Demand, Incentivize and Educate – Viola Tan, BArch Architecture ’24

Since my last blog, I’ve been mainly diving into my other project, the Building Differently project focusing on promoting modular and offsite construction technologies in Boston. We’ve been conducting interviews with developers, contractors, designers, researchers and other government officials to learn about how we can make modular work in Boston.

Modular construction is not a new thing. However, it has not been a huge success in Boston, realizing it’s potential benefit of being able to create a large amount of housing quickly and effectively. Some of the challenges we identified through research and interviews so far include storage of modular units, staging, and transportation of units from modular factories. These challenges are mainly due to the fact that Boston is such a dense city without many nearby modular factories.

What resources are there to help? My awesome colleague Holly and I are currently working on mapping the land resources in Boston that might be suitable for storage, staging, and building a micro-factory. (Image showing map in progress) These include the publicly owned vacant land and some other unconventional land resources – a researcher at MIT suggested that we look into potentially renting sports fields in high schools and primary schools during the summer, when they are not using them as much. Another important resource would be open-air parking lots that are not being used as intensely, but I’m still figuring out if they exist (as parking is such a huge problem to start with) and if so, how to find out which lots are usually more free.

I want to end with an interview insight that I found super helpful. We kept asking people: what do you think the government can do to help? One of them, a researcher from McKinsey, said that there are three things the government can do to promote a new beneficial technology: demand/mandate, incentivize, and educate.

Co-Everything Housing, Viola Tan, BArch Architecture ’24

Such a chaotic and fun starting at the Housing iLab! The past two weeks I got to know about multiple projects happening in the iLab, two of which I am going to work on this summer – Building Differently and Living Together.

Living Together is a research on how the City can support co-living projects in Boston. Although we’ve talked about co-housing so much at RISD, it is the first time I got to know about the difference between co-housing, co-living, co-ops, communes, and traditional shared housing. Co-living refers to three or more biologically unrelated people living in the same dwelling unit, sharing kitchens and common areas. I once got co-living and co-ops mixed up and hence got invited to a tour of co-ops in Boston. On the day of the tour it randomly started raining before the time we were supposed to meet, so I just waited outside one of the co-ops. The people coming in and out of the building were so nice!! You can tell that they had some kind of agency to the space and were super welcoming. Love this sense of agency and community, and community agency. Later in the trip, I was surprised to see such a large group of existing co-ops in the Fenway area. Actually, a building that I used to pass by a lot last summer in Fenway, Boston is a co-op!

As for my co-living project though, I talked to the director of a nonprofit in Boston looking to set up a co-living site. Hopefully we will be able to set up an RFP which will allow us to direct funds to these projects. Apart from the legal definitions around lease splitting etc., an important aspect that distinguishes co-living from traditional shared housing models is the intentionality in living together. Other co-living projects by this nonprofit have coaches coming in monthly to teach residents skills for living together.

Lastly, it was interesting to learn about how government RFPs work. I went to the Rent-to-Own RFP conference held by my supervisor and met some affordable housing developers from the community. For that project, we are trying to facilitate rent-to-own projects in Boston that help people gradually transition from tenancy to affordable homeownership. So far, the main job of the government that I’ve seen is to distribute money from the bigger government to hopefully the right people to do hopefully the right thing.

Day One at What Cheer Flower Farm | Samuel Aguirre | MFA Furniture Design ’24

Day One at What Cheer Flower Farm | Samuel Aguirre | MFA Furniture Design ’24

Final projects complete. The studios are empty. Critiques have settled in and the weight of the semester has left my body. Campus is pleasantly quiet, the pace of Providence has slowed and the spring/summer weather is oh-so pleasant… Deep inhale through the nose… … hold… … exhale. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Summer has begun.

Photo From WCFF IG Account

For those just joining us, I will be working with What Cheer Flower Farm (WCFF), a nonprofit agriculture and floristry center dedicated to bringing solace, joy and healing to the people of Rhode Island by giving away hundreds of thousands of flowers annually and supporting the local floral economy via job training. What Cheer Flower Farm has ambitious plans to remediate and build out their 2.7 acres of former factory land in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence. I will be spending my summer leading a community effort to design-build a high profile, public facing outdoor space dedicated to community use. 

Yesterday was our kick off meeting and the farm is alive with action. The farm is in a state of expansion and remediation is well underway with excavators and bulldozers moving dirt. WCFF Volunteers are hard at work and given the freedom to “do what feels good”. One can make bouquets with recovered and donated flowers in the barn or go outside and help with light farm work in the gardens. Everywhere the air is filled with pleasantries, conversations of grant writing, gratitude for beautiful weather, resource planning, and weekend plans. The overlap of casual conversation and passion for work feels at home.

