 Okay, let's get started. Well, hello everyone, I'm Vasa Genopoulos, Acting Deputy Director of Education at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. Cooper Hewitt is America's Design Museum. Our groundbreaking exhibitions and programs demonstrate the power of design to solve problems, transform lives, and understand history. And I encourage you to visit cooperhewitt.org often to be inspired virtually while the museum is closed. I wanna welcome you to our program today, creating a bright tomorrow, design education for a new sustainable world. Such a relevant topic as we continue to be faced with the challenges of tomorrow. It's so great to see so many people from across the country and even worldwide on this program today. We'd love to hear from you as well. Please add any questions or comments to the Q&A box throughout our discussion and we'll come back to those in the last 10 minutes. At the end of the hour, we'll welcome you to meet each other and continue the conversation along with our speakers in a separate Zoom meeting. And we'll share a link to that in the chat box a little later. Now it is with great pleasure that I introduce our moderator, someone who I've had the privilege of getting to know as our 2017 National Design Award winner, Susan Sennasi. Susan is the former publisher, editor-in-chief and director of design innovation of Metropolis, the magazine of design at all scales. For the past 45 years, Susan has contributed an unparalleled confluence of advocacy and ethics in positioning architecture and design as humanistic activities in contemporary culture. Thank you, Susan, for leading this important conversation. Thank you so much, Cooper Yuud, for making this happen. And it's a miracle of technology, so let's enjoy it and let's make the best we can. So as you mentioned, Vaso, it's really interesting that we're all questioning so many things right now about who we are, what we are, income and societal inequities. I mean, there's just so much that is up in the air and that is being revealed by this pandemic that we're a part of. And of course we haven't stopped thinking about climate change and economic needs. So one of the things that I copied down when I listened to Governor Cuomo's daily address is that, yes, we are going to rebuild. Yes, I know. We're going to rebuild, but build back better. And so who better to talk about this than people who are interested in, interested in and practicing architecture, teaching it, discovering all kinds of new ways of thinking about it and making it happen. So I would like each person to introduce themselves starting with Harriet Harris. Hello, thank you for inviting me. Keeper Hewitt and Susan, I look forward to your interrogation shortly. So yes, I'm Harriet Harris. I'm the new Dean at Pratt School of Architecture. I've obviously arrived at an optimum time to assume a deanship in the middle of a crisis such as a pandemic. When I inherited Pratt with its established history as an incredibly strong social innovation institution, but more recently quite focused on formalism, now reorienting the school towards a broader commitment towards what we're describing as decolonization of the curriculum. Because our perspective is that you can't address climate change problems without first addressing colonization crisis in education. So what do I mean by this? Well, decolonization is obviously understanding who's work counts within architecture and what counts as architecture, who gets to teach it, who gets to produce it and also where projects are situated and which communities they serve. This is really what we are focusing on explicitly within the next few years and there'll be many events connected to that. I think what we need to understand is that we are not all in this together. What we do in the construction industry in the North is having an incredible impact on the global South. The discrimination is literally geographical but it's also gender specific. So women and the poor are more likely to be disproportionately affected by the consequences of actions in the global North. The other things that we're doing at Pratt really are looking at innovation through incubation. So understanding that we're not really necessarily anymore required to just graduate employees. We should be looking to graduate employers, people who can redesign practice models in architecture to make architecture more representative and equitable because obviously that's a big part of decolonization of architecture is ensuring equal representation and that's not just gender, that's also race and also class. And it's about understanding that if we want to really diversify the next generation of architects and educators we need to be explicitly committed to outreach. And interestingly, Pratt's K through 12 programs began in 1897 which is 10 years in fact after the Institute was founded and it really engages young kids in rethinking what the building environment could look like because frankly as architects it's not about getting people to like us, it's about getting people to join us. So that's really how we're gonna do anything about addressing inequalities within the profile of the profession. Thank you. So as you can tell Harriet has an incredible portfolio into which we will dip shortly. We'd like to get the graduate student in the room, Maria Wallace to introduce herself. Hello everyone and thank you very much for inviting me in this wonderful panel discussion and conversation. My name is Maria Wallace. I am a designer and researcher coming from Greece. I am a recent graduate in architecture from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and I am currently a graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design pursuing a master in design studies in urbanism, landscape and ecology as well as a master in landscape architecture. My work is focused on social and environmental advocacy and is very much influenced by environmental histories and cultural anthropology practices. Thank you very much. Great. We're looking forward to seeing some of your learnings and some of your research. So let's hear from Claire Weiss, one of the practitioners who by the way, everyone here teaches. So it's not like they don't have their connections to academia. So Claire Weiss, please introduce yourself. Hi everyone. And it's exciting to see that we're having a national, in fact international conversation today as Harriet mentioned. And I'm Claire Weiss. I'm a principal at WXY or we call it W times Y. Doesn't translate that well architecture and urban design. And it's really a about 60 people multi-disciplinary collaborating around the idea that planning and architecture really belong together and that really design excellence in planning equals planning excellence in architecture. And I think that relates to the kinds of projects we've been working on for the, I don't know, just maybe for the past five or six years that are with commenting on related to this topic, which are really about understanding what drives systems and how those systems really ultimately are giving you the information to at least understand why things are built in certain forms and in order to change that dynamic, to change how spaces and places serve more people and allow more people the freedom of expression but also better resources and access. You have to understand how many of these drivers are actually working, especially if you wanna change some of those drivers. And we work at all sorts of different scales but I was thinking about early on that almost everything is already accepting that the word adaptation needs to be used. And now that we're in our how many months of COVID-19 kind of understanding about ourselves and how we are occupying space and what the policies are that the work that we're doing is kind of making me think that it's even more important to use the word adaptation. So we're working on a project about adapting, not curing a barrier island. This is for an artist residency off coast of Florida but understanding if you're only gonna occupy, be able to occupy space, let's say for 20 years, what decisions do you make now? And equally, I did wanna mention and then a lot of the work we're doing is in buildings for industry, for food producers in particular, along with affordable housing. I just wanna mention the studio I finished up with Brian McGrath last spring at Parsons which was actually asking each of the students to look at supply chains and whether it was wood or paper or pharmaceuticals or makeup, look at how they came in and outside of New York City and how that informed the urban design of an area around a freight train. And I'm thinking about that today, how much I learned from that studio that I think about every day as we all look at how things are delivered in the city. So did we lose Geeta? I can't see her picture. I'm here. Where are you? You need to click gallery view, Susan. Oh, okay. Got you. I'm here. My mind, I'm last but not least, baby. So Geeta Nandan, I am a principal and co-founder of Thread Collective. We are an interdisciplinary design, planning, architecture studio. One of my other partners is an architect and one of my partners is a landscape architect. And we do a wide range of projects. And I think that our primary commitment is to working incredibly intimately with our client and working with a lot of community-based organizations at various different scales of projects. And most of our work is looking at how to build. It's funny. So we used to talk about our work in terms of sustainability in about five years ago or sort of right after Hurricane Superstorm Sandy. We then started to talk about our work in terms of