Academic (Re)Design: Resisting ‘The Return to Normal’ in The Academy

By Jessie Male

I first proposed an online college writing class in spring 2017, a time when the virtual classroom was controversial and far from common: a “lesser” option, one allotted to “nontraditional” students with circumstances that placed them outside the mainstream. The course was “Introduction to Disability Studies,” which, like most classes at The Ohio State University– where I was a PhD student–was being offered in-person, exclusively. This policy did not make sense to me. How could I teach about disability identity and culture, and accessible practices, while also taking part in academic systems that often isolate and exclude marginalized and vulnerable people? Why should students miss coursework when a panic attack meant they could not share physical space with others, or lack of transportation meant they could not get to campus, or because their children had a snow day? This online course would mean expanded outreach; the alternative mode was not inhibitive but rather a mode of possibility, an equitable shift in which an inability to share common space does not mean isolation from community.

At the time there was resistance. “Being on a computer isn’t the same as being in the classroom,” one faculty member argued. “Discourse will be limited when not in an in-person setting.” And even after the proposal was passed, there was an understanding that this was the exception and far from the rule. Of course, no one could not know then, what we know now, that a pandemic would force everything to change, online coursework would become a “new normal,” and all of academia would evolve into hybrid–or entirely virtual–settings.

I did not excel as an educator the first semester I taught online. The Learning Management System lacked structure and organizing information was often counterintuitive and cumbersome. The course was asynchronous, and I struggled with how to assess participation or facilitate peer interaction when there wasn’t a shared environment in which we could verbally communicate. Though I encouraged students to meet with me during online office hours it was rare that students attended as their minutes were precious, readings and reflections conducted on lunch breaks or between hospital treatments, or during late-night hours after children had gone to bed. I missed the small moments in kairotic spaces, defined by Disability Studies scholar Margaret Price as “the less formal, often unnoticed, areas of academe where knowledge is produced, and power is exchanged.” These were those moments outside the classroom where students and I fostered added connections: walking together in the hallway; a chance encounter in an elevator; a chat over coffee. As someone who advocated for online education as equal to in-person classes, I worried the course was a model for the perceived failures of remote learning. And my understanding of “educator” was completely upended. Whereas I thrived conducting class through predominantly verbal methods, pre-recording videos and uploading materials were monotonous, my personality was flattened by awkward pauses as I moved between my cellphone camera and the script on my computer screen. I never knew where I should be looking. I could not see then—I did not have the skillset, the training, or the experience the ways that the online classroom can be dynamic and enjoyable, not as a replication of the in-person classroom but as a new type of scholarly journey.

Over the past three years, I’ve learned a lot about teaching online. I think we all have, whether educators, parents, scholars, or students—there is so much new knowledge about technology and pedagogy. Yet this isn’t just an article about the value of online education. This is about the remote classroom as a concrete example and metaphor for the ways that educational systems have been transformed due to global trauma, in many ways for the better, shifting away from classist and ableist gatekeeping practices that often isolate marginalized students, staff, and faculty–or prevent people from even entering the community. In 2023, many people in the academy–like in many workspaces–are promoting the “return to normal.” But I argue that higher education is not what it was in 2020, and to return to that state would risk destroying many diverse and equitable learning and engagement opportunities. For the university to truly be a common space, it must not return to a state that privileges physical presence, instead honoring the many forms (and formats) in which participation can take.

Campus Redesign: Building on What We Have Learned

In 2022, I began a position at The University of Pittsburgh as the Postdoctoral Associate in Disability Studies. In addition to teaching an in-person Disability Studies course, my primary responsibilities are developing programs to support disabled students and planning events around building a culture of accessibility. Having recently moved from New York City— once the hotspot of the COVID-19 epidemic—I remain struck by the more relaxed nature of policies such as masking. When in attendance at a packed college basketball game, I spotted only a handful of face coverings. In class one student out of 21 wears a mask, and though I can keep a six-foot distance, I too wear one due to my own health concerns, and out of solidarity. When I move through a lesson, I am acutely aware of the ways the ongoing pandemic informs my pedagogy and strategies from the online classroom entering the physical space. Building on the principles of UDL (Universal Design for Learning), students engage in multiple methods of engagement and composition. In addition to formal writing assignments, students give oral presentations and take collaborative notes. Through such moves, they support students who are absent or wish to return to previous information, by developing a classroom archive. The materials, too, have changed shape. Podcasts and documentaries no longer supplement but exist, in tandem, with formal academic scholarship. Almost all readings are available through hyperlinks. In class, most students review these materials on electronic devices, where they take notes while I move through our PowerPoint.

Even definitions of classroom participation have transformed over the years, no longer privileging the most vocal participants. Who is asking questions of their peers during group work? Whose fingers don’t leave the keys during free writes? I’m more comfortable in the quiet moments of class, allowing students several minutes to ponder and reflect on critical questions and concepts. This semester, I declare—citing the value of a supportive head nod—that “active participation can also be listening.”

Though there is an institutional emphasis on coursework returning to what it was pre-COVID-19, I am comforted by continued extracurricular events over Zoom and other virtual platforms. A remote talk with writer and scholar Jo Hsu on “how disabled and other marginalized communities use storytelling to drive collective action,” had thirty attendees from around the country. Such audience diversity isn’t possible when all attendees live in close proximity. As a scholar, I, too, benefit from the support of online integration in event planning and curriculum design. From my home office in Pittsburgh, I spoke about my dissertation work to a Nonfiction class at SUNY Geneseo, and a Disability and Literature course at Pace University. Such opportunities for discussion reserve time and labor and cut the often-inhibitive cost of traveling.

What I am describing are expansive strategies for sharing knowledge, a practice that, during the height of COVID-19, was modeled in the institutional acquisition of open-access materials, increased journal subscriptions, and expanded relationships with local libraries and other colleges and universities. In this, we see how the common space must also be a reciprocal and collaborative space with public and private institutions coming together to support knowledge production. During the summer of 2020, I wrote my dissertation from my apartment in Brooklyn, relying almost entirely on sources that were open-access and newly digitized. And though this is an extreme scenario—a strategy built out of necessity—this system continues to aid student success, especially those who live off campus, who are still avoiding high-traffic areas, or who, for an array of other legitimate reasons, cannot enter a physical library.

Recognizing Institutional History and a Hope for Change

Although college brochures and websites are filled with images of jovial students in communal gathering spaces, it’s important to acknowledge the ways the university has historically been an unwelcoming—even violent—space for vulnerable members of the community. More specifically, many practices and policies around admission and retention risk isolating—or erasing the presence of— disabled and other marginalized persons. Jay Dolmage, Disability Studies scholar, and author of Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education, refers to such practices as the “steep steps” of academia, “enacted to keep certain bodies and minds out.” One such move is recruitment emphasis on standardized test scores, which are often impacted by access to high-cost preparatory courses and services; for example, The Princeton Review’s 1400+ course comes with a price tag of 2,199 dollars. During the height of COVID-19, when lockdowns were prevalent, hundreds of universities suspended their testing requirements, aligning with a more comprehensive approach to admission. And though many people have returned to in-person settings—enabling the reopening of testing sites— what if inclusive admission became the new academic tradition? What if a comprehensive redesign of academia also involved its entry point?

Yet it is also important to consider how breaking barriers of admission does not ensure academic protection. As Esmé Weijun Wang chronicles in her essay “Yale Will Not Save You”, later part of the New York Times bestselling collection The Collected Schizophrenias, institutions of higher learning often fail students with mental illness. The essay, originally published in Sewanee Review, addresses Wang’s experience of navigating mental health services while trying to adhere to the expectations of the “traditional college experience.” Wang describes taking a yearlong voluntary medical leave and returning to New Haven “for four interviews that would determine whether I was fit to return.” She writes: “I flew home to California and waited to hear back from them, and when I did, the answer was no.” Letters of support from therapists and professors did not deter their decision. She could never again set foot on campus without a dean’s permission.

Wang was a member of the Yale class of 2005. Thankfully, conversations about mental health on college campuses have expanded exponentially since then. This has emerged out of shifts in social discourse but also out of necessity. With over a million dead from COVID-19 in the United States alone, how many of those had children or grandchildren in college? How many students lost friends and colleagues? How many are navigating their own transformations of bodies/minds affected by the virus? Colleges had to acknowledge the impact of trauma and provide resources and policy shifts that enabled many students to return to campus. Even Yale’s policies have undergone revision. As of January 2023, students experiencing mental health crises are no longer being pushed to withdraw from the institution. In an email directed towards students who might otherwise not report mental health issues for fear of retribution, Dean Pericles Lewis wrote, “I hope these revised policies ease any concerns about your student status, allowing you (and the people supporting you) to focus on what is important.”

I hope to witness similar shifts at my own institution. By the midpoint of the semester, students and faculty are already exhausted. Most courses have returned to in-person formats, and even the labor of moving across a large campus can be grueling. Walking to the elevator, I spot a student sitting at a communal table, asleep with a book in her lap and her computer propped open. Midterms are approaching and I can feel the influx of anxious energy. In my inbox a story appears from The University of Pittsburgh Times revealing that student registration with Disability Resources and Services is up 200 percent since 2016 and up double since 2020—a number that indicates students are accessing necessary support systems, but also highlighting the need for added flexibility. I think often about former students who thrived when able to attend class from their beds with the camera off, sharing thoughts through the chat function on the side of the screen. Or students who preferred an asynchronous format where learning was on their own timeline and ideas could be shared with peers without ever having to speak. How are they navigating the shift back to “normal?” Do they feel their school is meeting their individual needs?

A year before the emergence of COVID-19, at a workshop for digital media scholars, I gave a presentation entitled, “Online Teaching is Not the End of the World.” The title strikes me, now, with bitter irony. When met with what seemed like—to many—the end of the world, we turned to online teaching. At that presentation, I spoke about the necessity of adaptation, more specifically about responding to student accommodation requests or making readjustments to group activities. I was thinking on a small scale and could not know what “adaptation” would look like when a deadly virus was happening. But educators, staff, students, and administrators pivoted in ways I could never imagine, utilizing tools for multimodal engagement such as Zoom webinars with transcription options and live captioning. What these moves prove is, even in a time of isolation, higher education can be a space to build community. Now, these adaptations need to become permanent fixtures—in fact, we should continue to expand upon them–thus continuing to break down the barriers between “traditional” and “nontraditional” students and forms of engagement. The university common space is vast and multi-dimensional, vibrant and complex, and made up of many different modes. I hope we can continue to embrace this altered form–and look forward to new possibilities.

