Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Hey everyone. Welcome to BRI Blocks. Bri BLS are short podcasts where failed architecture editors discuss current urgent matters in architecture and spatial politics. This is the Brief Look series on discomfort. This is a series that we started with Juan and Maria Victoria. We have been doing it already for a few months, which I congratulate ourselves for doing it, <laugh> for continuing especially, um, <laugh>. And in this brief box on discomfort, we discuss ideas of discomfort and special practices, what discomfort has to do with the way we conceive space and we design space. Uh, I am Maria Mat. I'll be one of your hosts today. And, uh, hello, Juan Maria. Hello, Maria. Hello, everyone. Today we have, um, a very special guest today. We have Todd Brown with us. He's an architect and an environmental psychologist, Todd, research explorers how a architecture and other physical spaces are produced, perceived, or evaluated as racialized, or how they embody other social constructs, which is something that it's very interesting for us on the topic of this bridge block. So, hello Todd. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2 00:01:17 Hello, buddy. I thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 00:01:20 Well, I think I'm just gonna start with a, let's say, simple or not so simple question. I would like to know, Todd, what connections do you see between these ideas of discomfort and your research?
Speaker 2 00:01:31 Thank you for that question. Great question. So, a lot of my research with looking at architecture, primarily architecture and race, but architecture and a variety of kind of critical social issues, is this idea really of looking at inclusivity, right? This idea of understanding how the architecture that we conceive of and that we design, how it is either inclusive or exclusive to certain, uh, social and racial groups. And I honestly believe that's directed, uh, or connected directly to, to the idea of comfort and discomfort. Because in most places in which people do feel comfortable, they usually find some sense of inclusivity, some sense of belonging in these architectural spaces that they inhabit. And what I've found in my research as an environmental psychologist is that often the architecture that provides a sense of discomfort are those places where people feel excluded, right? And so a lot of my research really looks at how design can consider kind of these multidimensional facets of identity and how we can start to design for both spec specific and general marginalized groups in order that they feel more, uh, empowered and valued within physical space.
Speaker 3 00:02:47 So I was reading your, your, I was getting a bit in touch with your research, which I honestly find very, very interesting, passionate, and, um, thank you. And so one of the things that I find, uh, very, uh, innovative in your research is that you are focused on the perception of the architectural object. So we tend to think the impact of, uh, racism, uh, in regards to architecture from the perspective of the production, right? The production of the built environment, the production of a building, the production in different scales. But what is very new and very interesting from your approach is that you tackle the question of perception and you try to say, listen, these are not two issues isolated. The production of space and the perception of space is not something isolated, but it actually is connected and it goes back and forth in the sense that the production of space produces a certain perception of space and that perception of space reproduces spaces. Yes. And that honestly, I found it amazing, like <laugh>. Ok, this makes so much sense. Yes. The perception of space, for instance, produces symbolic value of a building mm-hmm. <affirmative> and that reproduces dynamics of racial segregation. So I don't know if you could tell us a bit more about your research, uh, uh, in, on this and how, for instance, this is also related to the Carceral system, which is another subject mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, is present in, in your, in your research.
Speaker 2 00:04:31 Yes. No, thank you, uh, Maria Victoria for pointing that out. I think you, you know, you really summarized my research beautifully with that statement because that's really what it's about. Right? So I argue a lot of my, in my research, um, you know, oftentimes when, when architects, when we design spaces or any type of designer, they design physical aspects of the built environment. We're trained a lot to think in this certain way about, um, how architecture might be perceived. And we often look at our designs through the eyes of an architect, right? And what I argue a lot in my research is that the, a often the average, you know, everyday individual, um, members of society, of which we're all apart, we perceive architecture in certain ways around race, class, gender, other social constructs, um, based on the historical associations, right, that architecture have in order to produce those relationships.
Speaker 2 00:05:28 My, uh, I guess lexicon has evolved now. So I've, I've given since I've written that article, but I've given more specific names. So I call it now the socio spatial imaginary. What types of socio spatial imaginaries do we have around architecture in the built environment? And so I trace historically how race, um, racial power dynamics have been directly linked to the production of architecture. And yes, I argue that that production of architecture as racialized, right? Because architecture is a part of material culture, it's a part of society. It's not something that is, um, objectively, um, produced or conceived. It. Architecture really does not have a neutrality, but inherent within the production and creation of architecture, there are these embedded social ideologies that really are inex capable and unavoidable because we as human beings, every time that we produce something, anything that's a part of material culture, we're bringing in our own cultural values to how that space should be designed.
