Charlie’sFreewheels. 2020.CoDesign
    Charlie’s Freewheels is a non-profit organization that “uses bicycles to support the development of empowered young leaders, and self-assured young cyclists”

Charlie’s maintains a repair shop that doubles as an education space where they teach mechanics and bicycle-related skill development, as well as using the space as a meeting point for group rides and events.

Charlie’s is an example of a community bike-shop, a space that uses the simple beauty and power of the bicycle to grow relationships, teach skills and bring folks with varying backgrounds together.

Cyan station was retained to design the interior architecture for a new space at the ground level of a 40 storey condo development in Regent Park, and to lead a co-design process involving youth. The process began with building a collaborative timeline of the history of the organization.

Cyan Station led exercises to visualize the actors internal and external to the organization, allowing everyone to gain a clearer picture of their network and operations.

To understand the various daily journey’s through the existing and proposed space, user journeys were built collaboratively

Through the various co-design exercises, Cyan Station, the staff team, the Board of Directors and the Youth Advisory Group developed an architectural brief that outlined various program areas, spatial relationships and ‘zones’ for a flexible and functional space.

Once the brief was developed, Cyan Station began the process of Schematic Design. At this point, concerns with the new leased space began to surface. The collaborative process revealed that the size and nature of the new space was out of line with the real needs of the organization. In the end, the decision was made to remain in the existing space and to make some more affordable modifications. Sometimes building is not the best solution.