women and their families a temporary home and supportive services to place children in school, find jobs, complete paperwork, and adjust to living in a new culture after often-traumatic journeys.
LowDO has worked inclusively with Casa staff and residents to design the new building, beginning with a series of on-site engagement workshops in which visual cards and translators helped facilitate conversations between the design team and residents about their experiences and priorities. This participatory process has informed the development of all aspects of the design.
The project has taken shape as a structure and landscape that center much-needed shared gathering space. Modest bedrooms upstairs will increase capacity at Posada, while an adaptable “great room” below will connect directly to an outdoor covered porch and landscape, maximizing opportunities for gathering and connecting while providing flexible areas for services and tutoring. FORGE has designed the landscape to include a central community agroforestry garden that includes edible and medicinal plants identified by current residents as culturally desirable. Adjacent to the garden is a nature-based playscape that encourages creativity and exploration for children.
Throughout, the design weaves multi-cultural sensibilities through spaces and materials, aiming to create a cost-effective building that over time will represent “home” for diverse groups of women and children. Large shady overhangs, semi-conditioned spaces, and climate-resilient plantings all contribute to the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of the project.
