FXPodium Volume 2 by FXCollaborative

Volume 2

Podium Editorial Board: Amanda Abel Ilana Judah Brien McDaniel Whitney Odell Peter Olney Joseph Pikiewicz Jack Robbins Austin Sakong David Wallance, Chair Jen Krichels, Consulting Editor Laura Raskin, Acting Consulting Editor

Podium | FXCollaborative

Introduction In this second volume of FXPodium, FXCollaborative continues to demonstrate their extensive knowledge of the built environment. They go beyond the typical architectural concerns of building methods, budgets, and building codes to explore more complex territory such as: gender identity, racism, gentrification, generational change, alternative modes of learning, and much more. These contributing writers, all FXCollaborative staff, have broadened their scope and challenged our assumptions by focusing on issues that require further reflection, discussion, and analysis. In a time when many AEC firms promote themselves through highly curated web sites and slick brochures that lack significant content, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rewarding to engage in a series of reports that transcend narrow business interests, and reflects true thought leadership. This is not light reading, nor does it represent the usual marketing narratives embodied in many case studies. The various perspectives presented here reflect a level of thinking that speaks to the larger community and exposes deep societal issues that must be addressed in the 21st century. The four white papers that make up this edition of FXPodium: Volume 2 represent perspectives that have been developed through detailed research and extensive discussion. Consider the following reports:

Bathroom for Humans

explores the emerging tensions associated with new policies that treat toilet room usage as a civil right. These requirements will force a fundamental rethinking of the normative binary assumptions of male/female with far-ranging impacts and benefits.

Orchestrated Urbanism

examines the historical patterns of discrimination, segregation, and class structure in a prototypical mid-western city. These physical parameters have remained largely unchanged over long periods of time and require an authentic community-based planning process to overcome past policies that have disadvantaged untold numbers of people.

Room to Learn

reflects on the changing nature of education in a highly connected and digitally pervasive world. These influences directly impact our basic concepts for learning environments and the need for these spaces to more accurately align with pedagogical goals.

Follow the Water

reveals how our understanding and management of water must and can be advanced through the adoption of green roofs. These technologies are even more vital in recognition of the increasing threats associated with climate change and extreme weather events. In our hyper-active lives, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d encourage you to find time to read these papers. You just might find yourself thinking differently. I did. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Robert W. Balder Gensler Family Sesquicentennial Executive Director of AAP NYC Cornell University, Department of Architecture, Art, and Planning

Volume 2

Podium | FXCollaborative

Table of Contents 4

Follow the Water Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Room to Learn Questions and Strategies in Designing Learning Environments

Orchestrated Urbanism The Race-Built City

Bathrooms for Humans Dignity in Elimination/The All-Gender Toilet Room

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Follow the Water

green roofs and the promise of a blue future Peter Olney, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, GRP, Senior Associate, FXCollaborative

For the six-year period from January 2009 through December 2014, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the roof of the Javits Center, a 1.8-million-square-foot facility covering six contiguous New York City blocks on the western edge of Manhattan, with its expansive views of the ever-present Hudson River to the west and a Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood starting its own transformation to the east. It was a few years earlier, in 2005, that FXCollaborative Architects of New York and Epstein of Chicago formed a joint venture entity to provide architectural services for the complete renovation of the then 30year old Javits Center, known in the industry as the United States’

busiest convention center. When I joined the architectural design team following the completion of the Design Development phase, my primary responsibility was to lead a sub-team of architects and specialty consultants with the sole purpose of transforming an obsolete, and increasingly detrimental, convention center roof into a positive asset that not only addressed the obvious existing condition issues of water infiltration and minimal insulation, but also strove to address larger neighborhood, regional, and global environmental issues. Designed in 1979 by I.M. Pei and James Freed of I.M. Pei and Partners, the Javits Center opened in 1986

and currently hosts over 175 events each year including multi-day trade shows, conferences, conventions, and single-day special events. With the convention center showing its age after 30 years of use (Figure 1), the challenges facing the FXCollaborative Epstein team included designing the repair, restoration, or replacement of the exterior envelope, mechanical systems, exposed architectural concrete, and interior public spaces, all the while respecting and reinforcing the integrity of the original design, keeping the convention center operating throughout the duration of the renovation work, and improving the building’s relationship with the surrounding community. The incorporation of an extensive-type

