Often, when I meet someone and tell them I’m an architect, their response is, “I’ve always wanted to be an architect, but I’m terrible at math.” Or, “Do you use Chief Architect? I designed my house with it.” I struggle with how to respond, but I usually want to say, “It’s not as easy as it looks.” That phrase has been in my mind lately as we put together the episodes for this podcast. I had the classic outsider-fangirl view of podcasting: it looks so fun, how hard could it be? Turns out, as hard as any profession to a novice.
Having been an architect for a few decades, it’s easy to forget how much you learn over the years. Teaching forces me to see everything fresh, to remember back to what it was like as a student to encounter these ideas for the first time. Before the years of immersion into the day to day hustle of keeping clients happy, running a firm, and getting buildings built.
Another fresh perspective that emerged during our interviews for the podcast was how privilege shapes what we do in our communities. When I asked Melonee Quintanilla whether she sees herself as part of a movement, she said: “I think of my grandparents, they're part of the NAACP. They're getting arrested at lunch counters, they're speaking out and I'm just making a thesis and looking at kids' portfolios, it's not that serious.”
I suggested she’s working now from inside the system, while her grandparents were on the outside, demanding to be let in. Melonee, with her master's degree, works for an excellent firm on interesting, ambitious projects.
While working with the community of Harlem Park in West Baltimore, she wondered that if she had gone to school there, would she even be at Maryland doing an architecture thesis, earning a master’s degree, supported in the same way educationally. “That really stuck with me.” Even in her work as a summer intern, she saw herself using that privilege to lift up other people.
Now, she mentors students at Baltimore Design School, a charter high school focused on careers in graphic design, architecture, and fashion design. “I bring something different to the table just by existing and my different experiences enrich the design conversation. That's very important to me.”
“It’s really important to make sure that these different voices are included in the design of the future. Who are the architects in fifty or a hundred years? What do they look like and how can I start to change that and make sure that everybody is included in the design process? Cause I know we can't just have engagement sessions; that doesn't really get the details of what everybody wants. We need architects from all different kinds of lifestyles and all different backgrounds.”
How are you using your privilege to build the world you want to live in?