 We're going to now go to our next panel and Kossim Shepard is going to Introduce the speakers and be the moderator for this panel. Kossim is a adjunct assistant professor here in the urban design department. He's also a founder of urban omnibus Thank you. Thank you. Hillary and thank you. Mr. Cox. You're a personal hero of mine So that was a great great delight to see that As Hillary mentioned my name is Kossim Shepard. I teach here at GSAP a number of courses related to narrative and storytelling particularly through filmmaking as well as classes on the complex history of the encounter between architecture and poverty and so I'm delighted to be a part of this Conference today and the stimulating day of presentations and discussions as well as this panel in particular which kind of brings together both of those aspects of What I look at the name of this panel is livability and design excellence, but I think we're really trying here to expand notions of quality and excellence Beyond what can just be evaluated in aesthetic terms on opening day of a building But rather to really try and look at how environments evolve and how we might incorporate the experience critically of users of residents of workers people who inhabit and dwell in the built environments that we create Into that evaluation of how complex built environments work So we will be joined today by David Brody who was a professor of design studies at Parsons at the new school His work his recent work focuses on the relationship between design and labor especially in the context of hotels and also by Hans Iblings an architectural historian and critic who teaches at the Daniels faculty of architecture landscape and design at the University of Toronto and the publisher and editor of the architecture observer And the author of rise and sprawl Rise and sprawl the condominiumization of Toronto Unfortunately, Lisa young Lee who's the executive director of the public housing museum The National Public House Museum in Chicago is unable to join us the blizzard got in the way of her flight from Chicago this morning When the National Public House Museum opens in the last remaining building of the Jane Adams houses It'll be the first cultural institution dedicated to interpreting the American experience in public housing So I am just gonna very briefly cycle through her slides in her absence Just to really make sure if it's not already that the National Public Housing Museum is on your radar and that you visit them the next time You're in Chicago One of the things that Lisa in our conversations leading up to today really emphasized Was not only the physical site in the Jane Adams houses that is sort of a repository of memory But also the deep outreach and public programming the museum has done with constituents both current and former of public housing In in the Chicago area this I thought was particularly poignant in light of the Lafayette Park example The and really sort of doing deep outreach to lift up not only the sort of physical environments in which Public housing has taken place But also the personal stories and I think storytelling and the in the role of Lifting up the narratives of users. I think is going to be central to any expansion of our conversation about what? Housing environments and other kinds of complex environments can be So I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to introduce some of those questions into today's conversation Starting with David Brody who's gonna talk to us a little bit about Hotels labor and how those can influence how we evaluate these things David First of all, thank you for having me Hillary Castle. I very much appreciate it And I'm gonna talk just for about 13 14 minutes or so Today so my work looks at the ways in which design choices all too often subjugate labor Specifically, I'm interested in how design decisions Which directly affect the physical and economic well-being of housekeepers get made really without any regard for the difficult nature of what? Hillary Sample describes as cleaning focused work Since the majority of hotel housekeepers in the United States are women of color I contend that there is a racially motivated Discourse about hotel workers and a type of cultural disparagement towards what many perceive as the menial nature of these jobs That is implicit in these unfortunate design decisions This approach to design explicitly affects these women's daily lives and part of what this book project was about Was interviewing housekeepers and trying to get at those narratives that was just spoken about So let's enter one of these hotels I studied let's check in if you will to a conflict that arose at the Hyatt Regency Chicago eight years ago This conflict was a result of the lapse contract between Hyatt management and a Chicago hotel workers Represented by Unite here, which is the big hotel union in the United States The hotel workers previous contract went into force on September 1st 2006 and expired on August 31st 2009 from 2009 until the ratification of a new contract in 2013 those represented by the union including the housekeeping staff and many of those in the food and beverage department of the hotel worked without a contract this meant a protracted series of Conflict centered on wages and conditions and benefits So yes finances and benefits were critical to these labor talks and disputes that went on for four years in Chicago But housekeepers also protested the recent physical changes to the interior that made their jobs much more demanding So starting with the west tower of the hotel and then moving to the east tower the Hyatt Regency Chicago completed the renovation of its 2019 rooms in 2011 and typically whenever I talk about the Regency Inevitably there's several people in the room who stayed at the hotel because it's so enormous and it's such a convention Centric spot While the guest desires were clearly the driving force behind these design changes the voices of hotel workers Especially housekeepers were not included in the design process the firm Indy design based in California Led at the 90 million dollar renovation and I interviewed Beatrice Gorelli the firm's principal and owner and her conversation with me I think helped shed some light on both their design brief from Hyatt and some of the challenges that went into their enormous project Gorelli was very open about the tension that exists between corporations like Hyatt and a more ambitious design vision Often this had to do with finances and these limitations can affect creativity Since Gorelli's firm does what it can to push the possibility of design into into territory that will in her words Wow the guest During my interview with Gorelli. She was frank about housekeeping and concerns that her firm has with the women who clean the space as she has Designed she noted quote we design things that fit in only one place which makes certain that the room is housekeeping proof She emphasized that there are many hotels where housekeeping quote is the designer as they move objects They do not follow the manuals that design firms give to hotels and