Parks as Critical Infrastructure

Greenway Aerial. (Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy/ Kyle Klein Photography)

By Cheri Ruane

Parks and open spaces are often conceived of as civic amenities, enriching their communities by providing places to gather, recreate, relax, and connect with nature. However, they are so much more than simply beautiful places – they can function as performative landscapes providing critical services that mitigate the effects of climate change while enhancing public health and wellness, especially in times of crisis.

With so many urgent needs competing for capital dollars, it is easy to understand how parks can be considered a “luxury.” People understand there’s urgency around having electricity, operational plumbing, and clean drinking water. By comparison, safe and inclusive places to participate in civic life seem less acute. But common open spaces are not luxuries, they are a vital part of a functioning society. By improving livability and resiliency, and supporting the sense of place in neighborhoods, they serve to support vibrant communities while also attracting businesses and local job growth. Parks help address critical infrastructure for public health issues and are recognized as a powerful tool to support modern cities and towns.

What is infrastructure and why should parks be included?

Infrastructure typically refers to the basic systems and services that a society needs to function. On a national level, it includes all the physical systems such as transportation networks, utilities, sewage, water, cell towers, and more, plus public services including those that support health, safety, welfare, and education. The Department of Homeland Security says, “Critical infrastructure describes the physical and cyber systems and assets that are so vital to the United States that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on our physical or economic security or public health or safety. The nation’s critical infrastructure provides the essential services that underpin American society.”

These infrastructure systems, which require large initial investments, are essential for supporting quality of life and are considered a “public good.” A public good typically implies it’s provided to everyone equally, and usually paid for by the government through taxes, though this is not always the case.

While many agree parks are a “public good,” the lack of understanding around the significant impact these common spaces have on our lives allows them to be compromised and deprioritized when competing with public safety and healthcare. The irony is that studies from NRPA, APA, and NC State have shown an increase in public safety and general health when there is reliable and equitable access to public parks and open spaces. In the City Parks Forum Briefing Paper titled “How Cities Use Parks to Create Safer Neighborhoods” by American Planning Association these key points are worth noting:

• Time spent in nature immediately adjacent to home helps people relieve mental fatigue, reducing aggression.
• Green spaces are gathering places where neighbors form social ties that produce stronger, safer neighborhoods.
• Derelict or barren spaces are perceived as frightening and are more crime-prone than well-maintained parks.

The Environmental Impact of Parks

Parks have the ability to juggle several civic infrastructure systems. In addition to the health and safety benefits listed above, parks can mitigate floods and other natural disasters through resilient design strategies. City parks can be designed to act like sponges, holding water during rain events and slowly filtering stormwater after the event has passed. Cities use the natural capacity of green infrastructure to complement the traditional alternative of building and maintaining large underground networks of pipes and tunnels. Parks do this while improving air quality, reducing the heat-island effect, and creating close-to-home opportunities for outdoor recreation and experiences with nature.

Waterfront parks have an even bigger opportunity to protect neighborhoods by defending against sea level rise. At the 4.5-acre Langone Park and Puopolo Playground in Boston’s North End, the city implemented its first resilient design for public open space. Based on the Climate Ready Boston report released in 2016 the site was reimagined to protect and accommodate the rising tides, mitigate wave action, and recover easily from inundation. The park is an active outdoor recreation haven for the city’s most densely developed community and an important link within Boston’s Harborwalk, a network of publicly accessible corridors that provide the interface between public and private properties and access to Boston Harbor. By taking advantage of the outdoor recreational opportunities that the facility provides, combined with several engineered improvements to its ability to deflect and absorb the impacts of sea level rise, the neighborhood’s residents and many others will benefit from a stronger stance against the impacts of climate change. At the same time, it also can be a resource for physically distanced recreation during the pandemics that will follow COVID-19.

Ticket counter for Boston Harbor Islands with patrons waiting in line. Large scale map of the Boston waterfront to the left of the ticket counter. Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy.

Atlanta has created the Atlanta BeltLine, a network of parks, trails and open spaces that include robust transportation options and stormwater management strategies. The 22-mile loop around the city connects communities and residents, while the parks along the BeltLine are engineered to manage stormwater and improve resilience to flooding risks. The original mind behind the proposal is Ryan Gravel, who was a graduate student in architecture and city planning at Georgia Tech in 1999 when he conceived the idea that was later implemented with the support of Perkins and Will. At the same time, Houston is improving resilience to flooding through the revitalization of Buffalo Bayou Park. Designed by SWA, the 160-acre linear park links a network of trails, open space, and public art while managing stormwater runoff, especially after major storm events.

City Parks for Health

Beyond the physical infrastructure challenges, cities are also facing our national health crisis. Health inequities result from chronic issues of environmental justice in all its forms. While the COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic flaws in the public health infrastructure of the United States, it also exposed stark inequities in access to healthy environments, and how people are policed within what open spaces are available to them. This continues to be a growing threat specific to the health of communities of color. Addressing health disparities in cities requires a more equitable parks policy. To support this goal, the health benefits of parks need to be considered alongside the critical infrastructure services they provide, services increasingly important under social instability.

Infectious disease experts predict that epidemics are projected to increase in severity and frequency. Climate change will continue to endanger our most vulnerable communities at a disproportionate rate. One aspect of making common spaces truly inclusive will involve developing flexible infrastructure to accommodate serious health challenges and envisioning public park systems that are more agile in the holistic support of public health for all.

Park with city skyline in the background. Adults and children having picnics and playing in the water fountain at the park. (Photo/Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy)

Pale purple Allium with trees and city buildings in the background. (Photo/Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy)

On good days, this includes designing and maintaining big parks and greenways with ample walking, biking, and running trails that extend into all parts of the city, with a particular focus on historically underserved populations. Based on the cross-section of worldwide research, we know that these improvements will help people focus, improve mood and cognitive function, reduce anxiety, help people recover from stress, and help young people build social skills. We must embrace the opportunity to curate safe enjoyment of our common spaces.

Many professionals, educators, and scholars quickly noted and wrote about the importance of green space during the pandemic. One particularly well-curated piece on Medium, “Urban Parks as Critical Infrastructure: Equity and Access during Covid-19,” highlights the fact that it’s not all about the big parks. “Smaller green spaces provide a range of social and ecological benefits as well, and may be integrated into the urban fabric in a less transformative manner. Creating pocket parks, and greener and more multi-functional streetscapes encourages people to exercise and get fresh air while practicing social distancing. These types of initiatives can be found around the globe, with cities in the United States and Europe opening streets to restaurants and bars and expanding pedestrianized areas. Cities may empower neighborhoods to develop green spaces through community block grants, and through even simpler measures like providing a patch of soil and having the gardeners who happen to live there grow what they feel is right.”

Our common space networks must also be reimagined to support social justice. More than a public forum for protest, these spaces must feel safe in ways that include access and also use by populations that are fearful of racial profiling. The murder of Ahmaud Arbery, who was jogging, and the harassment of Christian Cooper, birdwatching in Central Park, painfully remind us that equal “access” is not enough. For open and green spaces in cities to fully serve diverse communities, we must consider and address these threats to communities of color, including expecting diverse uses of parks and putting in place policies to safeguard the lives of people of color in all common spaces.

Organizations like the National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) believe that “our nation’s public parks and recreation services should be equally accessible and available to all people regardless of income level, ethnicity, gender, ability, or age.” Their work continues to support initiatives that will ensure universal equity and social justice in parks across the county. Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy goes even further stating “We condemn anti-Black racism and are allies for equality in our parks and communities.”

Approaches for Equitable Common Space Networks

Another key aspect of parks as critical infrastructure is their ability to promote social cohesion and community engagement. Parks provide a public space where people of different backgrounds can come together, interact, and form connections. They can serve as a safe space where community members can come together to discuss issues, plan events, and build relationships. This can be especially important in areas where there may be a lack of other common spaces or opportunities for community engagement. The very nature of their outdoor positioning allows them to be less encumbered by preconceived notions associated with buildings. Public buildings owned by the government can feel unsafe, as can places of worship.

In order to be truly “common” parks and open spaces must be equitable, and we must ensure they serve the needs of diverse communities. Linking large and small parks to dense urban neighborhoods through green corridors encourages equitable use of parks and generally increases use. By networking corridors and complete streetscapes in areas without parks where alternative transit connections are lacking, cities will begin to address issues of unequal access to parks.

Emerging Equitable Funding Strategies and Tools

Many of these common space efforts leverage multiple sources of funding from federal, state, local, philanthropic, and private sector sources. City Parks Alliance has commissioned two reports. The first, “Investing in Equitable Urban Park Systems: Emerging Strategies and Tools,” is part of a national initiative to help cities understand various sources of funding and the additional implications each can have on communities, specifically related to equity. Urban Institute led the research and published the report, which explores twenty funding models and their equity considerations in cities of various sizes across the country. This work is made possible with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The second, “City Parks, A Smart Investment for America’s Health, Economy & Environment” is a series of 11 case studies highlighting the impacts of common spaces across the country. The Greenway Conservancy, a non-profit managing entity for the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, saw the abutting properties benefited greatly from their proximity to this ribbon of open space and were able to negotiate a Business Improvement District (BID) to support the care of the park. BID contributions are financed through an elective tax that is applied to parcels within a one-block radius of the park site itself. In this case, the BID provides $1.5 million in funding each year.

Conclusion

As globalization continues its steady march into our collective experiences, it is becoming increasingly important to find places where we can feel embodied and grounded in our own context. Public parks and open green spaces are critical resources and must be considered a vital part of the infrastructure that supports our human existence. Where else in our built environment can we find a forum for social, mental, and physical connection that can be identified as common? These are places to be nurtured, supported, and elevated as an inalienable human right. From parks professionals to community organizations, and from government funding to private equity, a new recognition is necessary to ensure these common spaces not only survive but thrive in the face of our collective uncertainty.

The Bodega A Common Space for the Community To Promote Health Equity

By David and Felice Silverman

A “bodega” is much more than a neighborhood grocery store. As Evelyn Brito of Bodega Makeover notes, “Bodegas are small businesses with BIG Impact, they are the heart of the community. They are community centers where people catch up with each other about their families and daily lives.” The Bodega Makeover project leverages the bodega as a community space, to address a critical issue: food deserts and food insecurity.

In 2020, our firm, STA Design, Inc., collaborated with the Bodega Makeover team on their pilot program, the redesign of Vega Brothers in Roxbury, Massachusetts. In doing so, we explored the issue of food deserts, and how to develop solutions for this important common space using community-centered design processes. We reconnected with Evelyn Brito to revisit the project, and understand the lasting community impact, lessons learned, and where support is still needed.

