 Good evening and welcome everyone. My name is Cynthia Smith. I'm the curator of socially responsible design at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. My pronouns are she her and to give a brief visual description of myself. I'm a white woman with curly silver hair. I wear round eyeglasses and I'm standing at a podium in the museum's former process lab originally Andrew Carnegie's library. So you'll notice those of you in the audience here in New York you'll notice all of the inscriptions around the perimeter up above. So it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's program Designing Gender Inclusive Spaces which is held in conjunction with our current exhibition that I organized with my colleague Caroline O'Connell designing peas. If you haven't had a chance to view it please come back before it closes on August 6th this summer. And I want to thank our supporters who made this program possible including the Ford Foundation, Lisa Roberts and David Seltzer, the Lily Ockincloss Foundation, Helen and Edward Hintz and the Barbara and Morton Mendel Design Gallery Endowment Fund. In addition to our in-person audience we're also thrilled to welcome our virtual audience. This program is being recorded and will be available on our YouTube channel next week so you can share it with friends who might have missed it. Today's program will run for an hour and 15 minutes. We'll first have our speakers give brief presentations on their work with accompanying visuals. Lori Brown, distinguished professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture, will speak on safe access to abortion clinics. Seb Chow, associate director at JSA Mixed Design, will discuss the equitable design of public restrooms. And Chalina Oddbird, founding principal and chief executive officer of Kukue Design Initiative, our 2022 National Design Award winner will share about gender-inclusive urban planning. After the presentations we'll have a panel discussion considering the role design can play in creating safe and inclusive public spaces. We'll then open it up to Q&A with you, our audience. For those listening via our live stream you can share your questions in the chat box and we'll read the questions on your behalf. Please include your full name and where you are whether it's Brooklyn, New York, London, or Mumbai. It's now my pleasure to invite our first speaker up to share. Lori Brown, welcome Lori. Thank you so much, Cynthia, and it's an honor to be here and to be included in this really important conversation. And when we were preparing for this event there was something Cynthia said that's really resonated with me, which was that creative confrontation, within creative confrontation, peace is always about conflict. And I really have been thinking about that ever since our conversation because what I'm talking about around reproductive health care access, I find it hard to find the peace part sometimes when we're thinking about this. So it was a statement that really continues to make me think. So I've been asked to also introduce myself. So I'm an architect, an academic, and an activist. And I operate at the intersection of theory and practice, which informs my feminist methodologies. I locate my work within what scholar Sandy Grande has termed the feminist political project. One that is not solely interested in academic feminism but engages broader frames of the historical materialist intersecting with race, capitalism, labor, and economic power. So I'm going to talk to you briefly about some of the work I've been doing for over a decade, which at first came out in a book Contested Spaces, Abortion Clinics, Women, Shelters, and Hospitals. And I want to start with a very short clip outside of a clinic in Louisville, Kentucky from 2012. And I want to mention that now in Kentucky abortion is banned. Please today repent and turn to Christ. It's so important. Again, as I said, bring it in, I'll leave it for her. So that's so what you're seeing, which happened regularly in front of this clinic was that over a block long lined with protesters where patients would have to park on beyond that block and would be escorted with the people in the orange vest. Those are the legitimate escorts of the clinic and be accosted by people protesting. And then the person in the lime green vest is a part of the protesters. So what interests me initially in this research or in this area was the right to two of our first amendment to protest. But how this right is on the ground understood and lived by those who are engaging in some of these contested zones. And part of this research also includes trying to make visual and visible some of what is really invisible within this area. So for example, at the time of publication, and I'll be updating this this summer, what you're looking at is a map that shows the number of providers per state as well as the gray areas or where the clinics were located. So metropolitan areas of 50,000 people or more is where the clinics are located. As well, I have the good fortune and honor to meet and interview independent providers across the country. So this is the clinic was the clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, that the Dobs decision, they brought the the case to the Supreme Court, wanting to understand how they were negotiating these things on the ground. And then also looking at things like poverty, the Gut Markner Institute who collects this, this data show has shown that poor women of color are seeking abortions at a higher rate for a number of infrastructure infrastructural problems and challenges. So the darker the circles, the higher rates of poverty and then the big circles are female head of households with children under five. So these rates are quite high, sometimes in the 70 and 90 percentile of that area. And additionally, looking at what are the states doing that make restrictions harder or possibly enabling more access. So what is mostly textual, making a visual icon of these restrictions, so that it becomes a bit more understood what they mean. So you know, some states require only fish physicians to provide care. Some states would not allow public money or public buildings to be used for abortion. So then additionally thinking about how could we creatively think about space and access. So for an example, back to Mississippi, this myself and research assistants called all the pharmacies in the most restrictive states. So in the state of Mississippi at the time, there were 462 pharmacists. We wanted to know if they stocked and sold emergency contraception because if you could access this, you actually may not need to go to a clinic. And you see that geographically, it completely changes where access could be. And we kept track of their comments and the information. And what we found, which was startling, was that 66% of the male pharmacist and 55% of the female pharmacist would not stock or sell emergency contraception. So we also kept track of some of their comments. So we were told no one would stock it today, you would have to come back tomorrow. You don't need a prescription. And at the time we were doing this research, you did need a prescription. So it was illuminating in terms of how erroneous information was being passed along and how this was also another form of a challenge for people to access care. Another aspect that I'm really interested in is how law and court cases intersect with space and spatial relationships. So I'll give you one example. So there was a Supreme Court case Hill versus Colorado, but it began in Colorado in 1986, because there are so many protesters trying to enter into the clinic and were unable. So the city council created what is called a buffer zone ordinance. And what that stipulated was in 100 feet. So you