they disregard the importance of appearance to avoid this Gorelli and her team keep a careful record of where each object should be placed and create a manual for housekeeping Which I was never able to get my hands on unfortunately that gives explicit directions about where objects should be kept So here's a before and after shot obviously the before on top and the after on the bottom of the renovation Indie designs changes that the Regency focused on pallet fixtures and textures found in the guest rooms the bed and pillows In the old rooms were multicolored with large vertical light fixtures that were part of the wood headboards a Grid-like pattern to find the overall appearance of the earlier rooms while Gorelli's new rooms are more monochromatic and less Accented with tones of brown the new lighting fixtures are subtle and the furniture has cleaner lines without the cluttered look That must have led to the decision to renovate This is a before and after of the bathroom The bathrooms extend this motif of cleaner lines with new sinks and vanities in the absence of towel racks The sinks are now set within a wood base and underneath the sink There are three towels you can see that on the right that instead of hanging from a rack are rolled and tucked out of a Line of sight which would be unavoidable with towel racks instead of the sink surface Extending over the back of the toilet to create a ledge for bathroom products Indie design uses a simple ledge where the Hyatt's bath amenities can be placed in Several of the hotel's images of the renovation that appeared at the time a small bamboo plant like what you see on the right Sits in a glass jar on the sink adding to the overall spa like aesthetic that defines the renovation So not all of the housekeepers at the Hyatt embraced this renovation and many noted In the interviews that I had with them that the changes have led to injuries and other difficulties several of the housekeepers explained that the new mattresses in the room are heavier and difficult to maneuver especially in terms of tucking in bottom sheets and in the hotel industry mattresses and beds are always the most controversial object specifically they've become remarkably more heavy especially over the course of the last of The last decade and hotels do not use fitted sheets like probably we all do in our home There's a phobia against fitted sheets in the hotel industry So Garelli from InDesign noted that Hyatt bought these beds without the consultation of her firm But the position of the bed which her firm did devise is also a point of contention between housekeeping and Hyatt's management as Anne Small-Gonzalez who was a floor runner and housekeeping remarked to me quote the bed is so close to the wall in order to get that tuck It's so uncomfortable. I think that's how a lot of people might be getting hurt They did make changes with that another housekeeper Angela Martinez Further claim that placing the mattress on a wooden box rather than a box spring which was in the old rooms Also makes the bed making process far more difficult since the box spring was more flexible than the wooden platform The new bed also has more pillows than the previous bed There are now six pillows according to several of the housekeepers I interviewed and these fluffier pillows are longer and require more Reaching and extending of the housekeeper's arm to place the pillow in its case and many have complained that this also has led to shoulder and back pain So another seemingly benign design choice all these kind of seemingly Benign design choices in Chicago men further complications for the hotel workers at the Hyatt For instance the new updated bathrooms have also led to more work Some of the bathrooms have glass partitions that separate the tub from the rest of the bathroom and many of the rooms that have shower curtains Like the one that you're seeing here no longer use a plastic liner So housekeepers have to scrub the white surface that shows even a minuscule amount of dirt Also since the towel racks had been removed housekeepers had to now roll towels and place them underneath the counter below the sink The towels are hidden from view achieving the type of clean line aesthetics found throughout the renovated rooms But by using a napkin as a model one housekeeper revealed how Exacting the rolling process is and how much longer it takes than folding a towel and placing it on a rack And so all of these small labor changes added up to a tremendous additional time in terms of the amount of Work going into each room So the design decisions created a very tense work atmosphere at the Hyatt Regency Chicago that in part led to the workers taking action and On May 26 2010 about 400 employees walked out of the hotel for a brief period of time to protest issues related to the workload increase caused by the renovation Hyatt and Unite here is an ability to resolve a contract to dispute exacerbated this issue of course and a Controversy about the hotel management's refusal to allow a particular union representative into the hotel During a particularly heated moment only made the situation worse The walkout only lasted a few brief hours But the stage was set for what continued to be a protracted contract negotiation that had for several employees an enormous impact in Studying this untenable situation amongst the workers the union and Hyatt management It became apparent that something had to change and then finally in August of 2013 Hyatt and its employees did reach an agreement at its four Chicago hotels including the Regency and Signed a contract that was in force until this year and actually there was a whole other recent labor dispute that took place this year, which is a Subject of a different topic but closely related to this of course as a result of the 2013 contract housekeepers would get a dollar eighty raised per hour taking their pay to $16.40 and there were also some additional benefits in terms of what the union could protest against and bring up in meetings And also some slight changes to health benefits But while many of the pressing concerns appear to have been resolved there was still really the matter of design There are still the difficulties associated with contending with guestrooms that have not been designed to facilitate the hard work of housekeeping So design should be a Democratic process as Guy Bonciapi has argued design has now become too entrenched in the spectacle of a media event Instead of focusing on intelligent solutions design has quote drawn nearer to the ephemeral fashionable and quickly obsolete This has led to the boutiquezation of the universe of products for everyday life While Bonciapi does not mention hotels specifically his argument is certainly applicable as hotel chains like Hyatt Redesign their rooms not with design solutions in mind, but with the idea of keeping up appearances that will look fashionable Bonciapi wants the design community to move away from this unsustainable model and move towards what he describes as a sense of participation So that quote dominated citizens transform themselves