resilience, kind of like the rest of the world, in the word resilience becoming mainstream. And I would say maybe about three or four years ago, I've just really come to not find that the word resilience means it has enough meaning towards it. And so we've changed the way that we are thinking about our work to really be about regenerative design. And I would say that, even though that we're all here to talk about a sustainable world, I think we actually really need to talk about what is a regenerative world? And how is it that the places that we are designing allow for not just humans, but bio habitats and multiplicity of life to be able to grow and better itself, right? And so I really wanna emphasize the fact that we shouldn't be sustaining ourselves, right? I think being sustained at this point is maybe not enough. And so our work focuses around creating projects like stormwater management skate parks in the Lower East Side where we've been working very closely with youth in a group called Stoked and the Lower East Side Community High School. And a lot of our work incorporates the voices and visions of those that cannot express themselves. So whether they're youth skaters, you know, or whether they are nitra residents, we've done a series of urban farms across nitra housing and in local communities where we are looking at food systems and looking at how regional food hubs can be hyper localized. And so, yeah, I just, I feel like what's also very important when we're thinking about the way that designers work is that, you know, design is not any longer, or for the future that I hope we all are looking for is not a sole practitioner in that it's not even enough to just say, oh, we have a team of designers. It's really critical to have a team that represents a wide swath of interests, disciplines, intro skills. So, you know, whether it's beyond just the landscaper and the architect working together, but it's really bringing in the community activist, the health practitioner, the medical workers. So there's a multiplicity of voices that can create what this better future tomorrow looks like. Cause it's really not only going to be made just by designers. So, you know. Eta, I'm so glad you sort of brought up the word sustainable because it's my pet peeve. It's like, Yeah, it's my pet peeve too. It doesn't work. I mean, it's just nobody ever understood that word. It's like, how do you talk about sustainable when you don't get it? And I think it was part of architecture sort of obfuscation for a very long time. But I do think that we are in a very different phase. So, what are some of your in teaching? Let's see, maybe Harriet could begin to unravel this. What are some of the words that you use to convey that we are in a different mode for architecture where we're thinking differently about what the built environment is and how, what does it to humanity, to the environment, to our material resources? How do you conduct the conversation with 18 to 20, 20 year olds? That's an enormously challenging question. I'll do my best to answer it. I mean, for one, I think that we're working or laboring under a linguistic infrastructure that does not describe the seriousness of the crisis we're facing. I mean, we've become almost complicit in notions of what a fossil is. It's a fossil fuel, right? But it's not, it's a fossil. Why should it be a fuel? And also, we describe it as climate change and not climate crisis, which already is a complacent way of describing the magnitude of the problem. I think one of the issues is that as you're describing sustainable as a term actually comes from the Greek meaning bearable, but it also means defensible. That's its etymology. So what's interesting about that is this idea that at the same time, you're supposed to be protecting something and maintaining it. And I think that if you apply that to how architects understand production values in relation to space, and I think climate is point a moment ago, you're looking at this issue around how we, what we're really teaching here is a way of designing which privileges a perpetuation of construction processes, materials and outcomes that advantage a very small minority of society. So I think what we're not really doing enough of in schools and it's not just my school, it's in every school, it's really understanding that architecture is a system of thinking. But if we want to really change the world, we need to understand how to use architectural thinking to redesign democracies, not just building redesigning inequality to make things fair. So I think there needs to be a more direct confrontation with understanding the structural inequalities of society as an architectural challenge and orienting our curriculums to confront those inequalities. I think just limiting people to understanding architecture's scope as being purely about the creation of spaces, often for those who are really the 1% of society is one of the fundamental problems that most architectural schools continue to serve. And unless we challenge that, we're not gonna be able to do anything about the climate crisis. So Claire, as a practitioner, I mean, you've been very unfortunately unique, fortunately unique because you stand out so we can ask you questions about this. But I'm really interested in what kind of language do you use? I mean, you talk to communities. Communities are very important to you. You figure out what they need, how do they get involved in the conversation? And what is your method of communication with communities and revealing their needs and revealing how they are your collaborators, essentially in the built environment. So can you- I mean, I think it's in a way really related to what Harriet spoke about, which is a kind of change in understanding the relationship, just like education can no longer be about served and servant, the same way, it's clear that communities are the clients today and the clients of the future and that ultimately we need to learn from them. And then the issue is that many people are not necessarily in the position of architects or planners to kind of use data, observation, research in order to represent and speak to the communities and basically say, this is what you've told us. This is what we've observed. Let's work on something together. And that to my mind needs many techniques of engagement to engage people with their senses, with their intellects, with it like at different ages, you have to come to them, you have to come to people where they are. And at the same time, I think you have to assume that the knowledge base is not looking up on Google or wherever else, the knowledge base is in communities. And we just have to learn more and we have to find ways to learn more. And we have to find ways to learn more from communities. So Gita, you also talk a great deal and practice a great deal in this kind of community involvement. Can you give a profile of some of the people that you work with and how they inform you, how they inform the project eventually? It would be really interesting to kind of see how do people talk to architects and vice versa? Because we've had a lot of Archie speak for a very long time and now we're beginning to understand that we're all in the same boat together. And you are qualified to do amazingly beautiful, relevant work, but people have a kind of suspicion of you. I mean, a lot of the profession. So Gita, how do you begin to have a conversation with some of your clients that you're regularly involved with? Well, so I think that it's important to understand that their communities are not just sort of this abstract notion, like, I think it's really important for every single person to know that you are already a part of a community and everybody on the Zoom chat is already a part of a community. And what I find is it's very often like they versus us. And after Superstorm Sandy, I think one of the most important lessons for myself was that I was like, oh, I'm a designer and a professional and I live in a community that desperately needs assistance. I actually shouldn't just be working with other communities. I should be working within my own community. And so very often us as designers always think about the other, but yet we should be involved within our own neighborhood, our own block, our own sort of community aspects. And I think that the way to approach this dialogue is to really think about, I mean, everybody is an expert and we have to allow everybody to have ownership over that expertise. And to me, the community, while they are kind of the client, I actually consider them to be the partner, right? And so they are bringing on an expertise into the dialogue that you don't have, right? And we as designers need to acknowledge, like I am not the expert bus rider, right? I am not the expert person going to the cooling centers. I am not the expert person occupying certain types of public spaces. And so when you are trying to talk to people that you are working with or, so for instance, like I'm designing a skate park, I've tried to skate, right? I'm not very good at it. I'm a surfer, but the people who are skaters, I act, they are designers, right? And they come to the table with a design expertise. We're trying to incorporate landscape and natural environmental aspects into the skate park and they're super into it and they don't have the language to talk about that, but they have the language of the skating. So you sort of have to find, not even just common ground, you sort of have to like throw your architecture tools out the window and try and work in a different way. And then it's a messy process. And I think what we have to really understand is like this getting to a brighter