 Hello, I am Caroline Bowman, Director at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and really really thrilled to welcome you all to what I've just learned is the largest building in Boston. Michael Phillips is a long-time friend of Cooper Hewitt's and has been encouraging us to use this space for quite some time. So I am thrilled to be here and thank you Jamestown and the entire team for helping us make this happen. Special welcome also to our whole family of NDA winners and jurors and by the way the wall behind you is for all of you to use to spread the word about the Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards and this evening's panel. So please do use our hashtags National Design Awards at Cooper Hewitt and have some fun with the circular exclamations about the importance of design which we also used at the Gala in October. Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum is one of 19 Smithsonian museums, but an important one because it is America's only design museum. Our purpose is to inspire, educate and empower people through design. How do we do that? We do that with award-winning exhibitions, a collection of 210,000 design objects, local and national education programs, the National Design Awards of course, a master's program and association with Parsons, online offerings and discussions like tonight's celebrating design and its value for improving lives. We couldn't do this without a very dedicated board of trustees and I want to point out that we have two trustees with us tonight. Chairman of the board Elizabeth Ainsley if you would please wave. Thank you and chair of the Education Committee Alice Goddisman and I'm asking for the waves because tonight is about celebrating the East Coast National Design Awards but it's also about getting to know the Cooper Hewitt community. So I really hope that you'll come up and say hello to all of us and on that note. I also want to acknowledge the amazing and hard-working Cooper Hewitt staff. We're a staff of 83 people and there are about 12 staff here tonight. Ruki Ravikamar, please wave. Thank you. Vaso Genopoulos who leads the National Design Awards, hence the woo-hoo's. Michelle Chang, Kara Hunt, Halima Johnson, Maggie Lisman, Megan Mahafi, Maria Skorka, Chris Gautier and Laura Melly. Thank you all. Now the other thing that I would like to see as a result of tonight is that you all come to Cooper Hewitt very soon and can I take us to see some hands. How many of you have been to the Cooper Hewitt since the reopening in 2014? Okay. Not bad, not bad at all. But tonight if you share your social media next time you're at Cooper Hewitt or the receipt of this panel tonight, you will get in free because I really want you to come in the next few months. We have a stellar lineup of exhibitions that you shouldn't miss and now you know some of the team. Cooper Hewitt is a new museum experience that is life-changing and a global first. Our digitized permanent collection makes 30 centuries of design available in galleries and online aided by the Cooper Hewitt pen, also known as the magic wand. It allows you to put your iPhone and smartphones down and collect objects with the pen as you meander through the museum. So we're basically saying America's design collection is your design collection. In 2018 and moving forward, Cooper Hewitt is embracing accessibility in its broadest sense. A campus-wide commitment with everyone working together to integrate best accessible practices. So taking over all of the first four galleries right now is a magnificent show entitled Access Plus Ability with over 70 innovative products designed with and by people with a wide range of physical sensory and cognitive abilities. Huge thanks to the Ford Foundation and AARP for making the exhibition possible. New York Times Michael Kimmelman came to visit the show about three times and to quote him, the exhibition makes plain why design matters. We're also very pleased to be working on our third annual national high school design competition organized in collaboration with Target. The challenge for the teens this year is to make an everyday place, process or object accessible. This year we had well over 500 entries from 26 states and our finalists will be announced in 11 days. So the National Design Awards first launched as a project of the White House Millennium Council in 2000 to honor lasting achievement in American design. The NDA is our most prominent education initiative. Today they're known as the Oscars of the design world, representing 11 categories across the full spectrum of design. Thanks to major support from Delta Faucet and Target, we're underlining the national and NDA and visiting cities across the United States, D.C., San Francisco and Boston this year. This is our first visit to Boston, a nexus of technology and design, a real hotbed for design, and I'd like to add that it's a little it's a coming home for me. I'm actually a Winchester High School graduate. I won't tell you the year, but I'm really happy to be here and welcoming all of you tonight. Cooper Hewitt educators and 2017 NDA winners fanned out across Boston to bring design-based hands-on learning experiences directly into classrooms in the last couple of days. So a huge thank you to the winners for incubating the next generation of designers and leaders. And now over to our winners in the panel for tonight. I'm going to do short introductions and then ask the winners to join us. Deborah Burke, the winner of the Interior Design Award, founder of Deborah Burke Partners, a New York-based architecture and interior design firm and Dean of the Yale School of Architecture. I'd also like to add that just yesterday we unveiled the latest in our design-legend series and this is thanks to Chris Gautier, our videographer, who is somewhere behind the scenes and I encourage all of you to go to Cooper Hewitt's YouTube channel and check out this very latest exciting conversation with Kurt Anderson who sits on the Cooper Hewitt board. Alan Ricks, winner of the Architecture Award, co-founder and COO of Mass Design Group, a design collaborative based in Boston and Kigali, Ronda. Yesterday, a whole team of mass design designers and Cooper Hewitt educators led professional development workshops for Boston area teachers at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and earlier in the day Mass colleagues were with orchard gardens grade schoolers designing a school for an out-of-the-ordinary environment. So thank you, Mass, for that effort and also thank you for the tote bags that every one of you is going home with tonight