Designing for the Client
In beginning to look at an installation for the housing court, I took another look at my original observations from our first visit. I was drawn to the lawyer of the day program especially due to its integral part in the proceedings for the court and the public that uses it. The lawyer of the day program gives free advice to those who seek it, whether it be a landlord, a tenant or a property manager. The volunteer lawyers can help each person at varying scales of involvement, from getting a proper form for the client to actually representing a client for a hearing. The conversations that the volunteer lawyer has with each client is sensitive information and should not be shared with other parties present in the very chaotic corridor in which the lawyer of the day program operates.
I began thinking of different ways for the lawyers to have space to be able to talk to their clients in a quiet and helpful setting. Several of my ideas had components of temporary booth-like structures that could be assembled to give the lawyer a space to talk to their clients. Other ideas included separating the lawyer of the day program into multiple entities in order to separate the use of the lawyer of the day program between landlords/property mangers and tenants which would give the two different parties space for their own conversations as well as organizing the program more successfully because at the moment the one-table entity becomes swarmed and very chaotic with multiple conversations occurring all at one time.
Many of my other ideas for installations at the housing court involved way-finding and be able to give members of the public a decent sense of maneuverability throughout the courthouse through methods of signage, way-finding diagrams placed at moments of major foot traffic as well as nodes of direction to point people in the right direction and answering many simple questions that come up for first-time users of the space.