future is not neat. It's not packaged in a beautiful, as my husband likes to say, the architect's box, right? It's a messy process. And in order to get there, we have to be willing to be messy and we have to be willing to treat our partners and our clients with their own expertise and bring that into the conversation. So Maria, as a grad students who are, you're very involved in ecology and architecture and planning. And so what's your sense of what we, what Harriet began talking about and what the practitioners are saying? Where are you in this? What are you looking for? What do you want to do in order to make our buildings better? I think initially it is very important to understand what is designed for, what is it concerned with, what is it currently concerned with or could be concerned with and understand what are the sort of capacities that design has to solve issues or contribute to some kind of global issue that we currently have. And I think we need to be, we need to start, think less sort of conservatively and more creatively. We need to actually, we are designers. We are educated to be creative and we need to be more radical. We need to be more imaginative in the ways that we think about issues and global issues. And we need to kind of go outside of this box that we've created for ourselves. I think a lot of times, especially in looking at the sort of construction that is happening right now and the sort of design thinking, a lot of times are, these are replications of past ways of thinking about design and past ways of understanding design. And we need to actually just take a step further and try to figure out a way to deal with contemporary issues. So it's important to kind of first understand that, first understand, okay, what is our role in all of that and what our role could be in all of that? What are our capacities? Maybe we can directly solve some of these issues or maybe we can, if we can't currently, maybe there's a way that we can advocate for that. Maybe we can kind of work with design activism and put pressure on others who can solve some of these issues and sort of understand, okay, what are our roles and what are the ways that we can situate ourselves and actually contributing to some of the challenges. And I think, I mean, it was mentioned, we talked a little bit about climate change and I think it is also important to have a holistic understanding of climate change and a holistic understanding of the global issues that we're currently facing, that is it only about the change of the climate that we are sort of focusing on? Is it also the air pollution itself that we are concerned with, which is also affecting a lot of people? Is it like, what is the sort of issue and concern that we have? And as long as we kind of clarify that and we clarify the issues, then we can begin to kind of talk about design solutions and the ways in which we can respond to all of that. So Harriet, let's kind of dig into this now because in the past five to 10 years, New York City underwent an enormous redevelopment, rebuilding massive, massive developments with the obligatory high rise, five high rises occupying a tiny bit of grass and somehow we consider that urban. And which, I mean, let's face it, tall buildings are important to house millions of people everywhere around the world. You can't just use a plan. But how are you and your students, how are you looking at the existing urban environment in order to make it better? Are you sending them out to live, live and experience these places and come back with some ideas of how do you make it better because it needs fixing really badly? Yeah, it's a very good question. I mean, obviously in a school where I have 1,500 students and if you divide that down into studios and programs and courses, it would be all of our time to describe the many different ways. So maybe I can just focus on a few. And certainly within the graduate Centre for Planning and Environment, the approach has always been to really go to the communities and not so much expose students to the communities as if the communities are some sort of, you know, foreign agent of stimulus, but actually to let the communities lead the process. So it's much more about changing the power dynamics through different models of engagement and co-design. It's about understanding that architecture or anyone coming from a planning background isn't the privileged curator of community content, but they are the enablers and the facilitators of community and grassroots-led innovation. And it's really through understanding how to work in that way with stakeholders, there's any real prospect of designing relevant and meaningful outcomes. I think the problem with architecture is, you know, it's really, I think in many ways, there are expanded ethics in pursuit of economic advantages. And I think in doing that, it's surrendered, it's claimed to be anything resembling a public service in a way that perhaps doctors or in some cases lawyers are. It's much more around a kind of economic and financial servitude. And it recognizes one form of capital because we can talk about capital if we're going to interrogate terminologies today. So we have all been pretty much brainwashed into understanding value propositions about what society needs to do. It's all about growth and it's all about income and it's all about profit. And it's really understanding that, of course, that, you know, growth in itself is really problematic, that it's never enough, that we have to continue to expand, that we have to continue to exploit, that we have to continue to increase certain kinds of value over others. But nowhere in this metric is an understanding that human life is the most important value that the planet and other species, alongside human life as of equal value. So I think that we're pursuing a certain kind of metrics in architecture and we're serving those metrics that are completely broken. So I think coming back to the pedagogies within our school, it's really sort of going into the communities and understanding what value means to them because I think that at the moment, our value system is completely corrupted and it's been corrupted through, you know, I would say a bias within the canon. So again, it's this issue around the need to deconize and to make it more equitable in terms of its representation and content. But it's also about understanding that we are fast approaching a certain finitude around what we're doing. We cannot continue to sustain this level of exploitation and privileging and polarization of wealth. At some point, it will be a catastrophic collapse of what we're doing and it will be devastation for all species, not just ours. And it won't just be the poor that are affected, maybe the very few people at Swiver, you know, Bezos and his friends on the moon or Mars, wherever it is they're heading off to. Good luck with that. But you know, I would like to think that we can... I say, let them go. I say, let them go. Yeah, yeah. Let them fly away. And maybe we can make it better. So... But I think that's my point, you know, that it comes back to what value is in architecture. What's the value of what we produce? How do we measure that? We've always... You look at any piece of architectural commentary in most of the journals, value is all about anxiety over fees, anxiety over what we're paying, anxiety over market share, nervousness around the periphery of architecture and its purpose. Oh my God, you know, consultants are taking over our territory. I think we just need to start with understanding what value means and we do that through direct community engagement, both in professional and pedagogy. And totally. And I think, Iita, you teach at Pratt and also at SVA, which are probably very different experiences. What is your conversation with your students? I mean, your very hands on, your very hands on in your practice, you understand they also, I'm sure they talk about what Harriet is talking about humanity at the center of all of architecture and thinking about each other and thinking about diversity of humanity, of diversity of income and all of those things that we now have seen graphically play out on our television screens. So how do you approach the, and no, let me ask, what do your students tell you what they'd like to do? Because I'm really interested in where are they going with this knowledge? I mean, there's some amazing instruction being done at Pratt and other universities and really revealing a lot more about where architecture as the role is than it's been before. So tell us about your students. So I would say the, so every, so, you know, the fall studio that I run is the Delta Cities Coastal Resilience Studio and it's this transdisciplinary interdisciplinary studio. We have every sort of student in the School of Architecture represented, architects, planners, urban placemakers, sustainability experts. And after the sort of joy and research of the first five or six weeks, and it usually happens around mid-review, there becomes a moment of panic. And it's not just your typical architecture, school panic. It's almost like an existential crisis, which I think is incredibly important and classic in a way that what it's about is it's about that this group of students, 12, 15 students, all of various different disciplines, they've all been working maybe fairly individually and then they're slowly coming together and working more closely together. And then the last five or six weeks is when they had to gel as a group and really ferment their ideas across these boundaries. And the moment of panic is when they realize that that is incredibly hard to do and that they have to do