that is designed by Mass Design. Craig Wilkins, design-mind winner, Michigan-based architect, academic and author recognized as one of the country's leading scholars on African Americans in architecture. He spent the morning with students at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School designing 3D spaces for favorite Pixar movie characters. And our moderator, Matilda McQuaid, Cooper Hewitt's beloved deputy curatorial director and head of textiles. Matilda's been a Cooper Hewitt for 16 years and she is the curator of globally recognized exhibitions like Extreme Textiles, Tools, Scraps, and is currently hard at work on the upcoming National Design Triennial. So over to all of you and thank you everyone for being here. So thank you, Carol, I'm very much for that wonderful introduction and I'm really, really happy to be here with all three of you. I've been doing a little research as I was preparing for this night and so impressed with all of your practices. I have another hat beside textiles. I was trained as an architectural historian. So I feel a very, I feel a camaraderie with all of you. And so I wanted, since you're all NDA winners but you also are all architects and educators. So I wanted to begin with, and I'm just, they're therefore warned that this is going to be a discussion. So I want to really talk about architecture today and the professional practice of architecture. And because I think in many ways architecture reflects some of the really stark imbalances in our world today, but it's also a wonderful, there's a lot of creative solutions as exemplified by all of your work that can write that imbalance. And of course architecture can address very complex problems which are sometimes part of those imbalances. So I wanted to get a sense from you what you think the state of architecture is, or state of architectural practices today as it pertains to each of you and your practice. And it doesn't matter who goes first. I hope it'll kind of launch discussion between all of us. But has it changed? I mean, Deborah, you've, your practice, you've been 30 some odd years. And I know I was talking to Deborah before. I, one of my graduate internships was starting a women in history archive at the American Institute of Architects in 1985, I think, which was a first. I mean, that was kind of, that was about the time that you started your practice. There wasn't many women. We were celebrating the centennial of the first woman who became an FIA fellow in the American Institute of Architect, and it was very soon. So how has it changed for you as a woman? Or has it changed? Are these on? So I laughed when you started because of course I'm old and I've been doing this for a long time. I'm not old. And it has, so architecture has changed. There are many more women in schools. I think nationally schools are 50-50 male female. There are increasing numbers of women in practice and licensed and partners in major firms. Although that improvement is much slower and a bit more depressing than just the school numbers. And I think we're seeing other very positive changes like deans at many of the leading schools of architecture are now women and they're changing the agendas within those schools in terms of coursework, invited faculty, support for women, and other underrepresented populations in architecture to have an education and therefore then a voice. But I think architecture lags behind the other professions in terms of the representation of underrepresented populations, women being among them, and I'm sure Craig will have a lot to say about this. My practice is 50-50 male-female and that's something we've done for a long time and that's just general ethical principles. Craig, do you want to? Because I'm not only thinking, well, there's, what, you answer first before I go ahead. No, no, because I was thinking it's also not just gender and race. It's also, you know, kind of this idea of designing for the, that 10%. So, like mass design, designing for that other 90%. So, but first talk about your sort of opinion about African-American and their... Okay, this is working. So it's a very complicated question for me because on the one hand, I've seen some changes within the profession in general that I think are fairly positive and I think they've just identified a number of those. However, if you look at, and there's a danger in this, so I just want to put this as a caveat. There's a danger in just looking at numbers, but it is a place to start. And so if you look at sort of the demographics in the profession, just in the profession, not in academia but in the profession, every category that they have sort of, that has been identified, like, you know, whether it's in ethnicity or race or whatever, has trended up, right? So there are more Latinos or Hispanics as the way they call it in the field. There are, every one has ticked up slowly, but it has ticked up. So in that sense, it's become more diverse. It's still primarily white males. They're still in sort of the 80, low 80 percentile. But everyone is sort of ticked up, except for African-Americans. For over the last 30 years, that number has remained at about 2 percent. And just statistically, that shouldn't happen. So there must be some other reason that that is the one group or category that has remained relatively flat over the last 30 years. So in a sense, we are becoming more diverse as a profession, right? We're becoming much more, although it's probably more in education than in practice, but most, there are more women who are becoming part of the profession. And we can talk about whether they remain in the profession. That's a different question. But there are more women who are becoming part of the profession. There are more women who are going into architecture as an area of study as undergrads or graduate students. But for people of color, specifically African-Americans, that number remains flat. They're a little more going into school, but becoming professionals and remaining professionals. That's not changing. So that's why it's complicated for me. It's complicated because on the one hand, I do see some progress. But on the other hand, if you dig a little deeper, there is something's flatlining. And when you know, and if you understand the term flatlining, that's never good. So I don't know if that addresses. No, that does. But why do you think there is, why is it flatlining? Is it because there's not enough role models for students to look up to? Is it in the educational sort of level? Well, I think there are a number, again, it's a complicated issue. I think there are a