LANDSCAPE PERSPECTIVES: EQUITY IN + BY DESIGN
PANEL DISCUSSION
BENJAMIN C. HOWLAND PANEL 2019
Below is the transcript of the panel discussion from the 2019 Howland Panel. Thank you to the UVA faculty and students that sent annotations and comments. Initial key for annotators can be found on the lower navigation panel.
Leena Cho (Moderator):
Thank you for joining us today, and also for your incredible lectures. It’s also fun and an incredible honor to sit here with you and see your incredibly diverse projects that you all are really passionate about. I want to make sure that we have around 10 minutes at the end of this for our audience, our students and guests to ask questions. But I also want to make sure that we’re touching upon topics where the commonalities between our work can begin to be seen. And I also had a little cheat sheet from Taryn and Chloe with a full two pages of questions from students that they never got to ask over lunchtime. And it seems like there were three patterns or three types of questions. Number one, if I can remember this, number one: how did you become who you are as a designer, generally speaking? Number two: what do you like? Whether it’s plants or designers or other disciplines. Number three, please predict the future. (laughter) How do you imagine our profession being challenged and also how to move forward in this really complex realm involving equity and social justice? Right?
So I would like to bring in these topics and also I want you to remember that our audience of students are interested in hearing from you about some of these personal stories at the same time being able to learn from you in terms of your own experience in practice and also where you might be headed. So I’m going to first start off the question and this is very informal. Please jump in, chip in or even change the questions that I’m asking.
But first question, you know, sometimes these will be very vague and other times very specific, but I’ll start off by asking you how do you, in your own experience how do you disagree? How do we disagree when we are trying to also work towards inclusion and equity and equality?
Maura Rockcastle:
I had a recent experience where we were in an engagement meeting for Indian Mountains Regional Park in St Paul. It’s a cultural landscape study and interpretive plan. And our project advisory team is predominantly from the indigenous communities and we were starting to talk about some of the overarching interpretive themes for the project. And everybody in the room was really uncomfortable still from the previous conversation. We hadn’t stopped long enough to allow for them to take the time they needed to build consensus and talk to each other. And so there was this shifting in the room, I stopped. I said, “is everything okay?” And slowly they started saying, “no, it’s not okay.” And I tried. I said, “well, this is really big picture.” You know, I tried to just reframe it a little bit and they were like, “Nope, that didn’t help.” So it was like, okay, we need to stop.
It was like I had to learn to actually not disagree and we sort of completely halted the whole project and we’re waiting for them to do a whole bunch of internal engagement before we pick up. And we’re really lucky we have a client who’s going to support us in doing
that and willing to stop and rethink the project. But since we have to leave in like a couple of seconds, I thought I would just quickly say one of the things that I think is going to be one of the most vital roles for some of us to play in the future is becoming activists within the city and agency side of things. I know I thought about doing that. I was not interested in that, but I see a lot of power coming from cities where there are a lot of young landscape architects and architects getting embedded in the city processes and are making the biggest changes in those cities because of that. And we’re having a hard time with our own city agencies. Not having that kind of leadership, not having people who are smart enough to recognize how to even write a brief about a project properly. I see that as being one of the biggest places where we need to get embedded to be able to make change.
And I like rust and mold and rot and piles.
Sanjukta Sen:
I guess I’ll go quickly because I have to leave with Maura. I think in terms of disagreement, the sort of more recent forms of disagreement are in the context of practice, and I think some of that was discussed today. I think that is this sort of notion of activism really only existing in very sort of individual models of practice in some ways. As the practice grows, it becomes almost difficult to manage the activist thread. And I think that’s a conflict that is sometimes a generational conflict and sometimes a financial conflict within the practice. And that I think has been an interesting disagreement to deal with in the context of a large practice. So I’m hoping that that those modes of practice sort of get questioned by people who are working within the larger practices. In some ways in terms of what I like, I was going to say gin and tonics, but… I love stones and I love ferns.
(Maura and Sanjukta run to catch their flights)
Thank you for joining us today, and also for your incredible lectures. It’s also fun and an incredible honor to sit here with you and see your incredibly diverse projects that you all are really passionate about. I want to make sure that we have around 10 minutes at the end of this for our audience, our students and guests to ask questions. But I also want to make sure that we’re touching upon topics where the commonalities between our work can begin to be seen. And I also had a little cheat sheet from Taryn and Chloe with a full two pages of questions from students that they never got to ask over lunchtime. And it seems like there were three patterns or three types of questions. Number one, if I can remember this, number one: how did you become who you are as a designer, generally speaking? Number two: what do you like? Whether it’s plants or designers or other disciplines. Number three, please predict the future. (laughter) How do you imagine our profession being challenged and also how to move forward in this really complex realm involving equity and social justice? Right?
So I would like to bring in these topics and also I want you to remember that our audience of students are interested in hearing from you about some of these personal stories at the same time being able to learn from you in terms of your own experience in practice and also where you might be headed. So I’m going to first start off the question and this is very informal. Please jump in, chip in or even change the questions that I’m asking.
But first question, you know, sometimes these will be very vague and other times very specific, but I’ll start off by asking you how do you, in your own experience how do you disagree? How do we disagree when we are trying to also work towards inclusion and equity and equality?
