Psychology as a Design Tool?

By Jesse Miller

What tools can architects develop through research on psychology and social issues to more deeply understand clients and context, and to better address social problems? How can architects better work toward addressing social problems? By more deeply understanding and engaging clients and context.

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Launching our sustainABLEhouse Initiative

Watch for future posts about sustainABLEhouse.

In 2006 we convened a conversation about housing in Dallas and challenged the current thinking to engage design as the tool to bring about methods and solutions addressing equity in our city. The title of those conversations was sustainABLEhouse.

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bcFELLOW Jesse Miller surveys potentials lots with client.

bcFELLOW Jesse Miller surveys potentials lots with client.

Echoing that great dialogue, we have created under the same name an effort to provide design services to any family that wants to build and own an affordable and efficient home within the central neighborhoods of Dallas.  This work is defined by the financial interests of the family with bcWORKSHOP willing to take on any budget no matter how modest. sustainABLEhouse is an effort engaging families normally outside traditional ownership choices in our city. While upfront budgets drive the program, we will not stop there.  Specific consideration will be directed toward the life-cycle costing of the home with design crafting a durable and energy efficient house supporting the financial interests of the family.

This work is in direct response to the estimated 30,000 plus affordable homes that are still needed in Dallas (Mayor’s Task Force on Affordable Housing). The success of sustainABLEhouse is not marked solely on affordability; rather, it is driven by a set of principles specific to Dallas: enhance neighborhood vitality; practice environmental sustainability; increase market capacity of affordable housing; influence perceptions and practices of affordable housing; promote intelligent and informed financing; and design for beauty, scale, and adaptability. The design of each sustainABLEhouse is a participatory process with the client and their neighborhood ensuring needs and opportunities are being identified and addressed.

The role of bcWORKSHOP at the beginning of a sustainABLEhouse is to work with the client to define and agree on the tasks that need to be completed, when they need to be completed, and who will take on the necessary responsibilities. Early tasks include selecting a property, which bcWORKSHOP and the client work on together, and securing financing, which the client is responsible for. bcWORKSHOP and the client continue the process well after the home is completed by participating in home performance testing.

Infographic that demonstrates the design process.

Infographic that demonstrates the design process.

City Builder Lab

Learn more about POP Dallas.

In the summer of 2012 bcWORKSHOP partnered with Big Thought's Thriving Minds camp to launch the pilot toolkit + labs initiative. Using Dallas' historic Fair Park as a testing ground, middle school students engaged in a series of discovery, making and sharing-based learning exercises. Through these sessions, dubbed the City Builder Lab, students engaged with the historical, physical and social components of Fair Park. They examined the local environments within the park through the lense of a city builder, identifying problems and offering solutions as informed advocates of the park.

Culinary Arts Program

Learn more about our work in Dallas.

Early in 2012, bcWORKSHOP led a community engagement process to inform the design of Lincoln High School Entrepreneurial Culinary Arts Program, a new pilot project created by local nonprofit Get Healthy Dallas and the Dallas Independent School District to address health and economic development in South Dallas.

The program stems from research undertaken by Stacy Cherones and the SMU Ethics Design Team. After connecting with Robert Foster, a South Dallas community advocate, and the Turner Twelve, a student mentoring program made up of twelve high school students at Lincoln High School, the research team developed a detailed understanding of the dynamics of food access, preparation, and sharing in the focus community. The team recommended piloting a four-year culinary arts program with an emphasis on nutrition, business and entrepreneurship. Dallas Independent School District agreed to pilot this concept at Lincoln High School, and the program will accept its first students starting in the fall semester of 2012.

bcWORKSHOP partnered with Peter Brown Architects, a local firm with extensive experience in school design, to plan and run six design workshops with project stakeholders including students, faculty, staff, school district officials and community members. In the first set of workshops, participants created a set of statements that define the project’s crucial elements and create accountability in the design process. Following a tour of high school culinary programs in Frisco, Allen and North Dallas, participants worked in groups to develop boards that represent the identity of the program and identify important relationships to consider within both the school and the surrounding neighborhood. Ultimately, the stakeholders created 15 different visions for the core program facilities.

This work provided direction for a design that can be completed in several different phases as funding allows. The core program facilities include a demonstration kitchen, professional kitchen, and restaurant, and are the minimum required for a successful program. They can be expanded to provide support spaces for the program, while adjacent classrooms can be allocated to create a learning community within the larger school. The renovation will transform the existing, outdated facilities into spaces that resemble real working conditions in the culinary industry, facilitate collaborative learning in a 21st Century environment, and build on Lincoln’s rich history within the community.

The [Short] History

By Emily Axtman

Harlingen, TX is located in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which is comprised of 4 counties: Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy and Cameron. Both Harlingen and Brownsville are in Cameron County.  Harlingen, 30 miles west of the Gulf of Mexico and 15 miles north of the US / Mexico border, enjoys warm (or hot in August) gulf breezes and plenty of tropical vegetation — my favorite being the Sabal palm tree.

