Home

Project Photos and Videos

Imagine RIT

Team Member Roles Definition

Meeting Minutes

Phase 1: Problem Definition

Phase 2: Systems Design

Phase 3: Preliminary Detailed Design

Phase 4: Detailed Design

Phase 1: Platform Lift Design

Phase 2: Systems Re-Design

Phase 3: Detailed Re-Design

Phase 4: Integrated System Build & Test

Phase 5: Customer Handoff & Final Project Documentation

St. Joseph's House of Hospitality is a Catholic Worker community in downtown Rochester. It operates upon the principles of the Catholic Worker movement, which are found in the writings of the movement's founders, Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. "Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken." ^[1] St. Joseph's House serves free lunches seven days a week to 80-100 people and offers shelter for 20 homeless men during the winter months, among other services. However, the House is not optimized for the services it provides. Only the first floor of the facility can be used for serving lunch and providing winter shelter to a general population, so the furniture in the dining and hospitality rooms must undergo a complete changeover twice daily.

The mattresses upon which shelter guests sleep are removed from the shelter room and lifted to an elevated storage location every morning, then dropped from their storage location and carried to the shelter room each night. This is an arduous task for the guests and shelter staff, and causes the mattresses to wear out rapidly.

The P17431 members are teaming up with Autodesk, Inc. to develop a new solution for St. Joseph's shelter operation. The goals of this project are to develop a sleeping arrangement which is space-efficient, more hospitable for guests, more sanitary than previous solutions, easier to set up and store, durable, and repairable, and to develop a personal belongings storage system which is organized and provides efficient access to guests' belongings. Autodesk is providing financial support to the team as well as training in its Fusion 360(TM) cloud-based computer-aided design software.

A single-page summary of the project can be found here. Detailed background information on the project can be found in the Project Readiness Package and on the problem definition page.

The dining room of St. Joseph's, ready to serve a meal.

Project Name

St. Joseph's House Shelter Improvements

Project Number

P17431

Project Family

Social Impact Projects with Autodesk

Start Term

2161

End Term

2165

Faculty Guide

Sarah Brownell, sabeie@rit.edu

Primary Customer

St. Joseph's House of Hospitality

Sponsor (financial support)

Autodesk

Sharon Im

• Project Manager

Kenneth Postel

• Facilitator

Ezra Weinstein

• Finance
• Notetaker

Alice Komrowski

• Customer Liaison
• EDGE Webmaster

Connor Pierce

• EDGE Webmaster