On Memory: Design Brigade Week 8.

Longevity.

Published in

Design Brigade

10 min readJul 28, 2020

Preparing our Presentation Materials

This week we are preparing for a discussion with the Mayor about the memorial project. For this to become a reality, it is essential to have his support and feedback. In preparation for this meeting we have been working on clarifying our ideas and flushing out diagrams and drawings to explain these ideas.

Working on a presentation as a group is not without challenges. Our group has been using Google Slides to collaboratively assemble a presentation, both asynchronously and together while discussing on Zoom. While Google Slides does not have all of the capabilities of other softwares, such as Adobe InDesign, the ability to work together simultaneously has been invaluable.

Because so many minds are behind this presentation, a challenge for our group has been to create a cohesive visual appearance in the presentation materials while combining all of our different drawing styles. Part of this process has been utilizing the color palette and font choices we discussed in last week’s Medium. We are in the process of finalizing our presentation materials, and making edits to our visuals, written materials, and scripts.

Additionally, we are developing preliminary budgeting outlines for potential projects. In the hopes of moving forward with a solid option, our discussion aims to present an array of options that fit varying price points and timeframes.

Guidebook

As mentioned in last week’s Medium post, we are further developing the framework for the guidebook that will be instrumental in the execution of this project once the Design Brigade internship is over. The guidebook will serve as a roadmap for how to build off the work we’ve done so far and will include a list of next steps the city can take to ensure the community is involved. To that end, we’ve defined the basic topics that will be covered: introduction, community feedback, design development, and funding. Each of these topics will expand further to provide an in-depth understanding of what this project is and what it could be.

Advisory Committee

We cannot emphasise enough the importance of engaging the people of New Haven from this fundamental stage onwards: They must be involved in the design and planning of this memorial.

We’ve spoken a lot about the difference between designing “for” and designing “with” the city, and a key part of this aspiration involves the establishment and take over of an Advisory Committee. We hope to remain available for any questions or concerns, but we acknowledge the limitations of our position. To this end, our guidebook aims to aid this transition and not dictate. The Committee that will work with the Department of Cultural Affairs, and represent the diversity of the people of New Haven, of which the memorial must be an expression of. We believe strongly that any advisory team needs decision making power.

Alignment and Calibration

This week, our team took the time to reconnect on a more personal level in the hopes that we may align our intentions and expectations, and calibrate our team dynamics so that we may work together more intuitively. Here are our personal thoughts:

Ye

As the team begins to narrow down the project and come to a consensus on a collective vision, it becomes increasingly evident that there are team dynamics that need to be addressed before we can move forward as a well-calibrated team. One example is the recurring misunderstandings between the on boarded members and members who have been involved since the beginning. Because the project has evolved so much from the initial briefing, new members find themselves getting lost as to which information is important and which is not. Whereas the original members, having followed the project through all the meetings and changes, have an intuitive understanding of what information is relevant, internal workings of the team, and who/what some of the design decisions are appealing to. Some original members may even feel a deeper investment and responsibility towards the individuals whom they have asked for advice and feedback, which inadvertently, translates to a deeper investment in the project. This kind of investment works best when all the members, new and old, are brought to the same plane of understanding and expectation. From there, on an internal level, we decided to open our group dynamics up for discussion so that we may develop a deeper investment in each other.

Something we discovered was that proper onboarding would have been helpful for creating a stronger team. New members were put on the project during an intense week of preparing a slideshow presentation to city officials, and introductions to each other were kept at a minimal. We did not know each other as people, we only knew of each other’s work and as interns who could execute the task at hand.

Hana

To me, “alignment and calibration” is a self-conscious reflection on my role and privileges in this project, and the reverberations this might have on both internal and external dynamics. I am experiencing a lot of firsts in this work, and learning a lot as a result. After our conversation, I am realising that part of my duty as project manager is to ask how my teammates envision contributing to this project, and to set the tone for a safe and honest space within the team. Understanding our individual and team aims, stakes and backgrounds is key to working cohesively, and feeling that our individual voices are heard. Our bumpy onboarding process made me understand how important it is — regardless of workflow — to take a pause and really check in on each other, to ask how we’re all doing outside the context of work. This is especially important given the weightiness of our discussions.

As a cisgender, mixed-race woman born and raised in Hong Kong, I have grappled with questions of identity in a context very different to our New Haven-based memorial project. In all honesty, many of the conversations about diversity and positionality that we are having with the community, with our clients, and amongst ourselves, involve realities I am confronting for the first time. This, I acknowledge, is one of my biggest privileges, and is leading me to reevaluate my past experiences as well. I keep circling back to how the lack of diversity in architecture as a practice has a fundamental impact on the ways the built environment perpetuates or dismantles inequality, questioning how I hope, as a recent graduate, to contribute to the latter.

Abraham

COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement ushered in a new era of design consciousness. The meeting with the community was the first wake-up call to how designers have been complicit in capitalizing on Black and Brown pain without including them in the design table. I’ve been mulling over my own proximity to whiteness and how the erasure of my Latinx identity occurs far more frequently when in perceived positions of power. This week, more than other weeks, the unspoken dynamic of being Latinx in a predominantly non-Black and non-Latinx group has raised questions of tokenization. Projects need to do more than just consult community leaders to ensure that the image of inclusivity that is projected outwards is also reflected within the internal dynamics of the group. As such, we’ve begun to reframe how we calibrate our divergent interests, and diverse identities, to ensure internal alignment with how this project develops.

