My name is Jerry Holmes and I'm the regional director for A&E for Stillcase and first let
me say thank you for all of you coming out tonight.
This is a great turnout and we're very appreciative of that and so on behalf of Stillcase thank
you.
I also want to take this opportunity to say thank you to Metropolis and so thanks for
providing such a great resource to the design community and also thank you for asking Stillcase
to help sponsor this event.
So you don't want to really listen to me talk that much but I'm going to introduce Susan
in a second but this is called Expanding Architecture Designs Activism and you as designers really
have an opportunity to influence a lot and so Susan's going to talk a lot about that
and what I want to do is tell you a little bit.
Susan, oh here I go.
Now it's my name right, I'm trying, I've got my name, this southern boy is going to try
this.
Okay.
Sinazi.
Good.
How about that?
Working.
Is that good?
Working.
Susan Sinazi, she is editor-in-chief of Metropolis Magazine and she has been in Metropolis since
1986 and so 24 years almost correct and what she's going to do is introduce this wonderful
group of panelists that we have here and then we'll start the program.
So without further ado, thank you to Metropolis and thank you Susan.
Thank you.
Thank you very much Stillcase for hosting us and thank you Jerry for welcoming the audience
here and I'm very impressed by you all.
Hello Atlanta.
You're really a good looking group.
Thanks for being here and thanks for being part of this discussion and we structured
a program today so that you'll be very much part of the discussion.
Let's hope that there's one mic that's going to travel around the room and we'll try to
get you as you raise your hands.
But firstly I'd like to thank Stillcase for their support in helping us put together this
program and for their generosity in sponsoring this four event series that we are in the
second part of Atlantis number two, New York City was number one and Los Angeles is coming
next month and Chicago is coming the month after that.
So we're trying to engage local communities on these sort of larger national concerns
but then figure out with local communities what's your particular solution and your particular
ideas about expanding the reach of architects and designers into the larger society.
And all of this came about because we published this book that is more timely than we thought
that it was going to be when we knew that when Brian Bell and Katie Wakeford's manuscript
came into Metropolis Books about a year and a half or so ago that we had something really
important that we had a movement already in people doing really important work in architecture
beyond the corporate, beyond the institutional, beyond all of those high paying jobs that
our community is used to and has been used to and will hopefully get used to again when
all of this mess is over.
But I think there's much more to say about what architecture is about.
So the book Expanding Architecture explores that idea and of really reaching out to a
larger community and there'll be book signing after the event in the other room while you're
having your cocktails and I hope some of you will get the book.
It's a wonderful example, it's a source book actually what can happen, what you can do,
what are some of the solutions, some of the ideas of other people doing this kind of outreach
programs.
So what I'd like to first do, the evening will lay out this way.
I will introduce Brian Bell who will do a brief presentation on some of the concepts
that are presented in the book and then I will introduce the panelists one by one who
will come up and we have a group of three respondents in the audience also.
I will introduce them but it doesn't mean that you are going to be sitting passively
and not say anything so you're going to be part of this too.
So Brian Bell like everyone has a very impressive bio and I'm not going to read a whole lot
of it except that he's been at this working in the so-called trenches for 20 years now.
So he's been a public advocate for architecture with a larger idea about itself for a very
long time and he's had great successes and amazing accomplishments as a result.
I think one of the things that is really interesting in this region, he's worked with Sam Mott
at Auburn at the rural studio.
He's worked with migrant farm workers and then he's also taught at the University of Chicago
and see state, he teaches there and then there's a conference that he organized which is going
to be in its ninth year, it's coming up actually in the early spring, not really in March,
right?
March 20th.
March 20th and it is called Structures for Inclusion and so it's about students and recent
graduates talking about possibilities of grassroots efforts.
So and then next year when it's its tenth year we're hoping that there's going to be
some really amazing policy discussions in Washington D.C. next year.
So I would like you to meet Brian Bell who will give you a short introduction to our
evening and then we'll proceed from there.
Thank you very much Susan and Latropis Magazine and thank you again Steel Case for hosting
this series of discussions Jerry, Elizabeth.