it, right? And so, and sometimes I'm like, I'm gonna lock you in this room and eight hours later, we'll figure out what comes out of it. But I think what's beautiful and I've gotten the feedback is that, getting through that hurdle is very hard and when you're on the other side of it, three or four months later, there's an incredible reward and an understanding and a knowledge that that was a process that's necessary in order to get to this brighter future. And that process is what also needs to happen in our professional world, right? That's why I say like, this design is not neat, it's messy, right? And it's argumentative and it needs to be sort of a battle of minds coming together and who gets rights to which part of the design and how are you working and is it that the agricultural system is gonna take precedent and timeframe versus the energy? So it's, I think there are a lot of things to battle out and some of these questions are not easily solved but I find that the value of the discussion and the challenges that are there are real. I think that that's what's really important is that what happens out into the real world and the professional world is what we're sort of practicing within the classroom in the community-based, client-based work that we're doing. And very often that's another sort of fraud way of working is working with this community client and it doesn't, once again, it's messy. It's not always perfect. It's challenging. And yeah, and I find that incredibly rewarding once we get to the other side. So do they from the outset know that this is going to be a collaborative project and they will take on certain parts of it or how do you structure it? Because it sounds to me like a really great model for an architecture office where various knowledge groups come together and really begin to understand and design certain parts of it but maybe not the sort of sole God creator, but then- Right, there's no, yeah. There's no God in my classroom. But and actually we ask every studio to sort of self-determine how they want to work and that in and of itself is a part of the process. But very often, yeah, they're working in these groups and then those groups are working within the groups and it's a challenge whether or not they're coming up with like a holistic plan or are we coming up with scenario building where we're looking at, this is what this kind of future might look like, this is what this kind of future might look like. And so, but that's also a part of the process is that the students need to make some of those decisions on their own in relationship to what the client would like to see as a deliverable and that all of these are challenges but they are surmountable and they do have to work together. So they do know that it's all a collaborative process and very often we're making teams within the studios that are multidisciplinary even within the subgroups, right? And so- So is that within their expectation when they enter that class or do they think they're gonna do some fancy shmancy imaginary project and then argue for it in the crit session? I mean- I mean, it's expected, so it's part of the expectation but there is, I think what's, so my studio focuses not on three levels it's like creating a 2030, 20, 40 plan creating a 2060 plan and a 2100 plan it's the 2100 that is the hardest, right? And when you talk about imagination imagination is critical when we are looking at 2100 and I find it really hard for everybody what does 2100 look like? Seriously, like what does it look like? And I actually have my students read fiction at the very early stages of the studio in order to be able to start to use that imagination I find fiction writers I mean, I'm a big fiction reader and science fiction kind of but I find science fiction to loosen their brains a little bit because it's like, oh, this person imagine this crazy world and I'm like, is it so crazy? Like, could we actually go there? Could we build that? Could we get there? What's your, you know, sort of because fiction sometimes comes true, right? So what do they read? I mean, I need a reading list. It's more useful than I'm used to. I had them read the Kim Stanley Robinson 2140 book at the beginning of last term and they will read, I'm looking at a few other options for this term that are more emotional. Also, so you're seeking to sort of inject that humanity of storytelling and getting to know people and understanding behavior and all of that. So it's really helpful that I love that idea actually. Yeah, the idea of sort of just two semesters I've been doing it and to me like the fiction has, it's loosened everybody. So when they walk in on the first class they have already read it. And so their mind is already sort of spinning in a different direction. And I don't know. I mean, I'd be curious to hear how Claire gets her students to think about 2100. I find 2100 to be for even like our mayor's office can't quite think about what 2100 looks like, right? So, I think one of the ways that, I think that I haven't mentioned the word public space yet, which is unusual, but I think public space is really the kind of moment to basically, at least for architects and architectural students, they wanna be able to project to 2100, 2050, but I think in public space. Cause in a lot of ways, some of the other questions are more kind of in fictional literature, et cetera, et cetera. But the stories we're talking about, the systems, the understanding of the relationship of how we occupy something, will nature take over more? What chance are we gonna give our cities to change? Most of those questions really will become apparent in our attitude towards public space. Will we create more public space? Will the public space be taken over by interests that we can't intend? So, I always like in a way the stress in terms of studio is to try and get students to play out some of those questions, but explaining exactly how it's gonna work in public space. I was noticing one of the questions in the Q&A was about, what is the relationship between nature and the city? Will we get more? And I always like asking the question, which is if we didn't give people free places to store their cars all over the city, what would you do with that space? And we could plant forests. You imagine how much open green space you could get if basically you took even half the streets, people paid for parking and you could create green space. So, really the idea of this dichotomy between, we worry so much in architectural school, about buildings, but we don't worry enough about public space because that is actually where it affects more people than what the design at the top of the building is, or even how many stories it is. So, on that line of thought, Claire, I mean, how do we begin to talk about urban ecology? Because I think the New York Island itself is sort of, has been paved over to, like every other city, hiding all the natural resources, the brooks, the fields, the naturally growing vegetation that might occur, some things that reveals the place to the people who live there. How do you, and then Harriet, how do we begin to understand that that is important, that we are part of this natural world, we are not here to make a garbage that we do, we are here to understand how the world works and therefore relate to that natural world. How do you, as a practitioner, think about that idea of urban ecology? Well, I think that the roots of what we teach may be taught as sustainability, but really teaching architecture as understanding resources and then what is resource management is, in a way, looking at it much more systemically, which is, if you don't create waste, if you compost, if you salvage, if you do all of these things, then you don't have to worry about disposing it, it becomes part of the answer. So, assuming that buildings have embodied energy, they have functions and they also, many buildings are nature, whether it's birds or vines or whatever, are trying to occupy them. I mean, when you look at the early pictures of the High Line, Pete Adolf totally enhanced it, but he enhanced what he saw in the first place, which was nature finding its way. In a sense, we don't respect and acknowledge the work it takes, the labor force, to help nature be supported in cities. There's all sorts of ecology all over New York that is trying to be here, including birds, as they migrate every year. And a lot of them by the millions is really terrible things to those natural systems, but whether it's water or air, I think if architectural education and architects had a greater love for continuity and for wanting systems to be continuous and for our building systems to want to not stop things but let things flow, there would be a more ability for the planning systems and the urban design systems to really be reinvented, especially in dense cities. So Harriet, I mean, this is right up your alley. I mean, you talk about climate crisis, not climate change. You talk about defining and calling it for what it is, and you are in the middle of this generation, and then also the new generation that you're trying to recruit from public schools and have them create a love of architecture in the built environment and the natural environment. So how do you define all of this and how do you begin to understand with your students, for your students, about architecture relationship to the earth and its functions? Yeah, sorry, just checking us, meet friendly. Yeah, I mean, it's, well, for one, we try to do a very auto-didactic model, we're shifting more towards an auto-didactic model of teaching, and what that means is that students are very much co-authors of the curriculum. So we're trying to