Panel B – Public Interest Design Education

PANEL MEMBERS

Tom Barrie, NC State University, Moderator/Presenter
Briana Outlaw, NC State University
Emilie Taylor Welty, Tulane University
Brad Guy, Catholic University of America
Brice Aarrestad, University of Minnesota

Tom Barrie, AIA, is Professor of Architecture. The Mordecai Backyard Cottage Project was a research and design project conducted by the School of Architecture at NC State University. During fall semester 2014 faculty and students worked collaboratively with residents and representatives of the Mordecai community to envision a range of possibilities for backyard cottages. Research documented and analyzed national precedents, current city codes and concerns, and potential impacts. The project process included participation by city councilors and planners and a number of public forums, and concluded with an exhibition of results and recommendations. The City of Raleigh is currently considering revisions to the Unified Building Code based on the outcomes of the studio.

Briana Outlaw, The Ghana International Design Studio’s mission was collaborative design of play experiences for adolescents and families in a fast growing city with few urban open spaces. The interdisciplinary studio included students from landscape architecture, architecture, industrial design, graphic design, and art+design. Interdisciplinary, collaborative work engaged American students and Ghanaians through immersive field study across Ghana familiarized students with Ghanaian culture, land values, and design traditions prior to engaging in final project work. The studio worked with Ghanaian stakeholders, including children, in the development of prototypes for play experiences to be tested and improved through the Playtime in Africa site.

Emilie Taylor Welty is a Professor of Practice and Design Build Manager at Tulane City Center, a design center of the Tulane School of Architecture. She has served as project manager for Grow Dat Youth Farm, LOOP’s Gathering Pavilion and the Tulane design-build portions of Parisite Skatepark. Emilie’s creative practice explores the intersection of making and Public Interest Design, and she has a firm in New Orleans with Seth Welty and Dan Etheridge called Colectivo. Emilie Taylor Welty looks at how disaster preparedness works on the ground in New Orleans at Tulane City Center. Their work can be described as a form of radical incrementalism, which here will be told through the lens of their water management work. Across projects the TCC’s efforts to educate, fabricate, and collaborate on stormwater issues are increasing capacity in a flood prone city.

Brad Guy is an Assistant Professor in the Masters in Sustainable Design program, School of Architecture and Planning, The Catholic University of America (CUArch), Washington, DC. He is also the Associate Director of the Center for Building Stewardship, Chair of the Sustainability Committee, and Faculty Advisor to the USGBC Student Group of CUArch. Brad is the Chair of the US Green Building Council Materials and Resources Technical Advisory Group, and a Member of the Board of the Off-Site Construction Council of the National Institute of Building Sciences, and a member of the Sustainable Sites Initiative Materials Committee. Brad recently organized the ìReclaim + Remake International Symposiumî, April 2013, at CUArch, which hosted speakers from 23 universities and 8 countries on the themes of building materials reuse. Current teaching and research focus on sustainable materials through life cycle assessment, prefabrication and modular design, design to use reclaimed materials, and productivity studies for deconstruction training in Detroit, MI. Brad also teaches an annual course at the Yestermorrow Design / Build School on Design for Deconstruction and Reconstruction.

Brice Aarrestad, Associate AIA, is an advocate for the design profession’s ability to alleviate the effects of poverty by bringing dignity to the human experience. He is an active social impact designer having worked on projects in Uganda, Haiti, and Tanzania through his involvement with Engineering Ministries International, the University of Minnesota, and his own social-venture Help Desk Furniture. Brice is currently leading the development of DLR Group’s pro bono program. Presentation Abstract: As public interest design educators, we are charged with providing the knowledge and skills needed by emerging professionals to effectively pursue substantive change through social impact design. This presentation looks at how the PID program at the University of Minnesota equipped a recent graduate to lead the reorganization of pro bono practice for international architecture and engineering firm DLR Group. The initiative builds on the firm’s desire to restructure their ad hoc efforts into a more effective, human-centered approach.