Speaker 2 00:06:34 Who's going to occupy those spaces, right? So those preconceived notions are already embedded in the production of architecture, so that once it exists other individuals in society, they can read those things, those they can read those, um, the environmental cues I call them, uh, now the environmental cues, which are kind of design aspects, design features and objects in the environment. We read those environmental cues and we create this social spatial imaginary. Now, it's not about being right or wrong all the time, and I'm always kind of very, um, key to point that out when I, when I present my research to architects, uh, cause I think I'm one of the few people doing empirical research, right? Going out in the street as a psychologist, right? And asking questions about architectural perception. It's a really simple concept, but unfortunately, if surprising is not really done often in academia.
Speaker 2 00:07:28 But when you ask people, and then you find that people have these social spatial imaginaries around race and gender and sexual orientation in terms of these associations, they perceive about who will occupy that space, who should be in those spaces. And when you find out there starts to be, and these perceptions of course are, are very, can be very, uh, they're very subjective. So that means they can be very, um, individualized. But what I, when you start to look at large numbers of individuals, you start to see common themes or trends and very distinct similarities around, you know, for example, sh showing an image of a specific type of architecture, a specific type of space to dozens or hundreds of individuals. You'll see that there starts to be a trend that the vast majority perceive this as, as, let's say, a wealthy, affluent wide space.
Speaker 2 00:08:19 A vast majority perceive this as a, uh, poor, um, you know, lower income space is occupied by people of color. Where do those, those common threads, um, and commonalities across that perception, why can we find, in most cases, anytime these types of studies are repeated, that there does seem to be a trend. Um, and that goes in the history of the production of architecture, who was allowed to take part in the process of, uh, and who was excluded even in the process of creating architecture. And that starts to be easily read. Oh, and of course, we can't forget they got a social, political and economic systems that also, um, grants or deny people access to certain types of physical spaces, right? So design is one point, but we can't ignore policy, right? Policies and practices, um, that have contributed to the shaping of the built environment.
Speaker 2 00:09:15 When we take all of those things into consideration, looking at the production of architecture, historically, looking at who has again been excluded or, um, included in the production or even the inhabitants or occupying of certain types of architecture, those things are translated in society. They come up as kind of these memes or occurring themes that we see in media that we see even when we walk down the street or when we see certain types of people in certain types of environments, or certain types of people not in certain types of architectural spaces. And this happens over our lifetime, really. It's a part of psychological conditioning. And so therefore, when we're introduced to a novel space, an architectural space or typology that we've never seen before, or a architecture in a specific environment that we've never been in before, the only thing we can do is draw on our historical, um, his association understanding of spaces and who occupy them.
Speaker 2 00:10:11 So then it becomes, again, a repetitive cycle, like you said, uh, Maria Victoria, right? It's a repetitive cycle that we then start to associate certain spaces with certain people, and we perceive them as such. And they start to then reproduce that idea of inclusivity and exclusivity, sometimes simply by being, not inviting or not being read and inviting by certain groups, inviting, uh, yeah. By certain groups. And so then you'll have spaces in which sometimes people won't even associate themselves with or venture into, or buildings, for example, that people won't even use because it kind of sends out this overt message that you're not welcome here. And so, and, and that's again, based on race, but based on a variety of other identity categories. And so that's what I'm exploring further in my research. I thought that was a long answer, <laugh>,
Speaker 3 00:10:59 But yeah, that was a great answer. Thank you very much. And yeah, and you, you, you develop a, this idea of what a quick, what I imagine is what you, you do yourself is a critical analysis, which includes form like particip forms of design. And that I, and again, I I give you back the question of, uh, just, just to go back to the subject of Carceral design, um, mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that is a very sensitive, uh, topic. And that is something that we've been discussing with, uh, Juan and Maria, uh, right before meeting, and is how there is architects critical position, uh, of denying being insofar as their abolitionist. They deny all possibilities or they're, they refuse themselves to be part of the design of jails, uh, of the, the design of the carceral system. And so what we were saying with Juan and Maria is that this is, it's interesting as a critical and radical position, but it also happens that someone is going design it in any case. Cause we not really in the moment in which jails are going to disappear, so someone else is going. And if those designing them are not those who are a bit critical. So, and we know you've been, you participated in, uh,
Speaker 2 00:12:22 The Van Allen Institute's Justice and Design
Speaker 3 00:12:25 Justice Design Design, yeah. And we are all very interested in this topic, and we would like to, to to hear about it
Speaker 4 00:12:35 Also, Todd, I see, and I, I've read some part of your work in which you are doing like, uh, an evaluation of correctional environments, and maybe you can broaden it up more both in terms of, you know, like how you engage coding research like as, as a scholar, but also as a designer and, uh, consultant. How do you breach those worlds?