And here I am in the middle of it. And full of gratitude. Grateful for the opportunity from Maharam and RISD to make this my summer. Grateful to Erin and Christine at WCFF for sharing my enthusiasm for the journey ahead. And grateful to embark on a project that meets me where I am: Craving a creative outlet in the interest of the greater community, with the guidance of hands-on, non-profit leadership to make it happen.

Lets do this 🙂

Follow What Cheer Flower Farm on Instagram

Thoughts, Santiago Alvarado, BFA Industrial Design 2022

As a brown person, as someone who is of indigenous descent but facing the after affects, ongoing violence of colonization. Let me begin by coming to a mutual understanding with you of what exactly does this mean to me.

I will say again who I am to remember where I begin to know where I go. I am a Quechua person who’s been assimilated as a byproduct of colonialism and U.S. imperialism. Essentially my abuelos in Peru wanted a “better life” and went to the city (Lima), that was corrupt by instability in government (U.S. imperialism + the after affects of spanish colonization). Then because of the instability of Peru and Lima, during the Shining Path era, my family thought the next “better life” would be the U.S. They move to New York, then Connecticut and now my body exists and takes space on Narragansett land.

It means I was not raised in a community of Quechua people aside from my immediate family. My family’s knowledge keepers have tried to assimilate to U.S. colonialist and imperialist cultures and values to protect my family. This doesn’t work. It’s an ongoing struggle to try to come to terms with the reality that you will never be on the same level as those who the hierarchical institutions was created for. It a discussion-conversation-argument-fight my family and I have presently. Why I feel so far away sometimes. The dissonance in understanding of the systems that we are forced to exist within (colonial, capitalistic, patriarchal, heteronormative systems).

These systems and the people who created them, have a designated place for you and that place is beneath. A system built on coloniality will never recognize the invisible objects that are designated to uphold them. It is important to remember that in the eyes of the colonizer you will always be seen as an object. A token. A commodity.

For colonialism to hear your voice and actually listen, that system must acknowledge every piece of control upheld. Every heinous crime and act it has instilled on nonconsenting bodies, that relies on your existence within it. If they admit this though, everything falls apart. They lose control, lose power, and this is devastating to anyone who is trying to keep the pieces of decay at bay. Grabbing at bones that are turning to dust and calling it a body that works.

You then, are the hand and the pin of a grenade, you are the explosion, everything and nothing. Potential energy encased in a rulebook and that you don’t/didn’t/can’t have words to speak your tongue (yet/still). That you you are expected to play the role and fit the part. Be the thing. These bodies.

To try to exist like this, to meet white expectations is to stick your body beneath theirs, to fit as legs of a table that those above will eat on. There is no seat at the table for you. There never will be. If there is, they have made you believe being a chair is the equivalent of being a person.

In colonialism, you are better seen and not heard, because if they listen they have to acknowledge that every piece of control that relies on your existence diminishes their own power. The solution lies within breaking the table.

This writing of course, exists within said institution, and as such is both for my peers and myself who are existing within this system. It is also for those who aren’t here in this room with me, to the people who aren’t playing the game of academia.

People who didn’t get it, didn’t want to get it. Academia to clarify, is a game– one that was made to make folks feel smart and boost ego, withhold knowledge, push intellect to create hierarchy above you and everyone else who doesn’t get to write this script.
You cannot decolonize a colonial institution. To do so is to undo the institution itself. This relation of submission serves the hierarchy of the institution, and accepts designation, taking away self determination of a sovereign self.

Potential New Beginnings, Investments for Continuity, Visibility – Abena Danquah, B.ARCH 2023

What an experience this journey has been! In this post I will be highlighting one of my last interviews with Mr Kwesi Ntiamoah, a Kente weaver who has been involved in the trade for decades! I remember walking into the Accra Arts center, asking any artisan who was willing for an interview or to learn more about their trade. When I got to this stand with Kente fabrics, from the wrappers to sewn clothing, there were about three men guarding the area. I asked if I could interview them about the cloth and their process, and one of them told me to wait for 5 minutes. He exclaimed that I was in luck, the man who actually wove them was in the back and he’d call him at once. This was a great amount of luck because most of my encounters at the center had been with people who were selling the crafts on behalf of the artisans themselves.

