Meet Roca

Molly Baldwin founded Roca in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in 1988, to provide support to at-risk youth in dangerous urban communities. For 38 years, Molly has been a tireless advocate, mentor, and community convener, reaching out to young people at the center of violence in Massachusetts’ most troubled urban communities. With the help of engaged institutions and Roca’s committed staff, Molly’s efforts at Roca have helped more than 25,000 young people make positive and profound changes in their lives.

Roca’s mission is to relentlessly disrupt violence by engaging young people, police, and systems to heal trauma, find hope, and drive change.

Since its founding, Roca has expanded into seven locations across Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maryland. At the heart of everything Roca does is Rewire CBT: a non-clinical approach built to help young people take an 8-12 second pause before they react and learn vital life skills to help them achieve and sustain behavior change. Roca’s data and independent evaluations of Rewire CBT have confirmed its life-changing impact, including among participants enrolled for 24 or more months, 92% had no new arrests and 98% had no new incarcerations.

Beyond direct service work, the Roca Impact Institute (RII) extends Roca’s reach nationally by providing Rewire training for frontline staff of community-based and juvenile justice institutions and police and corrections officers from coast to coast.

Community-Based Design 

In 2021, ARC had just returned to in-office work following the Covid quarantines. Increasing inequity from the pandemic, along with the murder of George Floyd, reminded me of a promise I made to myself many years earlier. Early life experiences and work in college fostered a desire to practice architecture as an instrument for social good. I was in conversation with an ARC colleague, Amber, and expressed a wish to do more and advocate for social change and community-based design. Amber had volunteered for Roca in high school and introduced us to Molly Baldwin.

There are moments in life when you meet someone for the first time and feel as if you have known them forever. This is Molly Baldwin’s superpower: making people feel welcome and accepted as they are. Getting to know Molly is an embrace, as she draws you into the Roca family. This initial connection grew into a partnership and catalyzed our work with Roca.

For the last five years ARC has been working with Roca to enhance their facilities and support Roca’s core values through design. We honor their goals in fostering trust and providing an environment that encourages openness from its community members. ARC’s story with Roca is personal, and is based on deep respect for Roca’s work, creating space where trust and openness can flourish, and at-risk young people can find a place to belong. 

Enthusiastic beginnings

Our first project was a modest improvement to the Roca Hartford location, which led to a renovation in Baltimore, and the design for Roca’s new Boston location. ARC and Consigli Construction subsequently completed a transformation of the original Chelsea, MA headquarters into an open, light-filled professional space that Roca youth and staff can call home.

ARC is currently working on the revitalization of Roca Springfield with Fontaine Brothers Construction.

In each case, we collaborated with Molly and her team to create space that reflects the foundation of Roca’s purpose while bringing renewed energy to the Roca environment that is professional and empowering to the communities Roca serves.

The best example of this work is the Chelsea Headquarters where Roca originated. The warm approachability begins the moment you walk into the building, where you are greeted with a smile from 36-year Roca veteran Marta Gonzalez, who serves as receptionist and education & workforce readiness instructor. She sits at the newly designed and re-located front desk, brightly painted with the signature vibrant Roca green color. Reception is elevated and open on three sides, allows sight lines across the whole first floor. Marta and the Roca team have full visibility of the activity happening in the entrance and first floor space. The design of the entry was important to Liz Hidalgo, lead interior designer on this project, because the first impression was critical to the work of Roca.

Does a person feel welcome and engaged the moment he/she walks through the door?

Does a person feel encouraged to keep taking steps towards a positive future?

This led us to focus on two key design elements for the whole project – color and the visual connections between spaces. We knew the space needed to be modern and eclectic and depart from the uninspiring neutral environments typically seen in institutional spaces.

Using color to engage and heal

Color is the best tool to enhance a space. It can also be the most challenging of design decisions because the experience of color is subjective to everyone. Challenge accepted! We took the Roca branded bright green and asked ourselves, how can this feel special but not overwhelming? The design response is a palette of emerald green and deep emerald-green tones for carpet and soft blue-grays for paints. We used Benjamin Moore Wales Gray as the overall wall and ceiling paint color, which fosters calm and prevents a harsh contrast of color. Old Blue Jeans (a new favorite for Roca) is applied as an accent color to circulation walls, creating a transition moment as you walk into an office or classroom – for more focused and reflective activities. Roca’s bright lime green, the staple color of their visual identity, is applied at key signage moments and all structural elements of the space, celebrating the foundation of the organization with these pops of color. On a recent visit to the headquarters, Victor and Liz shared a joyful moment with Joe Furnari, VP of Operations, as he retold a story of a patron commenting on the new colors of the space, excitedly noting, “The color changed the whole mood of the building.” Another visitor told Molly how calm they felt entering Roca Chelsea. Roca is now painting all of its facilities with the Chelsea colors as the new Roca standard palette.

Layers of visibility 

One of the most successful areas of improvements in the Chelsea space is the addition of a large conference room on the 2nd floor. By filling in half of the floor over the existing basketball court directly beneath on the first floor, we created a large space to build out a multipurpose use conference room. It has a expanse of windows that looks out onto the basketball court and has operable doors that open to the common area of the Young Women’s group and administration offices. It offers Roca a flexible space for training, hosting visitors and much more. 

A lot of the hard work that goes into keeping Roca thriving takes place in that room, not behind closed doors. The glass doors feature semi frosted film with Roca branding, so Molly and her team are visible to those who pass by, perhaps inspiring a young mother who is working hard to meet her life goals, and is engaged seeing the Roca team in action. Additionally, we like to think the team takes inspiration from seeing a youth member playing basketball below, using the space that was thoughtfully carved out for them and finding a moment of joy amidst the hard work it takes to make a change in their own life. These types of elements, literally built into the space, fill us with tremendous pride. The ARC team is incredibly grateful for our now longstanding partnership with Roca and the opportunities we have had to support their work and mission.