If the idea of a teenager handling important construction documents makes you shake in your steel-toed boots, you are probably not alone.

Yet, in an effort to turn an old, two-story Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) bill payment facility into the YMCA-PG&E Teen Center in downtown Berkeley, Calif., a group of teenagers did just that.

"The [YMCA] board decided to create a teen task force to participate in the design process. And they asked the task force to [evaluate and] select the architects as part of their work," explains Scott Salge, project architect at Berkeley-based Noll & Tam Architects.