into subjects opening a space for self-determination This ability to creatively instill self-determination is at the heart of Bonciapi's larger wish for an emancipated type of design That will foster less subjugation in the face of a design establishment So enamored with the seductive power of manipulating users with and through design and One way that I am a big fan of in terms of Changing some of the nature of the way this works in an industry like the hotel industry But I think this could be extended into a lot of the topics that focusing on today in terms of housing is by embracing this idea of co-design And Elizabeth Sanders and Peter Jan strappers describe co-design as a subversion of what designers usually accept as best practices In co-design the person who will eventually be served through the design process is given the position of expert of his or her experience and plays a large role in knowledge development idea generation and concept development They still claim that the role of the professional designer is important But in their model the designer cannot do his or her job without input from the individuals Who will have to utilize the product or system being produced? Sanders and staffers also understand that the design process is not a linear narrative Ideas concepts prototypes and products do not come to the fore in a logical way I think as we all know however, they claim that with more of an inclusive process quote What is being designed will change? Imagine then a scenario at the Hyatt Regency, Chicago where housekeepers management and potential guests Work together to come up with design solutions this form of co-design could include Conversations about the current rooms that raise questions about what design choices work and what design choices could be improved Upon perhaps for instance a housekeeper could explain to Beatrice Garelli How the weight of the mattress in relation to its placement on a non flexible bed frame makes it very difficult to change the sheets in Reaction to this the housekeepers and the designers could come up with novel solutions for different types of mattresses and frames that would enable Rooms to look presentable without causing the hardships described by so many of the housekeepers. I interviewed Designers managers union organizers and workers all appear to be having conversations without actually talking to one another and Small Gonzales the one of the housekeepers I interviewed at the Regency summarized labor's position eloquently She said quote management doesn't listen to their people They don't take that into consideration that people are actually getting hurt from doing what they are doing in these rooms and That the changes that are made are affecting people's lives In order to get both sides to listen changes have to occur that will enable this dialogue to take place Thinking about design as a democratic process with myriad voices ultimately makes the process more complex But this also has the potential to make the process equitable to both bodies and minds Good afternoon I'm extremely happy to be here. So thank you Hilary for inviting me at the same time I'm also slightly embarrassed that what I'm gonna tell is Extremely frivolous in the light of what we've been discussing so far It's a kind of wealthy people problem the rise and sprawl of condo towers in Toronto as a relatively new arrival in Canada. I've been completely puzzled and surprised by the transformation of Toronto over the last few years and This is the difference between 50 years, that's a lot, but I can tell you Around the turn of the century most of what you see here was still not built So I made a book about this with a disclaimer Now I have three copies of the book which is perfect for this room. So I will What I want to do today is say something about This transformation of Toronto with this one particular building type of the condo tower and I know that the book which I made together with partisans an architectural office in Toronto who is responsible for instance for this bar This book has caused quite a bit of grief and anger among developers and architects Which was surprising to me Because the book is simply observing what's going on and it's describing it in very neutral way I believe by making a sort of a catalogue and I'm gonna show you part of the catalogue So my first visit to Toronto was in the 1990s when I thought it was a nice but rather sleepy place and when I came back Six years ago seven years ago. I found a very exciting lively vibrant city so the paradox for me is that this transformation from mid-70s to this The city has become extremely interesting for its cultural life for its city life, but the architecture is an amazingly bland and uninteresting and this paradox exciting on street level boring as soon as you look up is something that is the sub the reason why I decided to make this book So this overall sameness is for instance visible in the exterior colors of The buildings which range from dark gray to light gray and from greenish gray to gray is green and We analyze this and here you see a selection of buildings and you can see that the most Adventurous designers of condo towers use a little bit of red and a little bit of green and that's about it and it's just one example of the sameness and blandness of These buildings the city of Toronto has imposed a new system of depicting Projects which are in the making so we have to make this notice board and you have to follow a template for how to depict the building and It really worked well because it shows this Sameness Even more and this is of course the perfect example the template for this notice board where you can see that It is indeed not very Exceptional and in this respect speaking here on a day which is dealing with new paradigms And in a panel which is about design excellence. I think I'm slightly out of place the Sameness is not limited to the design of condo towers, but also to its promotion and here we see a collection of slogans which are used to promote Condo towers new projects and the most striking thing here is obviously that architecture is completely absent They speak about many things but not about architecture What is striking as well for me is that Those buildings those condo towers are completely Interchangeable they display an amazing indifference to the site in their context to the city and to its history Even if they try to include Existing architecture they do it in a way which is only a potemkin version of history according to me and the Architecture is Underwhelmingly present it falls between the cracks of the spreadsheet at the beginning and the branding strategy at the end which speaks about everything but architecture and Here you see how this sameness also is reflected in floor plans which are Extremely small and in the light of the discussion of this morning speaking about Mexico The price of one square meter in Toronto is similar to a whole unit in Mexico and The amount of inventiveness in one square meter in Mexico. I think is the same as the whole unit here So we just made a selection of Floor