see the pink dot dash box around the building, then 100 feet of that protesters could not go beyond. And then an eight foot bubble around someone's body as they're moving in and out of that zone would prevent someone a protester from approaching the person unless that patient agreed to be spoken to. This made its way all the way through the Colorado Supreme Court, the Supreme Court upheld it, but then it went to the the the United States Supreme Court, and they upheld it and said, Yes, there needs to be a way that we ensure that people can access abortion. It was federally law guaranteed at that point. So it was interesting to see how literal dimensions around bodies and buildings are became legal precedent, which directly impacts the way we think as architects and designers. So this research has led to a number of ways to take action out in the world that was never anticipated. One being I met a lawyer who had said, you know, that there are these building codes that are changing from medical facility. So something like your primary care office, which is what would be needed for clinics and states were changing them to ambulatory surgical center requirements, which are much more stringent, incredibly expensive to make changes to. And what reads is very banal on paper. So changing a door width by six inches or a hallway by eight inches or ceiling heights expanding or having to create more sinks or more robust HVAC systems was closing clinics left and right. So I created with some with with other research assistance, a series of very banal diagrams that you're seeing here to help lawyers be able to argue and from the courts why these changes were not improving health or safety, but really use as political agents to close clinics. And this led to meeting the owner and director of the then clinic in Huntsville, Alabama. Now it's a it's illegal and Alabama abortions are not allowed. But they at the time were interested in creating a public interface around their property. And so myself in a in Trish, Africa, who was a former student of mine, we worked together to create a proposal and to let the and to really respond to the conditions of the property. So to move the entrance and give them more parking. So it displaces the protesters. This wall would meander around the property as and it would be responding materially and spatially to the conditions on the ground. So where there were protesters, it would be tall as tall as permitted eight feet and solid and then where it was less needed in the back in the wooded zone, it would be shorter and more open. And the owner was really interested. There was a clinic also in Montgomery had been using sprinklers quite creatively to water grass as well as maybe protesters, if they were right beside the grass and he's like, can we use the sprinklers? So I was like, yes, of course, we could figure out a way to do that. So we incorporated the sprinkler system that would be activated as needed on the protest side. And then on the interior, we wanted to reveal that is the sculptural moment that would also allow a kind of lush interior landscape to grow and create a much kind of soothing space as patients come in and get out of their cars to go to the clinic. So here's an image of what that may look like on the protest side. And then also when speaking with the escorts, they needed a shaded area because according to Alabama law, you could not allow anyone but the patients to go in for care. So they needed some shaded area and they also asked for a play space for children because children would come with their mothers but couldn't go in and they would have to wait in their car for hours. So we created a water feature area for children to play and this shaded zone. So I want to wrap up and talk about now in our post-row world. And when this went down June last year, I could not just sit back and although you know I know architecture can't solve everything but we can participate. So myself and another architect in Phoenix, Jordan Kravitz, decided we were going to create an architect database and we wanted to we sent out on social media if anyone any architects would like their name to be included. If you work in states where abortion is now legal, let us know. And so we received to date about 200 names including some in building trades. It represents 35 states in the District of Columbia and we are also creating have created a survey that we're sending to the states that have deemed themselves havens. So we've sent the survey to New Mexico and we're in the process of collecting names for Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Illinois at this point in time. Eventually it will expand but we want a more robust list for these states so that we can connect and we've already been connecting providers with architects and I want to leave you with an image of what abortion access looks like today in May 2023. As you know it's very fluid, it's it's changing based on politics. So this is what it looks like now but I'm sure it will not remain like this in the future. And in concluding to go back to our creative confrontation I want to just underscore that the onslaught against reproductive health care and other civil rights as you know is continuing and escalating. And that means that there is an even greater need for creative ways to counter these confrontations and that in order for change to happen we as designers and architects must be more engaged in how we think about these confrontations to create a peaceful space moving forward. So thank you. I'm Sebche, I use they them pronouns. I'm a tall Korean American non-binary person with like shoulder length, bleach blonde and black hair, wearing kind of like a goth corduroy black skirt and a short sleeve kind of like primary color paint slashed. Yeah, top. So we'll get started. So in an effort to move beyond land acknowledgments I'll be donating 20% of my speakers fee to the Red Nation to promote the colonial efforts including the rematriation of stolen territory and reparations for the genocide and displacement of indigenous people. In the interest of time I'm going to skip the introduction of our firm's inclusive design principles which considers an approach to accessibility beyond code compliance and adopts an intersectional approach considering the need of a broad spectrum of the population including age, body type, disability, gender, race and religion. But if you're interested we have many lectures online and content on our website that describes this. So I'm going to jump into why we were invited to join the Designing Peace exhibition which is on display right now. We were invited because of our stalled research initiative which since 2015 has created open source prototypes and design principles for inclusive multi-user restrooms as well as conducting advocacy through lectures, workshops, writings and legal initiatives. Before getting into how we adopted this initiative for the exhibition, a bit of our origin story. So in 2016 President Obama passed a federal law mandating that schools allow students to use the restroom or locker room according with their gender identity. In response there was a backlash North Carolina followed by 12 Republican-led states issued bills mandating that restrooms be used according to the sex designated on a person's birth certificate rather than their gender identity. And just last Wednesday on May 17th 2023 Republican Governor DeSantis signed a Florida bathroom bill targeting trans people which goes into effect July 1st effectively making it a criminal act to use a restroom according with one's gender identity. So in this context we began to conduct research realizing quickly that restroom controversies are not new and that this space has continually registered social anxieties