number of things that, excuse me, that go into play here. One of which is everybody on this stage, everybody here, I'm not going to include you, although you might be in this. But everybody on this table, on this area thinks that they are the best designer in the world. You have to, you're an architect, you're a designer, you have to believe that what you do, like, there are a billion people on earth. Why do you think your design is the best one? You have to believe that, right? And I don't mean that in a bad way, but you have to have some level of confidence in what you do, that you can produce something. And so you want to have the opportunity to do that when you go into practice. Quite often, although it's changing, but quite often, offices don't necessarily see people of color as intellectual, conceptual creators. They see them as workers. You can be a project manager, you can be a project architect. You can be a construction manager. You can be in our office and handle the technical stuff. You're good at that. But being the face of the firm, being the designer, being the person who creates work, that's a different story. And again, I'm not, this isn't, I'm not adding any sort of nefarious reason to this. I'm just giving you a reason. When you send someone out to do your presentation about the commission that you, or the competition that you're in, or you're down to five people or four people or four firms who are, you know, in competition for a project, the person that makes the presentation matters. It matters greatly. And so, sure, sure. And so, and so there can be a level of frustration within existing firms that you may as a person of color plateau. You don't get to sort of exercise all of your architectural expertise. And so, folks move on. They move on to their own firms, or they move on to their own projects, but it doesn't mean they don't face that same issue about being the face of the firm. So, often, I mean, unfortunately, often people get frustrated enough to where they simply accept the role as a construction manager. They accept the role as a project manager, or they accept the role as something else. And so, they don't proceed down the path that they originally chose for themselves because it becomes too hard or becomes too problematic. So, that's one reason. That's not all of them, but that's one. What are you going to say, Deborah? Well, I'm only going to, you have vastly more expertise on this than I do, but I will add, through my efforts of trying to recruit qualified students from underrepresented communities and architecture to school, I think they're, to add to your reasons, three more. One is you often go into a field where you know somebody who's in that field. So, you say, oh, look at Jane Jo, whomever. They're so fulfilled by their work. I'll do that. Most underrepresented communities. There's nobody to look at like that. Number two, you do the opposite tack, and it's like, I can't wait to earn so much money. So, nobody goes into architecture for that, as we know. And three. They do. They just get surprised. And three is the altruistic reason. How is this going to better my community? And you can understand going to medical school. You can maybe understand going to something like the Kennedy School and going into public service. You can understand maybe going to law school. But we have yet, as architects, to really explain to future architects how built environment social justice might be a way that people can help their communities by becoming architects. And I think until we do that we're going to have a hard time, and maybe that's what you're doing, attracting people to study architecture. Thank you for the segue. I think there's a couple of things I would point out. One, this is the first question of the conversation we're having at the National Design Awards. And that's pretty different than I imagine the first question of the similar conversation last year, five years ago, ten years ago. And I think that's meaningful. It signals that there is a change in the discourse and a prioritization of these types of issues that you're honoring people like Craig and teaching at Yale this semester. And just getting to talk with Deborah and hearing about initiatives that she's taking at Yale to prioritize this is a sea change, I feel. And so it takes advocacy by organizations like Cooper Hewitt and in academia and in the profession to at least bring this to the table of conversation. But I think what Deborah says is exactly right. And I would say that we have to do a better job of recruitment and empowerment and all these things. But I would say that ultimately we have to have the brightest and most talented people believe that this is an industry that matters and that we're expanding the talent pool by saying that this is a place that you can have an impact in your life. And that by widening that net, ultimately that's what is going to lead to diversity. And the thing that gave me this kind of realization is I was on a career panel last year at a charter school here in Boston and I generally think what I do is cool. Like normally I get the questions like, oh, that's cool. On my panel, I didn't get any questions. All of these students, they were thinking about what am I going to go to college for. And there were really interesting people on the panel that were working at Google that were working in biotech that were working in like the defense industry engineers. And they told a pretty good story. Like I can get a degree in this. I can get a good interesting job. And I was like, well, you could go to college for eight years and then come work at my nonprofit architecture firm. And they were like, okay, like, thank you. And I think that's ultimately what we need to do is to say this is a profession worth pursuing. And that's going to help us. Now that the narrative and the dialogue is focused on these issues, clearly we care and we can have a tactic, but we have to prove that it's valuable. Yeah. I mean, when I was making an answer to my question, I was talking about like the profession, not academia or the educational portion at all. But you're absolutely right. We were talking earlier that you have to make design in general, but architecture specifically relevant to the group that you're trying to recruit. If it's not relevant, they're not going to care. You give them as much money as you want for them to go to school. You can't encourage them as much. You can drive them to class and pick them up. But they're not going to engage in something that is as, you know, it's going to take them five, six, seven