Speaker 2 00:12:58 Thank you, Quana and Maria Victoria. Yeah, so I, it's interesting. In 2017, I really got my first exposure to, to working within the area of, um, carceral design that kind of got birthed out of the khali broader, um, suicide, which happened in 2015. But it was a result of, uh, his period of incarceration in Rikers Ireland, which is a notorious prison in New York City. And I was, uh, a doctoral student at the time, um, in environmental psychology. And, uh, just so happened that the event Allen Institute, which is based in New York City, um, where I was, they were holding actually an international competition, um, for proposals for gel, uh, healthier gel design because the gels had had come under the prison system. The indu, the prison industrial complex had already been under critiqued by academics for years. And now because of Khali Browder's suicide, it was, um, you know, this kind of, the idea of Rikers Island as a, as a prison system was under heavy, heavy scrutiny.
Speaker 2 00:14:10 But even more particularly, um, the physical spaces of Rikers Island, um, had come called into question, right? The quality of the spaces, what could have been so spatially traumatizing that we see higher rates of suicide, uh, within not only Rikers Island, but many prisons. But not only during incarceration, after incarceration, there are higher rates of suicide and other negative traumatic mental illness. And so that started to be taken note of by many officials, many professionals in a variety of fields. And the field of architecture actually started to think about the role that, um, physical, uh, prisons play in mental health and wellbeing. And I, I do come from a variety of different backgrounds, but public health is one of my, um, academic backgrounds as well. So I had already been interested in mental health issues along with architecture and environmental psychology. So the Van Allen Institute, um, had made a stipulation that each design team needed to have an environmental psychologist or someone with a background in environmental psychology as a part of the team of the design team, just to even enter the competition.
Speaker 2 00:15:21 And that was unheard of because, you know, very few architecture competition specify that you must have an environmental psychologist on the team. And obviously with my background in architecture and environmental psychology. But one team reached out to me and asked me to join as their consultant. And, uh, you know, I was still working on this topic as a PhD student at the time, but I kind of already written a few pieces about just in general, inclusion within architecture and participatory design in general. And that could be any marginalized population. And I consider prisoners a marginalized population, particularly in the US where we know there are racial and class disparities that are pervasive, right? In our criminal justice system. Uh, people of color and people of lower income make up the vast majority of the prison population. So in any time, for, for me, looking at a prison population really does include, um, race and class disparities automatically.
Speaker 2 00:16:18 So I was happy to be a part of the, of the competition. My team placed, we were finalists in there. We did not win. But the, the winning team actually did have a really, really great design proposal. So I say all of that to say that was kind of my first exposure working with, um, an architecture firm in Chicago. Um, I'm sorry, in, in New York where they were, they had been used to doing prison designs. That's kind of what that firm specialized in. But again, for the purpose of the, of this competition, they not only brought in me as an environmental psychologist, they had a criminologist there, um, and other researchers in the social sciences. And so we kind of worked as a team to think about, well, what are the critical social issues, spatial issues that occur within carceral environments, and how can we make them more humane, right?