triggered by the threat of marginalized groups entering into mainstream society. This has included women, black people, gay men and disabled people. The current bathroom wars are just the latest episode in the saga. Trans non-binary and intersex and gender non-conforming people demonstrate that there are many ways of expressing gender independent from biological sex and this realization liberated us to reject the inevitability of restrooms having to sort people into two categories men and women. This allowed us to develop the first stalled multi-user prototype which treated the restroom as a single open space with floor-to-ceiling partitions and communal areas for washing and grooming. Soon after we began to develop these prototypes with collaborators in public health whose clinical research and data demonstrated that inequitable bathroom access directly impacts the physical and mental health of not only trans and non-binary people but a slew of other user groups as well. We began to conduct engagement activities like literature reviews surveys interviews and co-design workshops which revealed an expanded list of dozens of restroom users with intersecting identities that we wanted to consider Muslims who perform pre-prayer washings people who inject insulin and hormones people who clean their colostomy bags and feeding tubes and dozens more. We also realized that innovative design solutions were not enough making our prototype viable meant amending the international plumbing code which mandates so-called separate facilities for the two sexes so in response we joined forces with the American Institute of Architects and National Center for Trans Equality successfully amending the 2021 version of the code making all gender multi-user restroom designs code compliant in 35 states. Since then our office has been lucky to work with progressive clients like Gallaudet University a school for deaf folks in DC the SoCal Club in LA and Carnegie Mellon to implement built inclusive restrooms some of which are shown here with more in the works. I'm going to briefly play this clip from the aerial series just to show that it's been gratifying to see many years of work and advocacy come to fruition and see the positive response to these designs including this student whose death and trans enjoying our restrooms at Gallaudet University and sharing a video of what they appreciate about the design so if you have time I recommend you check out the aerial series So now getting to our work for Cooper Hewitt so rather than present what we had already done we worked with Cynthia to think about applying stalled principles to Cooper Hewitt's own ground floor restrooms which you might use today as a speculative case study thinking about the specific needs of this building's users and the potentially exciting relationships to adjacent programs on that ground floor including the lecture room and the design studio we conducted a workshop with 23 members of the Cooper Hewitt team across departments to understand the specific needs of visitors and staff in this building the result is an installation which you can find upstairs big shout out to the project team some of whom are pictured here Joel, Marco, Matthew, Lee, Ben and Martin our installation is meant to evoke the design elements of the restroom itself using mirrors white countertops at the same height as a sink penny tile, etc the front features a highly detailed scale model of our reimagined restrooms that demonstrate our impact at the scale of the building and this is supplemented by vignette renderings that show our impact at the scale of the body the back of the installation features a historical timeline that goes deeper into those restroom controversies that I shared previously as well as a video monitor that describes our stalled initiative so with my remaining time I'll walk you through these reimagined Cooper Hewitt restrooms which we invite you to explore at your own pace upstairs in the exhibition if you have time and also feel free to use the restrooms downstairs and think about that before and after so we reimagine the ground floor restrooms thinking of this as a so-called wellness hub addressing the needs of diverse visitors and staff it's divided into different overlapping zones welcome, wet, and lounge that generate dynamic relationships with the restrooms adjacent spaces the design studio and the lecture room the welcome zone offers information about exhibitions and events displayed on a digital screen that also plays soothing audio masking bathroom noises to provide acoustic privacy visitors can also refill water bottles or drink from multi-height water fountains in the wet zone also you have a multi-height station allowing adults, children, and wheelchair users to groom and wash their hands together touch-free faucets and hand dryers are hygienic and easier to use for some disabled people this facility also includes toilet stalls of three different sizes standard ADA compliant as well as a caregiving stall which we sometimes also call a comfort room which includes a sink, mirror, and toilet so that those who need to can wash and groom and complete privacy and all toilet stalls feature full-height privacy doors and partitions this also includes a nursing room that has a baby-changing station sink, mini-fridge for storing formula or milk as well as comfortable seating and an interfaith space featuring neutral sacred aesthetics like filtered light, acoustic privacy, and rounded walls as well as storage containing equipment for people of different faiths to practice a sink and foot shower for Muslims finally the lounge has flexible multi-height seating that accommodates people of different sizes and abilities as well as an escape space which is sometimes also called a sensory room a semi-enclosed room lined with soft tactile acoustic wall panels and diffuse lighting providing a non-reverberant glare-free interior that can be a quiet refuge for everyone especially for autistic and neurodivergent individuals who are prone to sensory over-stimulation in public spaces so this is usually the part where we conclude by saying that an inclusive design approach allows designers and clients to take accountability for past harms and promises formal innovations that can enhance everyone's experience of public space however since I've been given this platform I have a few closing remarks to get off my chest this is likely informed by the latest bill in Florida I want to say that I'm so tired of talking about this I've been working to promote the creation and defense of gender-inclusive spaces in a professional context for almost six years primarily with our office but also as a community organizer and youth educator I've had to repeat myself hundreds of times including in lectures, panels, books and projects and probably will have to keep repeating myself and I don't mean to seem ungrateful I'm lucky to have a career where I can pay attention to issues that I'm passionate about but I wish that I didn't have to when will gender-inclusive spaces no longer have to be a special panel and we can just move on with our lives when will I stop being asked about the times that I've been kicked out of a restroom, locker room or the everyday anxiety of using the toilet all this trauma porn sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in a nightmare where everyone already knows the answers to the questions being asked so why do we continue to ask? Perhaps it's because the liberals, the progressives, the left are in denial that so many people want to eradicate and erase trans people who prefer to see us dead or disappeared so we attend, host or participate in another diversity and inclusion panel present yet another clever technocratic solution and pat each other on