plans and put them all together and I'm just moving forward to which may be my favorite part this so-called one bedroom plus then and then is a In most condo towers a room without a window Which is often used and rented out as a second bedroom and here you see why some of the small units have two bathrooms To allow for this renting out. There is obviously a legal difference between Condos and apartments But this is hard to maintain in Toronto where somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of all the units Which are privately owned are actually rented out The best category I kept for the end is The leftovers in every single building and these are my favorites by far in the light of a traditional 50 years of Housing design studio here at this school. I think nobody would get a high pass for anything like this I've a European background and I don't want to be Euro centric But it's striking that some of the best projects so far Which are maybe the real exceptions and they are of recent date are designed by European in this case Danish architects where you can see this project is on its way and the same for two projects by three times and Which I believe stand out as much better than the average in Toronto They are invited because there is an obsession with Design excellence even though it's almost absent in those condo towers And there is an obsession with branding and Danish architects work for This idea of branding and the same is true for Carol Lagerfeld And this is a particular case where an exit well an existing design for a condo tower has got a bit of touch Touches of genius from Carol Lagerfeld who was asked to design the lobby and one model suite as you can see here These are the lobbies The most important thing was maybe not so much his design, but his presence at the party Which was really like a big event with great slogans as well This one is great for someone is always dressed in black And here we see the master himself in this model suite which He transformed from a cramped unit into a cramped unit with black and white details Which is somewhere like ten feet wide and as you can see at least ten feet high Which is part of the narrative of branding that you have floor to ceiling luxury if you have anything that's ten feet high This is more or less the context in which architecture does not exist you can say in condo towers Where a loft is an excuse for not properly finishing anything or An excuse for making units even smaller than they were In that sense there is some sort of Limitation in the quality of those units a bit of background because every novel theme makes its causes new One key moment was the creation of the condominium act the end of the 1960s Which made it possible to sell units or to have shared ownership of land so there was a first step the second one was 1995 when there was a referendum on Quebec independence, which was a big thing in Canada Which was rejected by a razor thin majority and which gave enough companies Headquartered in Montreal the creeps and then prompted them to move to Toronto And this was the beginning of this transition from a sleepy town to a bustling city the third factor is Canada mostly escaped the economic crisis with a mix of good luck and smart policy and the proverbial Canadian risk aversion and It meant that the Canadian real estate market benefited from the crisis elsewhere and it became a safe haven for parking your capital and Particularly in condo towers. You can see an enormous increase in the value of property from around 150,000 Canadian dollars in 2000 to more than 600 There today and at the same time the sizes of the units got smaller and smaller One of the striking things is what you see one bedroom two bedrooms bottom left Here you see something striking as well you see this peak and this graver the top People with high income. So basically the inhabitants of condo Those condo towers are single high income highly educated people This one is striking and deserves more of kind of research perhaps is that most of the inhabitants from In condos used to live in detached or semi detached houses. So this shows it's an indication at least that It's a return from the suburbs to the city and the suburban background of many condo dwellers is somehow reflected in what you see in downtown Toronto nowadays, there's the arrival of large change towards with Which he used to find in suburban malls but are now present in the city as well So it hints at a suburbanization of the center of Toronto then two names collected to this Development in a very oblique way George Baird and Jane Jacobs Architect and educator George Baird was one of the makers of the vacant lottery a special issue of the design quarterly of the Walker Art Center in which he analyzed together with Jack Diamond and Barton Myers the Let's say the presence of all those vacant lots in the center of Toronto and The possibility to transform them and this is a drawing Right from this special issue Which is a bit ambiguous. It was meant to show that you could actually Turn a high-rise into a dense low-rise project but I think one way of reading it is also to see the other way around to kind of argument for What happened actually in Toronto recently? the other one other person that should be mentioned is and Jane Jacobs who left as you probably all know she left New York City to continue her work in Toronto in the late 1960s and She has an enormous reputation in Toronto still today. She's somehow the patron saint of pedestrian urbanism and In Toronto they've invented the James walk one year after she died and You don't have to be Roman Catholic to see the let's say procession like character of those James walks And she's always in often invoked in Toronto whenever a designer wants to prove that they've done something well By saying that she would have proved it Usually it's about walkability about neighborhoods and whatnot, but as a firm believer in free markets I think Developers could also claim that what they are doing is something that Jane would have approved of I'm Let's say not completely confident in the relevance of some of her statements and I think they have a sort of slogan like character and Some of those slogans have become Dating conversation material as you can see here. So I don't know to which extent we can still discuss this seriously in Architectural context George Baird by the way completely disagrees with me on this point. He read the book and he said afterwards The book is actually better than I thought it was. I don't know whether it's a compliment or swipe, but That's his and he said I was completely wrong about Jane Jacobs. I Come to a conclusion if you Suspend all disbelief and assume that the free market is working well And it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the free market does not work well for architecture more over speaking with Several architects and developers before and after writing the book I noticed that nobody's really happy with the situation and It seems that everybody feels that they are part of a movie and they are in this Mexican standoff