Maura Rockcastle:
I had a recent experience where we were in an engagement meeting for Indian Mountains Regional Park in St Paul. It’s a cultural landscape study and interpretive plan. And our project advisory team is predominantly from the indigenous communities and we were starting to talk about some of the overarching interpretive themes for the project. And everybody in the room was really uncomfortable still from the previous conversation. We hadn’t stopped long enough to allow for them to take the time they needed to build consensus and talk to each other. And so there was this shifting in the room, I stopped. I said, “is everything okay?” And slowly they started saying, “no, it’s not okay.” And I tried. I said, “well, this is really big picture.” You know, I tried to just reframe it a little bit and they were like, “Nope, that didn’t help.” So it was like, okay, we need to stop.
It was like I had to learn to actually not disagree and we sort of completely halted the whole project and we’re waiting for them to do a whole bunch of internal engagement before we pick up. And we’re really lucky we have a client who’s going to support us in doing
that and willing to stop and rethink the project. But since we have to leave in like a couple of seconds, I thought I would just quickly say one of the things that I think is going to be one of the most vital roles for some of us to play in the future is becoming activists within the city and agency side of things. I know I thought about doing that. I was not interested in that, but I see a lot of power coming from cities where there are a lot of young landscape architects and architects getting embedded in the city processes and are making the biggest changes in those cities because of that. And we’re having a hard time with our own city agencies. Not having that kind of leadership, not having people who are smart enough to recognize how to even write a brief about a project properly. I see that as being one of the biggest places where we need to get embedded to be able to make change.
And I like rust and mold and rot and piles.
Sanjukta Sen:
I guess I’ll go quickly because I have to leave with Maura. I think in terms of disagreement, the sort of more recent forms of disagreement are in the context of practice, and I think some of that was discussed today. I think that is this sort of notion of activism really only existing in very sort of individual models of practice in some ways. As the practice grows, it becomes almost difficult to manage the activist thread. And I think that’s a conflict that is sometimes a generational conflict and sometimes a financial conflict within the practice. And that I think has been an interesting disagreement to deal with in the context of a large practice. So I’m hoping that that those modes of practice sort of get questioned by people who are working within the larger practices. In some ways in terms of what I like, I was going to say gin and tonics, but… I love stones and I love ferns.
(Maura and Sanjukta run to catch their flights)
Gina Ford:
I love what you said and we were kind of talking about this at lunch. You know, you don’t ask the community ‘what do you want?’ cause you can’t give it to them. And I think it’s this sort of same thing about agreeing and disagreeing. It’s like you never ask a yes or no question to the community because then you get a position rather than an interest, a concern. People show up and they’re like so dug in already. And so how do you undig them by not asking them a specific question but broadening it and then trying to suss out, what’s the real heart of that? What’s the root of that fear? Is that about history? Is that about displacement? Where is that coming from?
I love what you said and we were kind of talking about this at lunch. You know, you don’t ask the community ‘what do you want?’ cause you can’t give it to them. And I think it’s this sort of same thing about agreeing and disagreeing. It’s like you never ask a yes or no question to the community because then you get a position rather than an interest, a concern. People show up and they’re like so dug in already. And so how do you undig them by not asking them a specific question but broadening it and then trying to suss out, what’s the real heart of that? What’s the root of that fear? Is that about history? Is that about displacement? Where is that coming from?
One of the emerging behaviors of socio-culturally, empathetically focused design in urban conditions is the awareness and dedication of attention to emotional response to design. This awareness empowers community and connects designers in new, positive problem solving to meet design goals. Yet, designers require new learnings and understandings of emotional impacts for true, deep connections. -- E.C.
So then you can address that through the work, you know, and then you have to be creative to understand how do you take those things that you’re given and make something out of them that they can react to. I think that’s really important. I mean, I was talking about this at lunch too, I’m working on a 58 mile-long strategic riverfront and it goes through a major city and then a bunch of rural areas and it’s like night and day doing community engagement and, and the, the amount of personal disagreement I could have it, you know, I can go to meetings where I just get yelled at for like hours on end. And I just like start to listen and try to understand where that’s coming from. But you know there’s this point where you need to start to become sort of like a translator, a facilitator of that disagreement too. And just hear it and have the humility to just listen and don’t fight back and don’t argue and just process it. Because it’s real to those people, they’re not expressing it because they’re wrong. They’re expressing it because it’s their lived experience. So even if you disagree with what they’re fundamentally saying, you have to hear it.
Jha D Williams:
I either misunderstood the question or my brain just went in a different place, but terms of disagreement, I immediately went to the design table, in the office. Because like Mass is such a collective there is not a decision that is not made by at least three people in our office. It’s kind of great because it’s also kind of frustrating sometimes when you’re trying to move on a fast deadline. And so in terms of like how I disagree, I would say very intelligently, first of all, I pick and choose my battles. But no, seriously, I think it’s a matter of, you know, being able to hear people out, training yourself to be a listener and be an active listener, but be a participatory listener. And then deciding in that conversation and in that particular arena, what is the point, what do I ultimately hope to achieve and disagreeing? And is there a way to still agree with this person and ultimately get what I want? So I think I disagree intelligently and manipulatively if that is how I disagree.