years to master if it's not relevant. If it's not relevant to their world, they're not going to do it. End of story. So we, as a profession, but also as a discipline, you know, architectural education, all the allied design professions that we engage with have to make the practice of architecture relevant to everyday lives. And that's one of the things that, you know, I teach certain classes about social justice design, activism and stuff at school. But I always use examples of mass at my work. I mean, in my classes, because it's an easy sell. You can see how it's relevant. You can see how it changes people's lives. You can see how folks get excited about a building. You know, I mean, that's a hard thing to do. You get someone excited about the building. But that's what has to happen if you are really interested in trying to diversify the profession. It's got to be relevant. If not, you're just wasting time. Well, sort of going back, how do you make it relevant and when do you make it relevant? I mean, is it... You always make it relevant. But when do you start? I mean, it's like, because I know you're all educators. Is it in kind of the colleges or is it in graduate school or is it way before then in elementary school? Craig and I were talking about this before because the deputy provost for diversity at Yale asked me when I first started on the job how I could diversify the school. And I said to him, why don't you give me enough money that I can have design programs in every kindergarten in America? Meaning you have to introduce these issues early on. You don't convince somebody coming out of college. Oh, good idea. Let's be an architect. Right. I mean, I know that's something that Cooper Hewitt has, and we do. We go into the classroom. We try to integrate design into the curriculum as much as we can. And I think it should be, just like art should be, you know, part of the art, music, theater, literature, poetry. All of it. His head. All of it. That the states are slashing. Yeah, everything. I totally agree with that. And I think I would also offer a kind of different anecdote, which is, you know, what can you do to address this issue? And for us, it's about not waiting for somebody to tell us to have a project, but to talk to our team about who are the people in your community or communities you know that are tackling issues that have spatial constraints. And how can we help them and that we have to go upstream and not just wait for the projects to come to us. We've increasingly kind of marginalized our role in the process and waiting for it to come downstream, waiting to be granted the opportunity to do loads of free work for the honor of the possibility of getting a job. And we said, what if we spent all of that free labor on people that need it that could translate that into something meaningful. And so we have to claw back some of that agency in the process. And that expands, you know, the tent so that there is more opportunity. And I think, you know, we talk about it in terms of kind of like proof of concept. And so how do we show a different model of practice, a different model of developing projects, of getting projects done so that it can be replicated. And I think that's what I hope people crave or I think people crave when they come to work for us is not to just kind of cross their fingers and hope that a project that they believe in happens to cross their doorstep, but instead that we're proactive in getting those types of projects and that people feel that they have agency and that will be attractive to people that want to come into the profession. That's what I call the new cosmology. So the old cosmology is exactly what you talked about, sort of traditional way of practicing. And again, this isn't a value, it's just a way to understand the difference. We tend to teach students that this is traditional way of practicing, that you wait for work or you enter a competition or you do, but someone comes to you with something. But I'm learning in sort of my position at the university that this particular generation of students are irritatingly impatient, irritatingly so. And they don't, I mean they understand that that's how it has been, they don't understand why it has to be. And it doesn't have to be, you're absolutely right. So the kinds of course, and I don't mean to sort of blow my own horn because there are other people doing this as well, but I think that the folks who begin to sort of look at architecture and the practice of architecture as an entrepreneurial thing, as a way to sort of like, you find the work that you are interested in rather than waiting for something to come across your table. And you figure out a way that you can finance it, you figure out a way that you can work with people, you figure out a way that you can make that thing happen. I think that's much more, that is becoming a much more attractive model for students that I'm seeing coming through because they can act on their naivete immediately. They want to change the world, right? They want to change, they don't want to do design with a little D, which is sort of a variance on that line. And now the iPhone doesn't have a, you know, a 90 degree turn, it has an 87 degree turn. They don't, that's not, they're not interested in that. They're interested in things that sort of change systems. And that's how you make stuff relevant. You can produce and tell them, look, you can make your difference. You can make the world you envision. You can do that through design. That's a game changer. That is a game changer. And so that's, that's, I don't know where I was going to put it. I'm going to interrupt you here. And actually oddly, I hope some would expansively defend traditional practice. There are a couple of people in the room, my age who might still practice architecture the old fashioned way. And this is what I want to say. So I have a fee for service practice. And we get paid for the work we do and from time to time we design nice houses for rich people and we charge them a lot of money. And that's okay. And it's okay for a number of reasons. One is architects need to be paid real wages for real work so that they can pay their employees. And if we continue to live on the model of unpaid exploited kids so you can enter competitions, we are going to continue to be exclusive because the only kids who can do that are kids with rich parents. So that's a bad idea. The other is to say our services are actually valuable. We bring quality. We bring beauty. We bring places where people want to be to communities. Pay us for that. Just like you pay your lawyer