give them more agency within the school, they now have their own budget, their own lecture series, for example, from next year, there'll be student deans at Pratt. So there'll be, in every single school, there'll be an assistant student dean working directly with the dean's office, so that in addition to student council representation, we have students at the table with deans making major decisions about the direction of the school. And of course, what auto-didacticism does is it allows students to bring the issues that matter to them to the table. And it's very interesting, now realizing, for example, that veganism is a really big part of the conversations I'm having with my students, and I just want to talk about that in relation to Claire's point around land mass. So, for example, a vegan needs something like an 18th and what a meat eater needs in terms of land. There are 40,000 acres of rooftop in New York, I'll never mind all the facades and the intermediary spaces and car parks we could convert into agricultural land. One of the issues we're facing is imagining that nature or the natural world is actually also farming because it really isn't. So if we're serious about climate change, we need to start thinking about the architecture of the countryside as we broadly understand it. So that means understanding that there's hardly any natural habitat left. And it has a major implications for carbon sinking and just broader ecological sustainability, bees, et cetera, et cetera, all these bigger issues. And start looking at how we start shifting cities towards more autonomous forms of growing, that means that the burdens on the countryside, aka agriculture, become reduced. So it's about repurposing cities, environments, it's the streets and it's the facades and it's the roofscapes, but it's also about understanding that what we choose to eat has a major impact as well. And I think that, obviously I'm a vegan, I'm doing a promo for veganism because it's unavoidable that what we eat is a major part of the conversation. And architects, again, are just not really confronting that conversation either and it needs to be centered, I think, in the dialogue. So let's see, Maria, I mean, you're studying ecology, you're thinking about this. How are you thinking about this kind of integration of the built environment with nature, natural environment? I think both Claire and Harriet are very clear on the mission because it has to be expanded and has to grow, it has to be understood. And right now, I'm not sure that we have an understanding. How do you begin to talk about that to your fellow students, to your teachers, to your future clients? Initially, I find it very interesting. One of the recent thoughts that I've been having is about the whole quarantine and the COVID-19 and how we've been hearing all these news about how, I mean, some of these are fake news about how nature is returning to the cities and all this wildlife sort of captured in all the streets, which a lot of it is not true necessarily, but it's interesting to see how a few measures and changes in lifestyle have actually resulted in a different sort of a built environment or different environmental effects, especially in urban environments. A lot of studies were sort of focused on on how air pollution was decreased because of the quarantine in a lot of urban environments and kind of created healthier places to live. And this is a very kind of a strange effect in a sense. And so actually one of the things that I was personally sort of worrying about in these sort of recent events is that all these measures now have been taken to kind of constrain the COVID-19 and constrain the pandemic for the purpose of public health. But it seems that this isn't the case necessarily. Like they didn't take all these measures to reduce air pollution, they took all these measures to reduce the pandemic, but this has happened. And I'm wondering what the effects of healthier urban environments have to do with people and whether there's a way that maybe we can create a system of, I mean, a lot of people are working from home and maybe that's resulting to lower, to better atmosphere for cities. So, I mean, are there ways that we can kind of reconsider our built environments in a way that they create healthier places for cities? So I think it was an unintended consequence definitely of staying at home, but it has dramatically shown the world that all that pollution is not as necessary as it should be. I mean, look at the new plans for Milan and how they're opening up some of the streets and how they're creating bike lanes and car free streets in certain areas of the city. So I mean, already there is urban planning based on the new knowledge. And Gitta, how do you see this, not just with your students, but with your clients in sort of bringing together some of the things that we learned as a result of this pandemic. And at the same time, how do we go forward with this knowledge in a way that is very familiar now, but then it has to be reinforced by someone who actually talks about the built environment. So I mean, I wanted to bring up the, yeah, I think that's something that with COVID that has been amazing is that pre-COVID when we would sort of say like, oh, imagine if X and the response you would get would be like, no, not possible. It's just not possible. Humans will not stay home for a month, six weeks. No way, don't even think about it. And now it's like, well, we've already done that, right? So I was like, oh, imagine if we went back to 1960s European model where like nobody went away, like nobody did anything for the month of August. It's actually kind of inconceivable, but now it's like, oh, maybe that's conceivable. It's a hot month, right? In Italy in the 1600s, you didn't stay in your house in Florence. You went to your countryside house, whether you were rich, poor, everybody went. And the reason why was because it was much cooler. And so you could sustain a much better lifestyle if you were not in the heat of Florence. So imagine if in August, like we kind of just all shut down and we actually took four weeks and we're with our families and we're relaxed and we were all in cooler places. I'm reading about the history of the Jersey Shore from a climate change professor perspective actually. And much of the Jersey Shore was built for inner city, middle income to low income workers that needed to escape the heat in the month of August. Maybe that's not what it looks like now, but that was some of the original intentionality behind it. So just starting to question these things that we said, absolutely not. Now it's like, hmm, maybe yes or yes. So I'm working on a street closure plan with community activists in Red Hook. And last year it was like, close the streets, are you crazy? And now DOT is literally asking what street should we be closing? So that's really encouraging though, because also the fact that the subway system is getting cleaned up relatively well. And the fact that it is a valued urban way of getting around and it's just not just utilitarian. So I mean, already there's a new appreciation and not a lot because it's a founded or inner appreciation, but the fact that it's killing people because it's so dirty and it's a horrible place to be. But I think now we're beginning to see that these things do have value if they are maintained differently, if the streets are maintained differently, planned differently and include some of the natural world in it and include some of the fact that as they said in Milan, cars don't go shopping, people do. And it's a very interesting time to kind of figure out how a new generation will be thinking about these things. I think one maybe last question to Harriet. So we know that especially in New York and in other cities where we have done some terrible, terrible things to the African-American and the Latino community in terms of urban planning and how we use land and what we place in their neighborhoods. And we have created really unhealthy environments and also not schools that are not strong enough to educate evenly between white suburbia and inner urban neighborhoods. So I mean, what is your, in your sort of outreach to New York schools, what is your plan to have inclusion because this is really becoming very important for us to think about how the future generation learns to love the fact that architecture is a great place to be and architecture is a great practice and it's a worthwhile one. Well, first of all, I wouldn't assume that architecture is a great and worthwhile practice. I think that it's always, if you like, based on certain contingencies and that's about our relevance and our impact. So I think we shouldn't get complacent about thinking that we're an infinite discipline. For one, with the amalgamation of multiple disciplines, a bit like a fraught love child between multiple epistemologies. So there's not really a discipline at what we do because we absorb so many other disciplines and knowledge bases and everything else. We're kind of a practice principally and we've added some philosophy to rack up the integrity of what we do. And to some extent that theorization in some ways has mystified what we do because that was, I think, a bit of a delusional reach towards making what we do sound sophisticated and clever. So I think in some ways we need to un-stitch some of that arrogance we've assumed, that kind of privileging that we've created for ourselves, to distinguish ourselves and really go back to understanding that if we are not able to reflect the people that we're serving there, we're not gonna do it very well. That we need to actually, we need a much more representative, if you