pointing their guns at each other Developers claim that they have to do what the market demands Real estate agents force them to offer certain things Architects claim that they have to do what developers demands and buyers are simply buying what's available Thinking that as long as it looks like everything else, they will be able to sell it with a decent profit at some point For me as a architecture historian and a critic I can feel completely an outsider in this unable to influence anything and I'm not saying that those recent developments by Invitation of Danish architects is leading to anything directly connected to what I'm I've been saying but There's at least one reason to believe that there is some power in the written word because Shortly after the book was published a group of architects mentioned in the book Gathered with a lawyer to see if there was enough reason to start a libel case against me I'm extremely happy that the lawyer advised them not to do it because that's why I'm still here But it shows that there is maybe some power in making a book and Offering a narrative offering a reading of something which I think is extremely disappointing With all the money available. I believe that Toronto could do something much better Thank you But for the moment, I'd like to start and get a little bit academic just for a moment before we reconnect to real life Which your presentations both evoke in great Detail and I'd love it if you guys could talk a little bit about your distinct Methodologies, I mean David you're talking about really an ethnography here and using sort of an American studies anthropological ethnographic Series of prophecies to really unpack the lived experience of taking care of these environments My Hans is as a critic You know, you're you're talking about this in a context that really Is in dialogue with a with a canonical architectural history as well as the way in which you've uncovered Some of the you know the legal things in terms of the condominium act and some of the context of figures that have left this Lead to the situation we now see in Toronto Our panel is the only one today that is not being sort of the presentation of design propositions or planning proposals So I'm as I mentioned in the intro excited to foreground, you know, both storytelling as well as other qualitative experiential methods of inquiry and you guys are both Educators too so I wonder if you could speak a little bit about your own sort of Methodologies and also why you think those methodologies are important to teach the designers of the future and how that might influence design education Especially for those who are considering going on to dealing with some of these, you know, social problems that we're hearing about today Well for me I'm trained as an architectural historian, but I also did archaeology and for me this whole idea of Classifying things classifying structuring categorizing things is really helpful to understand what's going on and it I think it worked well in the case of those condo tower because Many times developers and architects suggest that it's highly original what they're doing, but if you see it all next to each other you see same and We also made a point as you can see in the book if it's going around here We collected all the Statements from architects from their websites all their claims what they are doing And I think that's the main reason why they were upset because if you see all the let's say design statements and missions of all the websites together Completely interchangeable So in that sense it works for me to use this kind of old-school archaeological methods of classification to understand What is going on? I loved the the emphasis on the marketing slogans as well There was one that seemed particularly ironic that was like You you're not one of a crowd you make all your own decisions and are highly original think there are something like that Well my favorite I don't think we included it, but one of my favorite is a project where they said Unique selling point what that it was an iconic address David can you speak a little bit about your methods ethnography interviews sure and the role that plays in design education today Yeah, so my background is in American studies, but I've taught in mostly art history and design history types of contexts and The work that I did earlier in my career was much more historical Where I would spend the hours upon hours in places like the library here, for example For the project that I did on on American Empire in the Philippines And this was a departure and this was something that I had never done before the idea of working with People who are living was a was a new A new avenue But being able to interview subjects I think brought out elements of design that I had not considered before, you know so Part of another part of the project looks at these greenwashing programs that happen in hotels You know when you check into a hotel and you're told that you don't need to get your linen changed to your towels changed And they'll give you a hotel credit of some sort make a green choice which Starwood and Marriott do is probably the most famous one You know and on the surface there's a progressive element to that right? You're being conscious of sustainability and you're saving on chemicals But spending time interviewing housekeepers and hearing about how this led to lost wages is not something I ever would have learned without actually having Those conversations I think and it brought an element to the project which surprised me Which is always nice when research happens in a way that dealing just with documentation did not Do you find an increased interest on the part of students to to sort of investigate? Designed environments using that kind of methodology. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah I mean and the idea of interviewing people and having conversations about it Is definitely something that students are very interested in and more and more the students of the graduate students that I work with Are going in that direction? I mean, there's all kinds of complications with things like IRB approval and the population that you're working with And you know whether or not you use Subjects names or not and what that means do you pay subjects? I mean, there's all kinds of ethical issues, which I knew nothing about until I started this project quite frankly But I'd learned about but but students are very interested in following that path and I think it should definitely work for the research like mine as well because I always have issues whenever Explanations become too abstract when it's about the market right because that it's there's no market There's just a collection of individuals and they all take decisions and together they lead to something But it's all individuals and the funny thing is as soon as you speak to developers and architects there Basically complaining about the same things and they are few forced by something abstract which nobody can name or touch Yeah Society right yeah, which speaks to the way in which a lot of the buildings