the backs that we're solving the problem I also feel conflicted as a queer, non-binary person of color to be the spokesperson for this content the more I declare myself as these identifiers the more it feels artificial for whom am I identifying myself? I know in theory that it's important for people with lived experience to be at the forefront nothing about us without us, right? But why does it feel so convenient to righteously yell into the echo chamber? We smile and share renderings of a more tolerant world to sell a product that should need advertising However, what keeps me going and what gives me hope is my work outside of the discipline alongside my queer and trans community where these things don't need to be explained whether it's working as a camp counselor at a trans camp in New Hampshire and making a friendship bracelet with a seven-year-old while also healing my inner child or hosting karaoke for gender queer youth in South Carolina where vocal effects can trigger euphoria for a shy, questioning young person A queer artist collective in Hawaii hosting a nude figure drawing night in a tattoo shop after hours where we create our own sanctuary to celebrate each other But architecture too, while slow also gives me hope Our inclusive restroom that opened at Gallaudet making a trans student stay just a little bit better or the head of facilities for a well-known university campus that years ago shooed me away but is now calling us up to ask for help with inclusive restrooms and not out of the goodness of his heart but because we're becoming impossible to silence Queer and trans people with the support of our allies will continue to defy marginalization So on that more optimistic note I'll pass it off to Shalina, thank you Thank you, Seb And thanks for those last remarks, most of all Can you hear me okay? Okay I'm Shalina Oddbert I, she, her pronouns I am a five-foot-five woman with curly frizzy hair given today's humidity and I'm very happy to be here with you tonight I first want to thank Cynthia Vaso-Alexa and the rest of the team for the invitation to join this very important conversation as you can see tonight We at KDI are a non-profit design and community development firm working to build a more just and inclusive in all the ways that Seb just described public realm We are landscape architects urban planners and community organizers working across four offices around the world in the U.S. and Kenya and in Stockholm And before I get into a couple of projects I'd like to take just a few minutes to try to draw the connection between gender equity and peace and how that nexus intersects with our work Simone de Beauvoir sums it up pretty simply with this quote but data also affirms this idea as we see here with the statistic in essence having more gender equal societies results in more stable and peaceful states So then the question is what does it really mean to create a gender equitable world? Well it means working to change the excuse me outdated institutional policies the discriminatory laws and regulations like those we've seen in the previous two presentations to close this gap between men and women in gender minorities These are gaps that we see in gender roles gaps that we have in financial inclusion gaps in educational attainment gaps in civic and private sector leadership and that's to just name a few Okay so then one might ask well what does design and planning have to do with any of these things? Well to start our disciplines have historically helped reinforce these unequal gender roles and responsibilities and you can look no further than who has been in and who has led these professions from the beginning of time it has been this with very little of this and that's not just been in these early creative stages but it's continued through the design process into construction and even most harmfully into the usage of the spaces that have been designed themselves This inequity at the top has then had adverse consequences on mobility on access to key amenities like public spaces and safety particularly for women girls and sexual and gender minorities in cities all around the world So as urban planners and designers today who want to live in a world of sustainable peace it is our responsibility to promote gender equity in all of our work because our work quite literally shapes the very environment that we spend our days in I'd like to quickly give you an overview of what we think gender inclusive planning is but also more importantly what it isn't and I won't go through everything you see here on the slide here that you see on the slide but just to say broadly that gender inclusive planning and design is more than just talking to women it is universal it's not just about building knowledge but it's about building power and it's not just about doing a singular project or making a singular adjustment but it's about committing the needed finances and expertise to follow through on the lofty goals that we often talk about in rooms like these What it isn't is an add-on it's not something that should be apart from the regular goals and objectives of a project and it shouldn't be uninvested it shouldn't be assumed that this extra work of making something gender inclusive is something that happens as an altruistic effort of a project team I'd like to share two projects where we try to focus on this work of making the built environment more gender equitable and by way of that work try to make our contribution to building a more sustainable piece The first project started as a project in La Favorita which is a low-income settlement in Mendoza, Argentina and this project as this community as you can see is not far away in distance from the center of the city but it is miles away in terms of its access to amenities the access to infrastructure and so on This community in particular has a park called Plaza Aliar and this plaza had been invested in in a first round of upgrading that was done by the ministry and that plaza though it had been invested in years earlier was a place that was rarely used not just rarely used by women but rarely used by people of all genders However, those that found any use at all for it were men who used the soccer field who used some of the benches for gambling and things like that which made it even less of a place that women and other genders felt like they belonged When we talk to women through a participatory process about what it was that made the plaza so uninviting unwelcoming and really a place that was that they would spend extra time to avoid rather than even pass through There were many reasons one of them are simple things like the pathways that you see here women in this community as they tend to be by the numbers around the world of primary caregivers and families and caregiving often requires helping to move others through a particular space whether that's a stroller or a wheelchair just helping someone who has trouble walking pathways like this make that virtually impossible And so when we look at simple things like a pathway we think well this is this must have been unintentional and it must be something that's easily fixed but when you look deeper into how the decision was made who made the decision who was leaving the design you begin to see this taxonomy of exclusion that comes up in pathways but comes up in so many other elements of our built environment And just as one example you see here that this simple pathway excludes not just women but many others and those that do the excluding are all of the people that had a hand in bringing this space to be and the reasons behind it aren't simple oversight in most cases they're all of these isms that come along with the way that those making decisions are able to exist in the world So in this