HOW TO MAKE DESIGN MORE INCLUSIVE Scott Hunter, Principal & Los Angeles Office Director, HKS

// HOW TO MAKE DESIGN MORE INCLUSIVE

Scott Hunter, Principal & Los Angeles Office Director, HKS

What do you think architecture can do better to diversify the business?

The broader question that I think about this whole question about inclusivity is really asking these questions about who are we designing for. Who are these cities for? If we’re only developing the high, high, high end of the market, because that’s where the money is, then that shapes the nature of our cities, right. And I think that we have had a really challenging time dealing with these major social issues that still exist.

We were in this right before the COVID pandemic. We were in a historic run up. Everyone is wondering, wow, how high can it go? It’s still going. Meanwhile you had people sleeping on the streets. So this disparity that the economy had generated and our industry was part and parcel to that. It’s unsustainable. And then the Black Lives Matter protests were the eruption that happened as a result of that. The whole COVID pandemic really highlighted the inequity.

I think for us, the question is being hyperconscious and vigilant about who we’re designing for, whose voices get heard, who is part of the conversation. And it comes from our profession. It comes from our clients. It comes from the whole process that we have to go through.

What are large residential buildings going to look like in the future?

We’ve been doing some studies internally about how do you take the paradigm of the multifamily unit, the one-bed room apartment, for example, or the two-bedroom apartment, and plan it with greater flexibility to allow for a live/ work kind of situation. Everybody on my staff and across the whole world here has had the issues of two adults trying to conduct business as the same space as kids on a computer trying to do online class. And the audio acoustical impacts of that and the visual privacy and the sense that you just can’t get away to have a private phone call.

We’re focused very keenly on this because we know the housing demand is there still in California and we just have to adapt our thinking about the planning for it. And the things that were the extras in the past, like the little study nook, are really going to be important moving forward. And that needs to be baked into how we’re thinking about multifamily housing.

What are new considerations and forces architects should be listening to so that they can design more inclusive and accessible cities and dwellings of the future?

I think the professions, design professions and the development professions haven’t done a strong enough partnership with the cities. So I feel like the cities also have a role in shaping a vision of the future rather than our overworked planning departments reviewing one project after another, they’re just kind of reviewing projects.

What is the collective vision? What are we trying to do? What kind of city do we want to have? I think that’s the bigger question. Because if people have some sense of engagement and ownership then they’re less likely to get the pitchforks and torches out and try to storm the barricades because they view every project as an encroachment on their liberty or on the way of life that they think that they deserve in Los Angeles.

Experience 100% Touchless Access

Merging convenience and security, Openpath cloud-based mobile access offers remote capabilities, occupancy tracking solutions, and a hands-free experience.