and some day we'll figure out how to pay our doctors more fairly in the United States. But that's a separate conversation. And through that vehicle architects can then also function like people in other businesses which is to be able to say with the profits I have made through my efforts I can do pro bono work. So I admire you enormously. I envy your model but it's not the only model. And I just want to briefly defend a more regular model but practice more responsibly and more ethically. And that includes being paid for your work. Absolutely agree. I feel like I could follow up with that and just say I couldn't agree more. And that's exactly our idea. Why should it require our model to show that we reject the idea that there's architecture and there's humanitarian architecture. Who wants to be the unhumanitarian architecture? So I think the idea is that I think it is about value and recognition of that value and that it's applicable in any market. And the simple fact is it doesn't matter how many small primary schools we build. That's not where the large movement of capital is happening in the world. And to have a real shift of impact requires a recognition of how that capital is moving. And just as we saw the sustainability movement we want to see a similar social movement where we think about the supply chain of these materials. What's the kind of local movement for architecture that exists in food for example to ask these type of questions. What does it mean for me to build whatever my project is in a way that has a positive impact on the world. And just to ask that question and I think I was thinking about it actually just yesterday where we took our team put together this amazing presentation that showed everything that we had thought about to put together a design. And then I took 90 percent out of it and said OK this is what will actually show the client. And that's not a good thing to say that actually 90 percent of the value is like maybe they're not going to get it or maybe it doesn't seem worth it or maybe we have to hide it. And I think that's what it's about. It's to say that actually we bring a huge amount of value and that should be honored. It should be paid for 75 percent of our revenue comes from fees. It's not all pro bono. And what we see is what mass does is market making work. And what we want to do is open up the need for more architects in Rwanda where we started working where there wasn't a tradition of professional architectural education. There were fewer than 10 registered architects. It was about showing that actually this is worth investing in. And today there's an association of architects. There's an architecture school. There's competitive processes internationally competitive to get projects. That didn't exist only 10 years ago. Our office at the time I mean there were eight registered Rwandan architects 10 years ago. Today our offices in Kigali's majority Rwanda and we have 30 Rwandan architects and engineers in the office. It's about creating a market that that will have a demand. That's good for everybody nonprofit for profit. But it is about establishing what is our real value. Yeah I don't want to sort of take what I was saying as an either or proposition. It's not a value judgment. I think it's a both and proposition. I think you can have them both. And right now we don't we don't for lack of a better time we don't value both. We sort of see one as what is and the other as a threat when really it's actually broadening as you mentioned it's broadening the need for architects. Accidentally because it's showing that we bring value to a table to the table that we always knew was broad but other people didn't actually recognize. So and the folks who were with me today at the high school can back me up on this before. So I was showing the students a project that I worked on in Detroit and I think someone asked well how did you get the artist to work with you on the project. And we put out a call and we paid. I mean we could have a call and said do you want to you want to volunteer your artwork for this project. No we put out a call and we paid them because you recognize that they have a skill that is a skill and a value that should be paid. And I made it clear to the students I said design should it's a thing. It's not a thing you do after you go to school and get your law degree or whatever. It's a thing you can make a living at this. So design should be paid. It's not something you sort of give away. So there's a I mean I just wanted to impress upon them that what you do matters and you should you should be able to make a living at that. Even if you have to make the argument for it. So I'm not it's not an either or proposition. I think it's a both and proposition. So school going back to school because I do think I mean do you. Is there ethics that architects architecture school needs to. Courses and ethics or or something to kind of help them understand either the social aspect of or not just architecture and the social context of it. I know you said you led some students to Rwanda. Do they need to experience more of that kind of firsthand. Working with communities and it doesn't have to be going to Rwanda. We can do it here in the United States. But how do you get them to. Come to the realization of what architecture can be. Well I think that's a the last part is kind of interesting interesting way of putting it. I think probably everybody in the room and most of the architects I know already have those ethics. It's not a question of like hey I you know should I make a decision that does good or should I do the thing that does bad like well I'm ambivalent. I don't think that's the way most people are practicing. It's more that there's there's not a demand that there isn't a value put on on that like today. You know I think sustainability is the easiest corollary. Today people are willing to pay a premium for something perceived as sustainable. They're willing to kind of look at things in a bigger picture. We're looking beyond the kind of cost per square foot. The date opens to the life cycle of the building from operating costs. And what we have to do is expand that time horizon in both directions. What is the impact this has on the way that these materials got here on the people that built this on the people that use it to to answer that. And I think that's the way architects think they they like thinking about that stuff. But we have to do a better job of proving to people that that is worth investing in. And we have to it can't just be kind of marketing. We have to measure it. We have to