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Toolkit + Labs

Learn more about POP Dallas.

The toolkit + labs is a component of the POP Dallas public design effort to strengthen our city's neighborhoods.  It is a mechanism that builds collective understanding and awareness of the historical, physical and social complexities of a place and empowers people to advocate for their own cultural sustainability.

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The toolkit is an evolving strategy for how people can become engaged with the places they live. It can be about discovering our family history, sharing stories or making a garden. The toolkit is as much a recognition of human nature as it is a strategy for building and empowering individuals. It is a recognition of the many ways we give meaning to the things around us and of the ways we strive to position ourselves in the environment.

Through acts of discovering, sharing and making, the toolkit promotes engagement at the scale of the house, the street, the neighborhood and the city. Together the components build a laboratory — a living workshop — where people can begin to more clearly reveal the places they live.

Click here to see the full toolkit.

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Dallas to Brownsville

By Emily Axtman

My name is Emily Axtman and I've been a bcFELLOW for 8 months at bcWORKSHOP, Since November, I've been working on the La Hacienda Casitas project, a low income housing development in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV). I've been lucky enough to work on this project from schematic design through to the construction documents and am now following the project down to Harlingen (where the project is breaking ground in one week!) to be a part of the construction process first-hand.

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Cedars West Arts Festival

Learn more about POP Dallas and Neighborhood Stories.

In a fine example of People Organizing Place, the businesses along Rock Island Street in the Cedars neighborhood of Dallas recently put on the Cedars West Arts Festival to showcase the improvements they’ve made to their area. bcWORKSHOP showed up with our 40-foot Gatu (shipping container) gallery to exhibit photos and stories of the area’s past and engage visitors about their neighborhoods.

Named for the Rock Island Railroad that was extended to serve the area, Rock Island Street was developed from the river bottom reclaimed after the construction of the levees channelizing the Trinity River. Framed by the old meanders and conceived as an industrial area, the street remains populated by recyclers and architectural salvage companies. Working to share how existing buildings and businesses can be a part of change, property owners initiated a public art campaign and organized a street festival to spread neighborly good will.

In addition to displaying photos and stories about Rock Island, bcWORKSHOP collected neighborhood stories from dozens of attendees who told us what they love about where they live. Despite the June heat, the street was bustling with people buying found objects, enjoying the art and music while stopping in to provide valuable input informing our POP City Map.

Check out the video of the stories collected at the Cedars Arts Festival below, and watch for the latest version of the new City Map!

sustainABLEhouse - 2006 Symposium

The following is taken from the 2006 sustainABLEhouse program.  The event, presented by the bcWORKSHOP in partnership with the Dallas Architecture Forum was one of the first activities we did. Enjoy this look back.

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In 1996, the Carnegie Foundation in their report, Building Community, asked the question:

“Will U.S. cities be centers of civilization or decay, and will American children inherit a wholesome physical environment that promotes heath and prosperity?”

Buildings provide a framework for daily life and reflect values of cities in which people live. In 2005, only 2% of homebuyers worked with an architect and if Dallasites are going to meet the demands of growing urban areas and provide quality affordable housing, then architects, planners, builders, and residents must engage a new way of architectural practice.

Over the next twenty-five years, North Texas will grow by more than 4 million people, and according to The City of Dallas Mayor’s Task Force on Affordable Housing, there is a current need for over 30,000 new homes. The way in which Dallas builds to meet this demand must be reevaluated to provide all individuals with healthy, sustainable living communities.

The first in a series of conversations, sustainABLEhouse will engage individuals in relevant discussion about building affordable housing for the citizens of Dallas. The assembled group of architects, builders, planners, developers, city officials, and activists will examine national best practices and local opportunities for achieving social and economic benefits through community design practices. Panelists and topics for this symposium include:

National Best Practices, with Michael Pyatok, FAIA, affordable housing architect based in Oakland, California and principal of Pyatok Architects, Alexander Garvin, urban planner, developer, and consultant of the national firm Alex Garvin & Associates, Rick Lowe, artist, activist, and founder of Project Row Houses in Houston, Texas, and moderated by Donald Gatzke, Dean of the School of Architecture at University of Texas at Arlington.

Community Design, with Scott Ball, architect and President of the Association for Community Design Brent A. Brown, Dallas architect and founder of bcWORKSHOP.

Local Opportunities, with Hank Lawson, executive director of SouthFair Community Development Corporation, John Greenan, executive director of Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, and moderated by W. Mark Gunderson, Fort Worth architect, educator, and critic.

NEA Awards bcW Our Town Grant

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announces 80 Our Town grant awards totaling $4.995 million and reaching 44 states and the District of Columbia. bcWORKSHOP will receive $50,000 for Activating Vacancy, a collaborative effort to engage residents in the positive development of Dallas’s Historic Tenth Street District. Through Our Town, the NEA supports creative placemaking projects that help transform communities into lively, beautiful, and sustainable places with the arts at their core. The grantee projects will improve quality of life, encourage creative activity, create community identity and a sense of place, and help revitalize local economies. All Our Town grant awards were made to partnerships that consisted of a minimum of a nonprofit organization and a local government entity.

