Student Engineers Reinvent Downtown Workspace to Serve Santa Barbara Groups
Patricia Martellotti
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Deana Aguilera Arroyo is one of two teens who transformed a downtown workspace with her engineering skills.
“I really felt like I was perfect for this role just because I love the design process of my senior capstone,” said Aguilera Arroyo.
They built moveable, soundproof room dividers for Workzones, making the space flexible for meetings, workshops, and community events.
“Making drawings … We were figuring out what materials we were going to use … and then after I set up a bill of materials,” said Aguilera Arroyo.
The project gave them hands-on experience applying classroom lessons to real-world problems.
“This is the first time we’ve had the interns make something every year we’ve had interns from the engineering academy, but this is the first time they really created something that’s lasting that we’re gonna use every day,” said co-founder Pam Tanase of Workzones.
Workzones leaders believe the dividers help community groups use the space in multiple ways.
“We’ve been wanting to Isolate this from the rest of the space for three years, but we could never really come up with a perfect design and now we have it,” said co-founder Mike Franco of Workzones.
The students are college-bound this fall, but their work will stay in Santa Barbara.
From Workzones:
Workzones Taps Local High School Talent to Design Innovative Room Dividers
SANTA BARBARA, California – Two recent graduates from Santa Barbara’s Dos Pueblos High School are showcasing their engineering skills and making a lasting difference at a local coworking community by designing flexible room dividers that promise to transform the organization’s meeting and event space options.
Deana Aguilera Arroyo and Alexander Hadja, both 2025 Dos Pueblos High School engineering academy graduates, designed and built the room dividers while participating in Workzones’ annual, summer internship program. The program, supervised by Workzones co-founder Mike Franco, aims to give local high school students an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned in school to the real world.
The process of creating the room dividers took several weeks. The students were given a list of requirements for the dividers, including that they be moveable, soundproof, flexible and appropriate for a professional setting. Workzones needed the dividers for their special event venue, called “The Tower,” which can accommodate up to 75 people but lacked infrastructure for reconfiguring the space to serve the varying needs of the businesses and organizations that use it.
Aguilera Arroyo and Hadja took the requirements and, with the help of artificial intelligence, created renderings for the room dividers which were then used to cost engineer the project into something affordable that could quickly be made during the summer internship. The result was an innovative, easy-to-assemble product that provides instant privacy, sound proofing and infinite flexibility.
“The project is a great example of tapping into talented local youth to problem solve,” Workzones co-founder Pam Tanase said. “Our student recruits took room dividers to the next level and came up with a design that’s functional, beautiful and innovative. Now the entire Workzones community will reap the benefits for years to come.”
The moveable room dividers debuted at Workzones at the end of July with Aguilera Arroyo and Hadja supervising installation. Both graduates are heading to college in the fall. Aguilera Arroyo will attend California State University in Fullerton and Hadja will go to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
“We can certainly expect great things from Deana and Alexander in the future. And our team will be proud to say it all started right here at Workzones,” Franco said.
Headquartered in Santa Barbara, Workzones was founded by franchising pros Pam Tanase, Kirk Peacock, Mike Franco and Lisa Riolo in 2012. Workzones offers flexible and affordable downtown workspace where dreams organically grow and community flourishes. In addition, Workzones is part of the 805CoWorking Collective – a team-up of four coworking spaces from Westlake Village to Santa Barbara along U.S. Route 101.
–Workzones is located at 351 Paseo Nuevo, 2nd Floor, Santa Barbara. For more information, visit workzones.com, email host@workzones.com or call (805) 966-3722.