Mari

In the greater scope of professional practice, onboarding is rarely perfect. As we discussed the need for our group to realign and recalibrate, I began reflecting on previous experiences in the workplace. In the past, a majority of projects I have joined were in progress prior to my arrival. Subsequently, there is an inherent feeling of being lost in the group or not yet knowing the best way to contribute to something in motion. While I eventually overcame these challenges, I do wish those transitions could have been smoother and more welcoming. Generally speaking, I find that the best way to feel integrated in a moving project is to observe and build-up personal input as you go deeper into the mission. However, considering the short time span of this internship, it was/ is vital for a rapid reevaluation of how this team works together. We want to make sure that all team members feel a true sense of authorship, every perspective matters in this project. Moving forward, I will keep this experience in mind for future onboarding scenarios.

Zishi

2.5 weeks into this project, I feel that the primary reason behind us newcomers’ confusions is our intertwining and ever-changing roles. Firstly, we are designers of a pandemic & social justice memorial, which is a sensitive subject with an assumed didactic undertone. Secondly, we are the “privileged” people whom New Haven residents distrust, because of the historical/ongoing tension between Yale and the city. Thirdly, we are also stakeholders of this project no matter how “privileged” we are, because members of the Yale community have also been severely impacted by COVID-19.

As a result, It’s been very difficult for us to effectively position ourselves at all times, because as a team we have to juggle various tasks with a busy schedule, constantly being pushed from presentations to meetings to Medium articles without making sense of “what happened” and “what’s next”. For this reason, my understanding of “alignment and calibration” is the ability to adapt to these roles as our audience demands, without losing sight of our mission of proposing a space for the city to heal and grow.

Meanwhile, it is the first time that I find myself still trying to wrap my head around the design problem instead of entering production mode at the later stage of an internship. On one hand, we’ve been tasked with creating a “memorial” but we have to work with the client to figure out what to produce exactly, because a consensus is yet to be reached among NH residents — the project is due in a month, but we still don’t know if the memorial will be digital or physical, let alone having a site chosen. On the other hand, our previous meetings with New Haven city’s stakeholders have made it impossible for us to shy away from systemic diversity issues within the architectural profession and our institution. Since we are yet to strategize to fully challenge and fight against the status quo through this project (despite recent efforts from within the school of architecture), the apprehension we received from the NH representatives’ end only deepened our guilt and drained our energy so far.

A hectic onboarding week aside, I think it is the aforementioned two factors that perpetuate the weird dynamics within our team.

As we prepare our presentation to the mayor to package the necessity of having this “healing space”, two further questions that may be informative for future virtual internship emerge: how to assess the emotional commitment of designers in front of the much contested issues of race, diversity and social class, and how to maintain a productive self-consciousness without being overwhelmed by guilt and self-blame

Ally

The interplays of different points of view, experiences, and priorities manifest in so many different ways, and it is difficult to understand them from only one person’s perspective. That’s why it is essential for our team to talk together openly about the dynamic within our group, how decisions are made, how people can be made to feel welcome, included, and valued. I wish we opened up this conversation (which is ongoing) sooner. In the future, I, personally, want to feel more confident bringing up topics of interpersonal and group dynamics to my teammates.

Something that I realized this week was that a sense of responsibility to a project comes from a feeling of responsibility to people. For me, a lot of my drive to do my best work on this project has stemmed from the conversations and relationships our team has built with our client at the City, New Haven residents, and community leaders. I feel a responsibility to honor the trust that these people have placed in our team. I understand that not being present for some of these conversations earlier in the summer has made it more difficult for Abraham and Zishi to feel invested in the project. Given that this project was confusing from the start, that we have had to build it from the ground up ourselves, that I, myself, (even after being on this project all summer) am often still confused about where we are headed, I can’t imagine how disorienting it must be to jump in on the project midway through.

Moving forward, I hope we can build a sense of responsibility to one another, in addition to our clients. It is truly difficult to work as a team. Moreover, it is even harder to do so when you only know your teammates via Zoom, and have never been able to spend time together in person. We need to get to know each other better as designers and as people. Having an understanding of one another will be essential to aligning ourselves, producing the best work possible for the City, and building constructive and supportive relationships amongst ourselves.

Progress Work

The work for this week so far has been centered around the presentation to the mayor, which prompts us to tighten up the project’s narrative and comb through our concerns so far. Since the goal is to persuade the mayor into believing the necessity of this memorial project of “urban healing” and “growth”, the efficacy of communication has been our primary concern when crafting the presentation slides. Appealing visuals aside, a big chunk of the information is devoted to budgetary estimates and their corresponding hypothetical scenarios.

Meanwhile, we’ve consulted Marissa Mead from Svigals + Partners and Karen DuBois-Walton from Storytellers of New Haven. As for the former meeting, we aimed to make sure our estimates are reasonable. As for the latter, we wanted to learn more about ways of containing sentiments of the community and figure out what is missing from existing public spaces of New Haven, as well as her work related to affordable housing in many of New Haven’s less-affluent neighborhoods. Karen’s stories are also a reminder of the existence of stigma — in addition to the existing stigma of low-income communities in dire need of single/multi-family homes, the overlap of those communities with the COVID-impacted population may prolong such stigma in a foreseeable future, exacerbating the trauma of what these people have already experienced.

Finally, we have agreed on a preliminary framework for the final booklet, which will be further calibrated and enriched after meeting with the mayor.