case women took to the street to first audit the space audit all users of the space of all genders and then they got to reimagining it talking to people about their designs talking to people about the interventions that they wanted to see they eventually worked with students of mine at the time at a Harvard design school to come up with six different ideas that addressed those needs and in doing that they came to create this space that you see here what this space does that the other didn't was simple things like restripe a sports field to change vantage points to create spaces that move through a space and brought you to the center intentionally rather than make you feel alone and isolated in the center of a very big space it also gave uses like this weekly market that allowed women socially and culturally to have a reason to be in this space which in time could help to begin to change the way that gender roles and gender norms are understood in this community oftentimes when you get to a place project story and you say well one day we hope this will happen what was wonderful about this project is that the ministry and the world bank supporting this project helped it come to be and this is an early and grainy google earth shot of the construction of that site that the community voted on among the six what's exciting about this project is that it opened the door to a much larger conversation and platform for gender inclusive planning and design the world bank asked us at the end of this project to consider taking the process we had developed and the guidelines that we had worked on and try to make a handbook that would work around the world big task pretty impossible to talk about the ways in which planning all different elements of planning housing parks etc could be thought of in a gender inclusive way and this handbook has guidelines it has background it builds the case for why gender inclusive planning is just part of planning period and that's something that has been very important I'll close with a project that that is closer to home it's in Los Angeles and it's also an ongoing body of work that started by assessing the disparity across gender and transit and in in a first study we took a year this first study called changing lanes we took a year to understand the way that different genders use transit and how transit is not meeting those needs of women and other genders the findings they're not wanting to leave that as a plan on the shelf we then work to access philanthropic funding that would allow us to continue this work into a second phase project which was an action plan to help DOT understand how they could take these findings and do something about them that project will be complete at the end of this year and will reveal 40 or more actions and recommendations across all of DOT's business lines meaning across policy recommendations across changes to service provisions across changes to infrastructure etc in order to make the transit system more gender equitable all of this work as with all of our work was done through a community design and policy making process that inverts what is typically done in our professions of bringing women people of all genders into a process and giving real decision making power to them these are some of the themes that that eventual plan will cover and will make recommendations within and as part of that project one of the steps was to not just leave those ideas on the page as a list of things to do for the Department of Transportation but to try to take one or two of them and put them on the street put them out into the hands of users so that they could give direct feedback on the way that these types of changes might impact them we asked our we have a resident group and a multi-agency advisory group that is that contains all of the agencies that touch transportation systems in Los Angeles and we asked them to tell us which of the many things that could be actions that could be piloted should be piloted and both the community group had a had a preference and a priority for additional shade and lighting to address this issue of comfort and safety for women and other genders moving on transit and interestingly the agency working group also saw that same need for additional shade and lighting and so that led us to begin to understand the existing systems and regulations and think about prototypes that could work in all of the places where traditional bus shelters and trees don't currently work and in Los Angeles that's over 75% of bus stops so we began to prototype a suite of different space saving and highly effective shade and light giving devices that could meet the needs of the two to four travelers waiting at a dash stop at any given time these restrictions let us to start our prototyping at the most restrictive space working only within the jurisdiction of LADOT which meant a prototype that without going into all the details could only touch the poll on which the LADOT dash sign existed and through that prototype we designed it to be put on the street and tested for four months and that here is a couple of images here of that first prototype that has been now about a week and a half being tested by users this is just one of many shade projects and prototypes that we've done in different areas and at different scales depending on the restrictions this is in a rural farm worker community in the eastern Coachella Valley again led by a group of women advocating for safety and comfort on transit and here are some of the images of that prototype insight thank you thank you giving us a glimpse into your work and I'm glad we have time now to unpack some of what you shared my phone back here so as we begin the discussion I invite the audience both here in the museum and online to begin to formulate your questions because you'll have time toward the end of the conversation to ask them and poor Seb, Jelena and Lori please feel free to ask each other questions as I think this is a good conversation to have the works that are presented in designing peace are intended to inspire dialogue and so here we are and to actually provoke questions which all three of you provide for us about what might be possible if we were to design for peace if we were to envision and design a world accepting of multiple voices cultures, identities, abilities to design more inclusive and equitable spaces the museum and I think this is an important point when I give tours of the exhibition I always talk about this offers space for exploration appreciation and respect for various perspectives in the hopes that empathy can begin to build and grow and that's what I hope we'll be able to do tonight so one of my questions is about this idea of durable and lasting peace not just a fleeting kind of type of peace establishing and maintaining safe healthy diverse equitable environment especially our public spaces which all three of you touched on is fundamental in creating a durable and lasting peace and each one of you are creating really contributing these potent voices to the role design can play in provoking change so my first question goes to Sab Stahl takes an intersectional approach to the design of restrooms considering not just transgender and non-binary people but also considers people of different ages genders, sexualities, races, cultures, religions, abilities those are all people who encounter barriers to access in public restrooms and other locations can you tell us more about the intersectionality of the Stahl work and why it's important sure yeah and yeah big shout out to Susan Stryker leading trans historian and activist who is one of the founding members of Stahl who I think really pushed us to think about how reimagining restroom design could address you know so many people