 Okay. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for coming. I'm Bryony Roberts. I teach here at GSAP, and I'm really excited to introduce this event, this conversation with WIP Collaborative, of which I'm also a member. WIP means both women in practice and work in progress, and it's a feminist collaborative of independent designers, many of whom have their own practices who come together to collaborate on shared projects. The collaborative learns from previous feminist practices in developing an egalitarian way of working and expanding processes of community engagement. So we're going to talk about several things today. The practice itself and its experimental structure, as well as a recent project that we did in lower Manhattan called Restorative Ground, we'll also be hearing from two of our members who founded or run other collaborative practices, design advocates, and open architecture collaborative New York, so we can compare and contrast these models. The presentation itself is also going to be collaborative and experimental. We'll be talking to each other, talking to you. I'm going to be the moderator, but I'll also jump in at present at times. We'll be looking under the hood of our practice and showing you how we work and the problems we haven't yet figured out. It'll be honest and exposed and intentionally of work in progress. So to kick it off, I'm going to pass it over to Lindsay and we can share the screen now. Thanks, Bryony. Do I sound okay? Could you actually dial up the sound a little bit in the room? Is that okay now? Lindsay, if you want to go ahead. Okay. Hi, I'm Lindsay Harcoma. I'm an architect, educator, and founder of WIP and member of WIP Collaborative. Lindsay, now you're muted. Is it working now? Okay, they're giving me a thumbs up. Thumbs up. Can you try just saying test? Test. Yeah, it sounds like it's coming from the back and not the front. I can hear her on Zoom though. Is it better now? I just... Still quiet. Okay, I changed the microphone settings. I just changed them back. Thanks for your patience. The sound is not working in the auditorium, so we're going to give it just a moment. This is one of the lovely joys of virtual and person hybrids. Sorry about that. If you want to try it one more time. Test, test, test. Still no audio out here. Yeah, from our side, it's quite loud on Zoom and the auditorium is a bit quiet. Yeah, Brian, you're coming through loud and clear. Interesting. Okay. I'm glad. Sorry about that. Whatever we did before the event started to fix Lindsay's audio might have made her too quiet. Yeah. So I undid that on my end. Is there anything else I can do? Sounds great. I think we're good to go. Great. Okay, let's start again. All right. Thanks, everyone. So I'm Lindsay Harkema. I'm an architect, educator, and founder of WIP and a member of the collaborative team here. And my research and design work addresses architecture in the public realm in ways that challenge and convince, challenge and transform the norms of their existing conditions, which is also what WIP is all about. WIP Collaborative, if you go to the next slide, is a platform that enables independent design professionals to combine their expertise and work together to realize broader impacts through shared projects. We are founded on feminist principles and WIP supports those who issue patriarchal conventions and define new narratives of architectural practice through their work. Distinct from a traditional firm built around a singular identity and authorship, WIP is centered around a way of working as an adaptable framework to meet the needs of its projects and collaborators. So our team is composed of the individuals who are here today and you see in the screen, Abby Cooper, Bryony Roberts, Elsa Ponce, myself, Ryan Brick Thomas, Sarah Gadacki, and Sonia Guiman. Together we combine a range of design expertise and professional experience working in architecture, interiors, fashion, landscape, public realm, community engagement, advocacy, and more. And we came together in part due to our connections through past shared work and volunteer and academic experiences. And this group can also expand. There are additional members who have joined us to work on some more recent projects, which again underscores the ongoing evolution of this entity. So as we present, we'll each introduce ourselves a bit more. To date, we've completed a range of projects focused on the public realm, including a built streetscape installation, research into design for neurodiversity, as well as project visioning and consulting for various scales of architectural projects. Now we're going to present more about our work by explaining the why, how, and what of our shared practice. Core to WIP is the intention to empower women as leaders in the discipline of their own practices, approaches to design, and counter narratives to conventional architecture practice that they represent. And to strengthen our collective influence as collaborators, not competitors. We think the notion of the singular genius architect is patriarchal and outdated. WIP emerged from conversations I had with other women designers leading their design practices during the time I was establishing my own. There was a consensus that some kind of supportive group that could provide resource and experience sharing, like peer to peer mentorship, as well as opportunities for collaboration, would be mutually beneficial, a way of banding together within and against a discipline that has historically held women back. The first step was to bring this group together. Just before the pandemic hit, I hosted a branch that convened a group of women in practice, friends, collaborators, colleagues, mentors, and their connections. At that branch, we discussed what we might want from this group and how it could take shape. A few points about why this is necessary. Typically in architecture firms, women are not promoted as design leaders. They are