like, community within both education and professional practice. And the way to do that was multiple ways. We talked a bit about the early education. But K through 12 is just one example. In high schools and particularly in Brooklyn where we do a lot of our K through 12 work, it's really about encouraging kids who wouldn't necessarily, whose parents have never had the opportunity to go to college. So their aspirations and their confidence about applying to do any kind of program at college, we have to really work against shifting what they feel that they're capable of doing. So this isn't just about spatial design, this is about kind of understanding the value of somebody's contribution. It's about making sure that kids feel that they have, they could grow up to be people who are not just, if you like, the recipients of architecture, but the authors of architecture. So it's about really about playing with this power dynamic. I think one of the problems is that, and it's a preoccupation, I think all schools have at the moment is, I'm gonna always, until I advocate for free education, because I think that while schools, of course, have no choice but to charge tuition unless they're extraordinarily wealthy and offer multiple scholarships, fundamentally, until we start making it fair and equal for everyone to enter higher education, we can do all the outreach we want, we can shift our pedagogy and our curriculum in all kinds of ways, but we're not going to address the fundamental problem. And that is the education is right and not privileged. So I think that coming back into schools, the risk we run with K-312 is of course, building aspirations that then become unaffordable for a particular demographic. So I think we must continue to campaign for freedom of access to education, not just by engaging young people in seeing a potential career in architecture in the future, but by carrying that right the way through to an affordable education at college level. And I think that is a challenge that we're all facing. It's not a burden that the schools carry. It's not a decision that they can take. It has to come from government. It has to come from some form of structural leadership, which at the moment is presently lacking, unfortunately. So we have to do our best, but that's really what I think architectural thinking could do. It could focus more on basically redefining, redesigning what the infrastructure of educational provision is. And it's all the way through K-312 right up to the government and the policymakers who impose upon us the obligation of making education expensive and unaffordable to many, many people. And that's the core of this diversity challenge since the beginning of your question related to the communities who continue to be excluded from education. And that's the problem. We need the mandate from government. Otherwise we can keep thrashing away in the shallow end, but we're not gonna get there. We're just not gonna get there. So here we are. And I think the time is ticking away. And I really do think that I'm not defining architecture the way it used to be. I don't care about that architecture, frankly. I care about what you guys are doing. And it's really, really important. I mean, there's a dialogue there. There's a new set of muscles that are being developed. There's an understanding of people, communities, cultures. It's, and then technology also. And all of those things that architects have embraced and not really the people part is sort of missing in a lot of practice. But I think what you guys bring to the conversation is absolutely essential in creating this new way of looking at architecture. And frankly, I think those kids in any urban school would love to be architects the way you define it. I mean, can you imagine? You know, sometimes I read about these exercises where the kids go around their neighborhoods and try to fix some things. And figure out how it would work better with the guidance and with the collaboration of a really sensitive architect. And everybody's doing some really great stuff. So I just think that there's so much more room for growth and improvement. And so your programs at Pratt and I think your practices speak to this. And it certainly is, you know, Gita's work in with the studio and the community. And so is Claire's work is really, really important for us to consider as models, models of a new way of practicing architecture and inclusive way. And maybe in the process we could actually begin to solve the climate crisis. Because I think we are now beginning to understand what we gain by not having all those cars and what it feels like to be in the city when you can actually walk or ride a bike without obstruction. And so I just think that we're poised. And I hope that you all will initiate some programs and we'll start also working with the city. I think there are some people in the city government that really want to hear from you. So, and I want to make sure that you are heard. So I think our time is up. Yes, somebody tell me. Yes, we are now in the Q&A. We're in the Q&A. Yeah, Q&A. So we've had some really great questions in the chat. I've responded to a couple, but there are others. You want to read some of them because so. Oh, sure. Yeah. I think it's weird. Doing, there's one question about living indoors for long hours. How are we rethinking the interior built environment? And in the last couple of weeks there's been a lot of blog postings on let's bring back balconies. As an idea and also just kind of reflecting on that many pre-air conditioning, free kind of massive use of fossil fuels, buildings were supposed to be more adaptable for people, blinds through ventilation. But I think architects have been producing and some of this under the guise of energy efficiency, some really bad buildings for the COVID era, where there's no through ventilation, where you can't open windows. So in terms of bringing the outside in, that I think it's a big question. And something hopefully that both the academic and the practitioners are going to start pushing back on this idea that it's cheaper not to have natural ventilation or to do layouts. Or even look at all the office buildings we have with no natural ventilation. Well, and also I'm reading all of this stuff about how the building systems have to keep working even though nobody's in there because the air turns into poison and it becomes a real danger to be in there. So I think the way buildings are designed, skyscrapers are designed, I'm not against skyscrapers, I love being high up in the off the earth. But I think it might be really interesting to think about how does the building respond to its climate? How is it angled? How is it located? Where is the green roof or the balconies or the green facade or some other things that are being in Singapore, they're trying to do that really well. So there needs to be a lot more discussion about that. And at the same time, the interior has to support this quarantining. I mean, I live in a shoebox and it's okay. I mean, I think what's also really important to think about is active versus passive design. And there's this whole passive house movement. I really don't like the word passive because I think that buildings that are both sustainable or regenerative require a human to be activated within their own environment. And it's not about the passivity of your house or your home or your building. It's actually about you taking initiative to open the window, close the blind, move furniture around on a seasonal basis. Like really thinking about how we occupy our own environments actively. And usually these kinds of buildings that are very passive or environmentally sensitive work incredibly well in an emergency situation, whether it's a hurricane, a blackout, a COVID situation. And so we're sort of building in multiple benefits beyond just the day-to-day livability. And I personally, it's sort of this like smart home, the electrified, not the electrified home, electrification is good, but the smart home, everything being within a network, the minute your system goes down, you still wanna be able to open your refrigerator, right? You still wanna be able to open your garage door. So I find this hyper need to have everything be sort of futuristic in that way to be almost slightly dangerous when we are facing emergency situations. So that's just something to think about when you're looking at your interiors. Like how do we make them humanly activated? I wanted just to address and link to what Gita was talking about, collaborative studios and interiors. And I think that our studios do have to be more collaborative. There's a great anecdote about how at University of Arizona, they were trying to do a system that used less air conditioning, evaporative cooling and stuff. And the biggest for law school, and the biggest problem they found was all the law professors wanted to wear suits. Yes. You know? In other words. You remember the collo, you learn the collo in the... So it seems like fashion. And also there is, I saw someone posted a, something unrelated to climate change, but a something they found in the Met, this terrain. Well, it used to be that people would put a block of ice. Right. Middle of their table. Right. Make this incredibly visa pottery where you would just cool where you were having dinner. So I feel like you're totally right on. I don't know who posted this about why interior designers aren't truly in collaborative studios, but maybe we need to be having collaborative studios that are really from clothing to household objects to everything because the solution is about human beings being able to, whether it's restorative or adaptable, not