that aren't served by this typology and not thinking about it as a space that just sorts people through gender but it's really just a place where we go to relieve ourselves take care of our bodies and each other so I think that immediately opened up the conversation beyond just gender you know this movement universal design which since the 90s has and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act has brought people with physical and sensory disabilities more into the conversation but I think we noticed especially when we would present this work you know six years ago that there would be you know Muslim folks in the audience Orthodox Jews in the audience you know people in the audience constantly telling us but what about this what about this and we realized you know just how large that list was so I think by collaborating with people in public health that had you know much stronger methodologies for figuring out the massive matrix of all these different people and their needs was really useful for us and to also understand that there are shared design solutions rather than maybe one design for every single person there's so there's so much overlap and there's also so many people that inhabit multiple identities at the same time right so it's we're not segmented into these different bubbles so I think that was really eye-opening for us to think about this but it also brings up the conflicts in that it's not necessarily a one-size-fits-all kind of kumbaya moments where one perfect restroom can solve everyone's needs and we've been kind of cataloging all these conflicts of where one person's needs infringe on another and I think that's really productive territory too both Lori and Chalina this intersectional approach also is apparent in how you conduct your research can you tell us more about the ways it's informed your work sure I think you know we say something at KDI often which is that we work to build a more just public realm where just for us means complete inclusive and resilient and and as just as you've said trying to divine then each of those things what is complete mean what is inclusive mean you know we started in the most in the most basic way well complete means having all the amenities that are needed inclusive means including everyone and within those really simple definitions we then have always pushed ourselves to try to get more specific and what you've said I couldn't have said better it's the more that you push yourself to truly meet that simple definition of including everyone the more you see where the overlap is where the conflicts are where the challenges are and I think what's been important in our work is to stay committed to confronting those moments of tension even as we think we've maybe finally you know finished that list to not be afraid to see no actually we've still missed one intersection that we haven't quite understood right and and the more that we push ourselves to make sure that that list is as nuanced and as complete as it can be the more we have to rework other aspects of our work how we conduct workshops how we conduct public processes how we engage people in design feedback and and how we go through construction processes and programming of our spaces overall so there's a ripple effect that happens when you really push yourself to stay at the forefront of understanding the complexity of intersectionality I think for my work and the work I've been involved with collaborating on these on reproductive health care going and meeting with clinic owners and medical staff and escorts and the communities that are both supporting and accessing care really is completely intersectional and you can't and as I'm sitting there listening and asking questions it's so apparent that like race gender economics all intersect in such critical ways and in different ways for the different types of people who are coming to access care and provide care so it's inherent within the issue of reproductive health care access and I think it because I've had the ability to go and work on the ground it make it became far more apparent in the field than it would have been just as this academic kind of project or research so I think and it's interesting to think about how all of our different areas we do participatory engagement so it's really fueled by speaking to those who are going to be using it or overseeing or sponsoring the projects and that also is is intersectional so for me it's inherent within the problem itself thank you all so Lori you gave a really great example of creative confrontation in fact we had this wonderful conversation I took Lori through the exhibition and I talked about how I was naive that I thought if I was going to assert about this idea about designing peace that we would move in that direction that was my aim to shift the conversation away from conflict but in fact it was the opposite in fact conflict appeared in a multitude of different ways and you've all touched on that today so you spoke about this how do we flip that within the exhibition I showed all kinds of examples of people protesting kind of on the other side but in fact there's what you're working on now is kind of creating safe healthy environments for people to access this these spaces are there ways that and I think it's it's it's are there ways that we can come together with shared space creatively that creates something that's this idea of this alternative future that Seb talked about you voiced it Seb what are the ways that that we're not just on another panel talking about this how can we what are the next steps I think we all want this but I think a lot of us are experiencing how it's almost it's daunting it just seems almost impossible can can you touch on that or any of the three of you I mean I get that this one I bring people through but it'd be great to hear from the three of you but your thoughts on that I'm hopeful and I completely appreciate very much what you mentioned because I too I would say I'm enraged and and frustrated and that we have to keep having these same conversations and servings in similar ways but I I have to remain hopeful and there's something I read by Angela Davis a few years ago where she talked about how in a similar vein like how do you keep doing this work and she said well it's not about it affecting my life but it's about affecting the generations that come after me and if I'm not continuing to do it then then I'm culpable too and I think I'm trying to have the longer view although it's really hard to not be thinking always about the immediate present and how do we respond to that but I have to remain hopeful that in the longer term there there is this escalation of more people being invested in caring and my students the students that I engage with and the ones like they're incredibly invested in issues of social justice and they care immensely about how what they're going to do when they graduate can make a difference in the world and that gives me immense hope and I think that is something I have to keep holding on to and helps continue to fuel the work I do and knowing that both in the classroom but also out in the world that there are more people aligned to do this work and hoping that when these projects do get built or that more people are able to see them that it will help at least shift shift consciousness and shift conversation which is the first place for for change to happen yeah it's interesting because in the one of the things that kind of emerged was this idea of prefigurative intervention and what I mean by that and that that was apparent in a lot of the projects that I selected for for the exhibition including stalled where we're modeling the future we want to see today in response to injustices in inequities and inequalities