managers, technical leads, project architects, but rarely supported for new design ideas. Their perspectives are often undermined or overlooked. And life events, such as becoming a parent, can be detrimental to their standing in an office. There are some exceptions to this, but this is overwhelmingly the norm. Also, professional advice and resources, such as how to start a practice, write a contract, make a drawing set, should not be things that each practitioner needs to figure out for themselves, nor should they be behind a paywall, like it is with the AIA. We all benefit when we pay our knowledge and experience forward to enable those around us and after us. Instead of the conventional individualistic and competitive nature of the discipline, couldn't we instead see our peers as enablers and all rise together? The success of a shared design practice could stem from its ability to resist norms, even more than its novelty. So, WIP Collaborative emerged from that community in response to a couple of RFPs that were put out at the time, including this one, a call by the Urban Design Forum, entitled Care for Hudson Square, which we won and will discuss later on. This was an opportunity to put the collaborative model to the test, and to identify our values, which are in egalitarian and democratic practice, resisting hierarchy, trusting that everyone's experience and ideas are valuable and can inspire and inform our collective work, that it's always in progress. WIP is not fixed, not fully figured out, literally a work in progress. Rethinking the norms of practice, challenging very fixed and static conventions of practice and learning in real time how to do that effectively. And that means we share in the uncertainty and messiness of figuring it out together. When going against the entrenched normative model of singular practice, it is both inspiring and uncomfortable to participate in the destabilizing process of creating something alternative. So, to talk more about the how, I'll pass it back to Bryony. Thanks, Lindsay. So, to contextualize these questions of how to practice, I'm going to jump back in and briefly talk a little bit about the legacy of feminist practices. So, this is a topic very near and dear to my heart and when I've had the chance to work with many GSAP students on over the last couple of years in an advanced five studio called what is feminist practice as well as seminars on theories of feminist practice. And when I heard about the WIP community that Lindsay was starting, I was really excited to think about how to put some of these ideas into the real world. I have my own practice, Bryony Robert Studio, which does community-based projects in the public realm. And I was excited about thinking of a larger interdisciplinary collaborative team that would be very supportive and could enable larger projects in public space. So, in figuring out how to structure and run the WIP collaborative, we learn a lot from feminist practices, both contemporary and historical. And what's important to note for many of these practices is that it's not just about advocating for gender equity. It's about rethinking how architecture functions to address equity more broadly in the built environment. By rethinking the structure of a practice, the process of design, and the topics that architecture willing to engage in, all to create a more inclusive built environment. So, in terms of organizing a practice, we learned a lot from the Matrix Feminist Design Cooperative, which was founded in 1980 in London, and did a range of work from built projects to consulting and research, creating new guidelines for public spaces. And they had a really interesting expanded mode of practice where they functioned as designers for client-based projects, but they also had educational programming, including teaching other women how to do construction and project management, and also doing a lot of community outreach and support. In terms of the process of design, we're inspired by practices like MUF, architecture and art, that creates methods of co-creation and collaboration with local communities, where there's a constant feedback loop between the lived experience of people in a community and the design process itself, intentionally challenging the kind of power relationships that are typical between architects and communities. And then lastly, there's a history in feminist practices of addressing questions and issues of embodiment. Historically, experiences of the body, of emotions, and of pleasure have been gendered as feminine in the discipline of architecture. We're interested in how feminist practices have reclaimed attention to embodiment, but also situated it politically, such as the contemporary practice feminist architecture collaborative, which is actually born by recent GSAP grads, many of whom you might know, who examine how specific architectural types construct experiences of gender and sexuality around the world. In addition to them, we learned from a wide range of feminist practices that are ongoing. There's a huge kind of network of this work. And if you're interested, I highly suggest looking up some of these offices. And now I'll pass it off to Ryan, who's going to talk how we learn from these models in our own practice. Hi, I'm Ryan Brooke Thomas, a member of WIP Collaborative. I also teach design studios currently at Cooper Union. And I'm principal of Colositos, a design office based here in New York. The focus of my career path and interests as an architect have always gravitated towards the edges of the discipline, specifically where it crosses over and intersects with aspects of interior graphic and urban design. For my independent practice, situating it at this overlap opens the possibility for architecture to be pushed through different lenses of influence that can both help to broaden an understanding of how and what we do as architects, but also to reflect back onto and reshape the