LANDSCAPE PERSPECTIVES: EQUITY IN + BY DESIGN:
JHA D. WILLIAMS
BENJAMIN C. HOWLAND PANEL 2019
Before I actually start talking, I’ll quickly say two things. One, when I first got the invite, I was a little hesitant to come because I am not a landscape architect. I am an architect. And so I emailed back and I said, Hey, I just read through this panel in the description. I don’t know if you know this or not, but I’m an architect. I can get you a landscape architect, but I am not one. And I was still invited. So very excited to be here, very humbled. The other thing I will say is that Gina might have set me up to potentially talk about the Columbus project. Unfortunately, I will not be presenting on that, but I will just give you all a quick snippet. Yes, we were given a field at an elementary school and we are intending to plant a corn maze there, because one of the things that we’re very interested in at MASS Design Group is food systems and the architecture of food systems. So, part of our planting strategy will be to teach the children, specifically the students, about food ecology through several different types of corn. I am not at all involved on that project, so if you have any questions beyond that, I’m going to have to go to Slack to answer that.
So, hello everybody! Very excited to be here. My name is Jha D Williams and I’m a senior associate at MASS Design Group. I’m going to tell you all a little bit about MASS specifically and essentially how we were founded. And then I’ll talk to you all briefly about two projects that I’m currently working on. MASS Design Group is essentially “beyond the building.” And what we very firmly believe is that architecture is never neutral. It either heals or hurts. And therefore our mission as a collective is to research, build and advocate for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity. So essentially what we do is we partner with other organizations to help amplify their mission, particularly through design in the built environment. As a result of that, we are a nonprofit organization and a lot of times people were like, how is that possible? How are you nonprofit and architecture at the same time? Believe you me, it works. I do have a salary. I promise it’s working. We were founded in 2008, essentially by some students that were working and studying in Boston at the GSD. However, our first project, and therefore our first office is in Rwanda.
In 2019 we are over about 120 people across two offices and a lab in Poughkeepsie. The number literally changes by the day. It’s kind of exciting that every other day we have new coworkers to meet and greet, but we also have some satellites where we’ll have two or three people working out of a particular office in a particular city depending on the project that we’re working on. That’s why you see some of the other cities popping up on this map, which is not to say that there’s currently folks there, but over the past 11 years we’ve definitely had some folks working across the globe. So this is who we are. We are predominantly architecture—it makes up majority of who works with MASS Design Group. These photos here are representative of the Boston office, the Rwandan office, and the Poughkeepsie lab.
If you look at the background of the photo, you can tell where people work. But yes, we are predominantly architecture. We do have an awesome landscape team. That’s why I tried to offer up a landscape architect to come talk to y’all. But you got me instead. We do have an industrial and product design team, which is an amazing group of folks. We have a relatively large and ever-growing engineering team that’s based predominantly out of our Rwandan office. Our narrative team is really amazing and just anything you see on our social media, on our website, they are totally running that show. They are running this show right now. Operations, fellows, and business development, and then of course our co-founders are Alan Ricks and Michael Murphy.
One of the things that is relatively unique about the way that we choose to work is where we like to get involved with a project. This is not something new to the industry and we’re definitely not the only ones doing it, but we are certainly dedicated to working this way. Normally, you have a project and the client is who was involved with the visioning and the planning. It’s not until you get to the design and the construction of the project, that one begins to engage a designer or architect. And for us, we prefer to get involved in these conversations much sooner—before the project is even a project, we want to somehow be at the table. We want to already be in the mind of the potential partner of the potential client, and we want to begin to help to figure out how we can actually support capital for what that project might be. So backing up, we partner with mission aligned organizations—oftentimes there is a desire to solve a problem. There is a project that needs to happen, but the funding is not always there. How do we get to the table early enough in the visioning process to be able to create the materials and the resources that are necessary to raise the funds and to raise the consciousness so that the project actually does happen? That’s where we like to get involved. How this is possible is due in part to our nonprofit status as an organization, which is also in part funded by catalyst funding. This allows us to then invest in the type of impact and visioning that we’re talking about. This is supported by a number of partners and clients, and the catalyst fund itself. It’s partly how we’re able to do a lot of the projects that you may or may not know of, some of which I’ll talk about.