having, not just have our buildings be like a Swiss army knife of every possibility. I don't know. I think that sounds really good because the thing is, I mean, everything shouldn't be a technical solution. I'm sorry. I mean, we're in this stage where everybody's talking about, you know, we're on Zoom and everybody's saying, well, everything's gonna be digital from now on. You know, where's the humanity? Where's the touch, the feel, the hug, the whatever? I mean, I just think that there's so much to us as creatures that we need our environments to reflect us. And all of this, I mean, the materials that you use, the building materials, the furnishing materials, a lot of that stuff is off-gassing. A lot of that stuff is chemically based. Some of it is not good for you. I mean, we really need to reconsider our material palette in addition to everything else. Any other questions that I can't read because I moved my questions to the side so I can see the panel? There's one about gender, which is quite fun. I might scroll up and answer that. Hold on a second. Andrew, I don't know, maybe not. James, actually, he asked us because we're a panel of all women, if you might wanna speak about that for a moment. So I'm quite happy to do that. I'm gonna paste into the chat a very interesting resource which is the D Colonial Atlas of the World, which explains that the top 100 companies killing the planet are unsurprisingly led by male CEOs. Similarly, if you look at the COVID crisis, if your leader is a female, you're less likely to die right now because the lowest death rates are in countries led by women. Similarly with the banking crisis in 2008, Iceland sent all of its male CEOs of banks to prison, which is frankly what the world should have done. So I think it's a really interesting question around, like of course, normally there is an aspiration to have a representative panel and it's not just always gender, evidently got regional diversity within our groups. But I think it is about understanding that, when these microcosms of all female panels occur, we're swimming, the disproportionate conversations are really being run by a white male demographic and that's one of the main problems. So it's kind of nice to be in a situation where we're a token or female panel, but we are still a token, right? So I think it's interesting that now that we're a group of women having this conversation, I think it's very interesting hearing from everybody about a sort of shift in perspective away from, potentially what you were talking about, Susan, is kind of, I would say, over belief in maybe technologies and things like that. I don't want to start turning it into a technology, it's gendered conversation, but you just need to look at how many women are running technology companies. In fact, it's 3% in the US in case you're wondering, to get a sense of, is technology gendered? The answer is yes. But it's very interesting to me, this whole kind of idea about representation and what we do to address it more generally. And I think that, again, coming back to this question that James Nichols has put forward, that there isn't, I think there's a study to be done really that understands what cooperativism and collectivism could look like in architecture. I think there's been a sampling of that form of business model before, but it's not been the one that's been favoured or supported or become predominant. I do think we are looking at ways of understanding architecture as much more interdisciplinary, much more connected to the communities that it seeks to serve. So I think that's a bigger conversation for another debate, but I think it's nice that in the chat anyway, there's a whole dialogue happening, which is turning into its very own resource book. So I think for the other participants in this conversation, it's worthwhile saving some really great references from Ariane and other people. So I think, yeah, I would hold onto that material. It's very interesting. And thank you all for sharing it. Any other questions that pop up? There was a question that just popped up about how can these ideas be scaled up in a way that can benefit all levels of society. I think many of these wonderful ideas are quite expensive there for an essay accessible to most people. Wasn't low income housing developed to be very cost effective by cramming in a maximum of people into cookie cutter. So I think that the issue of cost and sort of kind of how does architecture and design kind of make a argument and present the story of what total cost is. What is the cost to society, for example, of not training people to build well, of not making buildings that are large enough that if there is a crisis and you're a family of six, you can't actually socially distant or you can't take care of someone. What's the cost of being isolated without adequate access to light and air, for example. So I feel like we've spent the last number of decades looking at cost through only one metric. And one thing kind of our tools of or even our economic analysis tools can actually help us both teach and raise the issues of what's the real cost of something and therefore what are the trade-offs and how do larger groups of people are able to participate in making choices. Yeah, and I just wanna add to Claire's comment that in those costs, ecological costs are not... Ecological costs, yeah. So ecological, within the real estate industry there are no ecological costs. And I think that if we had that be a part of the formula when I don't wanna use the word formula, then, and for instance, like the costs of what things will look like in a hundred years or maintenance costs or operations costs, if those were put into the standardized formulaic, we would have a very different world, very, very different world. And that's the difference between paving with blacktop from Home Depot versus paying for the poorest pavers that are more expensive, but they're open grid and they create low albedo and stormwater retention. But all of those other costs are not in the formula of the lifetime of that parking lot. So I do have a question about that because I think you're absolutely right, but how does that begin to, how does the cost begin to be reconfigured? Because you as architects have a lot to say about how do you do the cost accounting for some of the work that you do. I mean, Claire, can you figure out what are the steps toward this more equitable and more sensitive cost accounting? Well, I think that actually the Green New Deal kind of outlines some of this, which is that we have a way of quantifying those costs and certain cities like New York used to not okay things until they looked at a full long-term cost to the city, especially if the city was paying for it. But in most cases development, those costs are just thrown on to later generations. Or constituencies, tenants. Exactly. But one thing to think about, especially because banks are top of mind, is that what if in order to bore money for doing a project, you actually had to show what your long-term costs were. What if you had to in fact, invest in jobs that were longer term. And if those were conditions of boring money, I think you would find that economic propositions would be very, very different. So I think through our tax policies, through our mortgage and loan policies, there is a lot of tools to basically create the right kind of market for a more equitable development and a more equitable city. Right. I think that the siloing of the development process is also the problem. So if it is a company or a business that is building their own building for a specific period of time, and they know that their workers will be on site to make a healthy workplace makes sense for them. But if it is a developer that builds the building that then is rented out and leased out to another company, that division happens, and then those costs are not directly put together into the same thing. Right. You know, carbon tax, insurance companies, you know, why are we still insuring our low-lying floodline buildings, right? And so insurance has a huge role to play in the way that these costs are equated. I mean, our insurance, you know, industry is still dates, like the process and the methodologies date back to the 20s at this point still, right? So that hasn't caught up to the environmental, yeah. I mean, it's clear, someone mentioned carbon tax. It is very clear that if we had a national carbon tax that linked to a global one, then the money that in fact gets collected from those carbon taxes would be there to pay for many, many things that are required to make the world that we're all describing happen. So therefore, that would give you the means to develop the kinds of housing, food production, you know, local, even kind of promote the kinds of businesses, give people fair shares. But without doing that, it's gonna be very difficult to see where that money is gonna come from. But a carbon tax would really be a great thing for all of us. So it seems like the idea of build back better applies to a lot of things, including economics. Because I think all the, it seems like all the systems have been called to question. And now it's the time to come in with these ideas and start exploring how it could be. Claire, can you think about a project that you're working on that this would work on? Or how would you put this into practice? Well, I think a lot of the even short term projects that we're doing with bids related to public space both post COVID, the reality of what it's gonna take to get businesses back, how we're gonna rethink streets is a huge opportunity to de-emphasize the car, to provide new, even new grants and new ways for