 Thank you for coming tonight. My name is Cynthia Smith. I'm the curator of socially responsible Design and the curator of the exhibition by the people designing a better America. That's currently on display Both on the first floor and the third floor It's on display through February 26, so please tell your friends to come See the exhibition It includes 60 designs from around the United States that address the complex problems of social and spatial inequities in urban Suburban and rural communities design responses range in scale from the entire city of Detroit to a mobile health app for expectant mothers Thank you so much for coming tonight and welcome to Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum The only Museum in the United States Devoted exclusively to design the vent this evening is the first of several we have scheduled in conjunction with by the people the next Defiant jewelry with Detroit's rebel now takes place on January 26th with IDO org in the third There are three more in February One is how design can meet the needs of underserved communities co-organized with Pratt institution on February 2nd Redivining the civic role of public libraries in the 21st century on February 9th and a discussion on design cities and cognitive Computing on February 15th You can RSVP to any of all of these events at Cooper Hewitt org Tonight, I'm delighted that we have one of the designers whose important work is Included in by the people designing a better America Deanna von Buren one half of the design Social science team that brings design workshops to prisons around the country Designing justice designing spaces essential work exemplifies what is required to envision Design and build a more just and equitable America But first I'd like to take a moment to thank Autodesk Who provided major support for by the people and partnered with us on design night New York? We're honored to have the president and CEO of Autodesk Linnell Preston Cameron with us Linnell is also the director of sustainability at Autodesk Throughout her career. She's been a leader on sustainability Conservation and community development sits on boards focused on environmental health biomimicry see innovation net impact and Responsible business all incredibly important not only to us tonight and Cooper Hewitt But incredibly important for improving and supporting communities here in the US and around the country around the world Lynette or Linnell. Thank you Everyone loves to cross my L's and turn it into Lynette. Thank you Cynthia it is such an honor to be here and I'm so excited to welcome all of you to our very first design night in New York City and Exactly, it's about time, right? And we are so thrilled to be co-hosting this with the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. It's a very natural partner We have been a fan and a supporter of the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum for many years over the years I'm also so thrilled to welcome all of you from the New York design community here tonight and get a chance to Connect and meet with many of you here. So thank you for coming I'm particularly excited to introduce tonight's speaker for two reasons First because as you'll see she is an incredible leader and spokesperson for restorative justice And doing really important impactful work But also because this marks a bit of a milestone for the Autodesk Foundation and the work that we're doing in the portfolio that we have The foundation we set it up three years ago to invest in people who are using design to create impact So we invest in a whole different set of solutions that address many different at Epic challenges, but all through the lens of design much like the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum So this gives us the privilege of working with designers in hundreds of different countries that are working on issues from Ranging from the design of a cholera center in Haiti to sanitation systems in the slums of Nairobi to Renewable energy systems in Myanmar and many many more many of our foundation customers are here tonight I hope you get to meet them. We also have many people from Autodesk and the foundation team would be happy to tell you more about the work But the reason I'm excited about tonight is because when we set up the foundation several years ago We hadn't actually thought about the application of design for the criminal justice system and for restorative justice We thought about design for dignity design for healing, but never this application of design About a year ago. I had an opportunity to go to a TEDx event But this was a TEDx at San Quentin prison in California San Quentin is in my home county of Marin I see it every day as I take the ferry into the city for work But of course I'd never stepped inside of it and for those of you who are familiar with TEDx's it was organized by the inmates the majority of speakers were inmates or Formerly incarcerated and the audience was half inmates and half visitors like myself that day and As you can imagine it was an incredibly memorable day to sit alongside Lifers to hear their stories their poetry to share peanut butter jelly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches their food with them during the day And of course being with Autodesk. I was struck all day long by the role of design and Not just the design of the prison architecture, which is incredibly intense But the design of the entire criminal justice system and the impact of that design on the very people It's intended to serve So needless to say I now recognize the importance of the work that you're going to hear about tonight And I am so pleased to introduce you all to Diana Van Buren and the organization that she co-founded designing justice designing spaces She is a national leader in design and advocacy of restorative justice centers Such