If you look at the background of the photo, you can tell where people work. But yes, we are predominantly architecture. We do have an awesome landscape team. That’s why I tried to offer up a landscape architect to come talk to y’all. But you got me instead. We do have an industrial and product design team, which is an amazing group of folks. We have a relatively large and ever-growing engineering team that’s based predominantly out of our Rwandan office. Our narrative team is really amazing and just anything you see on our social media, on our website, they are totally running that show. They are running this show right now. Operations, fellows, and business development, and then of course our co-founders are Alan Ricks and Michael Murphy.
One of the things that is relatively unique about the way that we choose to work is where we like to get involved with a project. This is not something new to the industry and we’re definitely not the only ones doing it, but we are certainly dedicated to working this way. Normally, you have a project and the client is who was involved with the visioning and the planning. It’s not until you get to the design and the construction of the project, that one begins to engage a designer or architect. And for us, we prefer to get involved in these conversations much sooner—before the project is even a project, we want to somehow be at the table. We want to already be in the mind of the potential partner of the potential client, and we want to begin to help to figure out how we can actually support capital for what that project might be. So backing up, we partner with mission aligned organizations—oftentimes there is a desire to solve a problem. There is a project that needs to happen, but the funding is not always there. How do we get to the table early enough in the visioning process to be able to create the materials and the resources that are necessary to raise the funds and to raise the consciousness so that the project actually does happen? That’s where we like to get involved. How this is possible is due in part to our nonprofit status as an organization, which is also in part funded by catalyst funding. This allows us to then invest in the type of impact and visioning that we’re talking about. This is supported by a number of partners and clients, and the catalyst fund itself. It’s partly how we’re able to do a lot of the projects that you may or may not know of, some of which I’ll talk about.
One of the things that I’ll personally mentioned about the catalyst fund, which I found to be very exciting when I joined MASS just about a year ago now, was that this catalyst funding is certainly what allows us to do projects as a larger collective, but it also supports some of the personal interests that we as MASSers have. So I’m currently working with one of our coworkers Jeff on a fellowship that focuses on social justice through the lens of architecture. What we’re doing is we’re creating this fellowship that is setting up entry points for folks that otherwise might not necessarily have access to the design industry or have access to working in a place like MASS. Through this fellowship, we’re having them focus primarily on research around diversity and inclusion through project work. The catalyst fund is what’s actually supporting that effort. We had to create a pitch sheet, we had to run it by the principals about 10 times. We had to tweak some things, and it’s finally underway. I was hoping that we’d have the poster finalized so that I could show it to you all today, but I have one more week before we actually roll it out. That’s the type of thing that the catalyst is able to support, which is very fun and interesting and invigorating for all of us that are there at the office. So, how we work: system thinking is very important to us. Our impact design methodology, which is our IDM—I’ll talk to you all about that in a moment. And this notion of low fab construction and a general methodology.
Again, an great example of empathetic design thinking in the IDM. The IDM is a model- clear, direct, and is imperative for socio-cultural understandings and accessible design . --E.C.
For our system thinking it’s very important for us that every project starts with a mission. All of our projects must achieve a simple, legible, and transmissible idea. We do not leave the table, do not leave the room until we’ve all agreed on this singular idea, which of course can evolve throughout the process. But we have to start there. Immersion in the context is also very important for us. If we do not begin to ask the right questions or build consciousness, we may fail the very people we seek to serve. Really taking the time, the energy, the effort, the resources to immerse ourselves in the communities that we’re wanting to work with—very much along that visioning part of the project—to fully understand what questions need to be asked.
So, for example, there is a project where originally we were contacted to design a school. They wanted us to come in and design a primary school. We got there and we started talking. We started having conversations and through the conversations it was actually decided that first we had to build housing to support the teachers for the school. Beginning to ask these questions in these ways at the beginning of the visioning processes is what I mean by immersion Proof of impact: essentially these are the metrics. How are you measuring the success of the project? So the question is not if, but in what way, and by how much? How do we begin to measure the success, the impact? The value added throughout these design processes is one way that we’re doing the system thinking. Investing upstream: being very mindful and conscious of who benefits from these architectural services. And more importantly, at what cost. This is beginning to unpack how the architecture is actually reaching the communities that it needs to be serving. We’re asking these questions continuously throughout the process. Lastly, justice is beauty. If you’ve ever visited our website, if you ever see any one of us talk, it’s something that’s very fundamental to the way that we think and that we design; understanding that you don’t have to have either or, but you should always have both. Believing that everybody has a fundamental right to a built world that is beautiful and one that improves the quality of our life is also something that’s very integral to the way that we approach all of our projects and all of our partners.
