no, thank you, de’vante

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Emily

I recently met De’Vante Wiley (featured in the audio below) while hosting a group of high school volunteers participating in the Summer Youth Institute, an experiential learning program that explores Mississippi society, history, and diversity. De’Vante began working to improve his community at a young age, organizing a community garden in Baptist Town when he was sixteen. I was glad to see that Southern Foodways Alliance ran into him also, wrote about him in this blog post, and provided the link to the excellent interview they did.

A couple of weeks after I met De’Vante he stopped by the community center. Just as he succinctly speaks about some of the most challenging social aspects of life in rural Mississippi, he also transcended one of the most challenging aspects of community work and said, “On behalf of the Baptist Town community, thank you for the work you’re doing.” From an outsider perspective, public interest work is warm and fuzzy, but the reality is that it is political, never complete, and addresses realities too complex to equal unanimous support from any large group.

Still, public interest designers conduct meetings, surveys, studies, games, and events to try to take into account the needs and aspirations of their client communities. Through this process to find the best possible architectural response, negative feedback is sometimes the only voice that is heard, while those pleased with an initiative stay silent. Positive feedback such as De’Vante’s “thank you” feels good on a personal level, but more importantly, indicates to social impact designers when a project is on the right track.

design futures should be in your future

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Emily

Hosted by a collaborative of university based architecture programs, the second annual Design Futures Student Leadership Forum conference was hosted at Tulane University last week. Over sixty students from ten universities were given a unique view of the field, meeting public interest design leaders and hearing about their projects, but further, participating in workshops that asked questions that welcomed the next generation of public interest designers to be a part the discourse that leads, defines and sometimes plagues this field.

Sessions included topics such as funding sources, ethics, power structures and skills utilized in social impact design. By inviting thought leaders and asking them to create sessions that were workshops more than lectures, what resulted was powerful stuff. Students got a look at one of Katie Swenson’s Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship draft budgets, a power mapping exercise Christine Gaspar and the CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy) staff had used to understand the agendas of involved parties related to unregistered hotels in New York City (pictured below), and insights from Theresa Hwang on ethical decision making related to the work of Skid Row Housing Trust, among others.

John Peterson, of Public Architecture, led a session that was designed for students, but was equally interesting to early career attendees. The workshop guided participants through a series of exercises that worked backward, from long range career goals, to options that can be pursued today to develop the skills that will make achieving those goals possible. As a panelist, along with Tulane City Center’s Emilie Taylor and UT Austin’s Nicole Joslin, I shared that though my time in architecture firms was important to my professional development, my time as a waitress taught me to talk with unhappy customers and to “know when a fire is a fire”, a skill that helps me keep projects moving forward even as challenges arise.

Though Design Futures was created as a conference for students, the format positioned presenters to discuss their work in a critical and reflective way that engaged attendees of all ages. Next year’s Design Futures at the University of Kansas is on my list of conferences not to be missed in 2015.

want to be a public interest architect? here’s one path

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Emily

The new class of Enterprise Rose Fellowship opportunities was recently announced. Six exciting positions in Boston, Oakland, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Slayton, MN will offer early career public interest designers opportunities to accelerate a career path in design leadership and community engagement.

More information is below, and the detailed work plans are available on Enterprise’s website.

Applications are now open for Rose Fellowships for 2015-2017. Apply by July 10th 2014!

Questions? Contact the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship office at (781) 235-2006 or rosefellowship@enterprisecommunity.org

The highly competitive Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship develops the next generation of leaders in community- based design. Rose Fellows take part in a unique three-year experience offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities. As integral members of their host organizations’ staff, fellows gain practical experience in site acquisition, site planning, architectural design, developing financial pro-formas, applying for financing and obtaining public approvals. Fellows also typically help their hosts improve standards and practices for design excellence, sustainability and community engagement. Rose Fellows also gain a national support system of colleagues who share their passion for public interest architecture and community development.

As full-time employees of their host organizations, fellows earn an annual stipend plus the standard insurance and benefits package provided by their host organization. The stipend for fellowships beginning in 2015 is $50,000.

Timeline

May	Fellowship opportunities posted
July 10	Fellowship application deadline 11:59 p.m. EST
September	Finalists selected
October	Interviews/Final decisions/Notifications
January 2015	2015-2017 Fellowships begin

gas station information

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Emily

In a community as small as New Houlka, MS (population 617), it can be difficult to plan a community engagement activity that more than a handful of people get involved in. The CREATE: New Houlka class was struggling with not only this, but we also needed an introduction to this rural community. Last Sunday, the students found a way to solve both problems.

First, they identified a place that is a hub of public activity, and then researched when the most people visit. The answer: David’s One Stop after church on Sunday. David’s is more than a gas station, offering hot plates, homemade desserts, and tables to stay and mingle. David’s welcomed us to set up outside of their store on what turned out to be one a beautiful, warm day.

Students researched methods of community engagement a formulated a plan in class. Each developed a component of the engagement and on Sunday we had a large arrow that said “Tell us about Houlka.”, a map with push pins, a string of questions on colorful paper, and cookies to help draw people in to share their thoughts. For two hours, a constant stream of welcoming residents shared their ideas about what makes Houlka unique, the assets, the eyesores, and more.