Leena:
One of the things I also hear from these different answers is that sometimes you have to maintain your own sense of neutrality. When you’re engaging with community members who might disagree with each other, who are coming from different contexts and history of the site, et cetera. But also you have to be an advocate for something that you believe in, where your projects might be moving towards. I was once recently in a conversation with an environmental scientist and an environmental science postdoc. And the senior professor said “it’s very important that you maintain neutrality as a scientist.” And then the postdoc said, “no, you have to advocate.”
So how do you balance these? Because you are trying to learn something and take away from something that could be useful for the community. At the same time, you’re rooting for certain things for society as a whole through such projects. So how do you, how do you navigate this fuzzy line of being a designer where you kind of are being asked to be everything all at once?
Sara Zewde:
You know we were talking at lunch about planning discourse and how planning talks about community engagement, and what I see as some of the pitfalls in the historical roots of participatory planning literature, which is the 1960s, after urban renewal and the construction of the federal interstate system, and how there’s this kind of guilt or paternalism that’s embedded in a lot of the language and, and even the methods. And that’s where the, like “what do you want?” question comes from. And so, you know, one of the things that I’m trying to do with every engagement opportunity I have is to set a different environment and attitude and just vibe. You know, that I’m not against you. I don’t have a position to defend, you can’t even disagree with me. We’re building something together. So this idea of a design cipher, which the African community actually came up with the ciphers is a concept that’s rooted in hip-hop culture. I mean it goes back even further than that, but hip-hop is what most people today associate it with. And that is when you form a circle and it’s freestyling and people just off the top of their head you have to listen to the other person, and you have to respond contemporaneously. So that concept was something that we used as a, as a basically a spatial arrangement as an approach to basically set the tone in terms of how we’re going to engage with one another. People didn’t even know who was the designer, who wasn’t, who was a community member.
Jha D Williams:
I either misunderstood the question or my brain just went in a different place, but terms of disagreement, I immediately went to the design table, in the office. Because like Mass is such a collective there is not a decision that is not made by at least three people in our office. It’s kind of great because it’s also kind of frustrating sometimes when you’re trying to move on a fast deadline. And so in terms of like how I disagree, I would say very intelligently, first of all, I pick and choose my battles. But no, seriously, I think it’s a matter of, you know, being able to hear people out, training yourself to be a listener and be an active listener, but be a participatory listener. And then deciding in that conversation and in that particular arena, what is the point, what do I ultimately hope to achieve and disagreeing? And is there a way to still agree with this person and ultimately get what I want? So I think I disagree intelligently and manipulatively if that is how I disagree.
Leena:
One of the things I also hear from these different answers is that sometimes you have to maintain your own sense of neutrality. When you’re engaging with community members who might disagree with each other, who are coming from different contexts and history of the site, et cetera. But also you have to be an advocate for something that you believe in, where your projects might be moving towards. I was once recently in a conversation with an environmental scientist and an environmental science postdoc. And the senior professor said “it’s very important that you maintain neutrality as a scientist.” And then the postdoc said, “no, you have to advocate.”
So how do you balance these? Because you are trying to learn something and take away from something that could be useful for the community. At the same time, you’re rooting for certain things for society as a whole through such projects. So how do you, how do you navigate this fuzzy line of being a designer where you kind of are being asked to be everything all at once?
Sara Zewde:
You know we were talking at lunch about planning discourse and how planning talks about community engagement, and what I see as some of the pitfalls in the historical roots of participatory planning literature, which is the 1960s, after urban renewal and the construction of the federal interstate system, and how there’s this kind of guilt or paternalism that’s embedded in a lot of the language and, and even the methods. And that’s where the, like “what do you want?” question comes from. And so, you know, one of the things that I’m trying to do with every engagement opportunity I have is to set a different environment and attitude and just vibe. You know, that I’m not against you. I don’t have a position to defend, you can’t even disagree with me. We’re building something together. So this idea of a design cipher, which the African community actually came up with the ciphers is a concept that’s rooted in hip-hop culture. I mean it goes back even further than that, but hip-hop is what most people today associate it with. And that is when you form a circle and it’s freestyling and people just off the top of their head you have to listen to the other person, and you have to respond contemporaneously. So that concept was something that we used as a, as a basically a spatial arrangement as an approach to basically set the tone in terms of how we’re going to engage with one another. People didn’t even know who was the designer, who wasn’t, who was a community member.
You know, some people knew how to draw, some people didn’t, but other people were making collages, other people doing other things. That’s really the environment I’m trying to craft, and it really is a craft. You have to design the space and the activity and all of that to be able to achieve that environment. I’m not there defending anything, you know. And then you are going to get yelled at, it doesn’t matter who you are, how big your heart is, how good of a designer you are, you’re going to get yelled at. That’s a big part of our job. And the idea is that in the anger there is a point. Just let the anger just wash off you, you know, and there’s something in there. There’s a data point. There’s some something to get from that and incorporate. That itself can be constructive and additive.
Everything is. So that’s kind of how I see it. There’s no way you’re disagreeing with me. You’re actually adding to the project.
Everything is. So that’s kind of how I see it. There’s no way you’re disagreeing with me. You’re actually adding to the project.
Sara masterfully details the skills, spatial and professional, of an empathic designer. It makes you want to join a cipher... - E.C.