Our IDM, which is the impact design methodology, is another way that we begin every project. There’s some folks here that have worked with us and they know this. We come in and the first thing we say is, where’s the trace and what’s the IDM? You know, how do we begin to start to talk about this project? For us is it’s creating a shared understanding of the needs and the goals of the project. It’s encouraging broad and realistic expectations of what the project can and should do. And it’s identifying potential metrics for impact and evaluation. So we develop this IDM, if you will, at the beginning of every project. And we hold ourselves accountable to it throughout the process as well as our partners. Sometimes it can get a little frustrating. There are many times I’ve been on several projects now where the IDM evolves throughout the project. I was on one project where we had five different IDMs based off of what we were trying to do with the project, at what phases, at what stages and with which stakeholders. So it can get a little muddy, but it’s always been very helpful in terms of helping us to fully understand what it is that we hope to gain and achieve through the project. So the first part of the IDM is the mission. So what is the fundamental goal of the project? What do we imagine success looks like? Normally this is a very simple one-liner, straightforward sentence. It’s a statement. And of course, like I said, it can continue to evolve. The second part of that is what is the method? How do we achieve that? How do we get there? What do we have to do in order to accomplish this said mission? The third is the impact. Again, that goes back to the metrics, to the systems. How do we measure success? How do we evaluate it? What rubrics are we putting into place in order to be able to understand how well our method worked towards the mission? And then lastly, it’s the systematic or the behavioral change that is put forward by the project itself. What influence has the project had beyond itself and beyond the original stakeholders? I will not go through this completely, but essentially this gives an example of one of our IDMs for a maternity waiting home that we designed in Malawi. The mission was to improve a mother’s experience at the maternity waiting home. Very simple, very straightforward. But it’s important to get it on paper. It’s important to clarify it so that we’re all working towards that one goal.
How do we do that? We create a comfortable, safe and healthy space for the mothers. Another way to do that is to incorporate space for the guardians. One thing that we learned by being immersive and by getting into the community and talking to folks that were already there was that a lot of women were currently not going to the existing maternity waiting homes because there was no space for their guardians to come with them. So if we’re actually going to achieve this mission, that has to be one of the methods through that process and incorporating education space was another method. The impact is: improve user experience. Again, these things are very straightforward, very simple, but it’s a matter of identifying them, calling them out and writing them down. That really helps us to stay true to what our goal and our mission is at the project. The systematic change there would be mothers knowing about the waiting home, mothers coming and staying at the waiting home, mothers having a positive experience while at the waiting home and more importantly, mothers returning to their communities to encourage others to come and do the same. Very straightforward but also very important and impactful in the way that we begin to think about a project.
Something else that’s very important to us in the way that we work is this notion of low fab construction—locally fabricated construction—which leverages the design and construction process to create positive systematic change within the areas that we’re working in. It also creates opportunities for empowerment through the construction process. Not just going in and throwing down a building, but actually taking the time to work with local materials, train local folks, and really get the community involved so that they have a sense of ownership in the process, and more importantly in the project. And investing, as I said before, through training and the next generation of emerging professionals.
So, for example, there is a project where originally we were contacted to design a school. They wanted us to come in and design a primary school. We got there and we started talking. We started having conversations and through the conversations it was actually decided that first we had to build housing to support the teachers for the school. Beginning to ask these questions in these ways at the beginning of the visioning processes is what I mean by immersion Proof of impact: essentially these are the metrics. How are you measuring the success of the project? So the question is not if, but in what way, and by how much? How do we begin to measure the success, the impact? The value added throughout these design processes is one way that we’re doing the system thinking. Investing upstream: being very mindful and conscious of who benefits from these architectural services. And more importantly, at what cost. This is beginning to unpack how the architecture is actually reaching the communities that it needs to be serving. We’re asking these questions continuously throughout the process. Lastly, justice is beauty. If you’ve ever visited our website, if you ever see any one of us talk, it’s something that’s very fundamental to the way that we think and that we design; understanding that you don’t have to have either or, but you should always have both. Believing that everybody has a fundamental right to a built world that is beautiful and one that improves the quality of our life is also something that’s very integral to the way that we approach all of our projects and all of our partners.