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Dating back to the post-Civil War era, the Tenth Street District of Dallas, Texas, is the city’s most intact Freedman’s Town—between 1865 and 1867, a group of former slaves were deeded ten acres of land each. Today the area has a high level of vacancy and many deteriorating buildings.

The local not-for-profit buildingcommunityWORKSHOP (bcWORKSHOP), together with Dallas CityDesign Studio and Preservation Dallas, is creating the project Activating Vacancy to engage Tenth Street District residents and artists to design a series of temporary design installations that illustrate a potential framework for future development, including priorities for preservation of the unique historic structures. The project will result in six temporary art installations and a comprehensive framework document for the future of the area. The project will also enhance the cultural heritage of the Tenth Street Historic District, benefiting the neighborhood's 440 residents, 80 percent of which are considered low to moderate-income.

"Cities and towns are transformed when you bring the arts – both literally and figuratively – into the center of them,” said NEA Chairman Landesman. "From Teller, Alaska to Miami, Florida, communities are pursuing creative placemaking, making their neighborhoods more vibrant and robust by investing in the performing, visual, and literary arts. I am proud to be partnering with these 80 communities and their respective arts, civic, and elected leaders."

The NEA received 317 applications for Our Town that were assigned to one of three application review panels based on their project type; arts engagement, cultural planning and design, or non-metro and tribal communities. Activating Vacancy received a cultural planning and design grant award. With only 80 grants emerging from the 317 applications, or a success rate of 25 percent, competition was strong, a testament to the artistic excellence and merit of Activating Vacancy.

ACD 2012 Reflections

The Association for Community Design held their annual conference from June 8 to 12 in Salt Lake City. Maggie Winter and myself attended the entire conference while Brent flew in on Friday to speak on a panel. The conference was a small gathering of leaders in the field of Public Interest Design from around the country.

photo courtesy of Association for Community Design

photo courtesy of Association for Community Design

The term Public Interest Design is a relatively new one. This was acknowledged in the first panel on Friday by David Perkes of the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio. The conference followed his exploration into the realities of this field. Perkes advised that we can talk all we like, but what are our actions saying? He placed an emphasis on discovering the real impact and implications of the work being done. However, using those impacts to seek acceptance and recognition of value from the mainstream profession seems to be the preoccupation of the moment. Awards, fellowships, and prizes are seeking to add to and establish that credibility.  There also seems to be a shift toward public interest designers feeling an obligation to improve their ability to be a resource for each other and non-profits with similar intentions, as well as providing resources to the public.

A panel with Anne-Marie Lubenau (of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence) and Dan Pitera (of Detroit Collaborative Design Center) summed up the topics of conversation throughout the conference with the questions they asked of the Rudy Bruner Award:

WHAT: What would we like to learn from each other?

HOW: How effective are the means of providing that information?

WHO: Who should know about it?

Public Interest Design is growing. It is seeking to become an example of practice beyond its current influence. Of course we want to make our type of practice a shining beacon of social justice for the architecture profession. These questions garnered a lot of debate as well as consensus, but I still feel as though people were holding back. Or, maybe we are still not asking the right questions.

Resources:

Power Plus

Research shows that 40 percent of all U.S. energy is consumed by buildings and 30 percent of that energy is wasted. Power Plus is bcW's energy education initiative addressing many of the underlying social, economic, and environmental factors that influence energy use. The initiative focuses the energy conversation within the scale of the home and employs high-tech and hands-on design tools that enable residents to make informed energy choices in the operation of their home in order to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

The high-tech side of the program utilizes an energy monitoring system called The Energy Detective (TED) to measure individual circuits and display real-time electricity cost within the home. Kill-a-Watt meters measure additional plug loads, creating a data-rich inventory of the home environment. bcWORKSHOP prepares detailed, graphic monthly reports of this data visualizing the home's energy use supplementing traditional utility bills.

The hands-on side involves a game-board style toolkit facilitating conversations about saving energy and money. The toolkit guides residents through a three month, seven meeting (4 weekly, then 2 bi-weekly, and 1 final month) discovery process with a bcWORKSHOP Energy Advisor. Visual tools including an annual graph of past power usage and the home's projected baseline performance serve as a guide for residents to inform decisionmaking, evaluate performance and achieve power usage goals. Using the toolkit, residents graph the weekly cost of appliances/activities separately, identifying the most costly behaviors. Additionally, a set of cards illustrate the cost per hour for each appliance and provides recommendations for saving money through either increased efficiency or conservation.

The high-tech and hands-on tools are deployed together encouraging dialogue and providing data. This coupled with energy saving actions and a feedback mechanism measuring action effectiveness helps residents make more informed choices. In this way, Power Plus demystifies the cost of electricity.