you're talking about are not even Housing environments in the sense that we've been talking about today But are in fact vehicles for speculative capital, you know, which you raise then we also entering again this abstract level investment in capital and things like that which also is is not only a A driver, but it's also an excuse to feel forced in into making these kinds of design decisions without a tremendous amount of consideration for The long term I mean another thing I really love about the Overlap between your presentations, which is also would have been very present in Dr. Lee's presentation, too Had she been able to join us Is this notion of of thinking at a slightly broader time scheme About some of the questions that you're investigating Then is necessarily often the case certainly in terms of architectural criticism where we evaluate Design excellence only on you know opening day and then immediately thereafter it begins to deteriorate Which is why questions of maintenance questions of stewardship not only when that's a labor Issue which of course is especially acute in the in the case of you know house cleaning staff and hotels But the way in which we maintain our environments as a form of use I think is of crucial importance as we think about all different kinds of environments So yeah, how does the role of of of time? Or the need for long-term inquiry into these complex environments, how do you think that's Needs to be you know to a greater or lesser degree embraced by design studies more broadly It's hard to be against it Well, then how do you do it? How do we encourage a longer time frame of analysis? Well, I think one of the It's so obvious, but one of the let's say Clear advantages of having an historical perspective of being a historian or whatever is that you know That's many things that are presented as new are actually not new at all. They have a history and So whenever I hear people speak about a new generation, I'm always suspicious because okay, what's a new generation? But it's very hard to break out of I mean I am teaching an American art class this semester Right, so it's basically American art architecture and design the way I constructed the class but you know with architecture you're often not always and I try to break out of it, but you're often just showing the The best version of the completed Thing without actually thinking about how people are construing that space in different ways It's what's constructed and then that's the snapshot that you're showing and the PowerPoint and then you move on to the next image Style to style You know it's frequently the mode of doing it and I think if there's moments where you could break out of that to try to Talk about how people actually use the space obviously that's something that makes things Come alive it makes things come alive for students But it's difficult to break out of the mode speak for myself personally if sometimes just going building to building or space to space By truck I can see the I think another aspect which is important is language. I'm Interested in the language around architecture language around those projects And I think even the language here Speaking about design excellence is really really intriguing to me. It's almost like When you say that if you if you have to emphasize it, then it's absent apparently so I Had a discussion not too long ago with the former planner from Toronto Jennifer Keesma and she was speaking about public space in Toronto and it was all about spectacular and design excellence and award-winning and world class and things like that Which for me was extremely telling yeah, and It didn't end well discussion, but well, no, I mean because the way in which the term is most often used is very much as a Benchmark or a metric and essentially it was used as a way to in a policy Context say well, let's actually hire architects as opposed to creating the same sort of boxes You know in the morning session Tatiana will about mention that for no two decades a lot of the social housing in Mexico was You know Very sort of formulaic type and then the introduction of any kind of architectural concern even if it is only 1% of the buildings Let led to a different level of conversation and discourse around that. However, I think you're absolutely right having to point that out Most often just indicates that it's absent. No, of course. There's always an inflation in language and I don't have any problem with it But I'm I'm still waiting for the first City that comes with a planning strategy where they say we want to make it good. Yeah Yeah, and Karl Lagerfeld is not necessarily the way to get That's what I found amazing about those images that you showed first of all The term fashion also came up in the list of the slogans that you had but the images of you know, Karl Creating the lobby and then him in that in that cramped apartment space with those black plates I mean, it seemed very unbrand for him, of course, you know dressed in his typical attire But it it it's about elevating the status of the space obviously for the individuals who are buying the apartment, but it's going beyond Architectural discourse right it has to now become this fashion idea Which I really found incredible from a marketing perspective of how that's working in those images Yeah, I mean, it's that's a whole other level of narrative Yeah, do you want to do other studies of this kind where you kind of look I mean, I'm also interested what you said you mentioned language I haven't yet had the opportunity to read the book But the you said that you described it, you know in a very sort of neutral way and we're really kind of breaking it down into these Yeah, no, which I mean I was slightly yeah, I was like really is this is this a neutral analysis? But I think what you're talking about is that you were you were Deconstructing the elements of the way in which this architectural narrative of a condominium downtown lifestyle is being presented Even though it's a pretty regimented and deterministic form of city life No, absolutely. And so one one chapter in this catalogue is there what we show at the renderings Buildings, and you always see the CN tower in the background. It's the only way to know that it's actually in Toronto And if you see them all next to each other, it really becomes funny. It's so silly that every single Image has the CN tower because it's marketed to people who already are in Toronto in most cases. So there's a kind of Endless repetition. So it's it's not only the language. It's also the visual language, which is so repetitive And I think it's intriguing so there may be more subjects, but now I'm a bit longer in Canada So I'm gonna live according to this motto of better safe than sorry So I might be more careful in avoiding a libel one issues Speaking of language David tell us a little bit more about the the content of some of the interviews that you conducted with these house cleaners was Did everyone use very sort of similar language? Was it all about sort of Inconvenience in time or were there other themes that came up that perhaps