Through our time, I got to know how Kwesi had gotten into the trade, having been introduced to weaving by his father and how much of an impact it’s had on his own life and journey. He shared how the industry could generally do with some more support, and more so that being in training of the artisans and them being invested into. That was a new perspective for me because with most interviews, we’d focused on how the work of the artisans was being patronized and supported from the side of the customers or those interested. What hasn’t really been taken into much consideration has been the encouragement on more people actually getting into the industry as artisans themselves. More and more, people are not encouraged by the difficulty that comes with being an artisan or artist in Accra, from the lack of investment in their craft to the unpredictability of the trade without a strong network or support system. While my experience has focused on how to gather more support and interest into the work of these artist and artisans, another important angle to consider also is how can more people be encouraged to pursue their interests in being an artist or artisan with the existing financial and socio-economic barriers or concerns that are currently causing disinterest.

Reflection

I’ve made wonderful encounters through this experience and learnt so much from the artisans I’ve met. I do wish I had met more female artisans as while I did encounter a few working in the industry, I didn’t have the opportunity to meet as many at the forefront of the crafts/ artisan work per se. Despite the summer experience coming to an end, I am hopeful that this is just the beginning of much needed personal and general curatorial journey, working towards the visibility and empowerment of more and more artisans and artists in Accra and beyond.

What’s next?

I will continue to work with the Diaspora Affairs Office, wrapping up on the database successfully and exploring the possibility of working with the artisans collectively in the near future.

Familiarizing Ourselves with Teaching Material- Carmen Belmonte Sandoval, BFA ID 2023 and Mei Zheng, BFA ID 2023

Familiarizing Ourselves with Teaching Material- Carmen Belmonte Sandoval, BFA ID 2023 and Mei Zheng, BFA ID 2023

Written by Carmen

Hello everyone! I’m excited to share the journey Mei Zheng, my internship partner, and I have gone through during our Maharam Fellowship this summer. We’ve decided to write the blog in tandem to provide both of our perspectives with clarity.

Week 1 & 2 – 

We began the internship with one remote week in order to familiarize ourselves with some of the past lesson plans that HYPOTHEkids have done to serve as points of reference for our own lesson plan. We met with our supervisor, Liv Newkirk, who is the Program Manager for HYPOTHEkids’ Bio-force program, for the first time on Zoom. This was helpful in transitioning to our in-person interactions the following week.

We were introduced to the HYPOTHEkids headquarters in West Harlem, NYC and met the lovely staff. We finally got to meet with the Director Christine Kovich in person after having been in contact solely through zoom and email. Liv Newkirk familiarized us with the program we were intended to teach called the Pathways to Graduation Program, which I will explain next.

The Pathways to Graduation Program: 8 week program for newly immigrated students who come with varying levels of English proficiency to earn their GED (High School Equivalency Diploma) which is supported by the NYC Department of Education (DOE). The students vary in age from 16-23 years old and the cohort was composed of 25 students. There was a 2 week rotation starting at the Beam Center (located in Red Hook, Brooklyn), then our 2 week rotation through HYPOTHEkids, followed by another 2 weeks with Solar One, and to end with two weeks back at Beam Center for the students. This was a collaborative program with the three non-profits as well as the NYCDOE. For the first few weeks of our fellowship, we had to prepare the lesson plan since we were taking the lead for the HYPOTHEkids 2 week rotation that happened from June 5th to July 14th 2022.

It was fascinating to learn about the collaborations that occur in non-profit spaces. It is something I didn’t know occurred but I’m glad they do because they create more enriching programs and experiences for both the organizers, facilitators, and beneficiaries. 

Week 3 – 

It was proposed by our supervisor, Liv, to focus our lesson plan on using heart rate sensors with Arduino hardware/software. In preparation for that, we were able to join an Arduino and coding class taught by Liv that is under one of the high school internship programs that HYPOTHEkids organizes. The classes are taught at Columbia University’s Engineering building which is a few blocks away from HYPOTHEkids’ headquarters. We wanted to familiarize ourselves with the Arduino software before teaching it in our intended lesson plan for the Pathways to Graduation Program. It was interesting to find similarities between the design and engineering methods of thinking, because we do end up using similar terms but then have different definitions. For example, as Industrial Designers we do not necessarily have to worry about our products working if they are “looks-like” models but for Biomedical Engineers that is what comes first.

While we were at Columbia, we observed the Bioforce students who were learning how to code which was helpful in getting ourselves familiar with a classroom environment that would be somewhat similar to ours in the following weeks. 

