Do-good Design
Bryan Bell and Design Corps spread the gospel of good design for good causes.
By Julien Devereux
The Metropolis Observed
February 2004
For the past 12 years Bryan Bell has been running Raleigh, North
Carolina-based Design Corps,
a nonprofit architecture firm that designs housing for migrant farmworkers.
Working and consulting closely with both farm owners and workers, Bell;
his wife, Victoria Ballard Bell; and their five or six design fellows
bring the highest levels of design thinking and practice to the problems
faced by their often neglected and underfunded clients. Like the late
Samuel Mockbee's Rural Studio program, Design Corps's greatest strength
is its insistence that there is no contradiction between good design and
"good deeds."
In December Princeton Architectural Press released
Good Deeds, Good Design: Community Service through Architecture,
a collection of essays Bell edited by Mockbee, Maurice Cox, and others
bringing their architectural training to nonprofit work.
Metropolis managing editor Julien Devereux spoke with Bell about
his book, and the lessons he's learned from his work.
Why did you decide to do the book, and how did it come about?
I realized there were a lot of other designers around the country trying
to achieve a social mission with their work, and I started talking to them:
learning from them and telling them what I had done and what I had learned.
And this exchange continues; I find these people doing really beautiful
design work. So the book was an effort to get these lessons out on the table
for other people. It took me five years to have any idea how to bring design
to this sector, and a lot of people don't have five years to drop out and
explore. I think almost all architects want to broaden their practice and
serve a greater sector of the public. This [book] is a collection of people
doing that. I was pretty clear in the editorial emphasis that we not just
make it sound easy or sugarcoat anything but tell some of the mistakes we've
made, what we've learned--and also bring in our philosophies. It's a how-to,
but it's also a manifesto. And hopefully it inspires people but also gives
them some real practical lessons.
What do you think it is that holds most architects back from doing this
kind of work?
It doesn't fit into our traditional model. Things are pretty specific about
how much you charge as an architect and what service you should do and when
you get paid. And if you follow that model you end up with a very finite
result. I'm not quite sure why architects have such a limiting model at
the moment, but that seems to be the problem.
I'm not doing volunteer work here. This is paying work. It just pays on
a little different schedule. You have to understand when the money comes
in and where it comes from. It's just a different approach.
Do you think that's because of the way architects are educated, or do
you think it's how they're acculturated into the firms that they take jobs
with after school?
Well, I think there's an issue with both. In the educational process I was
always handed a program on an 8-by-11 piece of paper, and I never really
thought about going out to discover the need for design somewhere and make
a case for that.
I was never really taught to listen. Architects come in late in the project,
and they leave early. They sit down and design something that somebody else
is going to build; somebody else is going to occupy. You don't pay that
much attention to those aspects--a little bit, but it's not your focus.
You're also not really involved when the program's originally written or
the site is selected or the budget's set. In almost all of my projects now
I'm there at the very beginning.
What areas do you see as places for architects to look into and expand
in?
Well, pick your issue. What's fascinating to me is that you can pick any
issue: health, day care, unemployment. Instead of starting with how many
square feet you need, start with the social issues that need help right
now. Start with that and then say, 'How can we play a role there?' I love
it when I see somebody who has a different cause than me. How they've brought
their architectural problem-solving to that issue is what's really interesting--and
not just problem-solving but the resulting built form.
On the one hand you're talking about bringing architectural knowledge
to bear on a social problem, but how has grappling with those problems made
you learn as an architect?
Here's an educational problem. I can walk into a design studio on the first
day and say to them, 'OK, today we're going to design migrant housing,'
and every one of the students will go to the desk and start designing migrant
housing. Somehow they think they know about migrant housing. My best approach
as a designer is to say every time I start a problem, 'I don't know anything
about this. How can I learn more about what's involved in this issue?' I
think it makes me more of an engaged citizen. The client doesn't knock on
your door and hand you the information you need. You have to be really proactive
about getting out there and finding those design clues. I love light. I
love beautiful materials. But when I find those pearls of solution out there,
that's what really inspires me as a designer. And the deeper you dig the
more beautiful they are.
As an architect, I need to get out and talk to people. I need to understand
them. Architects have this superman complex where we want to say, 'I can
solve all your problems with architecture.' But clients don't know they
need you. You're saying you can help them out, but at that moment it's only
fulfilling to you. You have to take the time to explain what's in it for
them. People don't know they need us, and we like to think that's their
fault and their problem, but we need to be the ones to explain how we can
help.
Have you seen a big difference in the way students approach their jobs
and the way they think of form after they've worked with you?
I read in a survey that 22 percent of architecture students say that they
went into architecture to improve the quality of life in their communities.
So going into school they have the motivation but not the skills. Coming
out of school they have the skills but not the opportunity. So Design Corps
is trying to open the door for some who have the same motivation I did,
realizing that not everybody can do it immediately.
But my work and the book are also a way of critiquing ourselves, because
it's not helpful to be patted on the back all the time and told you're
such a nice person. I want some good harsh design criticism. Give it to
me just the way we critiqued each other in school. So this book has also
been a way of discussing each other's work and trying to push it to a higher
level from a design point of view, not just congratulating ourselves for
being nice people. There are no excuses for bad design in this work. It's
as important here as anywhere else.
Finally, what are your hopes for the book's impact?
I hope to find even more people out in the trenches who can become a part
of this movement--and when I say movement, I'm not pretending like it's
something starting now. I only call it a movement because there've been
people exploring this for 30 years, and I've certainly learned from some
of the earlier innovators in participatory design. I see this as a new generation
taking a shot at it. I think the problem has been that graduating students
feel they have to make a choice between doing good work and doing good design,
and that needs to be resolved. They should have an opportunity to do both,
and the more examples and encouragement we can give to those cases, the
more we'll strengthen the future.
Ten years ago when I would tell people I was doing custom-designed affordable
housing they just thought I was crazy. But people don't find that crazy
anymore. People thought design was a luxury, and I think they are beginning
to realize that it not only can achieve but is also a day-to-day practical
approach to solving problems. I think a door is opening for an expansion
of design that I'm not sure has ever existed before. It's very exciting. |
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Bryan Bell, whose nonprofit firm Design Corps builds housing for migrant
farmworkers, is the editor of Good Deeds, Good Design. |
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Included in the book are articles by Shannon Criss, whose students in
the design-build program at Mississippi State University (above) joined
with community members in Okolona, Mississippi, to construct a wisteria
arbor and retaining wall for a park in a racially mixed neighborhood,
and Julia Bourke, whose firm Miller Bourke Architects helped the Mohawk
settlement of Kahnawake, in southern Quebec, build an innovative straw
bale demonstration home (below). |
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Top to bottom: Victoria Ballard Bell; Laura Butler; Lynn Jacobs,
Kahnawake Environment Office |
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