an inspirational person throughout her career. She is an architect and sits on a number of different boards She has worked on projects throughout her career All around the world. It's truly impressive including the design of the Syracuse peacemaking Center in New York So it is my true pleasure to introduce you to today to one of the pioneers who truly embodies our Belief in the power of design to create a better world. So over to you, Diana That is such a beautiful introduction. I don't know what to say Except for good evening first I really have to thank Cynthia for the call two years ago to include our designing justice designing spaces toolkit in the by the People exhibit. It's an amazing exhibit. We are so honored to be a part of it It's a hugely helpful for our work and the advocacy of our work and Also thinking Autodesk for two of the tools that one and then a second one the restorative justice city tool That is hugely important for our projects And what I'd like to do today is highlight those tools within the context of our project so that you can understand the sort of interrelatedness between Engaging of the community digital tools and the built environment around this specific issue But I want to set the context a little bit for why we're doing this work and what the mission is for the work Kyle my business partner Kyle Rollins is a real estate developer and I'm an architect and we're working together to build new Places to address a very specific issue. That's where my slides start. It's my gesture She told me like oh, I have to do something. Okay. Well, that's different No worries. No worries like my big moment To address this system mass incarceration We know now I think all of us probably in this room know that mass incarceration is a major problem in the United States of America and that we are Incarcerating more of our citizens than any country in the world by quite a bit by quite a bit And we have seven million of our citizens citizens under carceral control meaning they're on probation parole or they are incarcerated We're spending about 70 billion dollars a year on this system that is broken and ineffectual and it does not work We also can't talk about criminal justice without looking at it through the lens of structural racism in class Right that is also a huge component that one in three black men can refine themselves incarcerated in their lifetime And what happens is it destroys their lives, but it also shows the lives of their partners their family their children It's multi-generational and in what's happened is actually destroyed entire communities. It is a catastrophic a disaster For low-income communities from color and low-income communities in general So as an architect and a designer, you know You're looking at the system and you're looking at like how are we participating because design is part of everything Right, there's always design involved and what we can see is that we are actually about 15 percent of that budget is being Spent on the design of courthouses jails prisons detention centers in the infrastructure that props that system up Very expensive buildings and your tax dollars pay for these so we started I started to look at this I was like well, I really don't know how to impact this system. I have no idea what to do about this This is massive and it was painful and I thought about it for a while until it was about 2006 and Dr. Angela Davis and dr. Fania Davis. I don't know if you know them. They're great civil rights activists Good good. I think some people know And they told me about restorative justice. Does everyone anyone know what was to who's what restorative justice is? I know some people do because I talked to you, okay? Ahead of time so you'd raise your hand, but let me just explain it So I like I'm listening to this thing this thing that's old restorative justice is old And what it posits it's a philosophy that says when that a crime or harm has been committed It is a breach of relationship first that the needs of the victim are the priority not the needs of the state This is not a crime against the state This is a this is a harm done to an individual in their community and that the person who did the harm is Obligated to make amends and repair the damage if possible And so what you're seeing are truth and reconciliation courts in South Africa Gachacha courts in Rwanda fumble talk in Sierra Leone a peacemaking native peacemaking processes Victim offender mediation family group conferencing. There's tons of these practices They're happening all over the world and it's ex growing Exponentially and so you bring a victim and offender into a room with the community a plan is Agreed to to address the offender's conduct and then the person carries out that plan and potentially returns to their community Unstigmatized that is a radical departure from the from the system. We have to totally different set of values So I'm like, why aren't we designing for that? That system makes sense to me and it resonated with me So that was where the question started and I did a ton of research I did do some due diligence, but I did what a lot of designers do I went in a little room like I'm gonna make a restorative justice center all by myself, right? I'm gonna draw it It's nothing like a courthouse. It's gonna be awesome. And These are my doodles And then I had an ego check. Thank God And realize I can't do this by myself This is not this is not a mission for me alone. And so I teamed up with a woman She's gonna be so mad about this slide. She has not seen it Dr. Barb tapes who I think had to have been like the only other Person in the country talking about restorative justice and designed that at that point And she was a restorative justice practitioner of 20 years and she was thinking about design and through a series of events I found her and we have been working together