Jha D Williams:
I would say to add to what you’re saying, another way that I’m working towards all of this is much longer term and that’s beginning to change who’s even at the table and who’s even initiating the community engagement or initiating the conversation, because a lot of times what I see to be the problem with the way that we as a profession, as design professionals are currently struggling with community engagement is there’s always this sense of otherness, right? There’s this other community, there’s these other people that are coming into our community and trying to community engage with us when instead what should be happening is more of that community should be brought up, be educated in the design realm and in the design profession to begin with.
So that when the community engagement is happening, it’s natural. It just is what it is. So my long-term goal is how do we educate the kindergarteners of this community to become designers twenty years from now, so that as design continues, the community engagement is not necessary because it’s naturally happening because the community is already engaged, right? How do we take the designers and the developers from coming into a community to actually just already have them be there, which is hard and very long-term and is going to take a lot of time and effort and a whole historical uprooting. But that’s my goal.
Leena Cho:
The second question is: do you consider yourself political?
Gina Ford:
Yeah, I mean, I suppose I do. I write a lot. I love what you (Sara) said. It’s not just enough anymore to just do your practice. You also have to be out there talking about it, bouncing it off of incredible luminaires like these ladies are, hearing, processing it collectively because otherwise it can just sit in your head. But I write a lot about political stuff, I share a lot about political stuff. When I talk, I always talk about the political context of the decisions I make about my practice and how I want to cultivate it. It’s really hard though because I work in contexts, as you guys do too, where if you’re truly preaching the word of being inclusive and open minded, it also means really listening to people who completely disagree with you politically and also just trying to find again, where’s the shared interest that even these two very polar opposite political spectrum folks can find home in this project. I think that’s a challenge for us as designers that see ourselves as advocates too is, where are you advocating and how are you advocating versus when are you listening and really receiving that from the community.
And so in a lot of ways I think in the projects where we can surface more political agendas where we’re free to do that, when we can do it open heartedly, we do it. And then in the projects where there’s community members where that would turn them off and we wouldn’t hear from them, we can’t, we just can’t because then we’re not being the inclusive designers that we want to be. I hope that doesn’t sound like a cop out. It’s a reality of working in a diverse cultural context that is the country today.
Leena Cho:
One more thing I would add to this is, what does it mean to be critical, especially as women this time and age and how would that or, or not, it might not, figure into the way you practice and research and also communicate with other folks?
Sara Zewde:
I think that you can’t be in landscape architecture and not be political. Like it’s not possible. It starts with land, you know, land is power. So, even if you think you’re not being political, if you’re not saying anything or if your work doesn’t say anything explicitly that means you are reifying the status quo, which is itself a political statement. So you might be like, ‘Oh, I’m looking for a nonpolitical firm.’ You know, that’s not possible. And sometimes the ‘political,’ that whole perspective gets projected onto women, onto black women, on to young black women who talk a lot. So I always shunned the title of ‘activist’ or anything like that. Because I’m a designer. I like design. I like beautiful things. I do! I actually liked designing. You know, kind of a caveat to my last answer, which is like, Oh, we’re all building something together. We are, but I also don’t want to also shun away from the agency of design that I think it’s important that we own, that we do have a set of skills that’s important. We are shaping things and you know, designs are a result of our interpretation of people and places. So I own that, but that’s something that everybody owns. And so everybody’s political, all of it. There’s no way out guys.
Jha D Williams:
I mean obviously my answer is yes. I had a whole point in my presentation where I said justice is beauty. Like clearly MASS has taken a very political stance in the design world. But on a personal level, I was born political. I am a black, queer woman. I had no choice but to be political. And then I decided to insert myself in design and architecture school. And so walking into a classroom for me is a political statement. Walking into a planning meeting is a political statement. Still to this day, I tend to be one of the only black people in a design space, let alone a black woman, let alone like a queer person in the space, right. And so every time I opened my mouth and ask about something, talk about something, want to address something, it ends up being a political statement simply because more often than not, it is hyper different than anything anybody else has said in the room because of my perspective and where I have come from. So it is exhausting. But yeah, all that I do, I consider to be political.
Gina Ford:
And then you asked about being a woman in political space. You know, part of the reason why we did that article in Landscape Architecture Magazine and part of the reason why we’re doing the Instagram feed is because I believe, and I could be wrong, that there is this movement of women leaving traditional practice because of the national scene and because of what it has brought forward that many of us always saw and knew was there. But now it’s like, okay, I can’t be apolitical anymore. I mean, you just can’t. I know the three of us, two years ago we were in totally different places. You (Jha D) and I were together in fact, and so if you look at the Instagram feed it’s crazy: it’s a huge amount of women that are opting out of a traditional or a kind of a bounded practice. And that is super exciting. I think to myself, okay, we’re not going to have a woman president yet. But we are going to have this revolution of women creating a new way of thinking about design practice. I think you see it in the work too. I mean, like what I saw today, this is an affirmation of a feminized practice, right, of a practice that’s based in trying to learn and see and understand as other through a different way. And that’s super exciting. It’s like, it’s almost enough to make me feel hopeful about the world again. Almost. We just need a few more years. I’ve just maybe like a little bit more, just a few more superheroes, wonder women.