led to a way of Suggesting we could expand the definition of how we evaluate the quality of a designed environment Yeah, I mean it was about it was a lot of the discussions were about time and a lot of the discussions Obviously were about the difficult nature of the work. I was you know, I'd heard about this But I was surprised about the number of conversations that led to People talking about injuries and that's actually been fairly well documented by certain studies You know ergonomic studies and other studies that have been done But hearing about that and then also a lot of the interviews went into their Personal lives, you know the I interviewed a group of women in Hawaii Where this make a green choice started and actually was then it's now gone in Hawaii It's it still exists another star would marry at properties, but not in Hawaii any longer as a result of the Strikes protests and engagements that these women were involved with who I interviewed But they talked about losing The inability to send remittances to the Philippines So for example the wind the housekeepers that I interviewed in Hawaii all of them were Filipina And it wasn't that wasn't just you know sort of sort of a bizarre coincidence Who's doing the work in Hawaii in these hotels? But you know these long conversations that led to how make a green choice Which I talk about in terms of service design issues and workflow systems and things like that had other types of ramifications To their personal lives, which I never thought Would come up in these interviews I thought it was only gonna really just be about the work and the physical hardship and perhaps the corporeal hardship as well But I didn't realize that there would be other I mean of course it makes sense that there are but I was surprised when things like that came up In the context of the interviews and it was very difficult to get to interview the housekeepers I initially tried when I first started the project and got IRB approval I stood outside the service entrance of the Waldorf Astoria and waited for the women to come out of the hotel And I handed them my little flyer that I had IRB approval for saying you know Can I interview you and I got the most suspicious looks, you know, basically who's this white guy like there? You must be a union mole. Why would we possibly speak to him? And so the interviews that I did and I talked about this in the in the book We're absolutely Set up by the union and so it's important to Put that you know on the table that that actually was was part of the issue Perhaps speaks to why you know injury and wages. I mean those these are very much determined Yeah, and so there were certain conversations that happened where I heard the same Troves but yet at the same time there was evidence that was presented to me that that was really going on but I had to be very aware of How it was that I was able to speak to the folks I was speaking to as well I wonder I mean I'm just very curious, you know Since Hansen you're it does in the some of the data you showed towards the end of the presentation about you know That's very interesting where what kinds of apartments people lived in prior to living in some of these downtown condos Did you speak to any residents? I spoke to residents. Yes, and we are anecdotal basis So it's not enough to draw any conclusions But it seems to Promote a kind of anonymous lifestyle So if I'm visiting friends and if you meet somebody in the elevator, there's never any any content, right? people seems very introverted living there and That's maybe further proof of this continuation of this suburban lifestyle where you just shop for the whole week And then your groceries take them home and you stay in your own bubble Yeah, it seems to be part of that kind of global That's the you know that you're tapping into this luxury lifestyle That also often has to do with kind of detachment in the sense of cool in those spaces. I think yeah, absolutely There's another aspect to it, which I think is also interesting and it's kind of relating to your subject as well as that in the past running a household was an activity and now everything is just effortless and seamless and In every promotion of housing nowadays, you see people just having a great time. You never see anything which is remotely Connected to chores, right the work is invisible. Yeah, right car will leave it at your table. That's a In your case as well. Yeah, I'll tell it's that they go to great efforts to make it completely invisible. Absolutely We have about five minutes left. Are there any questions from the audience? So there's a certain point of view that would sort of link both your presentations and that's the financing point of view So there's this, you know Any project gets financed and it's it's a these kind of projects certainly are Money-making the motivation is to make make money and there's a narrative for each one of the projects like this That's that's that's written for the bank to convince them that this is a safe investment that they'll make their money bank and I used to write those narratives so I know something about them and On a hotel project like this. It's called the property improvement PIP property improvement plan and It's supposed to include Everything that changes so it's supposed to include the schedule of the construction. It's supposed to include any changes to the room Because the cost is supposed to be justified in terms of the revenue, right? So anything in terms of Actually changing labor cost or labor demands You know theoretically should be in that plan and somebody should have evaluated. So you may want to look into that No, that's a great suggestion. If I could get my hands on them, though, that's right Right, that sounds like a complicated. Yeah, they're usually life from go from the developer of Banksy, you know And in the case of the condos so we used to write these reports They would be very you probably won't be surprised that they're very different for an apartment building That's supposed to be a rental You know single owner Versus an apartment building that somebody develops to sell to one owner to rent Versus an apartment building where it's all condos and the condos because they are sort of mass market instruments are the ones that are sort of Have the least risk because there's they're easiest to sell and they also tend to be the lowest quality Because the people who are buying them are in the it are in the not in the position really to evaluate What they're buying So if you're buying a whole building if you're an owner and you want to rent them out you have your own Experts, you know to evaluate everything the physical plant But if you're a condo, you know buyer you just sort of buy based on what you know My question to you is did you look at and maybe it's in your book, but I haven't read your book before, but I will buy it So the deals to deals Did you look into the source of the money particularly in the Well, mostly in the condo, I would assume and in the rental developments as far as they are Are they being transnational Capital yeah, it is