ever since and she's on our board and we thought okay Your social worker restorative justice person. I'm an architect. What can we do together? And she had been working in prisons training and doing restorative justice work with men like the very The very TEDx event that you saw right that was organized by the men there There's restorative justice going on inside correctional facilities all over the country and together We developed something called the designing justice designing spaces toolkit to explore the intersection of restorative and justice and design With those who have to stand the most to gain from the transformation for those who have often been both victim and offender And so there was a deep understanding of the issue far beyond anything I could ever imagine And so really it's a series of tools and a curriculum And the tools are both social science tools and architecture tools And you can't get the stuff that designers use you can't get those glue guns into an incarcerated environment That is contraband all the way So the question is how do you do design work in the setting where you can't you can't there's no resources And so what we designed was a series of papers really just a series of folding and ripping and tearing of papers That could be used to build models perspective drawing create collages do diagramming And you'll see some of the models upstairs. They're beautiful Right without glue these men have I saw them chew up paper and with their saliva to make glue right There's like an incredible innovation and creativity and brilliance within the institution And the skills that are getting taught are not just design skills like hard design skills and sort of spatial reasoning of complex Concepts and organizations within the institution But also soft skills Most of these men and women have never worked together in a team before some of them are it's like Wow, we did that together as a team. That's an incredible soft skill to learn There's also the ability to articulate your thoughts and ideas to others And so these are life skills that they can carry out when they leave But it also is really helpful for us as designers and researchers to understand What kind of spaces will support accountability? What kind of spaces support empathy for victims? These are the kinds of things that they're both learning and translating into space And what you'll see is these are not designing better and more beautiful prisons and jails These are new building types. This is the healing sun center by some of our students Which is a space for peacemaking between victim and offender. It's a beautiful model actually the top slides off This is without the top on it This is the restorative justice tree center where it's almost a campus where victims and offenders can come together and live For a certain amount of time in the center come into dialogue You'll see this sort of campus style design in a lot of the designs that are coming out of our workshops Many of them can be seen upstairs in the exhibit Those were our students from San Quentin And what we also looked at okay, what what's the point of this outside of making this sort of new architecture And okay research was one piece of it Tools building creative expression and knowledge development But the thing that was the most surprising to me probably not to barb Was the fact that it had therapeutic outcomes, right? Everybody knows like art, you know art therapy But there's design does the same thing that through the imagining of Alternative spaces for healing through the process of the creation of alternative space We were watching people actually be able to address and bring up trauma I saw it happen. I was not prepared for that. I am an architect. I'm not a social worker I had some additional skills building to do because there's a responsibility for going to be working communities That are highly traumatized and you realize the thing that you're doing with them is actually, you know People are crying in our workshops. That was just totally unexpected To me but really a valuable tool is designers to know that design practice is a therapeutic tool Something that we should remember when we do our work And so Autodesk is uh, we are so grateful because what's happening now is tablets are coming into institutions And so we're working with an organization out of Chicago that does self-guided curriculum and therapeutic tools on these tablets And they are going to be digitizing the curriculum and Autodesk is given a seed funding to pursue that To the point that I think we'll be able to get the toolkit into the hands of like tens of thousands of people Instead of hundreds of people a year doing this self-guided approach on this particular tool So by the summer we should have this in the hands of many many people very excited about the progress We've made this year and that we can reach more people with it So I'd like to show a couple of projects where the toolkit actually has expanded well beyond the institution And is moving into all the things we learned in there We're able to really take out into the community which has been fantastic and this was one of the first projects The near west side peacemaking center in Syracuse is a project really led by the center for court innovation I don't know if you know this organization. They're an amazing non-profit think tank coming out of the new york court system And what they're doing is they're bringing native american peacemaking processes into a non-native community for the first time So imagine instead of going to court in adjudication you literally move into a dialogue with elders in your community We've been exporting the european model to native communities forever And they are reigniting their indigenous practices and now we're taking it back brilliant makes sense Their navajo partners said yep We'll support