discipline with refreshed ideas for creative production and critical reading. So for example, how can we consider relationships scale in new ways that are both radical, but also very intuitive, like the relationship between the human scale and ideas of interiority with the urban scale and the fabric of the city? Or consider components of a full environment, including tactility, atmosphere, narrative and cultural context is central and fundamental ingredients in architectural design. So along with the motivation to explore broadened realms of creative and intellectual possibility for architectural work, there's also the idea of expanded modes of practice to account for a fuller array of perspectives, design outcomes and forms of agency in our field. And for more independent design thinkers to have a seat at the table, so to speak, and shaping the environments in which we live and coexist. These ideas have all been able to further commingle and inform one another through our coming together as WIP. And for me, it's been exciting to be a part of this, not just for the sake of collaboration in itself, but also to collaborate in a way that's equally interested in and invested in both the content of our work and the form of our working model simultaneously. So we can go to the next slide. Inspired by many of the feminist and collective practice models that Brianne already shared, we've aimed to visualize and give form to our organizational structure in a way that reinforces its multifaceted nature. So at the core of WIP collaborative as a practice is the laterally structured ring of seven founding members, each bringing different experience, areas of expertise, as well as roles and degrees of involvement in various projects. And each also, of course, having independent practices and other kind of professional and academic outlets in addition to WIP. We wanted to maintain the model to remain flexible and fluid enough to regularly expand and incorporate other individuals and entities for various projects on a regular basis. So this includes working with other members of the larger WIP community on specific projects. Another overlap includes lighting designers and fabricators or others with whom we collaborate to execute built designs. And a third involves a range of research partners, including other designers, but also advocates and self advocates, community organizations and other entities that help kind of provide expertise and perspective that fall really productively beyond just a design point of view. And as we've mentioned, again, the idea that our practice is always a work in progress is very much a core value. As much as we aim for having clarity and synchronicity, this also remains an experiment. We're always adapting and shape shifting, reevaluating what's working, even this diagram continues to take new iterations as we grow. In terms of ways of working more practically, again, rather than each owning an expertise or a fixed role, we make a point of wearing multiple hats on any given project and also shifting those roles from project to project. This is flexible from a logistical point of view. And it also allows the end result to always reflect a kind of unique and ever changing mix of our talents and perspectives. We use a range of communication types from Slack on a frankly almost 24 seven basis tomorrow for visual pinups and as a way of doing asynchronous work. And then of course, we have regular meetings on Zoom or who will meet. And after over a year of working together almost a year and a half now, we've actually all only been in person on a few select occasions and more often than not, we're working together remotely. And then you can go to the next slide. As we evolve, there are a number of things that we're still considering and figuring out, such as, you know, sort of formal structures, which business structures best conform to our organizational model, our values and our practice goals, which legal structures then best support and enable those things. What's the right balance between research and built work, both are really productive to inform one another but operate on very different timelines and resource needs and other constraints. What types of projects do we want to pursue? How many at once? How do we address a mix of both paid and pro bono or research work? How do we reconcile different opinions about those priorities? So all these questions resurface sometimes with a sense of urgency as new opportunities and responsibilities kind of come up one right after the next. We've also recognized the importance of letting them get tested and asked again through experience in a trial. So add new facets to our thinking about the best responses and solutions as they unfold. And now I'll hand it over to Sarah. Thank you, Ryan. Hi, Sarah Gedakie. I'm an architectural and fashion designer and creative director of Sarah Gedakie, a multidisciplinary design atelier focused on garments, architectural design and environments with purpose. So one of the areas of focus that stems from this collaborative structure is our approach to inclusion in the public realm from an intersectional perspective. Looking at vulnerable populations that are not served as well as paying close attention to bodies and the way that bodies are served in the public realm. So what does it mean to celebrate embodiment? For us, this means celebrating physical play, exploration and touch as well as emotionality in resistance to the fact that architecture and public space design has marginalized women, people of color and people with disabilities throughout the history of the discipline. This is also an important focus of my personal practice and multidisciplinary work where embodiment and self-expression are worked through the scale of a garment or an object. My intention in designing clothes that are non-gendered, multifunctional and do not conform to standardized mass production is that they would empower the