MOAR Better BRAINS!!

There is an architectural practice philosophy called “Design by Democracy.”  Design by Democracy suggests that a community can be strengthened by being included in the design process for its municipal buildings and in the writing and approval of their zoning ordinances.  Participating in discussions regarding the analysis and needs of their neighborhoods helps these participants better understand and articulate this understanding of their community.  The opposite is also true, a new zoning ordinance or the design for a new municipal building would also be better because of the inclusion of different individual perspectives from the community to help inform the design decisions.  We have seen both to be true in our work with Native Communities.  We’ve also seen the dark side of public decision making, especially when working with multi family housing where bigoted and prejudiced people use government access to prevent folks of different race, color, or income class to live near them.  That is not an intended function of Design by Democracy, and certainly not what we advocate.  What we have found in trying to implement the tenants of Design by Democracy is: No single person has enough experience or perspective to develop the optimal solution for multiple users; designing in a vacuum will lead to missed opportunities; and the more experience and perspectives that can be assembled in addressing the problem, the more rich the solution can be.  At Jeebs & Zuzu, we say; “MOAR Better BRAINS!”  Saying it like a zombie helps punctuate the importance of that manifesto.

 

In practice, it means that everyone’s ideas (especially the ones that seem stupid at first glance) deserve to be considered, and while they may not become the solution, they most certainly can help open up the minds to the group as to what is possible and maybe even optimal.  Of course ideas happen inside brains, suggesting that capturing a wide breadth of ideas needs a larger group of brains.  We keep those in a jar in the back room.  KIDDING!  We need people to bring their brains into our discussions, many people, and most importantly, many helpful people with a sincere interest in the outcome of the solution and who can offer different ideas and perspectives.  We need MOAR Better BRAINS  

 

We have had the privilege of working with several Native American communities and we have found a great amount of satisfaction and joy in the relationships which have developed through these projects.  One project in particular was the Multipurpose Wellness Center at Santa Ana.  The resulting facility is gorgeous.  The project was to be three phases.  Two are now complete.  One of the phases included a full size baseball and softball park with a scorer’s tower, sunken dugouts, a concessions stand, a skate park and walking path.  The first phase was the Multipurpose Wellness Center.  This 73,000 sf facility includes indoor swimming pools, indoor basketball courts, a fitness center, a dance studio, a day care room with equipment, a commercial kitchen, a large multipurpose room, a demonstration/teaching kitchen and administrative offices.  The facility is located where the previous defunct community pool was located and because it is in the valley not far from the river, the water table is pretty shallow.  This lead to multiple engineering challenges that were addressed in the design phases of the project. 

 

One approach to creating a design could have been to take the Tribal Council’s list of space requirements and their proposed budget for the project and then present several designs for them to consider.  As we sat with the Tribal Council to discuss the project, it was clear that an alternate path could be more beneficial.  Certainly, budget and uses were still important, but the needs and desires of the entire community could not be represented in just the Council Member’s perspectives, and our values as designers certainly wouldn’t encompass each of the values of the community either.  We were tasked with developing a community outreach planning effort to answer the questions: what did the community want, what would they use, and what should the facility express about their values as a community and as a people.  If you’ve been playing along at home and have read a little bit about our “Polishing the Soul” process, you already know where this story is headed.

 

The best way to know the wants and needs of the community is to ask.  The best way to understand the values and what should be expressed is to ask deeper more directed questions, and this we did.  Over the course of an entire summer we held multiple brainstorming sessions.  We met with folks from individual neighborhoods.  We met with groups of parents.  We met with groups of high school students. We met with groups of grade school students.  We met with groups of seniors.  We met with the Tribal Council and shared the resulting thoughts from these meetings and then we asked for more input.  The Tribal Council established a Design Committee made up of interested individuals from each neighborhood, a few Council members, and some younger folks to act as representatives of the full community until they felt that the designs were complete, comprehensive, and representative of what the community and the Council desired.  We continued to meet and we talked and we visited other facilities and we looked at designs and drawings and then we made changes and met again.  Our meetings were regular and well attended.  One of our weekly meetings fell on my birthday.  To help folks attend, the meetings were held in the evenings and dinner was always provided.  On the evening of my birthday I brought a cake.  I’ll never forget the smirk on Aaron’s face as he declared, “Dave has no friends to celebrate his birthday with, so he’s invented a building and all these meetings just so he has someone to eat cake with!”  We all got a good laugh, ate cake and pizza, and went back to work.

 

By mid autumn we had developed a package that the Design Committee was proud to present to the Tribal Council and later to the Community.  The Committee members were invested in the successful completion of the project, and while the Council approved the design and concept, the funding for the project was still several years out.  The Committee members didn’t give up.  They did fundraisers, wrote grants, and appealed to the Tribal Council until a full budget was in place.  This took over four years, but the Committee was not deterred.  In fact, they eagerly reconvened to help select a General Contractor, then met regularly during the almost two years of construction it took to bring the construction to fruition.  In the end, the first two phases were complete.  I remember a community fair which was attended by the Committee.  I was tasked with giving updates to community members and to share what the inside of the building was going to look like.  The building’s shell was partially complete by that point.  The Tribal members were in awe of what the Committee was able to assemble and how much the new facilities would contribute to their lives. 

 

Opening day was astounding.  Not only did the entire community show up, but there were folks in attendance from the Tribe’ business enterprises, employees of those organizations, folks from the State, folks from the design and engineering teams, construction workers and their families, and neighbors from the surrounding communities.  The excitement, pride, and awe of the new facility was palpable and terribly rewarding to experience first hand.  Throughout the day I looked in on the various Committee members to see their reactions and how affected they were by the public’s first looks at the facility.  Each of them beamed in satisfaction, pride and gratitude.  It was a wonderful day. 

 

I find it true in nearly every project, but this one especially: the completed building is impressive and there are aspects of the design that I quite enjoy, but for me, the true satisfaction lies not in the structure, but in all the human effort and interaction that took place to accomplish the structure.  This was never more true than it was for the Santa Ana Multipurpose Wellness Center.  I have beautiful memories of the Tribal Council presentations, the community meetings, design charettes, Committee meetings, construction team meetings, selecting color boards, the ground prep contractor and the soils engineer, the day the concrete block arrived on site, the block layers, the pool contractors, the folks who erected the steel structure, the special coatings contractor, the folks who built the internal systems, the wood flooring installers, the kitchen equipment installers, the sprinkler systems installers, the flooring contractors, the painters, the site superintendents, the project managers, the operations managers, the landscapers. So many people gave their best efforts to create an amazing and wonderful place, and while I am proud of the completed facility, I find even more satisfaction in having been an integral, and instrumental, part of this distinguished and wonderful team.

 

As communities, as people, as individuals working together in teams, we can accomplish amazing things.  Design by Democracy or more correctly, MOAR Better BRAINS, can change where we live, how we live, and how future generations will live.  It is astounding to me to see major efforts being accomplished elegantly, successfully, and with cohesion.