Leena Cho:
Before I open it up to the audience. My last question is if you were to fast forward, I don’t know, 20 years, 50 years, and what are the things that could be changing in a big way when you think about design or the built environment?
Jha D Williams:
I’ve already expressed to you all what my bigger goal is. So I think one of the things that I would start with in terms of 20 years from now, what do I see changing? I would say design education. Like right now, design education, the way we are taught in these schools is, unfortunately, (I probably shouldn’t say this in a university, but whatever, y’all invited me) but part of the problem of the way that we practice, right? Like it is inherent in the way that we’re being taught and then also who is welcomed and supported and equitably justified in these educational experiences is also having an impact on who’s out here practicing and designing. So I see, or what I want to see happen, is just throw out the whole system. Let’s start all over again somehow. So, I don’t know, it sounds crazy, but I’m so hyper-focused on diversity and equity and justice through the people that are practicing the design, and I fully believe the only way to change that is through the education system.
I’ve already expressed to you all what my bigger goal is. So I think one of the things that I would start with in terms of 20 years from now, what do I see changing? I would say design education. Like right now, design education, the way we are taught in these schools is, unfortunately, (I probably shouldn’t say this in a university, but whatever, y’all invited me) but part of the problem of the way that we practice, right? Like it is inherent in the way that we’re being taught and then also who is welcomed and supported and equitably justified in these educational experiences is also having an impact on who’s out here practicing and designing. So I see, or what I want to see happen, is just throw out the whole system. Let’s start all over again somehow. So, I don’t know, it sounds crazy, but I’m so hyper-focused on diversity and equity and justice through the people that are practicing the design, and I fully believe the only way to change that is through the education system.
The question of design education is key. As Sarah Zewde points out, we need to not just diversify who we teach about, but radically rethink what we understand as a precedent and our methods of design. The work of Dr. Sharon E Sutton, FAIA, a pioneering African-American Architect and educator, provides many examples of rethinking design and design education, with children as well as adults. -- J.S.
Gina Ford:
Yeah. I mean, I don’t have a fully-formed answer to that except that you know, one of the things that I’m hopeful for in my own practice, and I’ve already seen a taste of this in the first year and four months, is that I just want to use my power and my privilege in the most positive and forward looking way I can. For me the most validating and wonderful experiences of the first year, there’s been a lot, we’ve had some great project wins, we’ve had all kinds of wonderful blessings fall out of the sky but what I love has been taking the knowledge I’ve accumulated just starting a business and sharing that with other women and people of color that I know that also want to start their own business. I think that 20 years time, if we can sort of undo the superman model in business practice so that it’s more collaborative and it’s less about you eat what you kill, so you keep everybody away from your kill. I mean that’s what it’s like, and change it to something where we’re like, you know, feasting together on our found riches. I kind of can see that and it’s, and it’s funny cause I was thinking, I wonder if you had a totally different panel of people that would be like, Oh, like “VR and driverless vehicles” and we’re like “education and collaborative business models.” But I think that to me is super exciting. (to Sara) What do you think? You’re like “VR.”
Sara Zewde:
We actually do use VR. (laughter) It actually has been very useful in our community engagement. Anyways, I think those are two really great answers. The education piece and the business model piece, those are both big spaces needing of innovation and I think I could see the profession going in that direction. The other thing is, something I’m really curious about that I’m trying to invest my time in is the client side. Like who is the client? What are they funding? Is it just a construction document set? No. There’s advocacy work, there’s research, there’s engagement, there’s this whole set of skills that we have that are right now largely not billable. This has been referenced in a number of presentations. How do we make the case, I know we have some professional bodies that are starting to do that, but I feel like that’s a place we need to make huge headway in order for us to be able to do this work.
Leena Cho:
Any questions from the audience?
Gina Ford:
It’s coming from big gun first. [laughing] Sorry Beth.
Beth Meyer:
Thanks, Gina. It’s been an incredible afternoon. Just been fantastic. So I want to thank you for that. The question I have is for you, Sarah, about another research project. And I’m just struck by the fact that you’re uncovering something about Olmsted Sr. that social historians have known for a long time, right? I mean, until really ‘68, ‘69 ‘70 historians knew more about Olmsted than landscape architects, right? But at the same time, we have PhD students here and colleagues around the country who are uncovering the fundamental role that Olmsted’s associates played in Jim Crow and the segregation of cities and the way in which, you know, Nolan, Manning, Olmsted Jr., and we could go on and on. We’re writing the subdivision codes, the neighborhood codes for Birmingham, Alabama, et cetera. So what do you think happened between dad and son?
Sara Zewde:
Yeah, it’s a really good question. He waits 30 years before he goes back to the South [Olmsted Sr.] between the end of his travels documenting slavery and then coming back again. There’s a 30 year gap where he’s basically exclusively working in the North. What I see him saying in his writings is that he feels like, how can we tell the South what kind of society they should be if we’re not the best version of ourselves? And so that’s the sentiment that’s shaping those 30 years. My archival work to date has largely been about 1846 to 1865. So I have yet to understand what happened between father and son. But it is a question that is on my list of questions to look into. So I’ve chosen 1865 as a kind of ending point, because it’s not a PhD for me. It’s a four month, six month research project. But there is a schism between what he’s talking about and what he does. I mean, even from a design perspective, even Central Park, the fact that Seneca village is a historic African American community, and all these people were displaced in order to construct this. There does seem to be some shift a little bit after Central Park where he shifts more towards thinking about parks as systems and he’s kind of articulating notions of equity and the idea that a range of people all across the city should have access to parks, and Central Park was too singular. That’s another thread that I want to follow in his later years. But I don’t have the answer to that and it’s something that I’m curious about—about what happened over the years. I mean, it became a financial engine on its own. That is probably the answer. But you know, to the degree that the son was aware of, you know, the sort of philosophy that Olmsted Sr. was using to guide his work—I don’t know. I don’t know that yet, but I want to, it’s a great question—also if you know the answer. I’ll let you know what I figure it out.
