Cody Johnson
Interior Architecture, Design
Health Non-Conforming
About the Project
Health Non-Conforming is a 15,000 square foot LGBTQ+ health and wellness center located downtown in Chicago's loop neighborhood. This clinic specializes in transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) healthcare and wellness. Its entire purpose is to address the institutionalized transphobia that plagues our healthcare industry. TGNC individuals, disproportionately black TGNC individuals, especially black trans women, experience discrimination in many societal forms and have been on record losing their lives due to a complete and purposeful lack of healthcare services, often in the form of denial of care.
Health Non-Conforming aims to prevent any more tragedy and offer a safe, welcoming, and gender-affirming healthcare facility to all residents in and around Chicagoland. The concept for the design is the freeform human body. The design values architecturally free forms and materials and celebrates the freedom of thinking outside of four solid, rectilinear walls. It was very important to me that this design was well-informed and celebrated queerness and expression. For this reason, I chose to collaborate with queer artist Christine Quarley in Los Angeles, California to create the large, colorful mural you can see in the guest lounge as well as smaller, individual murals on the exam room doors. Her work is breathtaking and is famous for confronting the topics of racial and sexual identity and queerness, a conversation that Health Non-Conforming challenges every viewer to have.
About Cody Johnson
Cody Johnson is an Interior Designer by day and a social justice warrior always. He uses his passion of interiors to create a more sustainable, just, and equitable society for all. He is a problem solver by nature and focuses his energy on solving our modern-world issues and addressing injustice. He is excited to begin his career in Los Angeles, California and toast the beginning of what he hopes is a career that pushes design forward and challenges the limits of possibility.
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time." -Angela Davis
“Cody's response to the deliverables for this final Studio project have been at the highest caliber - creatively conceived, technically competent, and visually compelling. His thoughtful, focused, and diligent attitude and overall preparedness has resulted in performing at an excellent level.”
-Joclyn Oats, Associate Professor, Design