Jenine Kotob: Stories From the Field
Stories From the Field is a mini-series about how our alumni, facilitators, and community members are putting equity principles into practice. Stay tuned for more stories about the nuances, challenges, and impacts of transforming our work from the inside out. If you want to feature your story, reach out to info (at) openarchcollab.org.
How would you describe your work?
I am an architect that designs learning environments — that includes everything from schools and universities, to civic, recreational, and cultural spaces. Also, nearly ten years ago, I completed my masters research on schools that serve internationally displaced communities, exploring questions like, how do we keep students safe in the context of war and conflict. Through my research, I found that people are resilient and strive to persevere against all odds. Even in the most challenging conditions, teachers and students would wake up every day with this mission to teach and learn, and a hope to transform lives through education.
How has your relationship with your work been shifting?
After years of being in the architecture field, I felt like I was yearning to better connect with the communities I was designing for. Sometimes the business of architecture gets in the way of a design process that cultivates human connection. With so much emphasis on standardized education specifications, fast-track schedules, and tight architectural fees, there was rarely time left for authentically talking with students, faculty, and communities. With this unquenchable thirst for more, I started to dig around on the internet and found Pathways to Equity. I wanted to learn about community-based design, not as this nebulous idea, but something that can go from theory to practice. Meeting this community and being among like-minded people was really rewarding — I didn’t realize how much I was missing that sense of comradery and affirmation that there were others feeling the same way I was feeling.
Being a woman of color with a different religious background, I felt like I had to hide parts of who I was in professional settings. With P2E, I really felt like I could be who I am, and I could think about my role as a whole person on my projects. Now when I talk to my colleagues, I remind them yes, you are an architect, but you are also a parent, a neighbor, and a human. We must learn to shed the uniform of expert and strive to be our human selves. When we sit down at the table with people we are designing for/with, the best way to make a connection is to be authentic. It takes an internal shift in how we see our role, understanding who we are, and expressing to our end users: “I am here to listen. We are here to build something together.”
How has this shifted how you show up in your workplace?
I was able to bring a lot of these personal reflections to my workplace. Our EDI committee organized a film festival leading up to MLK Jr. Day that focused on racial and social injustice and inequity in our country. We did one of the exercises from our class, which I referenced back to P2E, and our firm’s community was able to connect personally in ways they had never connected with before. People felt like they were stripping years of generational trauma, expressing things they had never admitted aloud, and committing to make more time for inner reflection.
Additionally, in my research I’ve been applying an equity lens to my school safety efforts. We are determined to move away from a crime-centered approach to security; and rather, cultivating a community-centered approach to safety and healing. How can we design safety to be something that is for everyone and not just a select group of people? It’s tough because we are up against a school security industry that is monetizing off of people’s fear; and, is now valued at upwards of three billion dollars. Fear is a very visceral emotion. There is fear from the threat of violence, fear from the threat of being bullied, or even fear of self-harm and suicide. But we so rarely talk about how fear can lead to making design and security choices that are xenophobic, harmful to our students’ education, and even ineffective. Shalini connected me with a restorative justice coordinator who works within a school district in California. The conversation was foundational in helping us to establish a framework for our study around restorative safety practices in schools as opposed to disciplinary and punitive measures.
And finally, recently we interviewed for this amazing project — a faith-based school and center for an international diaspora community on the East Coast. The community suffered a great loss over 100 years ago from a genocide and many of their families were displaced across the world. Today, they live with deep generational trauma from their past, but they have a strong sense of community despite the fragmentation and separation. We were able to dive deep into their history and had great discussions with members of the community about their identity and goals for the project. So often in our practice we don’t get to do that pre-design work of relationship building and identity exploration. Because of P2E I’m able to make moments to pause, to see who is missing at the table, and to ask the hard questions that need to be asked.
Oftentimes as architects we don’t take time to understand the complexities of the people we are designing for or the land we are designing on. Through research we can discover who has lived here for generations and we can make more thoughtful design choices that are less harmful to the communities that our projects impact. I like to think of myself as a historian — I want to know what happened in this place, learn from it, and pay respect to the land. Additionally, modern architecture is so environmentally harmful and damaging to our world. If we can look towards vernacular inspiration, then our projects can contribute to natural and human ecosystems more positively.
Ultimately, empathy matters. We are living in a very divisive and polarizing time. And it is with urgency that we must learn to be vulnerable, to take off our uniforms, and to come down from our ivory towers. We can use the design process to reconcile hurt, mend broken social contracts, and bring our shared humanity back to the center of our work.