Student:
Thanks. This is amazing. My question for you all is, what do you think are the limits of design when it comes to questions of equity and then how do you negotiate those personally in your lives?
Jha D Williams:
I think about that this way too often. I think the immediate, more obvious limits are unconscious biases. And I say that because the spaces that I’m working in right now are probably the most equitable design spaces I have been in, in terms of the attitude, the overall desire, the people and the places. And what I’m starting to realize is that the unconscious biases, the things that we are not cognizant of, the attitudes and the dispositions and the understandings or the lack of understanding, the ignorance that has been planted in us, is what I’m realizing is the actual problem. And so what I’m currently doing at my office to do that is we have these councils—and they messed up y’all, they put me on the “people council” and they told me that I could have the task group of Equity and Inclusion and I was like, well, y’all got the right one. So we are doing all sorts of trainings around equity and justice and unconscious biases and beginning to unpack the things. Because here’s the thing, I love MASS, right? Like I think it is absolutely great, I’m so happy that I moved to this farm, et cetera, but there’s nothing in me that believes that when we walked through those doors, that society stays at the door, right? Where we come from, who we are, the news, our social media channels, our friends, our parents, right? They come with us in that office. So there’s no way in the world that these issues have not followed us to the design table. So we’re going to unpack them and we can do it with gin and tonic and chips and bagels or whatever, but we’re gonna do it to be able to better serve the folks that we want to work with and serve through this work. So I definitely think it’s unconscious bias. These is at the top of the list, if not the beginning of the list.
Gina Ford:
So smart.
Sara Zewde:
I’m really interested in how design can work in parallel with policy, particularly as it relates to displacement. You know, I’ve heard landscape architects kind of suggest that we shouldn’t make places as good as we can because it will displace people, which I think kind of again re affirms the inequity of good places. But that is an opportunity for design to then work with policy, to help keep people in place, when their desire is to do so. I haven’t seen too many instances of that, but that’s something that I am looking into as I move forward. What are the precedents, what are the models for that or where do we begin with them?
Audience member:
I was asked by a panel of students recently at the University of Arkansas, we’re working on a project there, and they were asking what’s one thing that you wish you had spent more time on in school, in your professional life? And what’s one thing now that you think is not really available as a resource in design schools, that as practitioners, we need to find additional resources to help educate us and train us. And I think a lot of it touches on these worlds of advocacy, mediation, client management, listening. And just curious from your perspective, particularly maybe in the last couple of years as you’ve started new ventures. What are some of those resources or mentors that you feel are really vital to your practice and how can we educate and help share that knowledge amongst professionals too broaden those conversations and increase our skills in those arenas that aren’t taught?
Gina Ford:
I was just going to say, you know, I was in school 20 years ago, so this is not the way it is anymore, but just from my experience, I didn’t understand anything about community engagement or facilitation. I had to learn it all on the job. Right? And then I learned it badly from some people that did it badly and then it took a really long time to unlearn that and then learn a new way of doing it. I know a lot of schools—I don’t know if UVA is in this camp—but they are doing a lot more service learning out in community, actually participating in that as part of the core curriculum. And I think that’s really critical. I think it’s critical to balance that with studios where you get to just explore, as you said, beautiful things just for beautiful things’ sake. I was gonna say, one of the things that I struggle with a lot, just in the reception of a practice that tries to describe the work through the lens of equity, is just that the pushback, the boundary, there always seems to be that somehow it’s not also beautiful. And you tell someone that you’re doing a practice that’s purely public and that you really want it to be highly community engaged—I’ve literally had people say to me, so you’re not doing design anymore. [groans from speakers and audience] And I, I’m just, I know, right? I’m sorry, that really hurt you. It really hurt me. But I think that’s, that’s also the sort of limit, is that we just need to prove that the outcomes can be really powerful in and of themselves without narrative. That somehow they are transformative in the way that you experience them and disruptive enough that they become beautiful, or they allow someone to see beauty in something they hadn’t seen before. And I think that’s kind of a tall order. But anyway, that was just two thoughts driven into one.
Jha D Williams:
So it was a two part question. It was what do you wish that you would’ve done more of while you were in school and then what is something that we wish we had more resources for now?
Audience member:
More context to that is, I was thinking more along the lines of that we need to be, as practitioners, more versed in how to communicate and facilitate. That was sort of my advice to the students—as something we don’t learn in a typical design environment. And then if you move into the more traditionally hierarchical firm or something like that, how do you manage and try to find resources and leverage that?
