“Drafting Dreams seeks to impress upon students, their parents, and educators the importance of design education,” said Hughes. Hughes said through design education, students learn the design process that brings about the places they interact with daily. “Students are also exposed to decision-making processes that involve the built environment where the exposure will equip them to be able to influence progressive and necessary changes in their built environment as needed as adults.”
Considering his efforts fairly successful the past four years, Hughes said his clients consist of non-profit organizations and schools. Currently he is working with the Larimer Consensus Group, the Ellis School, Youth Places Inc. and the LIFE Makes Steam Academy. This school year he is expanding to Allegheny Traditional Academy. Financial support has been obtained from Bridgeway Capital, Kiva Pittsburgh and Urban Innovation21. Technical support has come from CUE Pittsburgh and The Mansmann Foundation.
In efforts to raise funds for annual scholarships for four students, his organization is sponsoring a Drafting Dreams ArcEd Luncheon Saturday, Sept. 16 at 1 p.m. at the Greater Pittsburgh Coliseum in Homewood. Hughes outlined that the proceeds will fund the Ina Ingram Merit Scholarship for high school students accepted into a college or university to study architecture; the Ishman B. Davis Pathways Scholarship for college students currently studying architecture; the Beverly Lynn Hughes Experience Award for college students currently studying architecture to travel to national conferences; and the HBCU ArcEd Award, which grants two awards to two of the seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities that offer degrees in architecture.
Hughes encourages people to attend the upcoming luncheon to learn exactly what the students are studying in the six to eight-week program. “Students will showcase their work,” he said.
Using the Homewood Children’s Village’s 2017 Summer Learn and Earn Program as an example, he said the standard curriculum he uses reinforces math skills and teaches architectural drafting, spatial arrangement, and building design. “Scholars are challenged to complete math problems related to proportions and fractions, learn how to use architectural drafting tools and design software, Google SketchUp Make to design one-bedroom homes and their dream homes. They create massing models of the one-bedroom homes and subsequently learn perspective sketching and building measurement as a means of understanding how to accurately document buildings.”
Considered a serial entrepreneur, Hughes is also involved in two other business ventures, N’side Out Spaces and Unity Consultants. He serves as chief executive container for N’side Out Spaces and project consultant for Unity Consultants.
N’side Out Spaces is a design-build company that manufactures and sells unique, versatile, and multi-purpose outdoor units by re-purposing shipping containers. The 8-foot-wide, 40-foot-long, 8-foot 6-inch metal containers usable for housing, office or retail space he says are affordable, functional and adaptable. “With our team’s combined background of architecture and construction estimating and management experience we offer scalable, fabricated spaces at a fraction of new construction costs.” His partner in the business, Danielle “Dana” Carter Lane, is chief operating container.
Founded in 1997 by Fred Brown, Unity Consultants’ focus was on addressing gang violence and bridging vulnerable youth with academic pathways that transformed their lives. Restructured in 2013, Lane and Cynthia L. James joined the team and Hughes was later added as project consultant.
Hughes is a board member and treasurer for the Homewood-Brushton Business Association, Board Parliamentarian for the Larimer Consensus Group and is on the Advisory Board for the Pittsburgh Albert Schweitzer Fellowship. He is a 2017 recipient of an award from BMe Community for his company’s social endeavor, Transition Pods, which re-purposes shipping containers into transition housing for the homeless, has received the Blazing Emerging Leader Award from the African American Leadership Association for his service to the community and his leadership in entrepreneurship, resulting in a Proclamation from the City of Pittsburgh and received the Alpha Rho Chi Service Award in 2014 for his leadership and service to the Hampton University Chapters of the American Institute of Architecture Students and the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students.
(For tickets to the upcoming event or for more information about Drafting Dreams, call 313-971-8886.)
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