Students also drew on some of the work of artist Candy Chang, and created “tablecloths” that we left at David’s to get responses beyond Sunday’s event (pictured below).

Throughout the day, a few themes emerged. Houlka is hopeful though it’s population and economy continue to shrink. Houlka is welcoming; residents were not skeptical of us and they are optimistic about how the new Tanglefoot Trail could impact downtown. The residents of Houlka support each other. Benefits for residents who have had a misfortune are held as often as biweekly.

A big thank you to the residents of Houlka for their warm welcome. Our class is excited to partner with you, and deliver a project that reflects the spirit of your community. Visit our facebook page for updates throughout the semester.

cottages not forgotten

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Emily

It has been a long time since I posted about the Cottages, donated to the City of Greenwood for use as affordable housing, and a big part of my fellowship work plan. This is because a resolution needs to be passed by the Mississippi legislature (typically in session from January through March) to allow the Cottages to legally end up in the hands of the organization that will install and sell them. As with many affordable housing projects, we have run into unexpected snags, policy that never predicted our specific circumstance, and skepticism. A recent letter to the editor of the Greenwood Commonwealth voiced some very real concerns about the homes regarding their durability, safety in regards to resident health, and cost. As I continue to build relationships with our legislators and we hopefully move closer to successful passage of our bill, this letter also provided me with an opportunity to publicly respond to these concerns. Below are some important facts about the cottages and this project that I highlighted in my response in a letter to the editor run on Sunday, February 9th, 2014.

The Mississippi Cottages are high quality homes. They were designed not as temporary shelters, but as a way for Gulf Coast communities to build back better than they had been before Hurricane Katrina. I spent a significant amount of time in the homes while working in Biloxi, and I would not be dedicated to this project if these homes were not of a quality that I would live in one myself.
From a technical standpoint, it should be clarified that the homes are “modular”, not “mobile”. This means that they conform to the highest building standards, and will meet all code requirements in any area of the United States.
In regards to finances, the Cottages themselves were donated, but the land on which they will sit, their foundations, driveways, steps, and mechanical, electrical and plumbing connections were not. These items combined will cost an estimated $25,000 for a two-bedroom Cottage. Pending passage of a bill currently in the MS legislature, the Fuller Center will sell the homes to applicants for only the costs that they invest in the items listed above. The mortgage the Fuller Center will offer will be for 15 years with 0% interest. It is our projection that the actual per month cost will be approximately $120-$160 in mortgage principal payment plus $60-$120 in monthly payments for insurance and property taxes.

soft metrics

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Emily

I believe strongly that design and thoughtful implementation add value to every project, but social impact work takes place in such a complex and variable environment that tracking outcomes based on specific projects is rare and imperfect. As I mentioned in my last post, we may not even know of the positive or negative ripple effects our work is having. Despite this, I also believe it is the responsibility of social impact designers to make an effort to document metrics associated with their work.

If we want the field of public interest design to grow, and funding to be dedicated to the projects and the jobs we believe make the world a better place, there is no alternative to demonstrating a compelling value proposition.

Rebekah Levine Coley, a professor at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education, and her colleagues from Tufts University make just such a proposition through a six-year long study that tracked the development of 2,400 low-income children within poor families. The research concluded that “the quality of a child’s home predicted academic success and susceptibility to emotional and behavioral issues” more strongly and consistently than any other factor. As Emily Badger writes in her report on the study, the breadth and depth of the research is important because it indicates causation over correlation. Read an excerpt below or the entire article here.

In retrospect, that study amassed precisely the kind of data you’d need to understand how housing itself – not the social environment of a “family home” – might influence children. The study recorded whether a home was rented or owned, or rented through public housing or subsidies, how affordable it was relative to a family’s income, how often families moved from house to house, and the quality of the property. Researchers looked for working refrigerators, holes in the wall, rodents, functioning heat and hot water, adequate light and fresh air – many of them signs of poor-quality housing outside of a family’s control. All of the families were low-income, but some had considerably more run-down housing than others.

Controlling for other factors like a parent’s employment status and income, Coley and her co-authors concluded that the poor quality of housing more strongly and consistently predicted a child’s well-being than all of those other housing characteristics (including whether the home was considered “affordable” to the parents or not). Children in more derelict housing had lower average reading and math skills. They had more emotional and behavioral problems.

The information presented in this study is important in gaining traction for the broad assertion that where a person lives shapes who they are. As stated above, the breadth of this study is important, but public interest designers, rather than be daunted by the idea of studying 2,400 of anything, should see their own projects as an opportunities to reinforce the study on a case by case basis.

I am new to metrics, and am beginning to delve deeper in two ways. First, by frequently asking myself, “What are the intended outcomes of my work in Mississippi?” I have tasked myself with assigning three specific outcomes to track to the Baptist Town Cottage project by the end of November. I will then measure these outcomes before, during and after construction. Of those three, I would like one of them to be a “soft metric” – something that is not numerical, hard to measure, and tied to well-being similar to Coley’s study.

architecture | equality

– Emily Roush-Elliott

Tag Archives: public interest design