Bodega Makeover’s Mission

Bodega Makeover is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to help solve the food desert and unhealthy eating issues in lower-income communities by promoting healthy food options through the transformation of community bodegas.

Designing spaces for community impact and problem-solving through community engagement are core values of STA Design’s mission. Understanding the context of the food desert issue and the importance of bodegas in the community was the key to the project design and process. Despite the healthy eating craze, with urban farms and rooftop farming being built in every city, bodegas are lagging behind. Research shows that without access to healthy food, these communities suffer from higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. Evelyn notes that “According to the Massachusetts Food Trust Program, more than 80 percent of the city’s population lives in what’s called a “food desert,” defined by the CDC as having limited access to healthy options. Many communities depend on bodegas, but even if there is a bodega, they may not be providing healthy food options.”

Evelyn’s mission is to promote healthier options and to tell the stories of Hispanic / urban communities that have less access to healthy food, while simultaneously connecting families and communities. “As neighborhood demographics change, bodegas (corner stores) tend to be run by the incoming immigrant population, and those communities look to bodegas to supply not just everyday groceries, but also items that fit specific cultural needs and tastes that might not be stocked in major stores. Some bodegas are also experiencing pressure and fear of displacement as a result of gentrification. Seeing how these beloved bodegas are being neglected and experiencing challenging times, I decided to create a television show called Bodega Makeover to bring light to this issue. Bodega Makeover seeks to illuminate the cultural history of these neighborhood hubs and create a path for these businesses to engage community voices. With a sustainable design, wholesome food options, storytelling, and helpful resources, our aim is to keep the community’s heart beating. Do we believe that design has the potential to reduce food insecurity? Yes.”

The Project: Collaborating with the Vega Family

“I walked around the neighborhoods, around different bodegas and went in old-school style and asked them if they were interested – hey do you want a makeover,” said Evelyn on choosing Vega Brothers as the inaugural makeover project.

From the start, and throughout the whole process, collaboration with Javier and Millie Vega was key. We visited the store and talked about the challenges: the store was crowded, and unwelcoming, and there was little opportunity to market healthy foods. Through observation, listening, and inventorying products and shelving, we were able to evaluate product placement and make recommendations about consolidation and overall layout. We proposed lowering shelves, widening the aisles, and incorporating color and bi-lingual signage to make the space more welcoming. Perhaps most importantly, our design located a large new produce section at the front of the store, visible from the front entry as well as from outside. The idea was to make healthy food the first impression. Exterior improvements included the removal of a security grille, and replacement with a decorative grille that would still provide security, but feel more welcoming and consistent with the homes in the community.

Engaging the Community

A space for the community must engage the community. As Evelyn notes, “We knew we had to collaborate with the community and organizations to achieve the best possible outcome for the residents. We planned a block party and asked people in the area what they thought about the design.” At that event, STA shared preliminary designs and an animation video of the design. We also set up a table, with a large board and stacks of sticky notes, inviting community members to share their ideas for what they’d like to see in the bodega. One common theme rang through all the feedback – more healthy food options. The community was ready for the transformation!

“Engagement with neighbors and organizations, in our opinion, is essential for these projects to succeed. In these programs, food partners are crucial collaborators and stakeholders. Because funding for these programs is limited, it’s critical that we use everyone’s time and resources effectively. The Bodega Makeover series aims to foster a robust dialogue in areas where people may be looking for solutions to food insecurity,” said Evelyn.

Building During a Challenging Time

All remodeling and renovation projects are difficult, but this is especially true when one of the resources being renovated is a valuable community asset. Then the unpredictable happened: the pandemic. Construction of the bodega renovations began in 2020. During the early stages of the pandemic, the Vega family was committed to staying open to support their community during this challenging time. Construction schedules and funding also became a challenge, the project was delayed and the design had to be somewhat modified. But the team persevered and completed the project with the same overall design intent. We worked collaboratively to develop options for the highest priorities.

Mural inside Vega Brothers. (Photo/STA Design, Inc.)

Impact and Lessons Learned

It’s been over two years since the Vega Brothers transformation. We looked back with Evelyn to understand how the space is working now that we’ve moved beyond the ribbon-cutting and the store isn’t in the spotlight anymore.

“The makeover of Vega Brothers went well, and healthier food options are now available at the Roxbury location,” noted Evelyn. Community feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and the space remains clear, easy to navigate, and brighter. The biggest transformation came from locating the produce at the front of the store, where it remains today. Simple tweaks and pivots like substituting plantains and yuca for apples and bananas have helped customize what the community wants to make it their own.

But bigger challenges were harder to overcome. The bodega received a lot of community resources and business support during the construction, (for example, Eversource provided new lighting that will continue to save energy costs), but that level of support across partners has not remained consistent. At the same time, rising costs for food have made it challenging to keep the costs affordable for the community.

The challenges were in fact too great for the family to overcome, and they have now sold the business to another bodega owner. While the renovated bodega will remain an important and impactful resource for the community, it’s unfortunate that the family no longer owns the business after all of their hard work to make the vision a reality. This demonstrates the importance of providing ongoing, sustaining support for community spaces, beyond the ribbon cutting.

Redesigned produce section. (Photo/STA Design, Inc.)

“An idea to take this to the next level is to rethink how we can connect community resources, local farms, and eco-friendly products to bodegas. It also gives us a vision and a plan for building a local food system that is strong, healthy, and sustainable,” said Evelyn.

Just the Beginning

The transformation of the bodega is just the beginning – with the success of this pilot program, Evelyn is now taking Bodega Makeover nationwide.

Evelyne shared, “The possibilities are endless…Our dream is for a reduction of food insecurity in local communities. Food costs are reasonable, and there are resources and food education available. We can all benefit from understanding how bodegas can be a flexible business model. This project can send a clear message to big box retailers that bodega culture is here to stay.”

The Bodega Makeover project was impactful to not only the community but to the STA Design team as well. We learned firsthand the importance of understanding and engaging the community, and how a community effort involves and impacts every person involved. We learned to flow with necessary adaptations – that it’s not important that the final outcome looks exactly as our renderings, but that the core elements of the problem-solving goals are achieved. We learned that donating our time can improve the community outcome, and we have continued to make this part of our mission and practice. Most importantly, we learned to recognize the power and responsibility of our role as designers and encourage the design community to seek out opportunities to drive toward community impact and equity.

Shared Spaces for All: An Inclusive Design Challenge for Airports

Biophilic-influenced exterior elements add beauty and functionality. Exterior curbside rendering of Appleton International Airport (Mead & Hunt, Inc).

By Anita Cobb, Ryan Dittoe, and Tonya Wood

Arriving at the airport, you cannot be dropped off at the access ramp due to traffic congestion. To find the ticket counter, you look up through the crowd for signage. After checking your bags, you go to the security checkpoint. You are subjected to a search as medical devices cannot pass through the body scanners.

Toward your gate, stimuli are overwhelming – people, lights, music, and food smells. You need to use the restroom before your flight, but find the accessible stall is occupied; the only place you can separate from all the cacophony. You rush back to your gate for extra time to board. You worry about whether you’ll make your connecting flight, since you will exit the plane last, with assistance.

Exhausted and hours later, you are at baggage claim where you rely on passengers to get your bag off the belt for you. You wait outside for your ride, who parks some distance from the access ramp. Finally, you are on your way.

Reclaimed materials, locally curated resources, celebrations of local culture and organic-inspired design combine for a timeless and inspired equitable interior environment. Exterior rendering of Appleton International Airport (Mead & Hunt, Inc)

Each element of this journey presents a different set of hardships for travelers with disabilities. It is the responsibility of the airport to ensure a universally accessible experience for all users, including those with visible and non-apparent disabilities.

Now more than ever, a sustainable and resilient built environment considers impacts to users’ health, safety, and in more progressive applications, personal identity including race, ethnicity, culture, and faith. Planners and designers are challenged to think and act beyond the present-day minimum regulations for building design to account for the rapidly evolving requirements and needs of various users, particularly in public or commonly used spaces. One avenue to address this is universal design – designing spaces to be accessible and functional for as many user types as possible. Universal design aims to acknowledge the needs of most people, instead of prioritizing non-disabled people – a practice that has created barriers and marginalization. Complex questions arise when considering the feasibility of universal design:

• How are users and their characteristics identified?
• How can we create a common space that captures the needs of users who have historically been marginalized?
• What strategies can we employ in our goal to design as wholly inclusive common space as possible?
• How can we incorporate the feedback of identified user types into our design process?

Universal designs, also known as inclusive designs, consider the lived experiences and intersectional identities of the end users, including ability, linguistics, and comprehensive skills among many other factors that inform how individuals experience spaces. A favorable anticipated result of incorporating inclusive design elements is creating a harmonious built environment for most users, including those that have typically not been considered in airport design. This includes designing with the needs of caretakers in mind as well as the needs of those who are aging, and those with cognitive or physical disabilities.

To deep dive into true universal design is to understand the benefits of consistently respecting others and their differences, providing access to those who need it, and celebrating the differences that make us unique. Practitioners in the planning, architecture, interior design, engineering, and construction industries have a duty to acknowledge the needs of all people for whom common spaces are created. While airports are required to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), these minimum standards do not offset traditional, ableist design. Airport designers are inherently restricted to their own lived experiences and the demands of their clients. This can perpetuate an unconscious bias, which leans toward prioritizing the needs of the majority passenger demographic – those who are non-disabled.

Mead & Hunt is an architecture and engineering firm that provides comprehensive services to address equitable built environments for our clients across a range of industries. The airport environment is one ripe for the implementation of universal design principles. It is also one of our most challenging environments – highly active, stimulating, and expansive buildings that present a variety of inclusive design opportunities. While this is a consistent learning process, our Aviation and Aviation Architecture team, already well-versed in the technical requirements of these spaces, now embraces design strategies to consider travelers with disabilities.

Airports feature countless touchpoints, such as curb front areas, check-in counters and kiosks, security screening areas, restrooms, hold rooms, concession areas, facility wayfinding and auditory messages, and more. As planners and designers, we consider sights, sounds, and smells throughout the facilities that may be overwhelming for some travelers. Customized planning approaches remain crucial to a client’s needs, but the incorporation of various lighting types, textures, and open space into project designs can be a simple way to start and aid in universal access. Examples of this include:

• Service animal relief areas (SARA) include low maintenance, cleanable turf, a pheromone-scented fire hydrant, specialized exhaust ventilation, a hand washing sink, waste bag supply and disposal, and ADA accessible pet water supply.
• Wellness rooms should be acoustically sound and include high-Noise Reduction Coefficient (NRC) rated ceilings, additional sound insulation where available, carpet, and soft lighting. Incorporating biophilic elements and natural materials are preferred. We recommend keeping the palette soothing and neutral with blended hues.
• Sensory rooms should accommodate those with Autism and/or sensory processing disorders and address various characteristics including the need for stimulation and quiet. This can be achieved with a zoning approach within the space and providing furniture that allows for privacy, noise-reducing headphones, and soothing components such as bubble or lava lamps. We recommend avoiding blended colors, busy patterns, dark colors, and loud, reflective surfaces. Provide visual opportunities for focus, fidget spinners, and tactile materials. High-NRC ceilings and lighting controls are encouraged.