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Figure 1

Aerial view looking north of existing Javits Center Roof prior to start of the centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 2010 - 2014 renovation. Pier 76 and the Hudson River are directly west of the Javits Center.

green roof was identified very early in the design process as a key element to address the host of challenges present in the overall renovation of the Javits Center facility. With the architectural design vision for the renovation work in alignment with the goals of the client team and the building operations team, the New York Convention Development Corporation (NYCCDC) and the New York Convention Center Operating

Corporation (CCOC) respectively, my subteam set about incorporating a 6.75-acre, or 294,000-square-foot, green roof, the second largest green roof in the United States, into the design of the new 14.25-acre, or 620,000-square-foot, roof and into the renovation project as a whole. (Figure 2) Since convention center visitors typically occupy the building more than330 days per year, the construction of the $463 million renovation project, managed by AECOM Tishman, proceeded in 12 sequential phases over a 5-year period from 2010 through 2014.

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Figure 2

The green roof is only one of the many sustainable strategies in the overall Javits Center renovation project. The project was awarded LEED Silver certification in October 2015.

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Figure 3

Aerial view of New York City’s Central Park and the surrounding urban density. Image © Pictometry

Managing Stormwater While green roofs in urban settings are increasingly becoming known to the general public for performing multiple sustainable functions, including promoting biodiversity, noise attenuation, capture of airborne pollutants, aesthetic enhancement, and increased waterproof membrane durability among other benefits, this paper will concentrate on the impact green roofs have on the liveability, health, and sustainability of cities through their ability to significantly reduce the volume of stormwater runoff from building roofs as compared to the majority of traditionally designed roofs typically found across the

United States. As demonstrated by the performance of the completed Javits Center roof renovation over the past 32 months, even the thinnest and lightest type of green roof system, known in the green roof industry as an extensive green roof, can provide exceptional results in its role as an efficient and effective stormwater infrastructure strategy. Without implementation of innovative infrastructure solutions, increased levels of stormwater runoff will continue to pollute local waterways and contribute to habitat degradation, beach closings, and swimming and fishing advisories. Green roofs can counteract these adverse effects by limiting the amount of precipitation that leaves a building site, and in the case of New York City, help reach the goal of opening 90% of City’s waterways to recreation.1

1 New York City Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan 2008, p. 62.

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

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Diagram of combined sewer system operation during dry and wet weather conditions. Untreated sewage is discharged into adjacent waterways during wet weather events when the publicly owned treatment works (POTW) at capacity. Source: US Environmental Protection Agency.

Looking back at the same six-year period of my involvement in the Javits Center renovation project, 314 inches, more than 26 feet, of precipitation landed on the streets, sidewalks, roofs, and parks of New York City, with a recent annual average precipitation total in excess of 48 inches.2 These recent annual precipitation totals in New York City are only a few inches less than the totals in Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon, two cities known nationally for significant quantities of rain. Precipitation in urban areas such as New York City, more often than not, will fall onto an impervious surface (Figure 3) and ultimately will rely on a cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stormwater system to safely manage the flow, treatment, and release of this water. In the natural water cycle, water is constantly moving between the oceans, atmosphere, land, and rivers as it changes states between a liquid and a gas. Water, in its liquid form, whether in oceans or other waterbodies, is constantly evaporating and will become a gas, in the form of water vapor, in the earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s atmosphere. This atmospheric water vapor will eventually condense, changing back to a liquid, and return to earth in various forms of precipitation, either rain, sleet, hail, or snow, depending on temperature levels. Precipitation that reaches the ground in non-urban areas tends to soak into the earth to recharge natural aquifers or flow across the surface of the earth as runoff reaching nearby streams, rivers,

2 https://www.weather.gov/media/okx/Climate/CentralPark/monthlyannualprecip.pdf, p. 4.

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

ponds, or lakes. In heavily built-up areas, large swaths of impervious surfaces disrupt the natural water cycle by generally creating more runoff than would occur if the area had not been developed. As the natural water cycle occurs across large regions of the globe, precipitation, whether it lands on public or private property, quickly becomes part of the public realm. While a common tendency to keep a building interior dry and comfortable for its inhabitants is to shed water off of a roof and away from a building, the rejected stormwater, in significant quantities, will adversely affect the local environment, and therefore must be managed.

population of about 40 million people.3 Unfortunately, too often stormwater will periodically overwhelm the combined sewer system, even during what is considered a moderate rain event, resulting in the discharge of untreated sewage into adjacent rivers and harbors. (Figure 4) These discharges are known as combined sewer overflows (CSOs). And while sewer back-ups and street flooding are localized examples of the negative impact to public health and safety when the capacity of combined sewer systems is temporarily exceeded, it is the large-scale regional environmental impact of CSOs on the quality of local waterbodies that is of higher concern.

