2024 Design Grants Final Presentations

Hear from our 2024 Design Grants teams! Our teams presented their projects, highlighting all the amazing work they’ve done so far and what is next for each project. Are you a funder or design firm who does pro bono work? You don’t want to miss this!

Gardens For All (Jardines Para Todos)

Sociedad Latina’s Jardines Para Todos design initiative will be led by 15 high school Youth Leaders who are part of their Environmental and Food Justice Program (EJ). Their EJ youth focus on addressing the impacts of climate change in their Mission Hill and Roxbury community and receive training and career mentorship to become the next generation of leaders in sustainability and environmental STEM. For the Gardens For All design initiative, the youth will create a design guide and workshops for community members that cover different strategies for low-cost gardening setups, accounting for spatial constraints, portability for rental housing, and limited light and irrigation requirements.

Inclusive Four Corners

Most recently, the City of Boston has been promoting an initiative known as Squares and Streets (S&S) that seeks to rezone key neighborhood areas to allow for more housing density and business development. This team from Four Corners Main Streets seeks to explore the details of S&S as a way to better understand the planning process and identify mitigation strategies for potential negative impacts and to create sustainable long-term benefits in return. Their goal is to have this process be inclusive of their neighborhood’s diversity.

Planning for a Chinatown Library Park

With a permanent Chinatown branch of the Boston Public Library planned to break ground this year, Friends of the Chinatown Library, residents, and other community groups share a vision of creating a small park or community garden next to the library. Because the land is privately owned and the landowner, a small community church, is not interested in selling at this time, they are unfolding a gradual and multilayered community campaign to convince key stakeholders and mobilize support. Support from Sasaki designers will help them to involve community members in developing and promoting this vision.