One of the biggest challenges we face is not only incorporating universal design principles into each individual project but creating a consistently inclusive passenger experience across the aviation industry. Part of how our firm strives to accomplish this is by creating forward-thinking considerations for the built environment and educating our colleagues about inclusive planning, architecture, and engineering. We have built a collaboration with Project Confluence, a team of environmental justice thinkers and doers from Arizona State University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Partners in Participation. Project Confluence has helped Mead & Hunt incorporate environmental justice into our work and offer tools for how we can strengthen our advocacy for just and equitable outcomes with our clients.

As a result of Project Confluence, our Aviation and Architecture groups collectively created our Inclusive Design Studio with specifications for interior features that can be used to showcase inclusive options to our clients. This also has become a repository of resources and educational tools that can be referenced during project work and used to empower our project teams to contemplate how accessibility issues may be addressed in our daily work.

Sensory Room space for passengers to enjoy their wait time. Fort Wayne International Airport Sensory Room for travelers that are neurodiverse. (Mead & Hunt, Inc.)

Our clients and communities are not homogenous—nor should be the spaces we design for them. Each airport we encounter has a unique perspective and capacity to incorporate universal design based on factors that include resource availability, space constraints, stakeholder expectations, and strategic goals for operations. We believe it is imperative to meet clients where they are to understand how best to highlight the inclusive design opportunities in their projects. Our clients desire to build spaces that are inclusive and accessible. Mead & Hunt strives to educate our clients on universal design principles with the hope that they will continue to practice them post-engagement.

From a regulatory standpoint, many organizations are unaware of impending requirements relative to their facilities’ compliance with universal design and access laws. With limited funding and general unfamiliarity can come a misunderstanding and low prioritization of such regulations as the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 and the Air Carrier Access Act’s Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights. Our world is evolving and to be at the forefront of such change can be overwhelming, but it is necessary to design more intentionally for current and future users. Regulated spaces are already being incorporated within airports, such as lactation and adult changing tables and SARAs, but there is a gap in non-regulated spaces like multi-faith spaces and meditation rooms. Some of these spaces can be used for multiple functions, depending on the allowable square footage. Given the statistics that drive the need for these spaces, it is for the benefit of many that they are incorporated early in design planning.

Regarding feasibility concerns, it is easy to assume that expanded accommodations result in a higher-cost project and bring no return on investment. The truth is that revenues increase when shared public spaces are designed holistically. The basis of design costs, which are a small portion of the overall project costs, become negligible when the customer base is expanded. Customers who feel appreciated, are less stressed, and have a sense of belonging, are more likely to become loyal patrons.

In all project types, there is no substitute for early engagement with client and community stakeholders. The continuous feedback loop throughout the planning and design processes holds the design team accountable while ensuring the needs of the end users are effectively, practically, and economically met. Several of our projects embrace these improvements on several levels, such as Fort Wayne International Airport, Appleton International Airport, Cedar Rapids International Airport, and more. These expansion and improvement projects have recognized the need for additional terminal amenities to improve passenger and employee experiences.

It is important to empower airports with tools for accountability to inclusive design. Metrics for key performance indicators include a number of users, comments from individuals who experience airport facilities, and a number of reported adverse incidents. These measures provide data to help assess a space’s effectiveness. Another strategy in development is engaging with academics on research projects to obtain metrics and data on designs – for instance, measuring physiological responses to assess the implications of the design of a given space. Biometrics can also be used to better understand the eye movements that occur when looking for signage and wayfinding elements of a space that are meant to guide a user to certain features.

Project Confluence Team gathers to celebrate successes and plan future events. Team of academics partner with Mead & Hunt to learn about how to incorporate environmental justice into project planning and design of the built environment

Internally, our firm’s Interior Design team collaborates with our Employee Resource Group (ERG) – created to help shape and execute diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives within and beyond the company – our sustainability and resiliency group, our technical and lighting engineers, and our architectural team to develop standards for these specialized spaces so that the needed inclusive goals are met successfully on a consistent basis within each project.

Along with the design aesthetic, integrating sustainable finishes and selections plays an equally important role in the overall success of the space, which is why we conduct eco-charrettes for each project. Throughout the design process, our design and sustainability professionals work with stakeholders and shareholders to examine the best practices for the built environment and passengers at each airport facility. It is a thorough and enjoyable process during which several options for sustainable and inclusive design options are presented for discussion with dashboards and visuals – graphs, imagery, metrics, and charts – to describe the benefits of each option.

Change occurs in increments. Start by considering what universal design looks like at your facility and where near- and long-term improvements could strengthen the quality of our industry and travelers’ lives. Designers can be curiously enthusiastic about reshaping airports and other buildings across the country by responding to the challenge to create inclusive facilities with shared spaces for all.

A Place to Belong: University Housing Shapes Community-Building at Penn

Lauder College House, University of Pennsylvania. (Penn/Jeffrey Totaro)

A Conversation with Cam Grey, Mitchell Holston, Karu Kozuma, Kathryn McDonald, Dana Reed, and Peter Sterling.

Thoughtfully designed common spaces are essential to the long-term success of residential housing on college and university campuses. Surrounding context and evolving student and programmatic requirements impact how these spaces are successfully woven into a building, offering support and opportunities for community members to engage and interact.

The University of Pennsylvania’s residential College House community offers interesting insight into the dynamics of building community and shared spaces, where two recently completed projects provide immersive experiences for students and faculty. Lauder College House, Penn’s first purpose-built college house, provides residences for 350 students, as well as apartments for faculty, staff, and graduate students, arranged around light-filled, double-height common areas. Gutmann College House, located at the western edge of campus, weaves city and campus together through the thoughtful treatment of building mass, materials, and neighborhood-friendly outdoor spaces.

We convened a conversation with representatives from the architectural firm responsible for the design of both projects, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and the Penn College House community to explore the design process behind these projects and how the University community uses them now that they are open.

Peter Sterling: What does common space mean in a university setting and especially in an urban campus like Penn, that has a close relationship with the city that surrounds it?

Cam Grey: I think that an institution like Penn, an educational institution and a residential educational institution in a city presents a really powerful opportunity to blur the boundaries between the lived life experience and the learning experience. One of the things that I’ve always felt about the college house experience at Penn is that it’s the place where that boundary is most deliberately blurred. And where, as a consequence, we hope – with our fingers crossed – that our students not only do their real learning, but actually practice their intellectual learning in environments that are not score-based, that are not for a grade.

So my sense about what the communal spaces on a campus like Penn are implicitly, and I think with our two buildings, explicitly designed to do is provide opportunities not only for the development of community sort of writ large, but also the opportunities for our students and our residents to practice adulting – to practice what it means to participate in adult conversation; what it means to be part of a community where you are mindful of other people’s needs as well as your own; how to transition from being in a family with all of the dimensions that has, into a world where they don’t know everybody in that same way. I think that the college house community is a very particular sort of transitional space. It’s a space of opportunity. The community spaces are then necessarily quite multidimensional. They need to be able to do a variety of things.

They need to be spaces for our students to sit quietly on their own to study. But they also need to be able to be nimbly transformed into spaces where they can purposefully interact with staff members or with other members and leaders in the community. One of the things that I especially like about our building: they can be teaching spaces; they can be spaces where the formal parts of the university’s educational mission are practiced and performed as well.

Mitchell Holston: When thinking about community, I think a lot of it really starts within their own suites. Within Lauder, each suite has its own community space. That is, to me, the ground level of where the community building begins. Because currently we’re a four-year house, but now I’m thinking about next year being a first-year house where we’ll have our first year students, that ground level community is more than likely going to be the people that they’re living with. They all have common spaces within their own individual suites. But then outside of that, we have lounge spaces on each floor. That served as a main community space that, I think, primarily our RAs within the building use to build community amongst their students.

We straight up call them community builders; they do at least one community builder on their floor per week. Those lounge spaces really serve as a conduit for them to be able to do that. And the lounge spaces on the floors, for the most part, are outside of the RA rooms on that floor. But then outside of that, we do have other larger spaces within our community. I primarily would pinpoint the living room where we gather and do a lot of our larger, more social programs. It serves as a space that we’re able to catch all students. It’s an open space. Most students, when they’re coming within the building, they can see it regardless of where they’re going within the building. And students can see it and know that if there’s people there. If there’s a commotion, if there’s noise, there’s some type of community building that is happening that we want them to be a part of.

Lauder College House, University of Pennsylvania. (Penn/Jeffrey Totaro)

Kathryn McDonald: The heart of community building to me is figuring out ways for students to engage and connect with other individuals. So whether that’s through learning, whether it’s having a casual conversation that turns towards more intellectual things, whether it’s grabbing some food together. We have all these multidimensional spaces that do that. And I think one of the unique things though, at least at Penn, is it often feels like we belong to the community at Penn too. The building does. And I think part of that is because of how the access works and what Mitchell was talking about where these two buildings in particular are very open and visible and obviously visible because they’re new and people were excited about new things.

They’re designed with windows everywhere. We have spaces that are purposely meant to be high visibility. But I think that’s what makes it interesting about community building is because it doesn’t always feel like everyone at the table is a Gutmann resident. That helps create more interesting conversations and moments. That’s a unique thing about Penn. Other places I’ve worked, we don’t have the same types of access that we have here at Penn. Every undergraduate student has access to every building on campus, residential building, which makes it unique.

Dana Reed: And students take advantage of that? You feel like people feel they belong to the shared spaces if they don’t live there?

Cam Grey: That’s the hope. Karu, you and Mitchell and I were talking about this just a week or so ago, the notion that as we are thinking about being a first year community, but even now in our four-year community, there’s that interesting tension between this is my place, this is where I am, this is my space, I am a part of this community and it’s bounded and we all share these experiences. But it’s also sort of permeable and open and there’s people that are coming in for other purposes: they’re coming in for learning, they’re coming in to be eating in our cafeteria. It’s doing both of those things and that’s mostly opportunity, but there’s also occasionally tension where those multiple types of community rub up against each other in ways that we might not have anticipated or that we need to think about managing in the moment.