Below are some images of our attempts at using Arduino:

June 30th, 2022 – First Visit to the Beam Center:

We were invited to see the final projects of the Beam Center’s first rotation on Thursday, June 30th. We got to meet the students before officially teaching, which was nice to see how they interacted with each other and how they introduced themselves to the guests when explaining their personal projects. The prompt was to make Identity Boxes using an Arduino code that allowed some of their elements in their dioramas to move such as a paper robot head, the sun, a llama, a ferris wheel, their flags, etc. It was heartwarming to see what they chose to include in their boxes. Some of the guests that came to see the student work were members of the DOE who I imagine came to see how the new programming was going.

Some students included pictures of their family, aspirations they have in life; one of the students wanted to become a nurse so she included images of medical professionals; another student loves to dance so she included a rotating silhouette of a ballerina in the center of the box with her family in the background overlooking the sunset. This moment was impactful to me because some were open to sharing their stories about why they are in the program and in the United States and some were away from their immediate family so they missed them. I truly appreciated their sincerity and trust through our conversations that were guided by their identity boxes. This influenced the way we were going to structure our classes in terms of trying to relate the topic that we would be teaching to their lives for them to have a personalized experience or at least know that we understand where they are coming from and want to meet them where they are collectively.

What’s Next?

We look forward to sharing insights on our first weeks of teaching in the next posts. It was lovely meeting the students at the Beam Center in that type of environment before our formal teaching.

Ancient Traditions, Modern Reincarnations – Derek Russell, B.ARCH 2022

One morning, walking past Manuel and into the kitchen, he asked simply, “do you want to go to the Amazon?” And so it was written.

In the distance between Quito and Ecuador’s Amazon, altitude abruptly changes over 5,000 feet. To voyage from the capital city in the clouds to the eastern lowlands requires both patience and a sturdy stomach, lurching over curves at mountain passes with sheer vertical drops deep into the valleys below. The journey takes approximately five hours to complete, three if Pablo is behind the wheel.

That drizzling 5 A.M. journey, a time just cresting the city’s hustle and bustle, greeted us with a plethora of landslides as Pachamama’s arms opened deep into the ravines below. Newly formed waterfalls punched holes through what I thought were solid roadways, collapsing concrete in an instant. We somehow managed to brush past fallen boulders through a narrow impasse, the determination to complete a journey that had already been stalled for weeks in the protests seemed to pave a path forward. It wasn’t until weeks later that I discovered we were some of only few travelers to successfully venture out of the Andes that day, that week even. And so it went that the distance between fallen highways and Shushufindi collapsed beneath our rubber tires, and in just a few hours we arrived at our destination.

Pulling into the central hub of the city at the edge of the Amazon, my heart sank. Truly, to me, it felt like one of the worst cities in the world. One distinct phrase emerged at the forefront of my mind, “there is no vernacular here.” This is the oil province, Miguel told me amid disheveled scrap yards and burning torches in the distance, the smell of petrol eking from the pavement. Shushufindi, he told me, a name deriving from the indiginous Cofan word for ‘paddle,’ is a new city. Built quickly and cheaply on the oil industry’s capital to house the working population, to clear cut forests and replace them instead with a concrete jungle. Really, it was only a few years old. Strange public art installations attempt to detract from the cheaply constructed double decker homes of concrete and steel mesh. Staring into their windows, I couldn’t help but think of the rubble I saw on the coast of Esmeraldas that I knew had at one point looked identical. That is, before the earthquake. So it was with our indigenous guides, Yadira and her two sisters Ruth and Naidaline, members of a nation known as the Siekopai, that we escaped through the boundaries of this portal city into the depths of palm oil plantations where the Amazon lay hidden.

Siekoya Remolino, the settlement of the Ecuadorian Siekopai, was only the first stop on a long journey ahead, for my true destination was the port city of Guahoya far away in the Peruvian Amazon. To get there would require a nearly 15 hour canoe ride through the snakelike waterways of the rainforest. I was told that time works differently here when I asked what hour I should expect for us to depart. There are no schedules, instead things simply happen when they happen, unfold as they should. So with an eager, and mildly unnerved, spirit, I set myself to sleep in the hammock my coworkers provided me knowing that the most difficult part of the journey was yet to come.

The morning proved to be far less than ideal, the heavens above opening, pouring rain into our hydroscape. To my surprise, the water did not pool over the soil the way it does back in Providence, here it flows swiftly and precisely down river, towards our destination, and eventually as far as the Atlantic ocean; tears for a continent. There is something to be said about the pace of life in the jungle, it is truly something unmatched anywhere else that I have encountered. Extreme bouts of boredom interspersed with spontaneous bursts of excitement as we weave our way through the largest undisturbed ecosystem in the world. No cars or bridges, signs of sprawling civilization, crossed our vision. Just a sightline of tropical forests and expanding cavities over water cutting through, and the logs of course.