transnational. Yeah, and was there a Something that jumped out of you you expected the the results of your findings and could you speak a little bit more to that? It's really hard to get exact numbers on this transnational Money what Seems to be clear is that a lot of the money is coming from outside Canada and there is a kind of anecdotal suggestion that a lot of it is coming from China Which has led to a kind of a field Racism in Canada in Vancouver and in Toronto saying that Chinese are buying everything So it seems that they there are parties that are buying large chunks of units in Single building single tower. So let's say 25 40 units or something like that as an investment and they rented out Blurring the distinction between an apartment and a condo But There are no let's say clear Fears for the exact amount of money that is Flowing into the market, but it's certainly driven by foreign investment You just Toronto have a second home or a big and home tax. I mean Vancouver does have a version of that I don't know I cannot give you an answer to that That'd be interesting to track the because that's a recent thing that in two cities that both have a huge Flurration of condominium powers. I know it's in Vancouver, but I'm not sure if it's There was also at the New York Times two or three years ago They had a series of articles about who is actually owning who actually owned apartments in the Time Warner Condos and really delved into the LLCs that are buying those spaces and it was a great investigative report Yeah, what I know is that the developer of this project by big in Toronto, they have on their website. I think it's on their website even At least they have an overview of their international offices and they're all in Asia equivalent or Something similar to the EB-5 visa program in the United States. Yes Do you ever think about how buildings age, you know in this city for example some buildings of age very well like the UN building or The Chrysler building Some of age very poorly like the original good McGraw Hill building I don't know if any of you remember that but that would want a ton of a design awards One of his first bill you look at it today and it's a piece of garbage. The second question is You've all heard of the rubric form follows function The Function of the buildings you're describing of the hotels for example is for the customers You know for the customer to you know have a good experience. I'll hopefully come back to live in that hotel How do you blend the two form and the function of designing a bed? You're not designing it so as to break the arms of the cleaners No designing it to be maximally comfortable to the customer absolutely and the third question It's I think the most important is in the mid-80s Approximately into the 90s. There was a whole field of the anthropology of architecture where they talked about how design encourages Our design of our habitat encourages Social cohesion and encourages people to live together There was a you know in that the bunch of photographs you had and during the intermission There was one of a public housing project It had 360 on that was get dressed and there were two people chatting in front of it You could you see how poorly designed that was you know how how people have to adapt to their environment You know I've got to socialize no matter how poorly you design your buildings But but you know the design could facilitate that socialization rather than restrict it and I was wondering if that is part of the your analysis of How Buildings are designed because I don't I don't see that literature anymore. I saw a lot of it You know last room is the vegetable space that that agreed these spaces to the dimension humanizing But I don't see that question addressed anymore today, and I was wondering if you think about it all Yeah, it's a really those are great questions I and I agree that the way these hotel rooms are designed is absolutely for the customer and that's In part my point I think if there was a way in which it was still designed for the customer still designed so that the bank would get its money back as well Yet also brought in workers to be part of that conversation. I think there could be very small design maneuvers design actions that could make it much more reasonable on To workers to work in those spaces, but yet customers could still be happy You know in terms of the cost and the bank issue that was brought up as well my contention is It is an analyzable question But the amount of money that sometimes is spent on labor conflict actually interferes with the profit that the banks would get and if There was some allowance for a conversation between these different Procure to use these spaces and clean these spaces and also be guests in these spaces and also manage these spaces and also own these spaces I think it could potentially stop a lot of the labor conflict that exists all over the hotel industry today I think I mean part of the the The discourse and literature that you're referencing sir is your environment behavior research, you know, which and some of the people that you invoked Come out of that tradition of environmental psychology and the way in which that was applied to post occupancy Evaluation of particularly social housing environments in the United States in the 60s and 70s and while you're right that that is sort of Less in vogue now than it was then I think some of the vanguard when you mentioned service design You mentioned co-design and and the sort of who are we incorporating into the ways in which we think about design environments those I think are Resurgences of some of that spirit of how can we actually bring to bring some of these social scientific and Psychological insights into the ways in which we look at patterns of use without necessarily Kind of recommitting the crimes of overly deterministic environments where you know, I mean Defensible space of chief among them that kind of pre-ordained how people are going to actually use their environments And in fact if we look at use We find that even some you know I'm sure there's a I'm sure that the diversity of the ways in which these homogenous environments of Toronto are actually used Based on the demographics of who's living there and what that could tell us about different household compositions and different kinds of you know Migration patterns, I mean there's a lot of more nuance in laid on to these homogenous environments that I think it takes a lot of work And it takes ethnographic work and design criticism work as well as other kinds of competencies to unpack those forces And so I think that's one of the things The architect is Not enough of us But yes But definitely I think it is on the rise certainly in the in the pedagogy that we're involved in here I think you see an increasing Interest on the part of students of architecture to look at some of those post occupancy questions I don't know of design studies and if Daniels faculty if you see similar trends in terms of yeah, what we're doing at Parsons Absolutely, hopefully we'll continue to do more of it. So I think that