you on that and that's just what they've done and red hook has the first program Syracuse was the second and because I harassed them for like a year They learned that program in place is the right way to go and wouldn't it be more impactful if you had a place for that to happen So we got a burn justice innovation grant to do that And I got trained as a circle keeper myself Especially after some of the the processes we saw inside the institution so that I could manage The trauma coming up a little more and the peacemaking palette Is a process by which we ask people into a circle so that we're able to replicate the peacemaking process So we are literally getting design input as they tell their stories and training the community at the same time You killed two birds with one stone that way and we were also able to then take Folks and use our diagramming tool and do role playing because I don't have who's ever been in a peacemaking or restorative justice process anybody Yeah, see there's a few there's a few but it's very stressful And what does it feel like to come into a space with somebody who's harmed you? Are you willing to do that? I mean really if you think about it What kind of environment would you need to support that? And so this would allow us we got an incredible amount of data to the point We now have literally a set of design guidelines on how to make a peacemaking center and so We were able to take a house in syracuse A maryon wilson who's a great artist there had already started the adaptive reuse of this old crack house And we were able to take that and turn it into a peacemaking center It just opened so we still have to take our new photos But they have now because they have a place they've been able to double the amount of cases They had originally intended to do we've located in neutral territory within the community Where things lie in the city is critical and it is deeply embedded It's a hyper local restorative justice and infrastructure restorative justice is hyper micro local And it's really critical. So we learned a lot about that and what kind of spaces you need to have to make those All of that is now in the toolkit, right? So all of this peacemaking palette piece We've actually been able to take back into the institution. So there's an exchange across these these places So it was around that time that Ferguson happened And it was really a call to action for us That while this sort of push for restorative justice was great We really need to to find a way to broach that wall of the current criminal justice system including law enforcement Like how are we going to engage law enforcement? How are we going to engage that system in some way? Because you know, we always you know, most people of color already know that this is an issue But it was now coming to light in a way that you could really take more action So one of the projects that came out of that sunny shorts of the Is an incredible innovator in in correctional programs. I don't know if you ever heard of her She wrote dreams from the monster factory She's amazing and she has created several restorative justice programs inside institutions resolved to stop the violence But she also set up the first charter school inside of a sheriff's department First one in the country And knowing that advanced education is one of the greatest predictors of reduced recidivism sort of a no-brainer right more education It's better. So she sat down with me one day over a couple coffee. She's like, oh, you know, diana Like we're losing our students when they leave We leave the jail, you know, this is what's happening. But you know, the san francisco gave us these buses So maybe we could do a school on wheels Like maybe we could strip it back and we think we're not getting the students due to all these different reasons And then I said, well, what if we did a whole village, right? You can't I kind of Oh my goodness. Did I break that I get a little over excited about the topic So, um She said, okay, let's do a whole village So this is going to be happening in the bayview hunters point and it's going to go to several locations And the reason for this is that there are incredible amount of barriers to services, right? So you have very little public transport to this neighbor's community very low-income community of color that, you know Jobs have left high rates of incarceration high rates of poverty Urban blight people literally can't cost gang lines because they'll get shot So there's that was literally one of the reasons people weren't coming to class because it would like you would die There was no car public transport is costly Education is really very bad in the community. There's low employment access to social services And I should put on your access to justice resources, which is a huge problem So the pop-up resource village is intended to gather resources mobile resources from all over the city And activate public space in that community and cross all of those barriers And there are a lot of things in it right everything from barber shops to 12 step programs So it's really a marketplace and there are many components to the marketplace And so some of these are what we're going to create. I circled the bus We actually have hopefully an autodesk intern. I believe coming who's going to help us with this project this summer But I wanted to show you two of the anchors to the village. These are started. We've already started And so there are two buses and the first is the school on wheels right in response to education In response to the underfunding of the fact that we have a lot of people in the community who are literate And so what we did was again, we took the toolkit and we were able to engage this community on the top left We have philanthropy in the room. We have formerly incarcerated people We have community leaders all at the same table