It's a pleasure to be here, thanks for turning out tonight.
So I'm going to present a short statement about the book and really hopefully we'll
be a way of introducing this great set of panelists, a very diverse group and I think
that's one of the things I want to emphasize is the diversity of the work that we're including
in what we call the expansion of architecture.
So let's get started, first I have to see, is this some sort of disclaimer by the AIA?
You all know, you all know you're learning up there we go, that's what you're going
to learn.
Okay, now we can get started.
Architecture has so much unrealized potential, the benefits of design could do so much more
for so many more people.
Design can play a role in addressing the critical social, economic and environmental issues
that we face in the world today.
Architects have been absorbed in what we can accomplish technically, aesthetically, structurally.
We've recently made great progress in what we can accomplish environmentally but where
we've failed is to show what we can do socially and economically.
We can do much more to help communities and individuals.
We can help them reshape their existence by either responding to disasters or facing
challenges in their daily life.
I would say to you all this is a very exciting time to be in design, not just for us and
the new opportunities out there but it's also exciting to consider those who might benefit
from this expanded role that we can play.
Tonight we're going to talk about the expansion of design, an expansion that can transform
our identity and transform the collective consciousness of what design can do for people.
This is not something that we're proposing for the future.
This is something that's happening now with real projects that are helping people face
to face encounters both in fields and on the street.
Some of these are large projects, you'll see one that's Atlanta based, it's a very large
project.
A lot of them are small projects, people out there at grassroots doing what they can do
with very limited resources.
In this book we've documented 30 case studies.
I would consider them best practices.
Also trying to capture this shared spirit among this work but as critically trying not
to reduce the diversity of the work that's happening.
This expansion is happening in three ways.
First of all in serving more of the general public with design.
Secondly, taking on a greater range of issues as designers and third offering a greater
scope of services.
The first expansion which is serving a larger segment of the population is getting attention.
More and more people are talking about serving more of the public and more and more people
are doing things.
I've used a statistic that only 2% of new home buyers work with architects.
The Cooper Hewitt when they put on an exhibit they use the statistic that 90% of the world's
designers serve 10% of the world's population.
So it doesn't really matter what statistic you use but the point is being made that design
can serve more people.
The second expansion is taking on a greater range of issues.
So the question I'd like to ask you tonight is what are the design issues of the 21st century?
When I was in school in the 80s and I said I wanted to do community design people assumed
that meant I would go into affordable housing.
That was sort of the one issue we were associated with which is what I did.
Then in the early 90s the American with Disabilities Act was passed and people had this second
issue accessibility that they associated with design.
More recently the Green Movement has made an incredible expansion in people's consciousness
about the critical impact of design on our environment.
And then with Katrina I'm a native New Orleansian and I think Katrina, the response to Katrina
also made an impact on people's understanding of the important role architects and designers
can play both for New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
There's an architecture students were some of the first responders.
So let me say that the lid is off the bottle and I would assert tonight that there's not
a single issue that is not a design issue.
We have just failed to understand how we might contribute to it.
So let me show a few examples of this from the book.
Can we help provide access to drinkable water for 1.1 billion people who don't have it?
Yes.
This is the Q drum by Hans and Peter Hendricks.
Can we reduce disease as designers?
Yes.
This is the Life Straw by Torben Fransen which eliminates virtually all water borne bacteria
and thereby eliminating diseases such as typhoid, cholera and dysentery.
Can we help communities resist natural disasters?
Yes.
This is the Safer House which was designed by MIT and Harvard students and one of these
was built in 2005 after the tsunami in Sri Lanka.
Now what I want to point out about this design is it was not only a structural solution to
resist the lateral forces of the tsunami waves but the government had proposed moving these
communities three miles inland from the coast.
These communities had always existed socially and economically at the coast.
So that original proposal would have destroyed the cultural heritage and basically economic
infrastructure for these communities.
So this was not just a structural solution, this was a social and economic solution.
400 of these houses have been built since 2005.
Without any involvement of those designers, it was such a great solution that the actually
the Buddhist monks who were the local clients had been building these.