wearer to embrace their unique body and self. The ability to create multi-scaler impact through projects in the public realm, WIP, is something that's extremely meaningful to me. And in celebrating embodiment for different needs, we at WIP hope that broader groups of people that have been and still are excluded from the design of public spaces can feel empowered through choice, which I will expand on shortly. So research interests are informed by feminist practice include physicality, emotionality, neurodiversity, sensory sensitivity, mental health, population just designed with not four people who are excluded from public spaces and public spaces themselves, including undervalued and underused ones. And to expand on the language and what we mean by neurodiversity and sensory sensitivity, we mean individual differences in brain functioning, which are the result of normal variations within the population. Neurodiversity encompasses a range of conditions, including autism, ADHD and learning differences, as well as PTSD, anxiety and depression. Although the experience of each neurodiverse person is completely unique and it's difficult to generalize, there's a strong common thread, which is sensory sensitivity. We all process the environment differently through our senses. Many people who identify as neurodiverse might either have under responsive or over responsive sensory processing. So neurodiverse individuals might need a quiet calm space or sometimes alternatively an active, highly stimulating place. But the most important thing in supporting neurodiversity in public space is providing choice between a range of environments, something that is missing in most public spaces in New York City. So from our shared interest of fostering inclusivity in the public realm through this lens, we began research about how public space can better serve the needs of neurodiverse populations of all ages and backgrounds. We conducted interactive interviews again on our own with individuals, groups and advocates on neurodiversity. And what we learned from that research was the importance of variety and choice that public spaces should offer a range of social interaction and sensory stimulation so that people can pick the environment that works best for them. And this research and collective interest in designing for a neurodiversity in the public realm informed our first built project as a collaborative restorative ground. What Lindsay mentioned earlier was the winner of Care for Hudson Square, a competition by the urban design forum that occurred last summer just for a temporary place making installation to reactivate Hudson Square as New Yorkers re-admirged out of the pandemic. So we'd like to share how this project came to be, our design approach and processings and what we're learning and observing now that the project is built. Restorative ground is located on King Street adjacent to a pops in Hudson Square. The neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in between Hudson River Park to the west and Soho to the east. The project is a multifaceted landscape of exploration with a full range of environments from adventurous and playful to quiet and restorative. The project also builds on the strengths of the neighborhood and connects to the existing resources of public space and cultural institutions. We envision the project as a much needed social hub for surrounding neighborhoods and a place where nearby institutions, many of which serve children and young adults, could gather outdoors. Now I'll hand it off to Sonia to talk about the project's design complexities. Hi everyone. My name is Sonia Gehmann and as many others here on this webinar and in our group I always identified as someone with interdisciplinary interests. I'm a landscape designer but I also have experience working in an architectural office. I worked on independent exhibition projects and also initiated community engagement and advocacy projects mostly around ecologically significant issues. And my current interests also include environmental and wildlife conservation and how design can play a role in this area. So as someone with varied background and interests I always felt a bit of attention when trying to squeeze myself into a specific discipline or conform to a predefined project structure. So forming part of WIP was a way for me to break out from those conventional project structures and blur the line between things like research, design, community engagement and fabrication, all the different aspects of work that I was always interested in. And so I think the restorative ground is really an example of how this model can not only impact the how of your work but also the what. And I believe that this flexibility is really especially important when it comes to working within public realm. It's always fascinating to me but it also presents such a variety of issues on every level. So things like navigating bureaucratic legal maintenance considerations in public realm can alone often limit the project ambitions at its inception unfortunately. For example the way the approval systems in public realm are set up. While those are important and provide many benefits to the city they can also often discourage experimentation and they really do promote conformity to the standard. So the variety of experience present in our group and frankly just the ability to talk about those norms and question them together in an honest manner allowed us to develop a project that is countering that idea of standardization and is really opposed to the one fits all approach. Restorative ground is just one of the projects in our ongoing exploration of what it means to create infrastructure of choice where the difference between people is really embraced and where each individual is able to find a space that fits their own unique sensory needs. Another benefit of collaborative approach into design which was especially valuable in creating unique