talking about What should be at a pop-up resource village and at the same time Doing small models and full-scale mock-ups of what how do you create a vehicle in a 40 feet by 8 feet? That's going to provide an educational space for the community And so this is what the buses look like This is what this one's starting to look like right so we're stripping it out And what you're seeing is a lounge area that they asked for and they wanted for casual learning You're also seeing desks and chairs and didactic boards everything folds and rolls and stacks So you can have circles in there both 12-step circles restorative justice circles and one-on-one education And it will look something like this when it's complete. It should be done by the end of this month And then this is what the outside will look like so that it shows up in the community Something really bright and inviting for everybody because the range of students is everywhere from 18 to 80 That's the sort of span of students are coming to anyone who feels undereducated is welcome here And so the second bus is an interesting bus because it functions during the day and night During the day it is an anchor in the village particularly focused on the The female-led households the high number that are living below the poverty line in this community But also the fact that women get released from jail in the middle of the night And they're pimps and drug dealers waiting there for them that take them right back into where they were before It's very dangerous. It's happening and a lot of our urban center Not urban centers this sort of restorative the justice centers, right? We are where all the jail is and the courthouses and all the bail bondsmen You guys know those spaces and a lot of cities and there's nothing going on They're very unsafe for them and this is truly the most vulnerable population in our correctional system And they wrote to the sheriff and said you need to do something about this And so the response has been what we're calling the women's mobile resource center Uh, I was able to get a Rauschenberg artist as activist grant to begin these both of these projects actually And I went and worked with 65 women in the san francisco county jails over the course of a week Is about 30 hours of seat time with these women And we did the full toolkit that upstairs. We did the whole range of things We even were able to do full-scale mock-ups with our bodies so that they could get a sense of what the scale of Was that was we got a huge amount of data a huge amount of data And I had thought you know, I went in and I thought oh, you know, it's the middle of night They're gonna want beds. They're gonna want to sleep You know, I just knew I had it down and you know, this is the thing you always go in there And then you realize you're totally wrong. You know, they don't want beds They've been sleeping in there all day and sitting in plastic chairs. I saw that What they wanted was a place to like start life again Right to get ready for the next day to call their family, you know to figure out where they were going to sleep The next night to do their hair put on some makeup look good for their man, right? You know, there was like a whole process and they wanted mirrors and they all wanted recliners. That was really interesting I was like, all right, you got it. I'll do it. And so all of these resources needed to get put in there And so we did we were able to sort of look at how we could get a series of zones throughout the bus That would allow for them to get food use the bathroom meet with a case worker relax a little bit And in the back you see the recliners they're four recliners And they're able to go and they can relax and use tablets and do their thing And so we did also a new thing which is interesting. We worked with an artist called Anna Teresa Fernandez Great activist artist and a fine artist to do pattern making with the women I was like, well, what if we could do pattern making and look at textiles? That would be really cool and they had some great stuff and I was able to take those designs and Both silk screen and indian block print and print 200 yards of fabric That we could be used for the interior of the bus and all the finishes in the bus so that they could see their own designs within the interior This is where my slides are out of order, but that's okay because we're going to put it on the outside So this is a rendering of the exterior of the bus where the patterns might find their way in And then an interior piece and so what's happening is kind of a micro enterprise might be emerging Where you can see on the bottom right hand corner at the women's resource center when they get out during the day There's a program there called sewing our lives together And they teach the women how to sew as a means of getting work And so they are going to use the fabric that they helped design and actually design the interior and pay get paid To do the interior fit out of the bus and we're now looking at how Textile design with incarcerated women could actually be a business model and a new business that people could could participate in So we'll see what happens with that But that's how you know when you start to engage people in these ways. What can potentially come out of it? and so Just three weeks ago, kyle. I think so I look for kyle for extra information like stats We got a very significant grant from the James Irvine foundation to to implement the entire village And so it's very very exciting. We're kicking it off this month It is a huge undertaking with mobile vending units and evaluation and site components and you can see the anchors will be there But we're very excited about the city is supporting us. And so I look forward next time I talk to you. You'll see a village in action So I just want to end with the restorative justice city piece Which is a