Another example of an issue that we don't think of as a design issue is immigration.
But Teddy Cruz has been working on the border between the US and Mexico and what he proposes
here is a sort of cultural and programmatic bridge between our two cultures.
I once heard a federal employee at the General Services Administration describe our border
crossing points as a combination of jail and toll booth.
I mean how pathetic is that to welcome people to our country?
And that is an architectural failure, pure and simple.
These are just some examples of the great potential for design intervention.
But there are still rare examples.
Our old skill sets are needed, but we need to learn new ones in order to help solve our
diverse social and economic challenges.
Let me be clear, these challenges are in our own communities, they're even outside our
front door and they beg for the positive impact that design can have.
So beginning with our education, we need to think of architecture and design in the service
of this ever expanding client group.
All of us, students and practitioners, need a broader skill set.
As we embrace these new roles, we become activists engaging in action for the public good.
And as the definition of activism suggests, we take intentional actions to bring about
positive change.
So now I want to talk about the expansion of services in the term we use design as activism.
We can become activists in many ways, so I'm going to show examples from the book of different
ways that designers are playing this role.
Here's one as designer as instigator.
This is a project, the Atlanta Beltway, which initiated by a student, Ryan Gravel, who's
here with us tonight, as a thesis project at Georgia Tech.
Ryan conceived of taking abandoned railway lines around the city and connecting them
to a new, well I don't need to explain to you the problem with the crossing, public
transportation.
Ryan sent this in to the city council and they have adopted this as a goal.
And Ryan will give us an update on that.
But nobody invited Ryan to take this initiative.
It's the creative capacity of design and a design as instigator as one type of activist.
This is a designer as guerrilla programmer.
This is a project in Zagreb, Croatia.
What happened in Croatia after the fall of the Soviet Union is all of the public space
became privatized.
At the same time, there were all of these buildings that were owned by the Soviet Union
that were vacant.
So Damir Blasovic and a group of artists would occupy these empty spaces and basically what
they would do is program them for one day with some sort of public activity.
And so they would insert into the public consciousness what these buildings could be.
Now nothing was built, so it's not about designing and building always.
This is guerrilla programming, which is a skill that designers are taught.
This is an abandoned building that was a lighting artist.
And then sometimes they'll have performances or dances in some of these empty spaces.
So again, that's a designer as a guerrilla programmer.
Another type of design activist is being an advocate for a particular user group, often
a user group that is not really made it to the attention of the market.
A graphic designer named Sean Donahue is working with a group that's the low vision community.
And what Sean found was that the transition for people who are losing their sight to go
from text to Braille is a very harsh move that you have to make.
So Sean's graphic design work is actually taking people along that path so that as their
vision is failing they're moving from text to Braille in a sort of learning continuum.
This is one of our own projects, so designed as also for a particular user group we work
with migrant farm workers.
This is not a group that has a lot of attention.
I started doing this 20 years ago and I'm still doing it.
That wasn't the plan.
But now we're able to, we've designed this unit in response to requests from legal services
for Florida.
A lot of migrant housing was destroyed by hurricanes.
So we've designed this for $45,000 out of the factory.
We had a $5,000 fee to it and we've sold 18 of these so far.
No government money involved.
This is what farmers will pay for this quality housing.
It exceeds the code and farmers usually don't exceed the code but we say, you know, this
is pre, I say to the farmers, I'm not your designer, this is designed for the farm workers.
But it works for them financially so they build it.
Another type of activism is designer as housing innovator.
This is on the Gulf Coast after Katrina, the flood plain was raised 13 feet and all the
houses were gone in Biloxi and past Christiane.
So what does it mean for a community when your houses are all 13 feet up now?
What happens on the street?
How do you use that space?
How do you enter that space?
How do neighbors relate to each other?
So that was a challenge we took on as one of our summer studio projects.
This is a designer as project facilitator.
The community design collaborative in Philadelphia actually matches architects with community
groups and sort of plays a matchmaking role to make sure that things are working well.
Do a phenomenal job.
This is one of their projects, not their projects, but a project they facilitated.