Waterway Pollution

An architect’s concern about the water quality of a city’s rivers and harbors may at first appear distant from the day-to-day work involved in the architectural design of buildings, but it is the impact that water has within the built environment that requires more consideration. For example, a recent 1.2-inch rainfall event recorded in New York City overnight on April 3-4, 2017, resulted in an advisory for recreational boating, wading, and fishing activities from the Riverkeeper organization, New York’s clean water advocate. The advisory was issued due to an Enterococcus Count, the EPA’s preferred indicator for sewage contamination, of 1,723 cells/100 mL in the Hudson River at West 145th Street, about 5 miles

A common solution, developed in the 1880s and used until the 1940s, to control the movement and treatment of water in communities around the globe, including portions of New York City, is the deployment of a combined sewer system, where the network of underground piping is tasked with handling both wastewater and stormwater. While the construction of new combined sewer systems has been curtailed for the past 70 years, this type of sewer system remains in use in many places around the United States. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, combined sewer systems are utilized in approximately 772 US communities with a total

3 https://www3.epa.gov/region02/water/sewer-report-3-2011.pdf, p. 3.

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Figure 5

Artist’s concept illustrating water’s journey through interstellar space to our solar system. Image courtesy of Bill Saxton, NSF/AUI/NRAO.

north of the Javits Center.4 According to local researchers, New York City will experience at least one CSO occurrence per week over the course of a year.5 At such consistent rates, the affected waterways are under stress to maintain acceptable levels of cleanliness. Polluted waterbodies

are the antithesis to New York City’s desire to take advantage of the waterfront for recreation and supporting residential and commercial development opportunities.

Water Is Life But first, why is water so important? Simply put, water is essential to human life and, looking beyond Earth, at the scale of the Universe, scientific research conducted at the University

4 https://www.riverkeeper.org/water-quality/hudson-river/nyc-hudson-bergen/north-river-stp/ 5 http://water.columbia.edu/files/2014/04/Green_Infrastructure_FINAL.pdf, p. 10.

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Schoharie County

A l bany County NEW YORK

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Fresh water is supplied to New York City from three distinct watersheds with a total of 19 reservoirs and three lakes with a total storage capacity of 550 billion gallons. Source: NYC Department of Environmental Protection.

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Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Image

Warning signs along New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waterfront are a common reminder of the threat posed to human well-being from combined sewer overflows. Image courtesy of James Nova.

of Michigan has found that up to 50% of the water on Earth was originally formed in interstellar space prior to the formation of our sun and solar system.6 (Figure 5) While waterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

age is thought-provoking in its own right, water is a critical part of healthy, vibrant communities, and although water covers more than 70% of the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surface, less than 1% is fresh water and suitable for human use. Water on our planet is both prevalent and scarce, too much water in one region results in floods while not enough water in another region creates drought, and it is apparent

6 http://www.ns.umich.edu/new/releases/22401-the-water-in-your-bottle-mightbe-older-than-the-sun

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

that sources of freshwater, such as lakes, rivers, and aquifers, throughout the world are under stress partly due to pollution from stormwater runoff. At the regional scale, the historical establishment and growth of cities has relied on the existing ecosystems both within and beyond their political boundaries for their well-being and continued prosperity. In terms of their relationship to water, cities founded adjacent to waterbodies rely on rivers, harbors, and oceans for industry, transportation and recreation, while nearby rivers and lakes are often used as sources of freshwater. Present-day New York City covers approximately 305 square-miles of land where the Hudson River meets New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Situated at the edge of one of the world’s largest natural harbors, the five boroughs of the City inhabit four distinct land masses separated by major waterways and combined have nearly 600 miles of coastline, all contributing to New York City’s position as one of the world’s preeminent waterfront cities. New York City, with a population of more than 8 million residents, relies on receiving its fresh water from a reservoir system stretching a distance of over 50 miles from the City’s northern limits. (Figure 6) With a Midtown location convenient to all of Manhattan’s cultural and recreational offerings, the Javits Center is situated at the southern reaches of the Lower

Hudson River watershed. The Javits Center, within 100 feet from the eastern edge of the lower Hudson River, finds itself front and center to the body of water most affected by how it, and its neighboring buildings, manage stormwater. Since great effort is expended to ensure that freshwater is readily available for use by residents and visitors alike, it is equally vital that the water returned to the environment after use does not threaten the City’s, or any other communities’, water supplies or waterbodies.