sensory environments was being able to draw from this from the varied experiences working with very different types of spaces so things we already mentioned like interior design or landscape design or fashion design they all informed the development of this project. So working together on the iterations of the design and really picking up ideas from each other. Again thank you Miro for being able to facilitate that process really seamlessly while we're all remote and online. This iterative process resulted in a design that doesn't belong to just one of us but is really shared by all and as a result I believe that the project really strikes the balance of overall coherence but also a variety of very unique elements along for very numerous ways for people to interact with the space something that is currently very rare in public realm but is really needed. So again I believe that restorative ground is a demonstration that the way you work really impacts the results of your work and restorative ground is an example of how breaking out of this paradigm of sole design authorship helped develop a space that embraces the inherent differences that when people and ultimately results in a space that is a lot more inclusive. I'm going to hand it over to Elsa here to talk about more details of the project itself. Hello everyone my name is Elsa Ponce I'm an architect I'm a co-managing director at Open Architecture Collaborative in New York also a WIP member. I work as a consultant for their studios but I also do my independent work and I'll be talking to you about the formal and material strategy for restorative ground. We began to reflect on how to create spaces that provide a range of choices and social interactions and how do the spaces look and feel what formal qualities and materials facilitate this type of action. First we established a predominant material to create a cohesive landscape that is attractive as a large move and that draws people in. We chose recycled rover as this primary material because it creates a softer and resilient surface for play and it also provides opportunity for new and scholar surface continuity and more immersive experiences. This rendering here shows the focused area and here you could imagine a group of professionals from a nearby office coming during lunch break or the Children's Museum hosting an outdoor activity on the large collective tables. These flat surfaces are made of stained marine plywood to withstand the weather and in this next slide we have the active area. Here we created a more dynamic space with sloped surfaces and steel pipe arches to facilitate active play but also to provide space to exercise or stretch. In this zone we imagine groups of children playing or adults who just need a little bit more action after a long day at work or joggers stopping for a stretch. In addition to rubber this zone has other materials like synthetic turf and expanded steel mesh at the tree's location. The mesh paneling at the trees allows for light air and water to reach the tree beds underneath. Next and this is a rendering of the third environment, the calm area which has softer geometries conducive to more restorative activities like lounging and leaning and for this area we designed this expansive generous netted hammock for groups and individuals to relax at any time of the day or to just spend a quiet evening outdoors. This drawing which is an oblique perspective of restorative ground shows how the installation remains one continuous gesture but with variations in geometry color and material to encourage exploration and choice as it was mentioned before. And now I'll pass it over to Abby for the next next section. Hi everyone, I'm Abby Hoover. I am the founder and director of Overlay Office, a founding member of WIP, adjunct assistant professor at Pratt Institute. I'm also one of the founding members and board secretaries of design advocate so I'll talk about in a few minutes and co-creator and editor of Sucker Punch Daily.com. As you can see from these many collaborations this is something as a small practitioner it's great to be able to collaborate with others in pursuit of larger endeavors which we've been able to do through WIP. So getting back to restorative ground I'm going to talk a little bit about the fabrication and installation process. You can go to the next slide. This is Elsa and I on site right when they were starting behind us to do the installation and I think in this picture I'm eight months pregnant and Elsa's seven months pregnant. So we just wanted to show this as kind of an example about how we all collaborate and support each other and it really is a team effort and here is Mia and Lindsay with our kids at the opening and that was two weeks after I had my third child and I think we've had three babies, two weddings and all kinds of personal events that have happened as well so I think it's important to mention that part of our collaborative is you know supporting each other professionally but also personally and enabling us to kind of go through these life cycles while still being involved in having support from our peers. But in terms of the fabrication of this piece you know we it was also a very collaborative effort with the client heads and square properties and also the fabricator TACCO. TACCO the fabricator who used to do a more traditional millwork project in the city and this was kind of a new endeavor for them and for us and so we all really figured out together kind of how to realize this and make it happen. You know the the modular nature of the project really helped contribute to its execution which was great for us to see as like an integral part of the design process enabling us to be fabricated. They were able to make all of the modules in their shop in NASBAP and then bring them to the site assemble them and add the material. You can go to the next slide and you know there are a lot of complex details a lot of connections