and so so I mean that I was I was very hopeful I mean I didn't look for these but it became apparent and and it's true for artists designers activists around the world in in multitude of different forms and in different scales um yeah I guess one thing that this makes me think of is the kind of like curse of designers being so tempted to fall into solutionism and I think that's a massive problem that I've observed over the past few years and I think some ways that we try to like alleviate this curse is looking to other disciplines for help like I think working with historians or public health researchers or activists like brings in like a really refreshing perspective to architecture and design that I think like is really productive for us um and then I think for myself personally like the way that I can kind of keep inspiration and not lose sight of the future and think of generations forward is also do grassroots organizing work outside of the discipline of architecture which I feel like sometimes I start losing my mind and the ivory tower of like these elite conversations and spaces and institutions and power so I think working on grassroots scales like brings me a lot of energy um and I think in general it's difficult when things are so present like in with these news controversies and things of um you know for example for restrooms you know these take years to uh manifests and fund raise and plan around but then there's also that very real just material conditions of like trans and non-binary people's safety today and how are you showing up for those people in your lives you know how are you whether you believe in you know legislative power or mutual aid or like other ways you know how are you making sure people are getting fed or getting their medicine or like their healthcare so I think like it's always about like for me looking outside of architecture and doing those things in parallel it's interesting that you bring up legislation uh and even in your talk you did and and Laurie um in uh in your work um and in what you wrote about in contested spaces you talked about um these spatial conflicts uh these spatial complexities that are caused by legislation um especially in where there's access to safe reproductive health is limited um can you tell us more how um designers architects or even everyday citizens can counter these power dynamics I mean it really is about um power isn't it very much so and I think one of the things I discovered when looking at the building code changes was that most often the people making these decisions had no expertise in the built environment that they were politicians they're bureaucrats and it was a wide it was a wake up that we who have design expertise have to be more engaged at the policy and the local level so that we can intervene and provide expertise that doesn't exist there and hopefully counter and create better better solutions to move forward so I think it it became really apparent that um we are absent in so many of these spaces of power and and legislative and decision making bodies and that has to stop and so I think for you know and and and everyday citizens too to become aware of who who are making these decisions and what can you do as a voter or as a citizen and a participant to engage and to speak out and to work um to to not try to help make that not happen so I think it's about becoming more aware at the local level um and how it affects your everyday or your or your communities everyday lives I also think designers have a bit of a superpower in that regard that they that we don't often know that we have or use um but it's become a regular part of our practice to use really simple visualizations or prototypes or kind of quick builds and I can think of three wildly different projects one about street vending and and street vendor regulations another about vacant lots and city owned property and on and on where in one case a simple visual diagram one that someone might do in their first year of design school um really changed policy first at the county level and then at the state level and in another case where a simple prototype paint wood some hammer and nails uh changed a really important city motion about that made it possible for everyday residents to access city owned vacant lots that would otherwise sit idle collecting trash so I agree with you we're absent in places where not only should we be present but we have a unique capacity to power change I am being told by uh those in the audience that uh we're about to turn to uh you in front of me and also people online um so it's been really illuminating and inspiring uh discussion uh but I want to uh ask those in the audience uh if you could raise your hand and we'll bring you a microphone um and those tuning in uh to our live stream can you share your questions in the chat box and we'll read it aloud on your behalf so who might have we have a question right here right up front wait for the microphone because the people online hear you thank you uh if you could say your name yeah and uh possibly where you what who you represent or where you're from or something identify up all like that um hi yeah my name is Shloka and I well I guess I'm new to the city I'm originally from India but I work here now in New York and I think that the work you guys are doing is extremely important and living in New York it's hard to think about these kinds of public places without thinking about homeless people and uh I guess my question is uh if you have any ideas for how to make those places that you spoke about whether it's like public restrooms or healthcare or public transit more welcoming for homeless people who often have a hard time using especially restrooms and have to like resort unfortunately like going outside like on the street or like in back bathrooms which are not necessarily the most hygienic so yeah interested to hear your thoughts on that yeah thank you for that question um I there's so much to say there but but I think I'll say this first it always comes back to a really simple simple definition for us which is this idea of a just public realm and there I focus on the word public public by definition again means everyone regardless of any difference you can name including your housing status and so in our work we try to start from that basic principle a public space a public restroom a public right-of-way these are all places where unhoused folks have just as much of a right not just to be in the space but to also be accommodated and welcomed and served by the space how you do that it's there are that would be a much longer conversation but I would say that designers in our firm of course but in probably in all of these practices and in many other practices are trying to help work on that problem but but importantly to something you said earlier you can't design your way out of this of these situations because design is when when it's getting to a design solution it's because we haven't worked on the bigger issues that are at the policy and at the structural issues of structural racism and legacies that we need to undo in a much bigger way that said there's a role for us to play certainly yeah thank you thank you shoka for that great question yeah I also recommend you check out some work the urban design forum has been doing in the streets for care series there have been a series of talks around yeah design professionals working with city agencies around the treatment of unhoused people in New York City including restrooms and plazas and all this so there's a lot of rich content out there I'll say for restrooms what always comes up is you know what if you know an unhoused person goes in there and locks himself in there and then we have to get them out or they're doing drugs