prove it. And then people will will buy in. And I think by and large the designers already appreciate it. But it's about building the case. We only have a couple more minutes and I had there's I know and I wanted to get to this question about space. And I just want everyone to know that I borrowed a lot from reading Craig's book on the aesthetics of equity. And you and I'll pass you that check later. But no you made some really great observations in this the discussion of space across cultures. And you've all worked with certainly different communities different individuals different countries. And I'm interested in in sort of how how your practices work with these different individuals and communities. And what are kind of your best practices for shaping spaces for different different needs for different individuals. Again programming. I mean I know you all have your kind of your mission your certain principles I know mass mass does. But are there can you describe some of the ways that you you know you go through a problem when you when you're designing for a particular space or a group. It did. Well you can talk. I'm going to I'll do it. Well in terms of and you can you can talk as much as you can about I was thinking about your women's building. So OK. So some of you may know that we're doing a project in New York called the women's building which is a transformation of a tree. Shreve Laman Harman men's YMCA they're the architects of the Empire State Building. That became a women's prison in New York City believe it or not into a building called the women's building which is going to be a center for NGOs and girls and women's organizations. And I think the big answer to your question I haven't read your book but I promise I will is listen listen a lot. One of the things that we did in the beginning we're still in programming it's a complicated project there's lots about it I can't talk about. But what were men's rooms in the Y became women's cells with triple high bunks in them. And although the project requires a gut renovation of the building we had many many many many listening sessions with formerly incarcerated women about what should happen to those rooms. Do you keep a room to remind people of what happened or do you destroy the rooms in order to look forward. And there was no agreed upon answer. But the single most important thing of the process was to listen to what every one of them had to say because nobody had listened to these women for a really long time. And to be in a room where they could say their thoughts and hear each other's thoughts and have the professionals respect their thoughts. I think was key to step one we haven't made the spaces yet as long as programming process ever. But but I know that those exchanges of ideas and the ability to talk about what you think space needs to be for you is one of the things architects have to be able to listen. I think it's interesting that you're saying that that all happens in this programming phase not not a part of basic services. And I think that's revealing. I think that's revealing. And one of the things that we think architects are really good at is being moderators of that type of discussion of being able to digest these different viewpoints. And think about what does it mean to shape a space that addresses that. We haven't done a good job of selling that as a service that we provide. And we call it immersion. We don't call it programming because that's what it is. It is listening. It is about curating that experience of hearing and listening and storytelling. With the agenda at the end of the day. Figure out what it is we're trying to do. What is the mission which is what we call it and to figure out a vocabulary that everybody can use from that point forward to make decisions. Because often it starts that way. Okay. Should we keep it this way to remember this and then at some point the rubber meets the road. And you start making really subjective decisions or you start making financial decisions and you leave all that behind. And what we want to do is keep that with us. Keep that vocabulary with us. What are the ways that we're going to evaluate whether we succeeded or not. Are we going to decide whether we have that kind of dialogue at the end of this. That it sparks X Y and Z types of conversations or that this is going to be what happens. We have to figure that out early on and it does a few things. It helps us make it a little less subjective when we have to make decisions where we can refer back and say we built consensus around an idea about an aspiration of what we hope this achieves. And we have some vague idea of how we might measure that. And this is what we think architects do. But that's not usually why people hire an architect. And that's what we have to ship. I'm going to push back on that because I don't think architects in general are very good at listening. I don't think they're very good at thinking that input from non architects or input from people who aren't in the field is as valuable as what we bring to the table as educated experts. I don't think we're very good at that at all. I don't think we're very good at bringing people together and pulling their ego aside a little bit and say OK we are engaging in this as a partnership. I also disagree. Maybe this is a gender issue and why it's going to be good when there are more women in architects. It might very well might be. I don't think we're very good at that at all. And so I agree with what you're saying. I agree that that is absolutely the way to go. But we have seen I have time and time again when that is not the case. We assume a certain kind of user. We assume a certain kind of class of user and we believe that we understand that that user is and we make cursory engagements with them to sort of this is what we did. What do you think about it instead of saying let's figure out this thing together. Let me recalibrate then a little bit. I would say I think design training enables you to think about problems and I agree with that. And we don't often have the space or take the time to actually leverage it. So in practice I don't disagree. But I think it is one of the tremendous capacities of design to facilitate that type of interaction. And we have to do it better. But I think it design is uniquely capable of helping negotiate that type of dialogue. Where I'm going to chime in is that in the particular project I'm talking about clearly from its definition. There is an enlightened client with means the ability to do the project and the ability to spend the money on this lengthy process