material changes and unique solutions to you know what seemed in Rhino as somewhat simple details but then once we started getting into reality and we're dealing with things like material thickness and you know these kinds of joints where we have you know four or five corners coming together you know it was a challenge and kind of a give and take collaborative process with the client and with the fabricator to kind of figure this out and with all of us. We all have participated in going to the shop to look at progress through site visits and then also the actual installation and yet here's another view looking at another challenging moment how to how to connect these metal grates to the soft material rubber and you know turning opportunities or creating opportunities out of challenges like how to create an edge detail here and then here's the nice view of the final installation and how everything everything came together in the end through this collaboration and it is it has held up well despite being an exciting place for skateboarders to hang. I'm going to talk a little bit about one of my other collaborations which is Design Advocates. Design Advocates is another collaborative organization which also many of the other members of WIP who are part of this lecture and also the larger WIP group are part of and some of us have even kind of met through that. Design Advocates a few of us small independent design practitioners were on a call when the pandemic started the very first week you know trying to figure out what we were going to do and how we could support each other in our industry and Design Advocates was born out of that conversation. So Design Advocates was initiated in April of 2020. It's a non-profit platform for collecting data and empowering design businesses and started off as being specific to the era of COVID-19 but now has evolved into a larger project. Since its inception as a vehicle for research design and advocacy Design Advocates has worked together on more than 40 projects. We effectively operate as a brain trust of smaller firms with a broad range of expertise paired with a nimble approach to problem solving. All of Design Advocates work starts with community engagement. We interview and meet all the stakeholders to analyze local code and zoning issues and identify all the challenges before beginning our design. While we are collaborative each project has a project leader who manages the overall project and a project manager who manages the day-to-day operations of the project. We communicate frequently and as a collection of small firms offer effective peer review of all the work that we produce. And here's kind of some diagrams that start to describe this process of you know kind of community engagement cycling through the design process and looking at every phase of this as an aspect of design. So you know yes the final product is important but also the process and how that's designed and how the engagement with the client we see the clients and other project partners in the community as equal parts of the collaboration. And with that I'll hand it back over to Elsa to talk about Open Architecture. Thank you Abby. As I mentioned before I manage Open Architecture Collaborative in New York. This organization activates pro bono creatives and designers to deliver design and development solutions that actualize the potential of local communities. By building a bridge between goodwill and need we make connections that allow for nonprofits to access design services and for volunteers to engage in community driven projects. OAC is part of the Open Architecture Global Network which includes 21 chapters. We are the longest operating chapter. We have served our community for over 12 years across the five boroughs of New York and have completed more than 80 projects. These are some images of the kind of work we achieve in partnership with our volunteers and clients. We do design and design build projects, temporary installations, education and outreach programs and events like the day of impact which mobilizes volunteers for one day every October to support organizations across different sites in the city. Next please. This is a diagram of how we are organized. We are a nonprofit fully operated by volunteers. On one side we have the communities and nonprofits we support. On the other side we have all the volunteers that deliver the services and in the center there are the managing directors, directors of impact, communications, projects and operations and essentially a board that just provides strategic leadership but allows for these connections to happen. Most of our members do not volunteer for an extended period of time so the team is always in flux. This diminishes the opportunity for long term projects so we only engage in small interventions but nonetheless it allows for valuable connections to form. Lindsay and Sarah for example have volunteered with OAC as project coordinator and project volunteer respectively. They developed a design proposal for the Barth High School community in the lower side but also Sarah has supported us by designing the face masks we use to protect our volunteers on day of impact and all these connections and collaborations come from a place of generosity and solidarity which is very important. These are values that are not often found in traditional practices or not the practices that I started working with when I was just fresh out of school and since I joined OAC New York I've had the experience of working in a non-hierarchical purpose driven organization. The opportunity to join WIP was obviously very inspiring and exciting as a way to continue practicing cooperation and impacting communities but also as a way to work on other projects that we don't typically have at OAC like research, larger builds or even projects with communities outside of the city of New York. Both at OAC and WIP we recognize that the reasons that our work is