in there other illicit behavior and I think I think I agree with Shalina and the limitations in terms of we can anticipate the ways that design is used but the maintenance of design and the policing of design is oftentimes outside of our boundary and we can stimulate those conversations to think about how the design elements will interact with their use but sometimes it's also like out of our hands so I want to avoid the kind of trap of being like we can solve this problem through like a really intelligent sophisticated design that being said there are definitely design elements that come up for me you know the most common probably being hostile architecture as it's known you know these spikes on benches or other places to keep people from sitting or sleeping but that actually came up for me in Lori's presentation in your the sprinkler system that you had done which is I think really clever and provocative and also kind of polemical where at once it's deterring protesters and obviously there's histories of using water against protesters in very different ways but then on the other side you know kind of propagating this bloom of like flowers or a garden so I think there's like this I think it's a great challenge to be like what is the opposite of hostile architecture or is there counter violence that like architects should be considering here so yeah not an answer but just an idea that came up yet other questions hello thank you for this interesting conversation my name is Jackie I'm French and Mexican and I work in in New York in one international not-profit about poverty and social justice and your urban planner and I want to to ask to you so how to bring this notion of gender to other latitudes because I say for example Shalina you're working in Argentina and sometimes here in the United States New York it's a very progressive city but this is not the case around so when we talk about gender we also talk about the the space where gender is difficult to be a set for people so and we have many battles because we have the battle to find an space to urban and designers and architects to have a place to do participatory process and also to have this gender concept so how do you think it's the best way to to bring gender in the discussions and in participatory process with people who sometimes is not open to this kind of discussion and also Laurie you talk about the you need to to have the place we in the in the political process to have more voice in the process so what do you think is the best way for urban planners architects and all the all the professionals like us to have the to raise the voice to advocate for ourselves and also the people we represent thank you you need to have a copy of your handbook on page four just kidding um I'll I'll help me if I forget the second part of the question because I want to get back to that too but starting with the first part this was a real challenge for us when we started well our work started in Kenya and in communities with very traditional gender roles and we were doing work of gender equitable and inclusive planning at that time in the early stages of our work but but we weren't calling it that because we really didn't even know to call it that and so that really helped us when we went to Argentina and we were specifically commissioned and asked to kind of do what we had been doing in Kenya but now it had a label on it it was about creating a gender inclusive process and a gender inclusive design for a plaza in this case so we sort of reverse engineered it and we said well how have we been I guess getting away with this work and getting buy-in for this work for all these years in Kenya which has a very traditional in in particular communities where we were working very traditional gender norms and and how can we kind of take that template and use it to our advantage in Argentina and I guess it's not a very novel or or special formula but I think it is about looking for intersections there's so much of of what makes a place more gender inclusive that really just makes a place work better for everyone and by honing in on those places of intersection and using those as the kind of key markers of the project or the key goals or outcomes for the project it actually isn't that hard to get people to buy into those bigger notions so sometimes it's just about labels and how you talk about things what we tried to do in the handbook where we couldn't give such an abstract answer was we tried to build a case using data using case studies using kind of like a chapter that someone like you who wanted to convince someone who you thought would be hard to move and convince of the topic could go to and kind of see which of those pieces of the case might be useful to you and so if you look there you'll see lots of facts and figures and great anecdotes of what you get by thinking about from getting from thinking about our built environment in a more gender inclusive way and I did forget the second part of the question could you just repeat it Laura Laura is coming thank you for your answers and your response and yes that's how we can be advocate or to have a best role in the in this political process to have more more participation in the political process where urban planners and architects sometimes are forget because it's something bureaucratic or political to take the decisions sure and I think probably any of us could weigh in on that so if someone else would like to take that please do actually Laurie brodo great peace and fast company thank you well again it intersects a bit with the first question and one thing it made I immediately thought about was were the UN gender mainstreaming goals that they have for development which you probably have heard of as a nonprofit or NGO and the ways in which to think about how the greater good the greater public will benefit from as inclusive of environments as possible I think is something that I see and I'm aware of in other countries and not as much in the United States which I've been thinking something about for a few years and it it's illuminating to think about how through policy through analysis and policy and implementation that gender mainstreaming has become just accepted form of design development planning in other parts of the world and in terms of how do I think the question was how do we get more people in the design realm fields to be involved and I've been thinking about that in terms of how we educate those moving who will be our future designers architects and planners and they have to but we need to teach them about the roles we can play I think is one way I think then also creating ways to organize whether it's through organizations like the AIA or other professional organizations that could have more of a kind of political have more political power to work within the kind of political systems but I think a big part of this is about education and outreach and just raising awareness of how we do need to be more involved because I don't think kind of as these disciplines were necessarily thinking in those ways. Yeah another another quick way is and the architectural league of New York just had a series about this is like the withholding of architectural labor as a way to get people's attention you know if you refuse and start stop complying with certain patterns I think that's a quick way to get people's attention sometimes to get a seat at the table. So I believe it is it's 7.35 we're a little over that brings us to the end of the program today. Thank you all again for this important conversation and thank you all for joining us tonight both in person and virtually and as a reminder designing peace is on view through August 6th and we welcome you to come visit the museum again soon. Thank you so much.