The same rainstorm that nearly delayed our trip from Quito, the same water that nearly flooded the village on the even of our trip downstream, had all aggregated here in the Aguarico. A high tide meant that we would move more swiftly than normal, but at a cost. Detritus that once littered the forest floor now littered our path, really it felt like we were in a simulation of the old arcade game Crossy Road, meagerly attempting to pass between one obstacle and the next. I quickly learned the hand signs seated next to Robinson at the bow: a fist to cut the engine, a release to bring it back to life. After many hours of this game of chicken, multiple bathroom breaks along the shoreline, a stop with the Peruvian border patrol so as not to evoke the wrath of their two-person police dinghy, we had crossed into foreign territory. I will never forget watching the sun set on the Rio Napo, the most beautiful colors I have ever witnessed in the sky. An in an instant we are plunged into darkness, left with nothing but a spotlight roving like the lantern atop a lighthouse past vines and an impenetrable fog. We search without eyes, another few hours, until suddenly, a spark in the distance.

The Siekopai, also known as the Many Colored People, are an indigenous community that has called the Amazon home for hundreds of years. They are a vibrant craftspeople who create multicolored garments and speak a unique language. Following a border dispute in the 1940s between Peru and Ecuador, the population was splintered, causing some of the community to flee deep into Ecuador and lose contact with their families. For nearly sixty years, the two groups remained separated until they were finally reunited. As a result of globalization and oil drilling in the Amazon, many indigenous practices are being lost as locals are assimilated into a capitalist system, relying less on subsistence living and more on working class jobs within the petroleum refineries and palm oil plantations. Distance between the two groups has made collaboration strenuous, and as these communities modernize, the ability to share and preserve knowledge becomes increasingly more difficult.

Pictured here are images I had the pleasure of taking for a historic workshop conducted by the Siekopai peoples in the Peruvian Amazon. Many women from various communities all across the jungle gathered in a the village of Guahoya to reunite and share ancestral knowledge of their traditional pottery making to the young generation. This pottery workshop is the first of its kind to be conducted since the recent reunification of the tribespeople. It is important to understand that the implementation of ancestral knowledge is a modern practice, and by creating spaces for community, there is hope that craft can once again incite sovereignty and agency for these struggling communities. I was lucky enough to be invited to help document the process. What I witnessed on this journey was an incredibly knowledgeable and generous community. With workshops like these, a new life has been injected into the Siekopai as they are able to reconnect with their families and strengthen historic bonds that have been fractured. The mending process is slow, but very much alive and thriving.

Weeks later I was given the opportunity to return to the Siekopai community in Ecuador to continue the work that began in the pottery workshop. Here, a guest speaker conducts an entrepreneurial workshop with the women of Siekoya Remolino, who made the ultimate decision to create a women’s collective to help brand and sell their crafts. The drive of these women was truly stunning, in mere weeks they had constructed an entirely new workshop dedicated to pottery making. With so much energy and excitement, I saw them take many steps towards becoming business leaders in their community.

They had asked me to help them create an official logo for their new brand, and so for the last part of the entrepreneurial workshop we had a session on logos, branding, as well as time to brainstorm together how they wanted to represent themselves moving forward. The organization is to be called Kenao, the Paicoca name for a particular ant species that is very small yet lifts immense loads. While the women had many symbols that they wished to incorporate into their logo, we narrowed down a few that particularly represented the ideas their organization stood for: a shamanic baton native only to their tribe, their pottery adorned with a symbol that is specifically used to represent women, and of course, the Kenao.

While at many times I felt withdrawn from the prospect of helping to monetize artifacts of cultural importance, the reality is that these communities are a part of the global economy. Often, especially in more developed countries, we tell ourselves many myths, particularly related to indigenous peoples. Somehow a way of life in tune with the land is seen as something that is primitive, communities stuck in a time beyond time. But although they use ancient technology, perfected over a thousand years, they are modern people who desire a livable income and a safe community to live in. If their cultural practice can in some way give back in a system that has made subsistence living nearly impossible to sustain, then that is the path forward. Until sovereignty, until palm oil plantations are returned to the earth, until petrochemical industries stop extraction, these indigenous communities live with the rules that another society has imposed upon them. Customary practices have been disappearing, but here we have a chance to not only relearn what has been lost, but prove that these artisans can create work that is viable and modern and beautiful.