of taking in information from all different sources. So often in the process where it's the goal of the client to go as fast as possible and as inexpensively as possible. They won't pay a professional to sit in a room with different groups of users and people who have had different experiences to actually both listen, draw ideas, exchange ideas, show them what things are like. So I think much of what you're saying is true but it may be forced by the wrong reasons. It's not only forced by, oh my god, the architect has a big ego. And we do have an unfortunate history of that, let's say, but I think it is also forced by what clients are willing to pay for. And listen, I think we're all in the same ballpark but you're maybe on first base and I'm in left field or whatever. But we're all in the same ballpark. But I think it comes down to what we said before is that about what you bring to the table as a designer and how you get someone else to value what you bring to the table. Like we can do the work in a compressed period of time. We always do. But that leaves something that you can add to the project on the side. Oops, sorry. At least what you can do bring to the project off to the side. So in a sense, although folks may be low to say this, in a sense you're not doing the best thing you can because you have to set some part of what makes your work great off to the side and compensate for that. So the thing is that you have to figure out a way to make, and I'm not being Pollyanna about this. I'm not saying that you can do this tomorrow or maybe not even 10 years from now, but we as a profession need to push this idea that we bring more to the table than just what you are sort of seeing us doing. So let me give you an example. One minute. Okay. All right, then I can't give you an example in one minute. No, no, no, I'll just do it this way. I'll just say, look, there are 27 states right now that are considering lowering or even abolishing the need for a license to practice architecture. 27 states. Why is that? Because they don't value what we do. It's up to us to make them value it. And if we have to make that argument, let's make the whole argument, not just, well, you know, we need to stamp the drawing. Yeah, we need to do that, but we need to do something more than that because we can do something more than that. We can make something better than that. So that's my one minute argument, but it's much, much more. Pretty shocking. Yes, absolutely. And again, this is not Pollyanna. I'm not thinking it's going to be done tomorrow, but, you know, we have that. It's so very important. Michael, if we thought about space differently, Michael Brown wouldn't be dead. He would not be dead. What happened there was a clash of cultures about space. People of color walk in the street. That's what we do. That is a cultural thing. The police officer saw that as an affront, and that's where the problem started. That's where it started. So we have a couple of minutes for some Q&A from the audience, and we have microphones on the side. So please fire away. I guess I want to ask a question that relates to, I guess, the first section of your conversation about diversity and related to the second section, which talked about value of architecture. Value of design is something that I'm a product designer. All of the design fields talk about figuring out how to impress upon others how they're valuable. When we talk about diversity, we tend to talk about how do we draw these people in? How do we make it something that they want to be a part of? But we don't talk about it in terms of the value, the inherent value of those people. When you talk about getting out and talking to people and understanding their communities and the nuances of the problems that you're dealing with, the things that we bring with our differences inform the way that we take in information, process it. And I think that's something that's missing in the talk about how to increase diversity. I mean, was there a question? Yeah. Yes. Next question. Do one of these design things? Design thingies, you know, you people. But I watch Home and Garden TV all the time. And the thing that I love with Flipper Flop or Property Brothers or Tiny House is the stories. So what if architecture education always started with the stories and always ended with the stories so that you always saw the emotional impact of the work? I think that's my question. I can see you to a website where there's a lot of stories about work. I mean, I think we totally agree. I think it is about building the narrative of the project and being able to tell stories. And often we talk about in kind of more academic terms of how do we evaluate impact? And we talk about the environmental impact and the carbon and the economic impact and the jobs created and the educational impact and the amount of time spent training. But our fourth is the emotional impact. And to us, this is the kind of soft one. It's the one people often are like, wait, what? And we talk about how do we quantify that? And it is through the story. It is through the testimonial. It is through an understanding of what difference did this make to a person? And it might be the person that contributed to building a project. But most importantly, it's the story of the person that uses it. Does it mean anything to them? Is it worth taking care of? Is it going to endure because people value it? Because they think it's beautiful. And to us, that is what sustainability is. It is the ability to a project to endure because people have taken ownership of it. And I think, you know, I completely agree. We have to be able to tell those stories well. I think one of the things that's changed in a very positive way is in the historic narrative of the architect was the solo male genius cape flying in the wind, silhouetted against the setting sun, looking out at how he was going to change the world. You got a cape man? And I think the 21st century narrative and the one you're referring to is much more what Alan was just describing, which touches on not the person who made it or conceived it or insisted that that is what it needed to be, but rather those who are impacted by it and influenced by it and contributed to its envisioning and creation and go on to use it. And perhaps even change it through use, which is even better. So let me ask you a question. Okay. So these are very more actionable, reasonable, probably closer to the truth answers. This is just crazy talk. So I had a student in a class. It's a class about social justice and design activism. But this student was from the computer. He