Speaker 2 00:17:09 For our prisoners? This was a project that we worked on, you know, for just quite a few months. Cause we didn't progress, uh, to proceed, uh, to the final, final round, but we made it just short of that. But, and so I kind of put Carceral design on the back burner a little bit because it was not a, an interesting, uh, you know, direct focus of mine at the time. But it just so happened that, um, in 20 20, 20 20, right before Covid, um, I guess, uh, some editors of a book, uh, that's called What Works in, uh, prison Design, they had seen the, the, you know, the work that I did with that competition. And they invited me to write a book, book chapter, I'm sorry, the book is called What Works in Custodial Design. And so my chapter, which is, uh, chapter 11 in the book about evaluating right, uh, correctional environments, um, it was another opportunity for me to, again, engage with the concept of cars design.
Speaker 2 00:18:04 So I'll admit, you know, I am new into this area of looking at carceral design, but I feel that, you know, what I discussed in my book chapter is really thinking about, and this can be applied to any, again, any marginalized group. What are the, the critical psychosocial methodologies that really need to be applied to both evaluate and analyze any physical space in terms of design? Who are the voices that need to be heard? And what are the mechanisms for the implementation of concrete architectural design strategies? So that's what I primarily discussed. Now, I will say that I, in my book chapter, I discussed this almost at a theoretical level because again, I've not worked, um, you know, I've not done any prison design directly myself. And even with my research, I have not done any research with the prison population directly. However, what I do use are examples of related empirical case studies in which environmental, psych, environmental, um, and psychological tools have been applied for the assessment of space.
Speaker 2 00:19:16 And they've been done in institutional environments by other environmental psychologists like, uh, mental health facilities, um, educational institutions. How can we really look at what spaces are dehumanizing individuals that are leading to, uh, suicidal, uh, tendencies, ideation, and action, right? Or that are leading to depression. And because what we find when we do the research is that prison environments are negative for really how they're currently being designed are negative for everyone. Not only the prisoners, but the guards who are there working in those spaces for the family members, right? Who, um, who feel often they report that they feel a form of secondary imprisonment just by visiting their loved ones. How do we capture their voices to restore the humanity? Because prisoners are still human, right? And I think there's a large misperception that, you know, everyone there is, uh, you know, in prison for, for first degree mo murder and awaiting death row, no, that is a, represents a very, very small percentage of the population.
Speaker 2 00:20:22 And most of these individuals are not serving life sentences, um, have actually not been violent offenders. They're in prison for things like, you know, before it was repealed recently, but things like marijuana use, right? And so how do we, yes, they are in prison, but how can we provide humane, dignifying and safe environments so that they're not further re-victimized, you know, during their sentence. Um, and, you know, leading to things like what happened with, uh, uh, Khali Browder. So that's kind of how I address it in terms of looking at prisoners as a marginalized group. Um, and how do we really capture their voices to understand how these spaces can be improved? And sometimes it's at the scale of, of, of architecture, but a lot of interventions, uh, the skull of interior architecture actually have proven to be very useful with rehumanizing these spaces. And so I do that again for any, any type of group.
Speaker 2 00:21:18 And so now I've become very interested in the prison population, but, uh, yeah, so that's where my work is, is taking me now. And I think that you, as I do more work in this area, I'd love to actually go into and get access. You know, it's very hard, even as a researcher to be able to interview inmates or get them to do psychological, um, any type of evaluation, psychological work. Um, but I, I definitely welcome the opportunity for that to happen, for me to actually kind of put my theoretical research into, uh, into practice.
Speaker 4 00:21:48 I wonder how is your work, uh, received and what sort of questions have you found challenging and interesting in regarding, well, on one side, among the architecture schools as, uh, usually for instance, the, what we have tended to call, like the user is not necessarily taken into account, right? Usually perhaps in design workshops before, but then the post occupancy issue is something that architects actually like, move on from that. So how do you feel it has, uh, been received?
Speaker 2 00:22:23 So a lot of my work, you know, is really centered around environmental justice is just that I happen to, when I, when I, when I personally discuss, um, environmental justice, I'm always thinking first and foremost about architecture and design, because that is my background. That is my training. That is the reason why, um, I do the work that I'm doing today. And I would say that, you know, one of the things that, that steered me to transition from the field of architecture, um, into environmental psychology, uh, over 15 years ago was because I was kind of disappointed at that time with the thought of architecture. Um, you know, over 15 years ago, we were very few practitioners were actually discussing race and architecture. Um, I don't even recall ever discussing race in over six years of architecture theory from both undergrad and grad school we were in, in my school at least.