Our IDM, which is the impact design methodology, is another way that we begin every project. There’s some folks here that have worked with us and they know this. We come in and the first thing we say is, where’s the trace and what’s the IDM? You know, how do we begin to start to talk about this project? For us is it’s creating a shared understanding of the needs and the goals of the project. It’s encouraging broad and realistic expectations of what the project can and should do. And it’s identifying potential metrics for impact and evaluation. So we develop this IDM, if you will, at the beginning of every project. And we hold ourselves accountable to it throughout the process as well as our partners. Sometimes it can get a little frustrating. There are many times I’ve been on several projects now where the IDM evolves throughout the project. I was on one project where we had five different IDMs based off of what we were trying to do with the project, at what phases, at what stages and with which stakeholders. So it can get a little muddy, but it’s always been very helpful in terms of helping us to fully understand what it is that we hope to gain and achieve through the project. So the first part of the IDM is the mission. So what is the fundamental goal of the project? What do we imagine success looks like? Normally this is a very simple one-liner, straightforward sentence. It’s a statement. And of course, like I said, it can continue to evolve. The second part of that is what is the method? How do we achieve that? How do we get there? What do we have to do in order to accomplish this said mission? The third is the impact. Again, that goes back to the metrics, to the systems. How do we measure success? How do we evaluate it? What rubrics are we putting into place in order to be able to understand how well our method worked towards the mission? And then lastly, it’s the systematic or the behavioral change that is put forward by the project itself. What influence has the project had beyond itself and beyond the original stakeholders? I will not go through this completely, but essentially this gives an example of one of our IDMs for a maternity waiting home that we designed in Malawi. The mission was to improve a mother’s experience at the maternity waiting home. Very simple, very straightforward. But it’s important to get it on paper. It’s important to clarify it so that we’re all working towards that one goal.
How do we do that? We create a comfortable, safe and healthy space for the mothers. Another way to do that is to incorporate space for the guardians. One thing that we learned by being immersive and by getting into the community and talking to folks that were already there was that a lot of women were currently not going to the existing maternity waiting homes because there was no space for their guardians to come with them. So if we’re actually going to achieve this mission, that has to be one of the methods through that process and incorporating education space was another method. The impact is: improve user experience. Again, these things are very straightforward, very simple, but it’s a matter of identifying them, calling them out and writing them down. That really helps us to stay true to what our goal and our mission is at the project. The systematic change there would be mothers knowing about the waiting home, mothers coming and staying at the waiting home, mothers having a positive experience while at the waiting home and more importantly, mothers returning to their communities to encourage others to come and do the same. Very straightforward but also very important and impactful in the way that we begin to think about a project.
Something else that’s very important to us in the way that we work is this notion of low fab construction—locally fabricated construction—which leverages the design and construction process to create positive systematic change within the areas that we’re working in. It also creates opportunities for empowerment through the construction process. Not just going in and throwing down a building, but actually taking the time to work with local materials, train local folks, and really get the community involved so that they have a sense of ownership in the process, and more importantly in the project. And investing, as I said before, through training and the next generation of emerging professionals.
So how we do that is we hire locally, we source regionally, we invest in training as I mentioned, and we uphold dignity throughout the process. I’ll go through a few projects of how that has happened for us over the past 10 to 12 years. One of our very first projects was the Butaro district hospital, which I’m sure Mara [Rockcastle] may or may not speak to, but she was our landscape genius on this particular project.What was really unique about this particular hospital is that, unfortunately up until this point, you had an area of thousands of residents that had no hospital within two to three hour walking distance. Being able to come in, work with the community, develop this hospital campus that really begins to change the landscape of the health environment in Butaro was very catalytic for this particular neighborhood.
I actually had the opportunity to go visit this hospital back in February. And the pictures, I can guarantee you, do it no justice. It is absolutely beautiful the way that the hospital itself unfolds, the way that the landscape unfolds. I’ve never seen a hospital used by the community quite in the way that this one is. It very much felt like both a community space as well as a hospital. Something that was very interesting about this project was the way that the hospital beds in the spaces themselves were designed. On the left you can see the original format where you have the beds facing each other, facing what would be the circulation. We used a very simple strategy of inverting that so those that are laying in bed actually have an opportunity to see out and to have natural sunlight. Also, to really begin to change the height of the room- these are very simple yet effective ways of changing the way that the built environment has an impact on the healing of the body.