One of those tension points: it’s a building that has one entrance, apart from fire and exits; it’s a controlled entrance, especially in the last sort of three or four years. In the early days of the pandemic and the aftermath, the buildings have become somewhat more difficult to access for people that are not part of the Penn community. We have this really interesting tension, I think, and an ongoing unresolved one, I suspect.

But on the one hand, this building and Gutmann are physically and philosophically designed to participate in the Philadelphia community. Our building sits there with this big open armed hug of the downtown part of Penn. It’s designed in that regard in its physical architecture and then also in the way that Michael thought about the exteriors of the building and the ways that Dana, you broke the harsh lines of the exterior of the building. It’s expressing the permeability of Penn’s relationship to Philadelphia, and yet it’s a building that has one entry and that actually has some obvious reasons why there’s one entry. In the past, we’ve done community events, we’ve done events that are open to the whole of the Philadelphia community. We’ve had the Philadelphia Orchestra bring groups into our living room and open it up to West Philadelphia. But getting people into the building, getting them access to the building in those moments can present a challenge. I think it’s a tension between a philosophy of openness and availability to all on the one hand, and then a need to control and know who is in that space and in that building.

Karu Kozuma: Common spaces are also an interesting experiment to see how students understand their place in a community. How they treat it, how they leave it, how they share it; do they see there are other people impacted by their behaviors, i.e. the housekeeping staff if they leave things? So it gives us a lot of opportunity to be able to see how students understand their role in the community. And then it gives us a chance to be able to think about, well, how do we go along that journey with them so they can recognize that in the one or two or three or four years they’re part of college houses or they’re part of Lauder and Gutmann, what do they learn when they’re sharing this space with others? It’s most certainly not their room from home.

How do we align these opportunities with our mission, which is actually for students to learn more about themselves and others so they can grow and they understand that they do play a larger part in a community. It’s these little things: do they leave things a mess, do they take a piece of furniture away from the common space, are they willing to sit in a common room with a complete stranger and be okay with that? It just gives us so much richness that it makes it fun to see how students respond and gives us a chance to be able to actually shape how they exit Penn. And it may be something as simple as using a common space, but it really touches on a lot of things that we’re trying to impart on these students when they graduate.

Cam Grey:

The piece that we haven’t talked about is dining, communal eating and shared eating. In Gutmann you all have a fairly constrained version of that. And ours, I think, was imagined as a really intimate experience with the notion that you eat together more or less as a family. And we spent a lot of energy and time in those early years working to create a family dining experience. And that, I think, was a real feature of those early years of our community. Now interestingly, there have been various developments on Penn’s campus, which have meant that the dining facilities are now under quite a bit more pressure. There’s a lot more demand for dining, which on the one hand is fantastic because eating together is an ace thing to do, but it also means that the community feel of our small dining space is undergoing something of a transition.

Dana Reed: Okay, does everyone know the story about dining at Gutmann? We started Gutmann and it was hush, hush and we were told, “No dining. No dining. No dining. Maybe a cafe, no dining.” And this very important person said, “I can’t sleep at night unless there’s dining in this house, and I know that you’re about to build the building, but find a way to put it in.” And so it’s hard to balance, I guess, the pedagogical mandates and I suppose, the economics of running of a dining operation.

Cam Grey: I think they travel in the same direction, I do. I think that the pedagogical and the economical elements of eating together travel in the same direction. Community building, needing to feed people that are living on campus and it being a pedagogical opportunity, they all work together … Our hospitality services folks have now opened up the Lauder College House Dining Pavilion as a lunch space for students to take their mentors. It’s supported by the Provost Office and so it’s a free meal for a student to bring somebody. But again, what’s awesome about it is that the initial contact is a mentoring or a support relationship. And then they eat together and they develop the intimacy of their relationship in that.

Mitchell Holston: In thinking about both Gutmann and Lauder together, I really like the use of the outdoor spaces that are inside of our communities. The courtyard within Lauder is a big part of the students’ experience. The courtyard is right in the center, and a lot of our students live on that side of the building where they have to walk through the courtyard to be able to get to those elevators. The courtyard plays a very integral part to what we do here, knowing that it is a big, wide open space so people can go outside, get fresh air. But it also provides a pretty big programming space for us because we do a lot of our larger programs out there.

I really like those uses of space; you’re still within the community, you’re still in our building, you’re still past our access points, et cetera, but you can still have those outdoor components to your experience.

Gutmann College House, University of Pennsylvania (Penn/Jeffrey Totaro)

Seeking Purpose Through Designed Experiences

The Sky Garden at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond Pavilion. (HKS/Garrett Rowland)

By Susan Chung

What makes us human? With technology advancements taking leaps and bounds while pushing our intellectual boundaries, what is our core identity and purpose in this fast-paced, ever-changing world? The art and science of being human—what makes us unique beings—is in the thinking and creating that we do, and our brains are at the center of it all.

The brain is a powerful yet delicate organ that adds character to our lives. It uses 20% of its total energy and oxygen intake but is about 2% of the body’s total weight. It’s an evolving organ that has the ability to grow, build, and recover throughout our lifetime (neuroplasticity). The brain can process an image that we’ve seen for as little as 13 milliseconds and is capable of 1016 processes per second. It can generate a total of 70,000 thoughts per day with a virtually unlimited storage capacity. But when areas in the brain are no longer used, those neural connections fade away (pruning), and we can lose brain cells, and/or the connections in between, due to injury (neuronal loss). We need constant and continuous care for our brains, as we do for our bodies, to have them be healthy.

Brain Health for an Enriched Life
Brain health is an emerging and growing concept that entails the brain’s development, plasticity, functioning, and recovery over one’s lifespan. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines good brain health as, “a state in which every individual can realize their own abilities and optimize their cognitive, emotional, psychological, and behavioral functioning to cope with life situations” (17). We can strive for brain health by 1) understanding the brain overall – the numerous interconnected social and biological determinants that influence how the brain develops, functions, adapts, and responds to situations, 2) realizing our own capabilities and the opportunities afforded to us, and 3) activating strategies that promote brain fitness and prevent deterioration across the life span. Knowing the importance of brain health and learning how to exercise our brains intentionally can enhance the quality of our lives. For example, having a sense of purpose in life is a strong predictor of better brain health, with benefits including lower levels of depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline (Center for BrainHealth). Having an aim in life, or multiple goals throughout life, motivates us to engage with others, participate in activities, learn new skills, plan next steps, etc. Research also suggests that a moderate amount of social engagement can help process feelings, make decisions, and feel rewarded (Felix et al. 1031). Social ties can strengthen neural networks and stimulate attention and memory (Bilodeau). Brain health is intricately interconnected to living an enriched life.

The “Living Room/Lounge” area at the HKS Miami office. (HKS/Kris Tamburello)

The dining hall at the UC San Diego’s North Torrey Pines Living and Learning Neighborhood (NTPLLN) incorporates human social dynamics, psychological needs and learning behaviors to enhance social, mental and physical well-being. (HKS/Tom Harris)

Brain Health Strategies and Habits
We continue to learn more about the brain as the field of neuroscience evolves but what are some tactical steps we can take now to exercise brain health? Cognitive training has multiple positive effects including faster information processing (Motes et al. 78) and improvement in self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress over time (Laane et al. 4). The cognitive training included in these studies taught brain health strategies related to strategic attention, integrated reasoning, and innovation, developed by the Center for BrainHealth®. We can learn how to think and create in ways that nourish our brains.

We can apply brain health strategies in our everyday – especially when we make it a habit – but we may not be able to do so anywhere nor everywhere. An architecture and design firm (HKS, Inc.) partnered with the Center for BrainHealth to explore the role of place, process, and technology in brain healthy workplaces. Nanda and colleagues not only found improved brain health, as measured by the BrainHealth Index, with cognitive training (consistent with previous studies), but also saw potential in improvement when offices had spaces that were conducive to the strategies (7). Their research also showed that challenges in the environment, such as noise or disruptions, can deter us from reaching peak performance when we need to focus (8), and that multitasking is detrimental to our overall work experience and satisfaction with individual work effectiveness, and can lead to increased burnout (9). Multitasking behavior not only puts a toll on our cognitive reserves but also tethers us to our workstations, making us static in the environment. With the increase in working with others virtually, we are prone to generating more noise at our workstations and disturbing our neighbors. The places we conduct our activities may be conducive to one activity type but not for all (10). For example, the best place to connect with other people may not be conducive to getting focus work done. In some cases, our surroundings may become a deterrent – having too many distractions, especially from noise, and having a lack of environmental control can disable us from reaching our capabilities. Focus work may be best when done remotely (e.g., work from home) whereas, collaborative work may be better when in-person. The research demonstrated that when we are using a range of spaces beyond our workstation, we have higher satisfaction with our collaborative work effectiveness (10).

Some changes that the offices put into effect during the study are areas for focus work that were either designated for quietude (e.g., focus room/ quiet zones) or accompanied by environmental and/or behavioral cues that signaled “do not disturb” (e.g., red flags at the workstations) (8). Some offices set up space for ideation and rapid prototyping to encourage ideation and creative collaboration. Offices saw a behavioral change in how employees used these spaces after activation. Brain healthy workplace habit recommendations include being intentional with where you work based on what you are working on, planning for a good balance of activities during the day with brain breaks in between and a variety of spaces used/visited that support each activity, and connecting with others in meaningful activities to help establish a sense of balance and coherence.

The study suggests that workplaces designed with qualities that meet their goals, combined with good workplace habits, can result in better brain health. This ultimately serves better individual and organizational health.

A basketball court located at the living and learning community in the UC San Diego campus promotes well-being and fosters a meaningful connection between the university and its community. (HKS/Tom Harris)

An exterior patio on the second-level roof connected to a tenant break room provides an urban oasis with sweeping views of downtown Salt Lake City from the Kearns Building. (HKS/Jack Madsen III)

Brain Health Spaces and Enriched Environments
With intentionality, brain health can be achieved anywhere. Places can be designed to enable us to have meaningful experiences that support our brain health. Nanda and colleagues suggest several space affordances (i.e., how we perceive environments to meet our needs) – namely for focus, exploration/ideation, collaboration/co-creation, rest/reflection, and social connection. When we’re in a space that has minimal distractions and/or we have control to minimize distractions, we can focus. Exploration/ideation comes from serendipitous interactions, inspirational materials, and stimulating environments that activate curiosity and learning. Collaboration/co-creation is catalyzed when having access to resources and flow. Rest/reflection can be seen as having introspective focus and oftentimes preferred to do so in nature that provide serenity. Social connection can be further promoted through pockets of spaces with furniture that is used for engagement and congregation. The design of spaces can communicate messages of how to best use the space for a particular activity.