So that's another type of activist role.
It's another project of theirs.
And the last one is designer as activist educator.
We have the best in business here with us tonight, Steve Bedaines.
And this is a project of his colleague Sergio Pilaroni where his students go to Mexico
and build housing for Yaki families.
And this is one of the essays in the book where the men from this community have all
come up here to work.
So the women are left there.
And so the students go down and help build the housing for those families.
This work doesn't have to be in another country.
It doesn't have to be expensive or take a major lifetime commitment.
It can be done by a guerrilla group of artists or it can be done in a New York neighborhood.
It can be a lifetime commitment or a quick weekend project just using found materials.
Remember, this is the critical thing.
Helping other people through design is the point.
And hopefully that's a simple point.
And I'm going to show some simple projects just to illustrate how the one architect
or architecture student in 36 hours can actually find a project, program it, find materials,
and build it in 36 hours.
And part of the reason we give this assignment is to sort of demystify this whole profession
of design and architecture and say it's simply about using your skills and adding some new
skills, which is going out to find a project and helping somebody.
So at the University of Oklahoma, all the architecture students walk on this path.
And to cross, to hit the crosswalk button, everybody had a step in the mud puddle.
Now, somehow it took an invitation to the architecture students to actually put something
there so that people weren't stepping in the mud.
But it was that simple.
And does it work?
I mean, as soon as we put it there, people stepped on it.
They didn't get their foot muddy.
It worked.
This is a project at the University of Virginia.
This guy actually took the bus here every day.
So he built a bus stop for himself as a member of the community.
That's another factor.
I want to show, you know, this is all about getting feedback from your own design.
You see that that seat isn't painted there.
I'm sure he stood up and probably looked at his friend's butt and saw that there was rust
there.
So they came back and painted.
And it's actually pretty beautiful for a 36-hour project.
This is a project by a woman in Barcelona we did this project.
And every day she was riding to school on the subway.
And she noticed that during rush hour, it was packed in certain areas.
And it was empty in other areas because there was nowhere to hold on.
So Luciana put in another bar here so people could stand on the subway in that particular
area.
And there she is kind of spying on people, seeing how they – she was originally going
to do it in red, but she didn't have red at three in the morning and it was black.
And people were a little confused by that.
They thought it was some sort of memorial or something.
So she actually – it's a little bit more of a sort of a performance artist element
says, hold on tight.
This is my contribution to the city.
So it's interesting to kind of have a little more of a communication.
Again, people figure out how to use these things right away.
The concept of expanding architecture, of expanding all the design professions is to
move from our current limited role and realize our greater potential.
We need to change our vision of ourselves first and in the goals we set for ourselves.
Then we can change the public perception of what we can contribute to the greater good.
As you have seen, this is already happening.
The collective consciousness of design is changing.
This shift gives us an opportunity to do good work and to make a permanent change in our
collective future.
Let me tell one last story about how this public consciousness can happen.
After the Rural Studio had done their first house, Sambo was looking for the next project.
So he knocked on the door of this very unsafe house in Mason's Bend and Anderson Harris
came to the door and Sambo said, good afternoon, sir, can we design and build a house for
you?
And Anderson Harris said, not today, thank you.
And Sambo felt like he was – said he felt like he had door-to-door salesmen selling
something that nobody wanted.
Well, if any of you have had the opportunity of seeing a butterfly house or of talking
to Anderson Harris, Anderson Harris is the greatest design advocate you will ever meet.
And so that change from his no thank you to being a design advocate is exactly the change
in the public consciousness that we need to make.
And that shows how possible it is in a very short time.
The massive shift we need is not going to happen by supernatural forces.
It will only happen by many of us becoming activists, by the design community becoming
advocates for the human community.
Our potential is waiting to be realized.
The only thing stopping us is us.
Now is the time to show what we can do.
Thank you.
Thank you, Brian, those were really wonderful examples.
And it always confirms for me how amazing designers are, how they think and what they
think about and how they can actually use their skills to do incredibly useful, beautiful
things for everyone if they put their minds to it.
So I think there's a lot here to talk about.