Speaker 2 00:23:19 We were not explicitly talking about race. It was not interwoven throughout the conversations, maybe in some kind of niche coursework, um, that I never even had. Maybe they discussed it there, but I definitely, it was not at the forefront, um, of, of, of, um, of the dialogue on architecture within architecture schools. And I'm, I will say that I'm proud to see and very optimistic how the field of architecture really has evolved from since when I was, you know, initially began doing this, uh, research. And I felt that I could find, you know, almost no one who even, you know, knew what I was talking about. It was like I was, um, speaking a different language and, and, and, and, and no either scholars or practitioner were really engaged, or at least that I was aware of, okay, that we're engaged in this topic. And now I'm seeing that many, many, many schools of architecture are readily embracing this.
Speaker 2 00:24:14 So I would say that it's now it's my, you know, this type of work is being well received. I, I love that at the University of Texas, at Austin, the school of Architecture. I mean, that's literal, literally what I've been hired to do is talk about, uh, race and architecture, the full-time, uh, faculty member there. And I see that, you know, all of the, of my colleagues who I, who are, um, who welcomed me to their studios to do my inclusion workshop, and Juan, thank you as well, you know, that you're one of them. Um, it's been a pleasure working with different studios from landscape architecture to interior architecture to of course architecture, um, urban design, and really thinking about what does inclusivity mean at all scales and for all people. Um, and I think that's well embraced. I'm really excited to see students very enthusiastic about this idea of looking at marginalized groups and really trying to figure out how to incorporate their voices, right?
Speaker 2 00:25:15 Because a lot of the work we do, um, is speculative. And I guess that leads to my answering the second part of your question. What are those challenges? And, you know, I will say that, you know, as, as a, as a researcher who's really, I'll, I'll say start just starting out in this area of really gathering lots of empirical data on how people perceive architecture and perceive space. Um, you know, when I do my interviews, they're sometimes over two or three hours each. I'm working on a one-on-one level. And I realize that that one individual, even if they are a, you know, a identify as, um, a person of color and or maybe someone who's also a part of a sexual identity minority or class minority, et cetera, they are still one individual and they can't truly be completely representative of an entire group or an entire population, right?
Speaker 2 00:26:07 So you have to kinda speculate if you, as, as I continue to do this research, getting more and more and more and more voices, because I, I only learn from what individuals who share their time with me and who are honest and genuine with answering my questions, doing my interviews. I do a lot of walking interviews in physical space, taking people to the architecture on site, and getting their perceptions right. So I can only gather the information these individuals on a one-on-one basis, um, are able to provide me. Or if I'm doing quantitative work, sometimes it's a little easier cause I can, can mass distribute surveys, right? Which I've done as well. But these are individual voices and it's, it's important to note they don't represent entire populations. So what we can do is just try to speculate how to be as inclusive as possible without enough empirical data.
Speaker 2 00:27:02 Again, unfortunately there is not a lot of research done in this area, so there's a drawback to that. I do feel privileged to be able to work at this intersection of race and architecture, um, and psychology, environmental psychology, because I'm one of the few people actually gathering that data that hopefully starts to serve as a reference for future scholars, designers, and researchers to come. But there's not a lot of presidential work to work with, right? So I'm kind of starting from scratch. That would be the challenge. So the, the good part is gonna, being at the forefront of this type of research, the challenge is that there's not a lot of previous research to draw from. And so that means right now we're at, we are actively, um, gathering this type of information and it requires more and more interviews, more and more surveys so that we start to build up a better picture of what truly what design features truly represent inclusion.
Speaker 2 00:27:52 Because inclusion is not gonna be the same, um, you know, for everyone, right? All black people are not a monolith. All Asian people, all white people are not a monolith. So, you know, the, I can't interview five people and say, okay, I have the voice represented here with five individuals. You really can't have that if, if I interviewed a million people. But as I start to interview more and more, you start to get a better pi picture, better understanding of what might be welcoming spatially and architecturally for an individual. And then you can start to, if you got enough individuals within that particular socio racial demographic kind of forming a consensus that yes, we think that these elements are inclusive, we think that these elements, um, are exclusive, then we start to see a trend and we can start to paint a picture and we can be a little more confidence.