people to do business. I mean, already, if you look at New York City is gonna have to reinvent its way. So we were, before I remember, we were all talking about how national chains were taking over different neighborhoods and local businesses and we're having a hard time competing in the rents were escalating. I think there's gonna be a huge opportunity now with so much that with commercial real estate having to reinvent itself. That I think that more architects, more designers, more all of us being part of our communities can, this is a moment in time that I think what ground floors are and what the sidewalks are can be really reinvented. So I think we're all, and in many projects we're doing right now are really looking for that opportunity to change the discussion. And that's in New York City with a number of bids we're working with, but that's also in places like Davenport, Iowa where we're doing a main streets plan or Captiva, Florida to kind of look at, how do you adapt even older buildings to kind of not just turn on the air conditioner and expect it to work forever when our dew point may change in the next 10 years? So who's your client at Davenport? I mean, is that? It's the city, that is the city. So there is some sort of forward thinking in on the city level. Absolutely, and I think all parts of the country, different cities, cities themselves all over the country are in a sense the ones that very much have been having this discussion for a while who really see all across the nation. I mean, look at Atlanta, they did the belt line and that in itself has been a discussion about public health, public space. So the other thing I would say is what's important is that every project be seen not as an end in itself but as an opportunity for those communities and everyone to actually start something new. When you look at the time we're in, projects are not about ends, they really have to be about creating some new knowledge and not just about that box called the project. So for all of you who ever wants to pipe in on this, where is the most sort of fertile ground for something like this? Is it city management? Is it planning? Is it investors? I mean, where is that willingness to reconsider all of these systems that have been outdated for a long time and are not working and are in fact destructive? Is there someone seeing something in the kind of line of responsibility that we could say, okay, we can go after these collaborators because they're willing and we can experiment? Well, I mean, just to start off on the mayor thing, I mean, I feel like mayors and governors are really important now when you look at Paris and Hedogo and the kind of leadership you're seeing there as well as the mayor of Milan, it really points to the fact that leaders of organizations, whether it's universities or whether it's cities, I think they're really the best, we hope the best partners for seizing this opportunity to change the world at this point, not just to put the world back where it was six months ago. Anyone else with some wisdom on the board? I mean, I wanna say as much as I'm an advocate for doing community work and getting down and dirty and working super hard in your own backyard and trying to get what you can get done, policy has to change and without true good leadership that is helping to open the pathway and open the gates to be able to roll out what the community's designs are, what the sort of momentum is at that community-based level without those leadership avenues. And I would even say within the federal government as well, it's very choked and there's really only so much you can do and then there's sort of like a ceiling. And so I agree, I think that the governorships and the mayorships are critical and important. I'm not sure we have the right leadership at the moment to really transform ourselves as radically as what we want to do, but when you have a federal government that is literally working against the mandate of what we're trying to do, it just makes it all that much harder or nearly impossible to actually achieve the full vision or the full pathway forward. So, yeah, I feel like sort of you can only swim so far against the tide. But it's really interesting because look at how many governors and mayors have stepped up without federal leadership. So I think there's something to build on here, right? No, no, and that I totally agree with that. But then you have to understand that there are federal rules and regulations that govern our Clean Water Act, our Clean Air Act that then allow for very serious harm against our environment to be taken. And then we as a community have zero power because those rules and regulations have been completely devoided. So there's, you can't do one without the other, I feel like, and we need those rules and regulations and policies in place at the federal level to make the mandate so that way communities can advocate for clean water and then use those mandates to be able to enforce that. I mean, I think I just wanna put in a pitch though, also for the power of imagination and the project, like for example, even though this is may or may not be the time, but if there was a way to swim in the East River now this summer without opening indoor pools, like the floating pool idea, plus whatever. And because being kind of creating a way for people to really access cities and access their environments without private cars, but to connect with the water, connect to nature. I think is one project can capture people's imagination. I think that's the power of architecture and design is to hope whether it's making a street into a playground or having outdoor dining all summer somewhere or whatever we invent, even though it may only be a pilot has the power to change people's minds. And then, so like, I think those, you know, people call them pilot projects or experiments. I think that's just super important that we don't, that we keep all of us keep trying to make things that demonstrate what's possible. And I just want to say that I think to answer the question about where is this kind of change going to come from? Which group, which discipline, which sector? I think it's actually going against the idea of it being any one discipline or sector. It's not about, as Agita said earlier, it's not about you going back to the silos and expecting a leader to emerge from some rarefied sub-discipline. It's actually about what we do collectively and it's, we need to look at leadership in the same way. You know, leadership needs to diversify and be less about hierarchies and more about co-leadership and basically the devolution of power to much more power sharing among communities between architects or the designers, between designers and the community. And also understand that architecture isn't just about places, it's about policy that we need to start understanding unless we start redesigning the infrastructure of the funding for things and the policies that determine how and what we do. We're not really going to be able to do much within the tiny bandwidth that's allowed to any kind of spatial designer who are forced to labor under policies that are serving a very limited, the needs and interests are very limited for you. There you go. It's perfect. That's a really great way to say that I think all of you are a stand to make enormous contributions you already have. And I just think that there's something to look forward to here. And so education, people who are in education are certainly assuring that there's a future for this kind of thinking. And I'm sure your students love this. I just don't, I mean, all of you teach. I know Claire teaches. I know Gita, I mean, every one of you must be encouraged by your students. I hope you are, are you? Yeah. And also by the panel, the attendees, sorry, you've been phenomenal, great questions, a lot of knowledge sharing. This is exactly the spirit of what we're talking about here that we have to work collectively if we're going to make a difference. And it's really encouraged by the ecology of the dialogue. It's the only, it's one of the only benefits of Zoom. Right, one of the only benefits. And in a typical panel, you wouldn't get so much great sort of interesting talking points and feedbacks. Yeah, this was the most fascinating Zoom I have ever been to, I have to say. And we can have the conversation continue. I know this discussion has been so thought provoking for everyone. And I know we're just getting to the start of it. So thank you, Susan, and to all of our panelists. And thank you all for joining and getting so involved in the conversation. We have set up a separate Zoom meeting for anyone who is still able to and would like to continue the conversation with a few of our panelists. We'll post that link in the chat box shortly. So feel free to join that and continue the conversation. Thank you all again. And we hope to see you on Zoom soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thank you. You are all wonderful. Thanks, Susan. You're my leaders. Thank you. Yeah, I do actually have to go to work. I'm really sorry, but it's lovely. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it. So nice to see you all again. All right, cheerio. Maria, fantastic. Yeah. Thank you very much. This is great. Thank you. We're gonna keep checking in on what you're working on. I mean, what a great moment to be doing the degree that you're working on. Absolutely. It's wonderful, really. It's wonderful. Thank you. And this was very inspiring. Definitely watching you. We'll be looking for your name. Completely. Great. Well, great to talk to you, Claire and Susan also. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Bye. Bye.