Lida Lewis
PASSIONATE DESIGNER
EDUCATOR | THOUGHT LEADER
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
The Chicago School of Professional Psychology (TCSPP) has been (and will continue to be) a long term relationship for me. I first worked with the school here in DC, and since then I've completed projects with them in Chicago and Southern California as well. A professional graduate school for psychology, their spaces, as with the opportunities they present to students, are a great mix of classroom and practice, providing unique design challenges and opportunities throughout the US.
Starting with the space here in DC, the school had a facility on one end of Franklin Park, previously designed by Gensler and referred to as the "Taj Mahal", and were doing so well that they were looking to expand. As a workplace designer, this was an exciting opportunity to expand outside my typical project type, though it had enough similarities that I could absolutely see many wonderful ways I could leverage my past experience into this new-to-me project type.
Together with their real estate brokers, we looked at several properties together. TCSPP, I learned, looks at location first and tailors what they can do programmatically second, which makes the test fitting process a uniquely creative opportunity. Once we found a site, I next dove in by helping to review the lease, helping to catch and tailor language that would need to be changed in order to fit an education facility's needs into a typical DC office building. Moving from there through design, I challenged standards on down into the detail of the specifications themselves and called in several other of my trusted consultants to ultimately deliver a product on-time, and 40% under the last budget.
After that project, we knew we could have a great time working together again. TCSPP appreciated my project management abilities and positive attitude, and I was extremely happy with their interest in maintaining an elevated aesthetic, openness to new ideas, and willingness to listen to suggestions. We next moved on to Irvine, CA, which was a lesson in code compliance! Here, we were building not just the education facility, but also a larger office component, as well as a small psychology clinic. It was also a lesson, for them and for me, in HIPPA compliance, integration of the three (office, education, and medical) typologies, and questions of standardization in AV components, and programmatic alterations for the locality.
We've collaborated on other projects since then, including a repositioning of a small space in the original "Taj Mahal" location. This space is a small, 800 SF, then woefully underutilized ground floor retail location. Originally a large room with a reception desk, I worked with the internal TCSPP Graphics team to do branding and repositioning of this highly visible location. Programmatically, the TCSPP team and I felt that what the two separated campuses both lacked was a student study area, and we took this as a prime opportunity to address that lack and to create a connection point between the campuses.