Jha D Williams:
Yeah, I mean I think in general—I feel like a broken record, I keep going back to education—but genuinely diversifying our education processes. So right now design school is very Eurocentric, everything we’re talking about, even when we talk about precedents. Throughout school I would just sit there and I’m like, y’all couldn’t find not one. There was not one architect of color that we could’ve pulled a building for. There was not one ever in the history of design. I know you’re mad too. I get it. So I think really where we should start investing some of our resources is in how we diversify the way we teach design, who we’re talking about, how we’re teaching it. Because when we get to these design tables, these professional tables, and we’re talking about diversity and equity and etc, if you think about it, most people are not coming from diverse backgrounds. Most people, definitely were not talking about diversity in school. So then how do you expect to come to the professional work table and be able to accomplish and be successful and be genuine at diversity if it’s not something you’re conceptually even familiar with. And so really investing resources at the education level in diversifying people’s experiences, what they’re exposed to, and demanding more from our education practices that they be more representative of a larger world, I think is how we can begin be better equipped as professionals when we’re out here doing this work.
Yeah, I mean I think in general—I feel like a broken record, I keep going back to education—but genuinely diversifying our education processes. So right now design school is very Eurocentric, everything we’re talking about, even when we talk about precedents. Throughout school I would just sit there and I’m like, y’all couldn’t find not one. There was not one architect of color that we could’ve pulled a building for. There was not one ever in the history of design. I know you’re mad too. I get it. So I think really where we should start investing some of our resources is in how we diversify the way we teach design, who we’re talking about, how we’re teaching it. Because when we get to these design tables, these professional tables, and we’re talking about diversity and equity and etc, if you think about it, most people are not coming from diverse backgrounds. Most people, definitely were not talking about diversity in school. So then how do you expect to come to the professional work table and be able to accomplish and be successful and be genuine at diversity if it’s not something you’re conceptually even familiar with. And so really investing resources at the education level in diversifying people’s experiences, what they’re exposed to, and demanding more from our education practices that they be more representative of a larger world, I think is how we can begin be better equipped as professionals when we’re out here doing this work.
One of the positives of the University of Virginia's education/ architecture design thinking program is the redesign and innovation of a socio-culturally based curriculum. Students of the curriculum have the opportunity to minor in socio-cultural topics, integrating into their educational path. The positive benefit to the field is expected with such strong socially aware foundations. -- E.C.
Gina Ford:
I was going to add, you know, I was just thinking to myself, one of the things that I think we could do as practitioners or even students is teach. I mean, I taught like a landscape architecture boy scout badge. Because my brother was going to be an Eagle scout and my mom was like, he needs that badge. And I was like, okay, I’ll get certified. So I taught like a group of 12 year old boys what landscape architecture was one afternoon. That those kinds of experiences are really great because it’s about how do you communicate this to people that aren’t schooled in it? Maybe we should all start teaching boy and girl scout badges, or whatever. Do you know what I mean? Cause then we could be doing both, going both ways. That’s right. So that we’re spreading that seed and then learning also how to articulate these things where we use big language and we use complicated ideas. You’d have to simplify. That’s a lot of public engagement too—you want to meet people where they are and you ultimately want to give them information that’s useful for them to be able to feed back. And I think sometimes we, you were talking earlier about going to public meetings as a kid and being totally frustrated by being both talked down to but also not understanding what you were actually being asked. And I think that’s sort of a boundary we have to break. So maybe it could do both.
Sara Zewde:
I want to add something too. I completely agree with what you said, but I do want to add something that I’ve seen done before, which is having precedents that are done by people of color doesn’t necessarily mean that the canon or the way we’re thinking about precedents is extending. Just because a black person designed it doesn’t mean it’s magically some new invention. So there’s a critical lens also as a layer to that, because we struggled too! We don’t automatically just like, you know, thinking this crazy—it’s hard, because we’ve been trained the same way y’all have, you know? I think it’s also a method of working with precedents or method of understanding. But what is the precedent? Is it a built form or is it a group of guys hanging out on the street corner? A group of guys hanging on a street corner is an architectural precedent in my mind. It’s a use of space that we can actually craft something around. It’s almost like opening up what a precedent is, to just unfold it. Because right now there’s nothing we can grab on to, even us. It’s hard for us too. And so a lot of what’s been built, you know, there’s not, it’s just really hard. I don’t know, that’s the answer that I have.
Jha D Williams:
I also wish I would have read more by the way.
Sara Zewde:
Okay. That was my answer to your question.
Jha D Williams:
I still wish I did. I listen to audio books, that counts right? Just trying to expand my mind to get more information constantly.
Sara Zewde:
The fact that our research methods aren’t necessarily limited to just Googling things, you know? I’m at Dumbarton Oaks right now, but when I don’t have access, I’m always emailing my friends that are professors like, can you download this article for me? There’s a lot of stuff, you know. So I didn’t show it, but we’re doing a streetscape in Baton Rouge. We started working on the project and, like I said, I’m in this window of time where I have access to academic journals. And so I want to just look around—what’s the history of Baton Rouge? How about on page one of this article called “Slavery in Baton Rouge”? Baton Rouge is the road that we’re designing and how it was built—it was constructed to support the cyclical cotton industry and was built by enslaved labor. You know, I wouldn’t have known that had I not had access. So that’s completely reshaped the trajectory of that project. So this research and practice thing that’s in my head that I tried to put it on a diagram is really— it’s important that we have research methods that we’re writing about and challenging ourselves— we are real researchers, we’re scholars in a sense, well not for real, but there’s seriousness, intellectual seriousness that should go into conceptual development and research.