PANEL DISCUSSION SUMMARY

Tom Barrie

Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Initiative
- Started 7 or 8 years ago
- Educational initiative pairing the teaching of design with a social practice
Produce applicable research to the public and develop solutions
Mordecai Backyard Cottage Project 2014
- Inner city, mostly residential neighborhood in Raleigh
- Conventional community based studio with graduate students
- Aim to result in changes in building code
Process
- Backyard cottages had been place in a new ordinance for approval
- Project developed as research for the planning commission
- Multiple community partners
- Students researched multiple contexts, the neighborhood, other types of housing, policy surrounding the issue, and communication
  - Learning how to put together and effective case
  - Developed an FAQ
  - Precedent research
  - Looking nationally at pros and cons of backyard cottages
- People were afraid that college students would be living in backyard colleges
- Research nationally about policy surrounding cottages
  - In North Carolina most municipalities allow them – why not in Raleigh?
  - Taken off the books in 1970s
- Research of Mordecai for feasibility
Results
- Series of meetings and reviews in Mordecai including the Urban Design Center
- Student design of backyard cottages
- Presentations turned into 11×17 sheets as handouts as public meetings
- Brought to a series of public forums
- Brought to a local affordable housing conference (exhibition)
Students worked 1 on 1 with clients
- Clients became advocates as well
Continued to work with the community over the summer, allowed for the creation of an overlay district
Now the planning department is developing a draft ordinance
- Student work was taken seriously and can lead to changes in city ordinances
Students learning how advocacy and the public process works – good citizen architects

Briana Outlaw

Ghana International Design Studio: Playtime in Africa
- Immersion in Ghana culture, working with children and communities
40% of population under age of 15
Partner with Mmofra Foundation, similar to a YMCA, local nonprofit
- Wanted a play space for children to keep kids out of unsafe areas
- Not much available green space
- Foundation wanted to foster a sustainable environment that provides a learning play environment
Worked with locals to understand the Ghanaian culture
- Artists
- Historical sites
- Other cities (both urban and rural)
- Learning value and engagement in local arts (pottery/beadmaking)
Culture of entrepreneurs
Engagement of stakeholders
- Architects, engineering, organization
- Worked with IDEO human centered design handbook
- Studied other existing learning environments
Local innovation with engineering firm
- Bathroom in park integrating composting and waste system
Site analysis
- Mostly built forms surrounding
- 2 acre site surrounded by concrete wall for safety
- Agriculture and medicinal plants
- Able to design and build different prototypes to address play and learning
  - Inspiration from Ghanaian culture
  - Traditional motifs being lost to popular culture
Reading nooks
- Made of recycled wire spools
- Allowed for reading outdoors and maintained storytelling of culture
Calabash instrument
- Traditional instrument that allows children to experiment with sounds
Adinkra Balls
Matching beads
Culminated in a video as documentation for the organization and prototypes that children could test
Takeaway
- What does it mean to be a global citizen?
- Real world application of design skills
- Adaptability to the needs of the client

Emilie Taylor Welty

In the past 10 years
- Over 80 projects (half design build/half more visioning/research/policy based)
- 25 structures built
- 500+ students with 35 faculty
- 70 community partners
Visioning projects are done on the students time and they are paid, provides more flexibility
- 5-person team currently, we advance community-driven ideas through collaboration, design education and scrappy innovation”
Projects are initiated by community partners through proposal and then chosen through committee
How can we use our skills as designers to do things other than buildings?
- Sometimes a building is not the best outcome
- Transferable skills
Post Hurricane Katrina
- More rigorous about process so it can be replicable and allow for continuation
  - Worksheet that organization and partners fill out together at the beginning of every project.
    - How do you define success?
    - How are we going to measure success?
    - Who are the stakeholders?
    - How can we build capacity within our community?
    - What are the student learning objectives?
    - Are there readings the partner has to frame the design investigation?
    - How are we educating the public and expanding knowledge about the issues facing New Orleans citizens?
    - How will we celebrate?
- Understanding steps of design process – what are the power dynamics in the modes of critique
  - Community partners have trouble with the traditional design review
  - Making clear that many times the designer is not the expert
Rethinking the design review
- How can we get more useful feedback?
- Sticky note feedback initially to lead discussion
Engagement through construction
- Continuing engagement through the entire design process

