Located in a previously vacant storefront just steps from Fruitvale Station in Oakland, Calif., a STEM lab is working to solve one of the tech industry’s biggest and most trenchant challenges. Founded by Google in 2016, Code Next is a free, after-school program and makerspace that aims to expose Black, Latino, and Native American kids to computer science with the goal of diversifying the tech industry pipeline.
“Back in 2015, it was coming to light that our tech sector isn’t very diverse. At companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google, [the workforce] is, like, 3% Black or [Latino]. And the thinking was, that’s a problem because we’ve got a bunch of white males designing technology for everyone,” says Danish Kurani, the Pakistan-born architect whose eponymous Atlanta and Mountain View, Calif.–based firm designed Code Next’s original Oakland home.
courtesy architect Danish Kurani / copyright Jim Stephenson
In the years since its founding, Code Next has grown. Google opened two additional Code Next labs in New York and is currently building a fourth in Detroit alongside the high-tech mobility hub the company is spearheading with Ford. Most recently, this spring, Code Next Oakland left its initial location and moved into the Fruitvale Station-adjacent storefront, which offered a larger and more flexible lab space, also designed by Kurani.
Set around the corner from its original location, along a bustling, Spanish-styled plaza and pedestrian mall that serves as a community hub for the Fruitvale neighborhood, the 3,000-square-foot, classroom-meets-workshop-meets-after-school-hangout space swaps the former site’s Google-inspired primary color palette and motivational supergraphics for a warmer and more stripped-down aesthetic, its raw-cardboard-colored interior becoming a canvas for the students’ creativity.
Kurani built on his experience designing the first Code Next lab to develop a purpose-built learning environment that emphasizes community, connectedness and exploration. Among the new additions are high-resolution digital cameras in every classroom and at every workstation that allow the 3D printers and laser cutters to be controlled remotely, a capability developed during the pandemic but now leveraged to offer a remote program called Code Next Connect. “We have hybrid learning capabilities so that a student who’s not at the lab, maybe not even in Oakland, can participate,” Kurani says.
courtesy architect Danish Kurani / copyright Jim Stephenson
The main difference, the architect says, is the amount of space dedicated to each of the program’s four focus areas, connected via a central circulation corridor. “In the new space, we’re able to have distinct learning spaces that all have different capabilities and a different character to them,” Kurani explains.
The makerspace features large tables, high ceilings, and open shelves filled with 3D printers and bins of materials. The fabrication shop is an airy, garage-like area full of laser cutters and other machines. The design lab boasts individual workstations but also amenities for group collaboration and pinups, while the coding lab is designed for a high degree of focus, with lower ceilings, acoustic panels, and wall-mounted computer monitors. Seating alcoves sprinkled throughout the space accommodate either solo work or socializing.
courtesy architect Danish Kurani / copyright Jim Stephenson
For the initial Code Next space, Kurani had asked the program’s leaders to describe the feelings they wanted students to experience upon entering the space. “I would get them to role-play through a typical day,” the architect says. “Every few moments, almost like Zack Morris in Saved By the Bell, I would call ‘timeout’ and say, ‘Okay, this is what you want to happen in this moment. Let’s pause and let’s think about what type of environment would make that possible.’ Role-playing forced [the leaders] to physically embody that experience and think through what they wanted to create. It was kind of like we were doing UX design in 3D.”
One thing Kurani wanted to change from the original space was the pedagogical approach of the architecture itself. “If you look at the first Code Next, the walls were plastered with stories of Black and Hispanic inventors and scientists, just to show these kids, Hey, people in your shoes have gone on to do great things,” Kurani says. “That works really well for places where kids come for a workshop or for just a few days. But Code Next has kids coming to the same space all through high school.”
The new Code Next eschews didactic supergraphics and instead features small, geometric signs that tell the story of various materials in the space. One notes that a countertop is made from recycled cardboard boxes. Another explains the unique chemical nature of whiteboard paint. Hidden throughout the space, the inconspicuous graphics “are kind of like easter eggs,” Kurani says. “They’re subtle. It might actually take you a year or two to find them all.”
courtesy architect Danish Kurani / copyright Jim Stephenson
courtesy architect Danish Kurani / copyright Jim Stephenson
As some of the signage makes clear, an environmental ethos permeates the space, from its flooring—carpets are made from recycled fishing nets or plastic bottles while the polished concrete-like finish is made from flaxseed oil and pine gum—to the MERV-15 air filter, which, according to Kurani, captures 90% of airborne particulates.
But it was equally important to Kurani that the architectural details be a source of inspiration, to prompt questions and observation and inspire a sense of discovery. The carefully selected materials and accompanying explanatory details, he says, are “meant to get [the kids] into a maker mindset and thinking about how things are made.”
This article has been updated.
Read more about Danish Kurani’s work, including the Khan Lab School in Mountain View, Calif.