Brain health strategies go beyond just cognition – they can be action-related (e.g., physical activity, nutritional diet, sleep) and socio- emotion-related (e.g, mindfulness, social connection), too. In a review of how design relates to neurogenesis, HKS, Inc. and HUME state that enriched environments, designed with sensory, physical, cognitive, and social stimuli that evoke positive behavioral changes, can preserve cognitive abilities, including memory (22). For example, clearly defined, less cluttered spaces can make information retrieval easier and quicker. Familiarity with a space from multiple experiences and/or engagements and environmental cues can also help with recalling information. The combination of enrichment and engagement create “complex-place contexts” that can help with cognitive activity and reducing stress. In fact, the research suggests that enriched environments can also support neurogenesis, making new connections and stimulating brain activity easier, especially for aging populations.

All activity is conducted within some physical space. When we engage with our physical surroundings, we can enhance our experiences and activities toward creating a pathway for brain health. Most spaces offer opportunities to engage with the environment – common spaces being a good representation of how we can activate specific brain areas. For example, gyms, courts, and parks encourage movement and the exercise of sensory motor skills. These spaces invite people to engage in physical activity using environmental cues that promote a particular interest (e.g., hoop and court signals playing basketball). Places that are entrenched with stimuli that harmoniously come together to evoke beauty invigorate our visual skills. Moderate amounts of complexity in environments promote creative activity – whether it be inspirational or supportive of the task. Nature is a great example for not only nourishing the brain with sensory cues but also restoring the brain to find reserves for creativity. Paths in nature guide us in exploring our surroundings, activating our senses, and regenerating our cognitive skills. When we can’t find the chance to access or don’t have access to nature, we can oftentimes design nature to be close to us. Biophilic design that brings nature into a space, natural analogues that remind us of nature, and/or forms in nature that evoke feelings of when we’re in nature can reduce stress, improve cognitive function and creativity, improve our well-being, and expedite healing (Browning et al. 9). Common spaces meant for connecting with others such as, lounges, cafes, and even lobbies can strengthen our socio-emotional skills. Coming together and sharing an experience can create deep meaning and purpose.

Designing Intentional Time and Space
An enriched life that thrives comes with intentionality. Returning to WHO’s definition of good brain health, we need to first realize our capabilities and then optimize them to fully live out our lives. Similarly, the spaces around us can help achieve brain health but we need to first realize its capabilities and then optimize the activity by finding the appropriate place. We may realize more about environments than we think we do through the information we’ve acquired in our experiences with various spaces. But we can only activate the optimization opportunity when we intentionally seek spaces with purpose, or, perhaps, to find purpose.

Common spaces, those that are shared or public, are most likely used for social interaction, recreation, relaxation, or reflection which can overall aid in cognitive regeneration and community restoration. These spaces can be purposefully visited alone or together and can be experienced in solitude or with others. When aligning with brain health strategies and space affordances, common spaces have an immense potential to activate brain health.

Forth Worth Baylor Scott & White All Saints Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Unit. (HKS/Daryl Shields)

For us to live with purpose, our time should be spent intentionally to create experiences, and those experiences can be enhanced from our surroundings. The enriched life comes from designing and cultivating our time and space and nurturing a strong foundation for this to be realized. The time we take to fully experience and enjoy places can boost our mood, motivation, and attention, and help regulate movement, learning, and emotional responses. Our brain is more than the command center for our body that processes information for us to live our lives. It is more than the knowledge center for our mind that accumulates information for us to grow our intelligence. It is what makes us human and what makes each of us alive with purpose. It is also what connects us with others. The design and experience of brain health spaces will not only enrich our lives but also the health of our organizations and our communities.

Key Takeaways:

• Knowing the importance of brain health and learning how to exercise it can enhance the quality of our lives.
• We can apply brain health strategies in our everyday – especially when we make it a habit.
• When we engage with our physical surroundings, we can enhance our experiences and activities toward creating a pathway for brain health.
• With intentional design and intentional use, brain health can be achieved anywhere.

Works Cited:

1. Bilodeau, Kelly. “3 Ways to Build Brain-Boosting Social Connections.” 8 Sep. 2021, Harvard Medical School Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/3-ways-to-build-brain-boosting-social-connections-202109082585.

2. Browning, William, et al. 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design. 2014. New York: Terrapin Bright Green LLC.

3. Center for BrainHealth. “How Do Feelings of Purpose Affect Your Brain Health?” https://centerforbrainhealth.org/article/find-purpose-to-motivate-your-thinking. Accessed 6 Jan. 2023.

4. Felix, Cynthia, et al. “Greater social engagement and greater gray matter microstructural integrity in brain regions relevant to dementia.” The Journals of Gerontology: Series B 76.6 (2021): 1027-1035.

5. HKS, Inc. & HUME. “Enriched Environments for Brain Health that Foster Creativity, Promote Positivity, and Reduce Stress: A Neurogenesis Hypothesis.” 24 June, 2021. https://www.HKSinc.com/how-we-think/research/enriched-environments-for-brain-health-that-foster-creativity-promote-positivity-and-reduce-stress-a-neurogenesis-hypothesis/.

6. Laane, Sarah A., et al. “Effects of online brain training on self reported mental health symptoms for generally healthy adults during the Covid 19 pandemic.” Brain and Behavior 13.1 (2023): e2853.

7. Motes, Michael A., et al. “Higher-order cognitive training effects on processing speed–related neural activity: A randomized trial.” Neurobiology of Aging 62 (2018): 72-81.

8. Nanda, Upali, et al. “Creating a Brain Healthy Workplace.” HKS, Inc. 22 Feb. 2023. https://www.hksinc.com/how-we-think/reports/getting-to-a-brain-healthy-workplace/

9. World Health Organization. Optimizing Brain Health Across the Life Course: WHO Position Paper. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2022. License: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo/.

Celebrating Forgotten Histories

in Detroit Through Historic Preservation

Exterior, sidewalk view of the Rosa and Raymond Parks flat in Detroit, MI

By Ruth Mills, Saundra Little, and Lorynn Holloway

Rosa Parks is best known for her refusal to give up her bus seat to a White man in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That moment forever fixed Ms. Parks as the “mother of the civil rights movement” and as a powerful symbol of resistance, strength, and freedom. Yet this symbolism has often overshadowed her subsequent civil rights work and few people know that the modest ground-story flat where Ms. Parks was living while she accomplished some of her most significant civil rights activism still exists on Detroit’s west side.

This is just one example of how Detroit’s often overlooked but rich history of civil rights activism has influenced the struggle for Black equality in Michigan and the United States. Quinn Evans and Centric Design Studio, a Black-led, woman-owned firm that is now part of Quinn Evans, led a collaborative project to develop a historic context and evaluate over 100 sites dating from the early 1900s to the mid-1970s for eligibility for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), representing the unique fabric of the city’s 20th century civil rights legacy. Viewing these sites through the lens of common spaces may seem unconventional, but they directly represent the experiences of the Black community in Detroit in the struggle to overcome racial discrimination.

For many years, Black historic sites were marginalized in NRHP nominations. Two programs of the National Park Service (NPS), the Underrepresented Community Grants and the African American Civil Rights Grants, provide funding to identify, document, rehabilitate, and interpret civil rights sites and expand the NRHP’s diversity. Since 2016, Michigan has received more than $3.8 million in federal grant funding to document Black civil rights history.

Many significant sites associated with Black civil rights events, organizations, and leaders have been lost through urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s, the destruction consequent to the 1967 Detroit Rebellion, or neglect and demolition resulting from the city’s need to address a decreasing population. “A lot of the loss was due to racism and ignorance – the focus on preserving the city’s White history, or past city leaders not knowing or caring about Black history and sites,” says Ruth Mills, M.A., M.S. and Quinn Evans project manager. This directly impacted Detroit’s Black neighborhoods, nearly eliminating these once thriving common spaces. As the resource pool diminished, the cultural legacy of the remaining historic sites rose in importance.

The church congregation gathers for service at the Shrine of the Black Madonna, circa 1960s

Present day photo of the revitalized sanctuary in the Shrine of the Black Madonna

“By listing these sites, the National Register recognizes Detroit’s significant role in the the wide range of issues the Black community encountered as it worked toward empowerment during this period.” said Martha MacFarlane-Faes, Michigan State Historic Preservation Officer

The Quinn Evans team’s historic preservation expertise and deep roots within the City of Detroit added a necessary layer to the delicate nature of the effort. Community involvement was paramount and included an Advisory Board composed of local Black and civil rights historians as well as robust public engagement to keep the community informed of the project’s goals, processes, and outcomes. Advisors identified important themes, people, and places to guide research and the survey, a critical component as documenting Black historic sites is particularly challenging due to missing and biased information in official documents and mainstream sources. The Quinn Evans team collaborated with the Advisory Board on the selection of 30 sites for an intensive level survey and five sites to be formally nominated to the NRHP as part of the project. A GIS-based bike tour highlights over 20 civil rights sites related to the theme of resistance.

The project culminated with the listing of five sites in the NRHP:

The Birwood Wall, built in 1941, is a physical embodiment of de jure and de facto segregation in the U.S. The wall separated an established Black neighborhood from a proposed White development under the policies of the Federal Housing Authority that would not back mortgages for racially diverse neighborhoods. Over time, Black residents broke the racial barriers symbolized by the wall. It has become a common space for the community, with the section of the wall adjoining Alfonso Wells Memorial Park painted to represent the community’s history. A Michigan Historical Marker, installed in October 2022, emphasizes the wall’s transformation from a discriminatory symbol into an emblem of tenacity and perseverance.

Detroit’s Black churches are more than houses of worship. They are common spaces for congregations and communities, and are centers for Black spiritual, social, and political life. Black religious leaders were pivotal in the civil rights movement. New Bethel Baptist Church was led by the Reverend C. L. Franklin, a close friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a national leader in the movement. It was also the home church of Franklin’s daughter, Aretha, who used her music career to further the cause of civil rights. Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr. founded the Shrine of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Church and became a leading figure in the Black Nationalist and Black Christian Nationalist movements. Together Franklin and Cleage organized the 1963 Walk to Freedom which presaged the March on Washington later that summer and where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave an early version of his “I Have a Dream” speech. Both churches remain in operation today and continue to serve as centers for spiritual and community engagement.

WGPR TV was the first Black-owned and operated television station in the United States, debuting in 1975 and airing original programming including a Black-focused newscast, dance show, and public affairs shows. It afforded career and training opportunities for Black people both in front of and behind the camera, and provided a virtual common space for Black residents of Detroit and beyond where they could see their interests and issues addressed in a respectful and nuanced manner. The studio is now a museum dedicated to telling the story of WGPR TV.