second project that autodesk is supporting us on The the restorative justice city project started a few years ago When we were talking with the institute for the future Which is a think tank and palo alto who are looking at the end of prisons And I started thinking well What if we were really to plan with cities to make the full-on shift from the punitive model restorative justice Sorry punitive model of justice to a restorative model of justice. What would that infrastructure look like? How do we really scale this thing up? So what we did was we were able to have a great convening at oakland where we brought the police in We brought in some of the countries leading restorative justice experts the city a lot of nonprofits And we looked at the city of the oakland and tried to figure out like what would we really need to do that And a lot of things came out of it like what is an restorative justice really mean and how does it interconnect into restorative economics Food justice economic justice all of these other aspects that really to create a restorative city We need to have we know in oakland in the flatlands That's where most of people of color who are low-income live They have 15 years less life expectancy than those living in the hills And the opportunity to create an entire corridor of resources both justice and otherwise was really catalytic to us And we also started to break those into what we call action domains And each of the action domains speak to some of those things, but they also talk about co-created social services And for us, of course the most exciting one in the bottom is designing for impact The design matters that folks who are low-income Non-profits don't deserve Substandard space they actually deserve better because if you're really working with highly traumatized population Your environment can really change how you feel in your act and how can your environment heal you And so with the designing for impact piece is really started to launch What came out of that was a new prototype Which was very exciting and that new prototype is called restore And so restore oakland is a project that we've started It's a center for restorative justice and restorative economics And so after remember my little doodles in the beginning I try to make I like and then we're here, right? So it's like kind of came it came it's coming to fruition. It's very exciting It is the first center for restorative justice and restorative economics in the country We hope to do one in new york We hope to do one in detroit and new orleans and washington dc and philadelphia But this will be the first and it's a right now an adaptive reuse of an existing building But what it is is on the ground floor a restaurant with restaurant opportunity centers united They're actually based in new york and color's restaurants is here as a standalone unit And they just opening their new space and lower east side next month. You should definitely go Donald trump hates these guys the new Nancy's guys wants to shut them down. So go eat there And so this will be their new restaurant in oakland. They train low wage Restaurant workers to get living wage jobs and they address the segregation racial segregation We see in the industry and really fight for proper wages for workers They also incubate small food businesses. So it's a great restorative economics model In this building also will be the elebaker center for human rights Which is van jones's organization that is focused on ending mass incarceration They will be on the second floor This building will also house many of the restorative justice programs for alameda county where oakland is So people will be coming here for peacemaking and conflict resolution And it will be a place for immigrants to come to get tenants rights and immigrants rights at a time when they are totally under attack So i hope donald trump hates this whole building. It would be really great Because we're going to make a lot of them And so this breaks ground this summer And you know the restorative justice city project is evolving because of this And because autodesse is sort of kind of fun is to do the seed work with Detroit Which Detroit has said they would like to be the first restorative justice city in the country And we are going to be helping and make that to create a mapping tool digital tool that helps cities plan for decarceration Help cities plan for the shift to restorative justice And we're working with eric kadora who from the justice mapping center to do that and other leaders in the in the country And we think that what we can do is start to map criminal justice poverty crime social services across Infrastructure and do that from the top down and the bottom up in a grassroots way To really create a tool that many cities can use to plan for this and scale our work up So here's the vision the vision Is that we will see a restorative justice center marking every skyline in the united states And these small ones in every single neighborhood and every one of you will have been to a peacemaking circle Every one of you will know where these are And it will be as iconic in your mind as a courthouse, but way better So i'll leave you with this image By cornell west. I love justice is what love looks like in public. So imagine that Thank you I told you she was amazing, huh? We are so honored to be working with you together. So thank you for that incredible presentation So please stick around enjoy the dj the music the food the activities if you haven't built a diorama in decades tonight's your night Thank you again to kupa hewitt for hosting this tonight. It's really been an honor and a privilege to work with you all as well And the exhibits are open till 9 30 tonight So please enjoy yourself move all the way up to the third floor to see the by the people exhibit and Enjoy and have fun. Thank you all for coming