RYSE Commons Design Tour

RYSE Commons is a new campus dedicated to youth leadership in Richmond, California. It serves youth, ages 13-21, across Richmond and West Contra Costa County. The project resulted from Black, Brown, Indigenous and Young People of Color (BIYPOC) calling on adults to listen, invest, and rethink young people’s place in the city.

The campus reimagined 6 parcels, a sea of asphalt anchored by a nondescript 1970’s county administration building. Spaces in this building were difficult to find or entirely cut off from the exterior.

The campus’ core is comprised of a large courtyard framed by the existing building and a new building to the west. Overhead doors at each building blur the interior with the exterior courtyard that was envisioned as a Zocalo, or town square, which can open to the street for large community events. Intimately scaled outdoor spaces beyond include a lushly landscaped meditation space and a kitchen garden.

A new interior layout at the existing building clusters spaces to house socially aligned community partners, additional meeting space and laboratories for innovation and entrepreneurship around a central “collaboration space”.