A section of the Birwood Wall showing the separation of the Black neighborhood on the right from the proposed White development on the left.

The reimagined Birkwood Wall adjoining Alfonso Wells Memorial Park, painted to symbolize the Black community’s history and endurance.

The Rosa and Raymond Parks Flat in the Virginia Park neighborhood was Ms. Parks’ Detroit home for over 25 years from 1961 to 1988. From her first floor flat, Ms. Parks organized and supported the civil rights movement, from her work in the office of Congressman John Conyers, to her leadership in local organizations and continued participation at national events. She welcomed young civil rights activists to her home where they discussed issues and debated tactics, nurturing the growing Black Consciousness movement. Although it is not currently open to the public, the flat today is preserved largely as the Parks family knew it. Recognition of its historic importance upholds the legacy of Ms. Parks’ work to combat racial inequality.

There is still a great deal of work ahead to document and preserve the over 100 identified historic sites throughout Detroit. As designers, we embrace opportunities where our work intersects with the public realm but recognize that engaging with sites of the past that may hold complex or painful associations for members of Detroit’s Black community requires empathy. While many sites have been lost, others have been significantly altered in response to community needs. This is a challenge in nominating sites for the NRHP, where physical integrity is a key requirement, but the legacy of economic disinvestment is part of the overall story of Detroit’s civil rights history.

The honorary NRHP designation raises awareness but does not provide protection for historic sites. However, it does open the door for preservation tax incentives and grant programs. “This project effort was ahead of the need for doing the necessary work to include these sites in the NRHP,” says Saundra Little, FAIA, LEED AP, NOMA, and Quinn Evans principal and Director of Diversity & Inclusion. “We ran into some issues during the survey process because any historic sites that were already demolished could not be considered for registration.”

The project finished at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, postponing a full celebration of its successes, but the effort has already saved at least one building, a modest storefront on Dexter Avenue that housed Vaughn’s Bookstore, the first Black-owned bookstore in Detroit and a hub of Black journalism and activism. The Michigan SHPO continues to fund projects to increase the diversity of NRHP nominations and connect individuals, non-profits, and local groups with preservation funding. The resources offered through federal grant and incentive programs hold the promise of a deeper level of physical storytelling and engagement informed by an appreciation of culture and heritage. The 20th Century African American Civil Rights Sites project will give the common spaces of Detroit’s civil rights history the level of recognition they deserve, bring greater opportunities for their preservation, and help inspire future generations.

An Unexpected Space in Healthcare

Staff Lounge at UCSF (Photo/Michael McLane)

By Ravi Rao, Associate | Lead Interior Designer at Taylor Design.

Given the demanding nature of providing healthcare, we must acknowledge the need to accommodate space for private respite away from the public eye.

What comes to mind when you think of common spaces within healthcare environments? Perhaps the arrival and entrance, the lobby, various waiting rooms, cafes, and maybe even spaces like restrooms, stairwells, elevators, hallways, and corridors come to mind. They are, after all, shared spaces. Each has a distinct function, but some are more likely to provide comfort, respite, navigation, and reduced anxiety. When these spaces don’t work the way they are intended to, it’s often because of conspicuous eyesores like – confusing signage, generic art, and institutional white walls everywhere. In these situations, the visual quality of the space impacts its overall function. Part of my role is to design these spaces for improved function while developing a look and feel that makes the users feel at ease. I often do this through the artful use of color, patterns, and textures.

A hospital is a stressful environment for staff and patients, and their families alike. As a healthcare designer, I believe design has the power to ease the stress and strain inherent to the healthcare system. Since the 1980s and Roger Ulrich’s founding work (View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery) in evidence-based design (EBD), continual research has been collected highlighting how design can positively impact people within these healthcare spaces. The study and incorporation of EBD in healthcare environments give design practitioners the knowledge to craft spaces that improve working conditions for clinicians, patient health outcomes, and support caregivers. EBD is rooted in scientific methodology that leverages data and best practices to influence hospital design. Incorporating nature-inspired design and an abundance of natural daylight and views improve the work environment and can accelerate the healing process. In addition, taking great care in sound attenuation through acoustic control reduces the mental agitation caused by noise pollution, which impacts our ability to focus and rest. Evidence shows that windows in clinician workrooms significantly reduce medical errors. On projects where incorporating windows into specific healthcare spaces wasn’t possible, like spaces within the core of the building or procedure rooms, I’ve included LED lighting technology with a controller that can automatically adjust the light to mimic the sun’s quality of light and color throughout the day. Though it’s not the actual daylight and views, adding this simple feature significantly helps staff and patients.

We tend to focus on public spaces, patient rooms, and staff areas when considering how and when to incorporate EBD into a hospital design. However, during a recent project, an unexpected common space came to my attention – a stairwell. These spaces are typically windowless, institutional-looking, tucked away, and rarely occupied. The function of a stairwell, the means of egress during an emergency, is often the only design criteria considered. With stairwells as an alternate means of circulation instead of taking the elevator, these spaces can introduce various design elements that enliven and enrich them: natural light, color, pattern, inspirational quotes, and more. And, within the stairwell, there is an opportunity to find peace and quiet.

On a recent project, a client shared a story about a stairwell adjacent to their clinic suite that really moved our team. During discussions of their staff workflow and the clinic’s primary, secondary, and tertiary spaces, our client mentioned that their staff regularly visit the windowless concrete-enclosed stairwell adjacent to their space. We were curious to understand why. They shared that the nature of their work is often stressful and challenging such as telling a patient and their families bad news. Drawing on inner strength to deliver the information in those moments required them to compartmentalize and even hold in their emotions. Following these emotionally charged moments, staff would stop at the stairwell to release – cry, breathe or meditate, or talk with a colleague. We were surprised at how staff leveraged this common space in unexpected ways for support.

Given the demanding nature of providing healthcare, we must acknowledge the need to accommodate space for private respite away from the public eye. Predominantly, we do this with respite rooms, quiet rooms, phone booths, staff lounges, and outdoor staff-only spaces. Here staff can manage stress and recover emotionally.

The stairwell was outside the scope of the renovation. Still, with a greater understanding of how the stairwell fits the context of the overall project goals, the team took great care in designing the project spaces – for example, the clinician work areas were flooded with natural daylight. Consult rooms – a place for staff respite between meeting with patients and families – offered long-horizon views for positive distraction. And the staff lounge was positioned with corner windows at the edge of the building, perched near redwood trees to be immersed in nature like hiking through woods.

On different recent projects, the stairwell was part of the design scope, and we introduced large graphics and warm, colorful patterned wall coverings to create visuals for positive distraction. In addition to finish materials, these stairs have windows, providing natural daylight. Because the stairwells are so engaging, they have become a de facto meeting space for the staff, who now find themselves perched on a landing or walking and talking – allowing them to get some cardio exercise while meeting with team members. Circulation spaces have great potential as common spaces that can be used beyond their obvious function.

Stairway rendering (photo/Taylor Design)

The last three years since the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic taught us a lot about utilizing spaces differently. Similarly to stairwells, outdoor spaces have become an unexpected place for patients to be evaluated and receive care. Here in California, design practitioners and engineers, clinicians, healthcare leaders, and government organizations – The Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) are examining current design guidelines and code requirements based on outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal is to bring greater flexibility and response to future local or global disasters through the issuance of a comprehensive “HCAI Emergency Design Guide.” These guidelines structure the makeshift use of space we saw these past three years, such as how best to separate infectious and non-infectious flows in the parking lot so the building can promptly attend to the most acute cases. This same separation logic can be better leveraged within the building to create compartments of infectious and non-infectious flows – a granular design flexibility not fully leveraged in our hospital buildings. Common spaces in healthcare settings – whether permanent or temporary – will continue to evolve, and it’s more important than ever to design experiences that equally weigh the patient and staff journey during typical and atypical time periods.

In my design methodology, I advocate working to understand the people we design for. For example, when I’m working on a healthcare project, I want to understand the clinician or patient’s perspective and partner with them to spend a “day in their life,” shadowing them, listening to their pain points, and seeking to uncover how the built environment contributes to their frustrations. With this knowledge, it becomes possible to develop design solutions tailored to their needs.

The Design Process: Presidio Tunnel Tops

View from the Field Station looking out onto the Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo/Bruce Damonte)

A Conversation with Paula Cabot, Jennifer Devlin-Herbert, and Richard Kennedy. Moderated by Ellen McAmis.

At the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio Tunnel Tops is a major civic project transforming 14 acres of the San Francisco Presidio on and around the recently completed Doyle Drive tunnels. The newly designed park reconnects San Francisco’s Crissy Field and historic Presidio Main Parade grounds. The realization of this project is due to a partnership between Presidio Trust, the National Park Service, and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The design team led by James Corner Field Operations, with EHDD Architecture, worked to create a public space with the promise of being welcoming for all.

Below is an excerpted conversation from late March with Paula Cabot, Sr. Project Mgr. Tunnel Tops Project, Presidio Trust; Jennifer Devlin- Herbert, FAIA, LEED AP, CEO, Partner, EHDD; and Richard Kennedy, Partner, James Corner Field Operations; moderated by Ellen McAmis, Marketing Manager, EHDD Architecture, about the development and goals for the project.

Ellen McAmis: We’re really excited to talk about the Presidio Tunnel Tops, and I’d just like to start it off with a question to all of us here. The Presidio is an incredibly storied location in San Francisco’s history, and this project is a huge transformation of a key space. Can you tell us about the history, both of the space and how this project came about.

Richard Kennedy: I think the Presidio is an amazing place. It’s an amazing reserve of nature with hundreds of acres of forest overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the bluffs down in the Pacific Ocean. It’s the place where the Golden Gate Bridge connects in San Francisco’s peninsula. It’s a very historic place where the community of San Francisco began, and for decades, it was a military base that was active in the city. You can walk around the forest and trails and see the evidence of those past uses, on top of that, it offers just some of the most spectacular long range vistas of the Bay. The Presidio is also part of what is known as the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is the largest urban national park in the country.

It’s 80,000 acres that stretches up and down the coast around San Francisco and the Presidio is part of that national park. But because of its unique military history, even though it’s set within a national park, which is a fully public amenity, the Presidio hasn’t always been public, hasn’t always felt public. In the early military uses, it felt like a military base, and you didn’t feel like you could always just stroll in and access it. So when it transitioned from the military, the Presidio Trust worked very hard in making sure that the public knew that the park was for them. It really is a common ground that everyone in the city and across the country can come and visit and experience the beauty of the park and this part of the world. The Presidio Tunnel tops was perhaps one of the great demonstrations of this effort and this goal.