needed are due to the unequal access to inclusive and quality design and so we use design to advocate for and support community groups but beyond designing we also strive to keep ourselves accountable to meaningful relationships that's very important relationships with our partners, professional or non-professional co-creators, advocates and also with each other. Next. All right well I can wrap us up so this is our group at Restorative Ground, Missing Sonia who wasn't able to be there in person but you know just to summarize I think it's been really wonderful to hear from all of these folks about how the methods and the outcomes of design practice are so interconnected that the way you structure your own practice, the processes you use to engage communities and then the issues that you engage at they are all incredibly important in affecting the kind of work you can do. So with that I'm going to put my moderator back hat back on I might actually move over there okay one sec we can stop sharing screen yeah you can take that off thank you. So I can start us off with with some questions but then I'd love to hear also from the audience and and Lila if there are questions through the zoom does that okay great so maybe to start off I'll throw some questions to the group which is the first one being so what is the future for WIP and we also have some exciting news to announce so Lindsay maybe you can start us off with that. Well thanks Bryony we are in thinking about the future approaching sort of multiple tracks of of work at the same time including these sort of research driven design initiatives and as well as some sort of client-based private commissions and consultant roles and so we're working to balance that and I think what's really exciting is that we are just sort of organically finding these opportunities to improve the public realm in different ways and through different sort of timelines and that our sort of values driven way of working is seemingly resonating and hopefully will be a catalyst for changing the norms of the profession but any should I should I mention yeah anything else okay great no doubt that we we we won a big project so today yes yeah we we just found out that the design trust for public space um has awarded us and our partners um Brona Carpenter Architects um a a commission for a long-term kind of research driven project we proposed together called the Narrow Diversity um where we'll be looking at existing public space spaces like playgrounds and plazas and working with various community partners who are advocates and self-advocates for people with disabilities to reimagine and hopefully push um some broad sweeping design changes to the public realm and excitingly it's also an opportunity to expand our team so we're joined by Elizabeth Timmy and Sasha Topolnitska who have joined our WIP collaborative team so it's really exciting to see like the the WIP family growing with these opportunities as well absolutely I just want to say congratulations also to Jennifer and Irina who are here in the webinar with us so congratulations to you as well and in the chat I have copied and pasted the event bright link to attend the official announcement on Monday night if anybody wants to go to that awesome thank you we want to also shout out to our community partners for that project um Sydney the Center for Independence of the Disabled in New York the Bronx Independent Living Services and Include NYC um but yeah I'd love to hear a little bit more about what people are hoping to see in the future of WIP um so Sonia maybe you could speak to that sure yeah um so I personally was always um interested in this idea of projects uh how the projects get initiated and that more kind of standard approach of you know like client approaching you with a site and then you're kind of figuring out the future of that site for the client is definitely an interesting one but also I was interested always into kind of expending those opportunities and maybe trying to um find sites first and understand what their challenges are first and then find ways to create projects for those sites and I think with WIP we really started to do it that way which is really exciting so instead of necessarily like being approached by a client with a particular site which also happens and can also be really interesting we uh kind of organically found um a topic or a theme um that of neurodiversity and includes expanding the understanding of inclusivity in public space and then kind of those opportunities and those sites started to come to us in a way um and I think that's really um kind of changing this paradigm of how the projects um can develop and I think that's really exciting and I hope that more and more practices um kind of use this approach uh and really making um kind of use of our you know skills and expertise to identify problems and then solve them rather than just solve them and so I'm hoping for WIP to kind of continue doing that and uh bringing that potentially to a larger scale but not necessarily always I truly believe that small scale projects are sometimes more impactful than large scale uh and can be more meaningful for the communities uh but I think so working both across different um smaller and larger scales but really coming from the place of the site and the community uh that is um associated with that site uh rather than with from a perspective of you know oh there's just an opportunity to do something let's figure out what to do um and I think we're getting there I'm real excited about that yeah Ryan I think you wanted to add something to that question as well you want to speak to it yeah sure I mean another another category of interest and excitement and sort of future future thought for us is just kind of in the realm of of teaching and mentorship um and I think that's kind of something we've thought of in two forms I mean many of us do teach design studios and seminars and so I think