IIDA – Perspective Fall/Winter 2019 - 18

"

For more than 100 years, architecture
has been practiced through the lens
of white European men. It hasn't really
been conducive to minorities in the
profession or in school."
-Christopher Locke, Designing in Color

A New Kind of Authority Figure
Design education leaders also need to reconsider how
they're teaching. Programs would become more inclusive
if they were focused less on individual output and more on
collaborative creations, Locke says.
"What's lacking in schools is what it means to be a good
collaborator," he says. "If we don't work in groups, if we
only do our projects by ourselves, we don't benefit from the
diversity of people around us."
This perspective can also impact a standard element
of design pedagogy: the review. Public evaluations can be
challenging for any student but can be especially difficult
for women and students of color when the authority figures
evaluating them tend to be white men.
Schools can start by bringing in more diverse guest
reviewers. While chair of her school's design program years
ago, Anthony contacted groups like NOMA and Chicago
Women in Architecture for just this purpose. "Students

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perspective

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then learn to have their work critiqued by people who look
like them and to see those people as authority figures," she
says. At the same time, those reviewers learn about the
budding talent of students with diverse backgrounds whom
they might not meet otherwise.

Breaking Down the Cost Barrier
A design education doesn't come cheap. While the
costs can be offset with scholarships, fellowships, and
internships, schools must also educate students about
the available resources. And when alumni and other
donors want to give money, schools can encourage them
to be more targeted and more creative with their giving,
Anthony says. For example, while an alumna and her
husband had previously provided money for a single
student scholarship, Anthony suggested that they instead
pay for one-day registration fees for all 20 students in
Anthony's graduate seminar to attend a NOMA design
conference. "Instead of one scholarship to one student,
they helped a whole class," Anthony says.
Professional groups can also help to defray costs outside
of tuition like raising money to pay for design supplies, Gay
says. "There's always a way to kill someone's dream," he
says. "There aren't a lot of ways to build it back up."
Students can also seek internships that pay for
their education while providing a less obvious benefit.
"Internships and mentoring can help women and
minorities see others like them in the field holding
senior roles and doing well," says Taruna Gupta, a project
designer at Groth Design Group, and a committee
member with Women in Design in Milwaukee.
There are certain financial realities that can't be
dismissed, however. When Gay talked to a high school
class about design careers, a student's father asked him
how much his son might earn in design. Gay didn't
sugarcoat it: "I said, 'To be honest, he won't make a lot
as a designer.'" But Gay didn't let the conversation end
there. He explained that while the student may not make
much money as a designer, there are other rewards that
come with a design career.
"Seeing a project come to fruition, designing something
that's used each and every day by real people-no
other job can compare with that," Anthony says. "It's a
psychologically rewarding and uplifting profession." n

Photo by: Max S. Gerber

The same goes for those outside the U.S. as well.
Originally from England, Baker says she was shocked when
she moved to New Zealand about eight years ago and
discovered the examples being taught in her new homeland
were the same she had learned about in Europe. Students
were taught all about Bauhaus and other European
movements, but not much, if anything, about Maori or
other Pacific indigenous cultures. "As design educators,
we need to reflect on the examples and standards we're
teaching," she says.
More inclusive examples and standards would help
students of diverse backgrounds recognize and appreciate
design traditions from their own cultures. Baker saw that
firsthand when a Samoan student in her industrial design
course came to her office with his design for a wearable
tech prototype. She asked him why he chose a white,
minimalist design, and he replied that, in his experience,
that's what got good grades. When Baker asked the student
how he might design it differently, he began to discuss his
interest in Samoan patterns and "all of a sudden, he had a
lightbulb moment," Baker recalls. The student ended up
doing his master's thesis on Samoan design.
The answer isn't to dismiss Western design but to teach
it alongside other cultures' products, from Aztec temples
to Japanese hill towns.
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IIDA – Perspective Fall/Winter 2019

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