I actually had the opportunity to go visit this hospital back in February. And the pictures, I can guarantee you, do it no justice. It is absolutely beautiful the way that the hospital itself unfolds, the way that the landscape unfolds. I’ve never seen a hospital used by the community quite in the way that this one is. It very much felt like both a community space as well as a hospital. Something that was very interesting about this project was the way that the hospital beds in the spaces themselves were designed. On the left you can see the original format where you have the beds facing each other, facing what would be the circulation. We used a very simple strategy of inverting that so those that are laying in bed actually have an opportunity to see out and to have natural sunlight. Also, to really begin to change the height of the room- these are very simple yet effective ways of changing the way that the built environment has an impact on the healing of the body.
Something else that came with that project, very similar to the school that I mentioned before, was the housing for the doctors. It’s one thing to build the hospital, but if there are no doctors, then what good is the hospital in this very rural, remote area? Designing housing that would attract doctors from around the world to want to come to stay, to practice, to teach, to learn here was also very important. Designing housing that’s not too far away to sustain the hospital was also very important. So these are some photos of the housing which I also had an opportunity to visit.
Next, the Cholera Treatment Center in Haiti. In the wake of the hurricane, unfortunately there was a huge cholera outbreak and a catchment area of thousands of folks. Designing this cholera treatment center in order to one, work with the patients who were suffering from cholera. This is the first permanent onsite cholera treatment center in Haiti. But then two, also using this as a sustainable project to be able to treat waste water was another part of the project. What I really love about this project—obviously the things that it does—but the facade system here was built by local metalworkers. If you ever have a chance to come to Boston and come in our office, we have one of the prototypes of this hanging up on our wall. It is just fascinating to see the hand craft that went into making this facade. Beginning to use a building to actually heal an epidemic in a very sustainable, intentional way was one of the main goals and main missions of this particular project.
The last project I’ll talk about before I get into some of the work that I’m specifically doing now is the Ilima Primary School. This project was about conservation and education. How do we actually begin to design a school for a community that very much needs a primary school without harming the natural resources in the immediate area? So this became both an educational and conservation project. This site is about six hours away from the nearest airstrip. That became very challenging in terms of acquiring resources, materials, and construction workers to actually get the school built. But it happened and there’s a very beautiful film called Made In Ilima that you all should watch. I never thought that I could sit through an hour of silence and construction, but it is very fascinating to go through the process of the project through this film.
The other two projects that I want to talk to you all about briefly are the ones that we are currently working on or that I’m personally working on in the office, which brings us the work that we’re starting to do here in the United States.
All the projects that I showed you are predominantly in Rwanda on the African continent. This first project is the King Memorial, which, if you’ve seen any of the articles, we recently won this design competition. There were over a hundred entries to design a Memorial to both Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King on the Boston Common. We are very excited to have partnered with the artist Hank Willis Thomas and his studio to do this particular project. Personally, I’m way more excited than anybody else on the team because I’m a Boston resident. To be able to do a project like this in my hometown is very important.
We were inspired by this photo of the Kings on the night that Martin received the Nobel Peace Prize. We were very touched by this notion of love, and love being a very powerful force. We believe that the work that the Kings did as civil rights activists would not have been possible had there not first been love within them, between the two of them. Love for people, love for society, love for the world. This notion that love is such a powerful force, it’s there for everyone to embrace, that kind of unconditional love for all humankind—that is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others to take risks for what they believe in. So the call to action for this particular project was one, love. This notion of the embrace, being able to actually step into the sculpture, stand under it and quite literally embrace somebody, whether it’s the person you came with or somebody that might be willing to embrace you. Two, we sought to really change the impact of how we interact with sculptures and memorials and permanent infrastructures in the larger landscape. Is there a way to start to change the way that our bodies react in these spaces? This was one of the things that we were thinking of throughout this project. What we found to be very interesting and I’m pretty sure we’ll talk about it at some point in time, was is it important to represent the likeness of the Kings, meaning their actual faces, their actual bodies, or is it more important to represent something that was a characteristic of who they were and what they did, i.e. the love?
The other two projects that I want to talk to you all about briefly are the ones that we are currently working on or that I’m personally working on in the office, which brings us the work that we’re starting to do here in the United States.