Student:
I was wondering, what’s your ideal situation in terms of improving the flow of information and creating connections between people? Because I feel like the discipline is still small enough where everyone’s still relying on interpersonal relationships and word of mouth and more informal connections, whereas maybe in the future if there was a more accessible and systematized way, or channels for people to access information and research and share. It might move things along faster. And I just wonder if you’ve ever imagined, wouldn’t it be great if I could share my work this way?
Gina Ford: I don’t have any ideas about that. I think I’m sandwiched between some really, really smart people. For me what I think about a lot is this notion of the erasure of people from stories and I look a lot at our publications and online stuff and I’m just always blown away by how singular the narratives still are. And so that’s where I think if we claimed our space, if we claimed our space as we should, we meaning like, “other,” I just feel like that information would be out there, but it’s not because it’s just edited. There’s this great study about—and it’s heartbreaking—about impressionist paintings. I maybe was at the National Gallery, there was going to be a show and they catalogued this one dealer and he had so many Monet’s and so many Degas and he had like so many Mary Cassats, and in the show it had many Monets, many Degas, and one or two Cassats. And then in the gift shop there was just the one Cassat and then in the exhibition guide there were none. So the bigger the audience got, the smaller the presence of her work was, and I think that happens to us all the time. So I don’t think about it more from like, how do we build platforms? I think about how do we break into the existing platforms and claim our space there. I think women are often asked to play the behind the scenes character that’s quietly making everything run. I think we’re also shamed a lot for claiming our work and I’m trying to model not doing that.
Jha D Williams:
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the place you’re talking about already exists for me, so I’m kind of having a hard time answering the question. However, I also am very great at inserting myself in spaces. Maybe I’m just missing the memo. I also don’t think that a singular space should or could ever exist because there’s so much multidimensionality happening to these conversations as there should be. Right. I’m pretty sure it might be a little bit harder as a student because of the way your time is set up. Trust me, I remember, but just continuing to insert yourself in conversations, conferences, forums, blogs, all sorts of things but then also maintaining a healthy balance outside of the design environment is something that I have found to be very helpful because as an artist outside of architecture and therefore by default as an activist, I am part of so many different communities that then help to inform the way I come back into the design community. And I’m being introduced to other architects, landscape architects, urban planners that I probably would’ve never crossed paths with. But they have friends in other circles. And so I think seeking out events and conversations and existing forums cause there’s a ton of them, especially now—social media alone has created all of these unique, awesome spaces for us to have this knowledge share and getting in where you fit in in that will just completely like blow up what I think you’re looking for.
Sara Zewde:
I think my answer to that question is about, I think platforms exist, but the audiences aren’t all there. There’s a bunch of empty chairs here, these could be filled with people from Charlottesville, you know. I give a lot of talks and I mostly am talking to students, which is great, but I wish that either there were, you know, publics invited into this conversation, cause you guys have a huge resource. You just flew in six people to talk about their work that’s relevant to people who live two miles down the road. A simple email, I don’t know how it goes, but either it’s inviting them into the conversation or setting up additional platforms that like while we’re in town, we go, we spend an extra hour tomorrow morning or something doing this presentation somewhere else where other people can start to imagine how, oh, well, okay, so this is possible. Or there’s examples of this, because Maura mentioned inserting people that understand design into city governments. But also a lot of times in the projects that I’ve been working on, it’s an upswelling from communities that are pushing politicians. Like the Philadelphia project is an upswelling from the community to say, we think there’s something better here. Right? And so I wish that I had the opportunity to present more to other people. Y’all are awesome, and I appreciate the invitation, but I’m just, how do we expand that? You know? It’s a question mark in my mind. There’s a lot of embodied knowledge and experience here and also a lot for us to learn from presenting this kind of work to a broader swath of people.
Here’s where I thought my hand was going to fall off I was scribbling so fast. Sara gets right to what I see as a huge gap in the way that design academia functions presently. We are taught to think that the thrust of the project, the hidden nugget that will propel the design concept, comes out of research that's conducted alone in the studio or in a library somewhere. I can't help but to be suspicious of this form of site-driven design. Instead, how can we restructure the way we learn in school to hone our community listening skills, to be ready when there is such an “upwelling from communities?” Rather than finding the project where there supposedly is none, let us listen to the projects that are already being asked for, lending our specific skills as landscape designers to make places out of those upwellings. -- L.K.
Platforms for discussion have been brought up multiple times -– I wonder, how can we utilize existing platforms but change how we interact with them. As designers, we constantly leverage our engagements with communities, how can the relationship be more mutually beneficial. How does this dialogue shift and change when we bring this dialogue to non-institutional conversations in different ways. -- L.G.
Gina Ford:
One last thing. I love that you made this a panel the last two years cause it’s doing exactly what we’re talking about, right? You’re moving away from sort of a singular, you know, how much can you learn to, to something where you’re seeing people bounce ideas, which is brilliant. Thank you.
Taryn Wiens (Organizer):
With that, I think we’re done. Thank you for being the most patient audience.