in a in a kind of direct and straightforward way bringing some of those topics of interest and research strains into the you know the sort of experimentation and and open questioning that's what's so wonderful about um academic studios and and sort of having a feedback loop there both to inform the research but um also to kind of you know push it out into the the world through multiple channels um but then you know I think also mentorship in other ways like we're really hoping that the WIP community can expand um in in a kind of multi-generational way in both directions by the way um not not just every younger but but um in all directions to you know I think just naturally often our kind of social and professional networks have to do with where we went to school or exact age group or that kind of thing um but there's so much to be gained um in in kind of crossing past those boundaries so I think we're we're also looking forward to that for the future great um I wonder if there are any questions from the audience there was a hand yeah Kaylee can you hear me okay they can hear me um I have a question kind of about how I it was interesting to hear how the collaborative um works so I'm curious kind of when you're using Miro to reach out to a broader audience and to kind of the that that like sensory math that you had um how do you how do you kind of negotiate that with when you're talking about senses and the architecture is so physical so how do you kind of do that digitally because I think it's a great tool but I'm just like feeling or even your personal mirror boards with the turf and the rubber like did you pass around a sample how do you how do you do this yeah great question could you guys hear that question okay yeah okay great um can I throw this one to Sarah maybe to talk about our process and then maybe the difference between what we did in Miro and what we're hoping to do with the design trust project like um yeah fantastic question it's definitely kind of like when we're when we were opposed with the restraint constraint of kind of using Miro in lieu of physical samples it's definitely something that we thought of you know it's definitely a combination I think of using either very evocative photos things that were personally maybe induced like very very um intense emotions for us kind of coupling that with you know different types of photos colors words and then also kind of explaining that throughout the interview so maybe a little bit of background of kind of how we would do these interviews if we do a screen share and kind of walk people through Miro um kind of explain a little bit about just kind of how this program works because I think all of them when we were doing those interviews with either advocates or self-advocates it was new to them so it was kind of guiding them through explaining kind of how this matrix of sensory sensory experiences coupled with maybe a intergenerational grid worked and then but it was kind of a process of introducing this to them but very much something that was iterative so we would for example have one of these matrixes matrixes for each of the groups that we would interview and have sticky notes of asking them what they resonated with what they didn't resonate with in terms of what they saw on the screen kind of what what they saw that was part of public spaces that they liked or what they wanted to see on the screen that they you know in terms of more things to see in public space there is definitely some really great feedback of things that were you know critical things in terms of language in terms of things were structured different photographs specific photographs that people had more visceral reactions to to really interesting so it was all those things of like a process of learning um and just always evolving understand that and then to your question about um specifically with restorative crown yeah of course we definitely luckily were able to get samples um the kids kind of started with abby and she would either take photos um and very good daylight to show us and pass it around to people that were able to see it luckily most of us um are pretty local in brooklyn so you know if there's a if there's a opportunity or option to have to go and check out a sample it was some something that was fairly easy to figure out for the most part um but I would love to pass it on to somebody else to kind of discuss how this process could be retooled um for design trust maybe I can jump in on that so I think we're we're really excited about this project that we're doing with bernard carpenter and all these community partners because it's a multi-year project and we can you know hopefully the pandemic will be less present at least by the spring and so we'll be able to go to sites in person with the partners look at spaces with them and really sort of listen to their reactions to noise to light to texture record those visualize them turn them into you know kind of data and then we're going to create prototypes in collaboration like through kind of workshops with our community partners and then be able to test them in person so a lot of like hands-on tactile experience um and then later that will translate into sort of suggestions for guidelines and policy changes so it'll be fortunately hopefully a very hands-on process if we're all able to be in person together for that time other questions yeah okay um let's see if there's anything else we wanted to hit we I think we covered like the sort of logistics of practice but we're I'm also happy to answer questions after if people are like how do you make this happen for yourselves but yeah it's been such a pleasure to sort of share this work with you all and be able to talk through what's happening for us in the future so thanks for being here and yeah you can definitely come up to me or happy to I think there were some questions about some of the slides happy to send along that information later thanks