They defined this opportunity as what they called the new gateway to the Presidio, with the idea that it was both a literal gateway, a place to arrive and enter into the Presidio and get oriented to all that the Presidio has to offer. But also figurative in the sense of demonstrating that the Presidio was being unlocked and being opened up to an even broader audience, not just the audience of the nearby community that knew about the Presidio, but the audience more broadly across the entire Bay Area, and hopefully across the country as a gateway into this particular national park. That’s where our effort as a team all began.

Jennifer Devlin-Herbert: Given that framework of landscape and the building infrastructure that reflects the army based history of that land, the buildings were developed from the perspective of what an army base needs. More structure, formality, command and control, keep people out rather than welcoming people in. It’s hardly a building typology that is welcoming. Those six million square feet of space in buildings were really an important kind of visual marker of how welcome this place felt.

With the Tunnel Tops Project, while the buildings that are a part of it are really a background to the big Parklands and the Tunnel Tops Park itself, the buildings also had to work within the context of that park and national historic district with a very particular architectural character to many of the buildings that had to be respected and worked with. There were real challenges between creating a place that millions of people were going to be visiting, encouraging them into some smaller buildings with big impacts through programs and people, while also respecting the architectural heritage of the historic buildings.

The newly constructed Field Station building is open to the public for hands-on exploration of interpretive exhibits about the Presidio’s rich ecology, history, archaeology, and more. (Photo/Bruce Damonte)

Ellen McAmis: All of you are talking about this initial concept of it being a new gateway and buildings that need to be welcoming and also this overlay of constraints, both of the site and of the history and of the various regulatory bodies. Within all that, maybe we could talk a little bit about how when we have this concept of welcoming, what were the initial conceptions of the audience and visitors to the park, and who we wanted to welcome into the park, who may have not been welcome before? Could you talk a little bit about that and how the conceptualization and the outreach occurred?

Paula Cabot: Well, I can tell you that one of the first times that I really felt that the landscape was welcoming us was when we took down one of the huge buildings behind the visitor center. And all of a sudden that whole area opened up. It opened up not just for the wonderful views, but just the way that the land sort of wraps around you. I felt that was welcoming. Anyone would feel that this was a welcoming space to begin with. So that to me was a really “aha” moment in the design.

Richard Kennedy: That’s interesting you describe it that way, Paula. We felt that way too when first stepping out on the site and seeing the horizon for the first time. Because of its beauty, I think everyone can grasp that this is a special place in the world. The horizon speaks for itself, and I think everyone involved knew that the view would always be the draw and the star of the show. Instinctually, we thought that the best way to draw people in was that openness and flexibility. What’s interesting is that when we started engaging with the community more specifically through community workshops, community participation exhibitions, and focus group discussions, it became clear that for people to really come out and want to enjoy the park, to feel welcome and invited, they’re looking for different welcoming cues to bring people in.

Having a big open green lawn was redundant, as there were already large areas of lawn surrounding the park with the main parade being one of them, but also Chrissy Field has an open airfield and a big open green lawn down on the bay. So through very early community participation and input, we started to understand that we need to create a mix of settings and diversity of places into the design that could speak to different groups and different interests. In doing so, we needed to create different invitations for use. So some areas are more open and exposed to the view, where people can lay out a blanket or kick a ball or play with their dogs. Some are more intimate and enclosed where a small group can come and just have an intimate conversation. Some areas were designed specifically for families, picnic tables and barbecue pits where people can come and have an afternoon with a group of friends and relatives and use it as their backyard. That kind of mixture of spaces was directly a result of the feedback we received and an expansion on the definition of what is welcoming and invitational.

Yes, and there was an elaborate and protracted process for understanding what those places and spaces should be. That had an impact on the buildings that were constructed in the park as well. In order to create that sense of welcome to all, what small but significant building space should be provided and where? While that feels like an abstract question to be asking, there were very intentional conversations over a protracted period of time that allowed for a lot of debate and discussion about how we were going to attract the broadest audience.

So the intentionality around what programs and building footprints and spaces should be minimally added to make this place feel like it was as attractive to a visitor from South Korea as it was a student from the Bayview neighborhood in San Francisco. There was a lot of debate around what were the public programs, what were the amenities that needed to be provided for that breadth of an audience. Keeping in mind that the city before Tunnel Tops didn’t really feel, even though it was open to the public, just by virtue of its building stock and the way the park was set up by its very nature, it didn’t feel very welcoming.

Richard Kennedy: This is a place for all Americans, not just for people in the Bay. And that ethos was constantly being reiterated throughout the entire process. Everything was evaluated against whether or not it was being inviting, being this kind of mixture of being flexible and allowing people to make it their own and occupy in their own way as any common spaces and public spaces do.

But also specific enough that there were ways that were familiar to use, and that made it intuitive and functional for people. That balance of creating an open, flexible invitation for any number of creative uses, along with the specific and intentional is evident for the landscape design – in the way the small intimate gardens and picnic areas and play areas are used relative to the open lawns and trails through the gardens as it is for the buildings. There are common areas that are for the public. The field station is this welcoming arrival point at the lower level and other common spaces in the buildings, and then more fixed spaces for deeper engagement with the Crissy Field Center program.

I think it must be said that the Presidio Trust and the National Park Service and the Parks and Conservancy were great stewards of that ethos throughout the whole process. The expectation is that ethos needs to continue as the park matures because design matters. You have to design the framework to invite and welcome and design places that people can use and feel comfortable in. But the people who occupy the spaces and manage the spaces, they too can contribute to a culture of welcoming over time. I think that I have great confidence that that ethos will prevail throughout the park’s history and keep it as an open invitational space for all.

Views from the Field Station look out onto the Golden Gate. (Photo/Bruce Damonte)

Paula Cabot: I think what has also been tremendously successful, and it allowed the Trust to execute the vision that they had in welcoming diverse groups and communities, is that the space allows the programming for these groups to come in. I mean, the numbers are right, the size of the spaces are right. The activities that we envision are not confined to small areas, but can be expansive. And that in itself, again, with something that the Trust wanted, but the design was able to accomplish.

And now in our first year of being open, we’re actually being able to program and review these things and see how successful they are. And they are tremendously successful, and tremendously diverse. So again, you can talk more about the design process, but I think we’ve achieved what we’ve set out to, at least in terms of trying to create spaces that allow diversity and welcoming to other people.

I also think Richard, even how you situated the benches around the lawns and among the various paths. It invites people to sit down and think and be there. It’s a tremendously welcoming thing that allows one to just sit there and have a space to contemplate or enjoy their families or have a bite to eat there.

Jennifer Devlin-Herbert: I think there’s also a lot of credit to the Trust and the Conservancy and the Park Service for the intentionality of their outreach to communities during the design process to really engage in conversation with a great diversity of voices. They also went out into the community to hear the priorities from a really diverse crosssection of folks and neighborhoods. That input influenced a great deal of the planning and the thinking behind the buildings in the park and beyond. And JCFO did a remarkable job of the continuous evolution of the design with the input from the community.

Richard Kennedy: I think it’s interesting, Paula, that you mentioned the seating, because I think the whole aspirational ethos around the park was to create an opening and an invitation to Presidio and the National Park. But in design, we translated that into specific smaller invitations. And the benches and seating are some of those ideas and manifestations. We tried very carefully to make special unique seating people haven’t seen before. They kind of make you pause and say, “what is this?” That pause gives you time to reflect and consider how you might engage with the object. There are the large driftwood benches, the big sculptural benches on the Cliff Walk, those benches are as long as 90 feet in their longest segment, and they’re meant to host many people at one time. It’s not just a private bench, but something that you have to share and it’s sized to share. Because we do believe that the appeal of being in parks and being in cities is to be around others, to be in the mix of things. We tried to offer that same experience here in the park. It’s a place where you can come together and sit with strangers, but all collectively appreciate the world that you can see on the horizon, and in doing so, start to appreciate one another. Parks really are that kind of mixing ground, and the furniture is just one of the invitations that enables that to be legible.

Another example is the outpost, which is the lower level landscape designed around natural play and play in nature. That is an invitation for children and families to engage. You might not know the Presidio, but you’ve heard the buzz around this nature play space out near the Golden Gate Bridge. That is a way that we drew in enormous amounts of people. When they arrive, they see the playground, they’re amazed, their kids exert themselves, and then they realize there’s all of this other park land to explore and tap into. There is the potential for the broader public to experience a whole host of new environments, new offerings, connection to nature, connection to the city’s history, connection to our cultural history, just connection to the broader environment is huge and really exciting.

Paula Cabot: One thing that’s important to mention and that the Trust planned for, was transportation to the park. Originally, you may have had to change buses several times. But the Trust took this seriously. And so in the design, we had a transit center, but we just expanded the transit center so that people could actually come with their families and arrive in a reasonable amount of time. I think that pulling transportation into the equation in this design and into the project was key to actually getting people an easy way of accessing it, where before it was not so simple.

The 17,000 SF Youth Campus at the base of the Tunnel Tops bluff is a hub for children’s activities. (Photo/Bruce Damonte)

Jennifer Devlin-Herbert: Richard, I was thinking about the outpost, building on this theme of how to draw people into the park. Transportation’s one way to do it. The other is how do you create that singular destination to draw people in and the outpost has become that. Every two year old to fourth grader to grandparent wants to crawl through those tunnels. This helped the public get to know about the programs that they’re invited to and slowly it became more of a public invitation to explore more.

Richard Kennedy: That’s right. I think we all had the instinct that providing a space for children would allow families and other people to come. We’ve learned in hosting public meetings, that if you want parents to come, you have to have space for children to keep busy. But it was the Presidio Trust who took on the challenge to allow for the play to innovate and become a fresh experience for children that was specific to this environment. It was the ethos and culture and quality of the national park that took the initiative because playgrounds are notoriously difficult to design and work through. There was a deep belief that this would create a bond between children and the natural world. Play was the best conduit to that goal, but not just any type of play. It’s all made out of natural materials. It’s inspired by narratives from the park. The nests that create tree houses are inspired by the bird nests from birds that actually build nests throughout the park. There’s intentional thought behind all of it, from its material characteristics, informal construction, to the softness of all of the detailing gives this overall impression that you’re playing in nature. You look around and even the play spaces have some of the best views of any playground in the country. The hope is that the uniqueness of the scenery creates a memory that builds that bond with nature over time and the park would become a gateway to a lifetime of connectivity to national parks, to nature, and the earth.