Brad Guy

Mission statement of school includes building stewardship
- Master of Science and Sustainable Science, 7 years old and successful
Comes to PID from a sustainability standpoint – Focus on waste
Where do we see building waste?
- Post Katrina looking at obvious problem of massive construction and creation of large amounts of waste
  - Laws not supportive of addressing community needs. For example, landfills opened in neighborhoods
- Where are materials coming from?
Building the capacity to recover building materials
Serving of people who need cheap building materials
Supportive communities
David Perks at GCCDC
- Using green materials to build homes on gulf coast
Worked in other cities
- Detroit – 75000 homes to be demolished, but those can provide building materials
- Creation of jobs – you were a builder, now you can be a deconstructer
At Catholic – space for course that can be tailored as opportunities arise
- In Ohio – work with a church, dismantled and rebuilt a pavilion for gatherings/weddings/etc.
  - Manufactured housing units on campus eventually removed, deconstructed
  - Teaching how things go together
  - This semester – using living building challenge to provide real world experience
Opportunistic model with sustainability leverage
- Huge umbrella that allows for flexibility
Allows students to be exposed to rural communities they would not normally go to
- Interaction with real people with real lives
- Interaction with communities through day to day conversation
Instill in students the idea of future thinking
- Designing for the entire lifecycle of the building
- Creativity and reuse of materials

Brice Aarrestad

At DLR Group
- Elevating the Human Experience Through Design
- Multiple offices, including international
- K-12
- Employees have the opportunity to buy stock in company, and therefore have a say in the overall vision for the company
- Vision 2020: create a formal DLR Group Pro Bono program
- Professional Development Grant for pro bono playbook
At University of Minnesota
- Public interest design initiative (student group)
- Got together once a semester for video or discussion. Allowed for broader conversation
- Practice and Principles of Public Interest Design
  - Fundamental ideas for PID
  - Ability to write why you are doing something
  - Staring at the fundamental level and what it means
  - Understanding the general state of PID
  - Field trip to International Field Committee
  - Where is the power relationship in an designer/client relationship?
- Building Stories Class
  - Taught by two professionals
  - Based on large and small scale projects paired together
- Design Deluth
  - Interdisciplinary with landscape architecture students for community development projects
- Tanzania Design Studio
- Public Interest Design Week
  - 2012/2013
  - Connected students to conversation at Structures for Inclusion
At Institute on the Environment, U of M
- Acara Institute
  - Outside institute on the environment
  - University based but no degrees awarded
  - Connects the university to causes, incubator for social interest projects
  - Gives access to grants and business model education
- Acara Venture Fellowship
  - Access to mentors and pilot project funding
At Design Futures
- PID Student Leadership Forum
  - Connections with students and communicating the goals of PID
  - How should we as public interest designers be working?
  - Bringing students into the conversation about practice

Open Discussion

Reconsidering, realigning design education
Hierarchy of strength
Educational goals
- Research to make effective cases
- Pairing of research and design
- Process and fine tuning of process (understanding power structures)
- Outcomes and impacts
- Understanding new contexts for design
- How to help students to become resourceful
- Curriculum
Public interest design as a reframing
- Switching the focus of studios from inward on the project to outward on the community
- How do educators develop the best and most effective projects?
Problem identification, not just problem solving
- Here is a space, what could it be?
Rooting in place
- Adding a human, story-telling, aspect
- Facilitates a forum for listening and story-telling through place making
Active listening
How do you decide which projects to value and push forward?
- Worksheet with 8 metrics
- Understanding of capacity of students, faculty, time
- Potential impacts
- Diverse committee, including faculty, past students, community partners
How do you get a program to a point where the community brings projects to you?
- Emails from people
- Putting forth that there is a process in place
Nonprofit or school based services competing with professional design services
- Understanding that there are services up to a point
- Doesn’t have to be a building
Problem finding
- Pairing students form different universities internationally
- Way of sourcing problems and potential solutions
- Local innovations can be key to successfulness of a project
Understanding people with diverse narratives
- Working with rather than for
- Listening to needs
RFP Process
- Important portion of the process when deciding how to move forward with a curriculum
- The project can become key
- County extension model relies of requests for service
Understanding educational worth decides studio project vs funded research project