was getting a degree in computer program. And he wondered, like halfway through the class, he said, why aren't there any television stories about architects? Not the home building and the flipping stuff, but why aren't there any television shows? Like, yeah, I know the Brady Bunch and all those, but why aren't there any television stories about architects? And it's something I've been thinking about for a while, but because it goes to this sort of thing about value. Like we know what lawyers bring to the table, right? Not only because they touch, we have to deal with a lawyer every now and then in our lives, but because we watch law and order and we watch Perry Mason and we watch all those shows, right? We know the value of a lawyer. So we're willing to pay for it. We know what doctors do. We know what the medical profession does, right? We got to go to the doctor, so we trust the doctor, but we also see ER and Chicago Med and all those. We know what it takes, what's the new one come about? Residents, you know, it's another matter, we know what they do, right? But we see it all the time. It seeps into our unconscious, not when we actually have to do it, but even when we don't do it. We value what they bring to the table, so we don't really question that medical bill that we get. We don't question the legal bill that we get. We always question the architectural bill, right? Because why do we need that and how much do we really need it? Well, why doesn't there a show about what we do? Why doesn't there something that doesn't seep in quietly about the value of what we do as architects? Could be. Could be. But you can't erase the architect from the show. I would never watch that show. How dare you? I would never watch that show. But again, my point is, it's just another way to sort of show, and I think you're right. I think you're right. If you tell that story over and over and over again in a drama, or even in some way, somehow, it doesn't have to be a television. I mean, I'm being a little bit facetious, but getting that story out raises the value, the profile of the architect that makes people willing to listen to what you bring to the table, allow you to bring more to the table, make more of a project than you could, and be willing to pay for it. I would have to say I don't agree with you that it has to be the client. And I think, you know, we tell a lot of stories, and I encourage you to check out our website. And there's a lot of videos, and those videos don't feature any clients. They feature the people that actually use the buildings, and the people that made the buildings, and I think they make pretty strong protagonists. And I think if you look at your space, and the spaces that you go through on a daily basis, I don't know if you really want to know the story of the client in a lot of those cases. I mean, a lot of these projects might be the government. It might be a large real estate developer. And those people have a lot of power and make a lot of decisions, but if we view, that's part of our problem is that we view only through their kind of bottom line, which in a lot of cases is inherently problematic. The government makes decisions based on the cost, you know, the day it opens, for example. They're not the operator, and I think we really have to shift that a little bit to think about who are the clients, so to speak. And I think we deal a lot with the public realm, and regardless of who pays for it, we think of the client as the public and the people that use it. Okay, we have time for one final question. Anyone? You were talking about the value of programming and architects as facilitators. And I've seen a lot of the kind of expansion of industrial design processes and design thinking going into other industries like finance, and now like a UX designer can get hired in any industry, and they're just a design thinker, and it's innovation lab and ta-da. So do you think that there is a space for architects to expand their services to some of those thinking and some of that outside of building, but just the way that an architect would approach a problem or approach organization or something like that? I think an architectural education prepares you to do anything in the world because what you're learning is nonlinear thinking and simultaneous problem solving of a host of different problems to a host of different kinds of users, a host of different issues that range from the most mundane and code driven, let's say, to meaningful to the planet like sustainability, to poetic like beauty. And we right now at Yale actually in the architecture school are bringing studio pedagogy techniques to the rest of the university as a way of teaching that there isn't just the formal lecture as a way of getting information across, but actually desk crits and crits and open discussions and sitting at a desk with somebody. So I'm a strong believer that educating people in architecture in order that they can go on and do other things is one of the great things that architecture can do. And I'll just close that out by saying that the mayor of New Haven, Connecticut is an African-American woman educated at the Yale School of Architecture. That's the way to impact the built environment. See, I completely and totally agree with that because people go to law school not to practice law, not always to practice law, but to have a way of thinking, a discipline about how to think about things. And then they go and apply that in politics, they apply it in real estate, they apply it in other ways, but it's a way of thinking us through a problem. I think, again, this would require us as a discipline to tell students that it's okay not to have to go into practice, but use that way of thinking to go into politics, to go into other places, use the way that we think about problems and apply that to different disciplines. We'd have to let them know that it's okay, but that would be a game changer. That would be a game changer. Can you imagine if you had a bunch of architects in Congress right now instead of a lawyer? I think we'd be able to figure out a way to get some stuff done. We would. We would figure out a way to get some stuff done because we figure out how to make problems go away. We do. That's one of the things we're really good at. Well, thank you very, very much. This was a wonderful discussion, really, really wonderful. And I only broke one glass, so that's pretty good. And so I just want to welcome all the NDA past and present winners as well as the jurors to go back and have a photo taken before everyone departs. Thank you all for coming.