All the projects that I showed you are predominantly in Rwanda on the African continent. This first project is the King Memorial, which, if you’ve seen any of the articles, we recently won this design competition. There were over a hundred entries to design a Memorial to both Coretta Scott and Martin Luther King on the Boston Common. We are very excited to have partnered with the artist Hank Willis Thomas and his studio to do this particular project. Personally, I’m way more excited than anybody else on the team because I’m a Boston resident. To be able to do a project like this in my hometown is very important.
We were inspired by this photo of the Kings on the night that Martin received the Nobel Peace Prize. We were very touched by this notion of love, and love being a very powerful force. We believe that the work that the Kings did as civil rights activists would not have been possible had there not first been love within them, between the two of them. Love for people, love for society, love for the world. This notion that love is such a powerful force, it’s there for everyone to embrace, that kind of unconditional love for all humankind—that is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others to take risks for what they believe in. So the call to action for this particular project was one, love. This notion of the embrace, being able to actually step into the sculpture, stand under it and quite literally embrace somebody, whether it’s the person you came with or somebody that might be willing to embrace you. Two, we sought to really change the impact of how we interact with sculptures and memorials and permanent infrastructures in the larger landscape. Is there a way to start to change the way that our bodies react in these spaces? This was one of the things that we were thinking of throughout this project. What we found to be very interesting and I’m pretty sure we’ll talk about it at some point in time, was is it important to represent the likeness of the Kings, meaning their actual faces, their actual bodies, or is it more important to represent something that was a characteristic of who they were and what they did, i.e. the love?
Another project that I’m currently working on with Hargraves Associates based out of Cambridge is an urban development project, a smaller scale project, in Shaker Square in Cleveland. This is the second oldest transportation oriented development in the United States. As you can see here, there’s a huge central public open space in the center surrounded by a very dense commercial corridor that is unfortunately underserved and underutilized.
What we’re currently working on as the MASS team is getting the community together. This notion of immersion, this notion of community engagement and how we get all the stakeholders at the table.
On the left you can see the landscape of the very wealthy, well-off shaker Heights. On the right you can see the less wealthy, less developed neighborhood of Buckeye. There’s unfortunately this huge racial socioeconomic divide happening right at the center of the square. We’re figuring out ways to engage all sides of the community so that everybody has an opportunity to participate in this project. This process is what we at MASS are focusing on. This is one of the renderings of the project itself. This is relatively old, so don’t look too hard at this. There’s a new one coming out next week, we’ll be in Cleveland. What we’re focusing on, like I said, is the community engagement. We had several public meetings, we ran a bunch of different surveys, and what we very quickly learned was that Shaker Heights was dominating the feedback. Shaker Heights was about 95% of the feedback that we were getting, and we were getting very low responses from the Buckeye and Ludlow neighborhoods. So what we decided to do were these things called “shop talks.” I walked up and down Buckeye Road, I walked up and down Larchmere Road, and I went into hair salons, nail salons, and barbershops. And I said, hey, look, I know you don’t know me, I don’t know you, but this project is happening right here in your backyard, and I would really appreciate it if you would allow us to come and talk to the community. Because in my experience, hair salons, nail salons, and barbershops are where people talk the most. They have the most free time. All you can do is wait. And also, you know, your local hairstylist or barber is kind of like a community leader. They are a steward of the community and people feel comfortable and they feel welcomed there. So we’re doing these series of shop talks and this particular talk was at “A Touch of Rain” and the young woman here is Rain, and every other woman in the salon said, I had no idea this project was happening and I would not have cared, had Rain not told me to come here tonight.
The focus on community assets is such a vital aspect of the success of MASS design's approach. Building capacity through a focus on local material production and connecting with people in and through the community institutions most meaningful to them are both great examples of an asset-based approach to design. So often designers read traditionally underserved communities as "blank slates" or worse, as communities to be saved by design (whose interventions almost always displace those residents completely without corresponding equitable policymaking), but a focus on honoring what is special about a place and its people requires a fundamentally different ethical orientation to the work. Recommended related reading: Koh, Annette. “Placemaking When Black Lives Matter” in Progressive City︎︎︎ -- B.B.W.
And after this, all of these women came to the public meeting that we had two days after this particular shop talk. So it was about getting proximate and meeting people where they are because expecting everybody to come to the formal, typical public meeting, does not always work. We know that, but here it very much was not working. And so we had to figure out a way to change the way that we were engaging with the community. So that’s the two projects that I’m working on right now. There are a few more that I’ll probably talk about through the Q+A, but that’s what I wanted to share with you all. Thanks.