Governmental Action Green infrastructure is key to controlling stormwater. Examples of green stormwater infrastructure include green roofs, cisterns, permeable pavers, bioswales, rain gardens, rain barrels, and porous concrete and asphalt. Key to preventing pollution from entering local waterways is decreasing the volume of water entering the combined sewer system.7 As explained in the City of Chicago’s Green Stormwater Infrastructure Strategy, “green stormwater infrastructure utilizes an underlying philosophy of pollution prevention and the premise that it is better to prevent pollution that to treat it”.8 The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), along with a number of state agencies, including New York State, have endorsed the use of green infrastructure for attenuating

7 https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/inflwred.pdf 8 https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/progs/env/ ChicagoGreenStormwaterInfrastructureStrategy.pdf, p. 17.

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

stormwater through runoff reduction and have worked to establish a framework to promote the understanding and adoption of this low impact approach. While the majority of green infrastructure solutions in urban areas must be implemented on limited public land or within already congested public right-of-ways, the roofs of existing and new buildings represent a significant and substantial amount of underutilized space in which to unleash the advantageous potential of green roofs. For example, in New York City, rooftops comprise 28% of the City’s total impervious surface area,9 roughly 60 square-miles, making roofs both a major source of the City’s stormwater management challenges as well as an untapped means to offset that impact through sustainable building strategies. New York City projects with high sustainability aspirations do not occur in a vacuum. In the case of the Javits Center, there are city, state, and federal influences. At the federal level, the United States government has recently taken steps to promote green stormwater infrastructure design and construction. Over the course of the last six years, green infrastructure has increasingly been part of the strategy devised by national and local government agencies to comply with the regulations in the Clean Water Act of 1972. In a USEPA memorandum issued in October 2011, the agency states that it “strongly encourages

the use of green infrastructure and related innovative technologies, approaches, and practices to manage stormwater as a resource, reduce sewer overflows, enhance environmental quality, and achieve other economic and community benefits.”10 Government regulations have a significant impact on the financial allocations to green stormwater infrastructure as studies have shown that the majority of cities are committed to action in order to honor current federal consent decree agreements.11

Javits Center Green Roof Advanced and detailed planning is required to bring a green roof project to realization. The benefits of an extensive green roof that were attractive to both the Javits Center client team and the FXCollaborative Epstein design team included increased waterproofing membrane durability, noise reduction, energy efficiency, stormwater management, and urban heat island effect reductions. Also of utmost importance to all involved was aesthetic improvement. As Bruce S. Fowle, FAIA, LEED AP, of FXCollaborative Architects, the Partner-in-Charge of the Javits Center renovation project explains, The benefits of installing a green roof at the Javits Center include the reduction of storm runoff volume and peak flow. It will conserve energy by moderating temperatures on the roof and lowering the temperature of the air being drawn

9 http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/green_infrastructure/NYCGreenInfrastructurePlan_ LowRes.pdf, p. 53. 10 https://www3.epa.gov/npdes/pubs/memointegratedmunicipalplans.pdf 11 https://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/progs/env/ ChicagoGreenStormwaterInfrastructureStrategy.pdf, p. 19.

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Image

Notifications and warning signs from New York City’s Department of Health are familiar to many of the City’s beachgoers. Wet weather events with a little as 1/2 inch of precipitation often results in beach closures due to combined sewer overflows. Source: NYC Department of Health.

into the rooftop HVAC units during the cooling season, while simultaneously helping to reduce temperature extremes inside the building. The green roof also adds the aesthetic value of urban open space—the fifth facade of the building that will be seen and appreciated from emerging adjacent high-rises.

The FXCollaborative/Epstein design process included extensive studies to evaluate the existing condition of all building systems, the user experience, the operational requirements, the adjacent urban influences, and

energy reduction opportunities. With guidance from the project’s roofing consultant, Rainer Gerbatsch of Commercial Roofing Solutions, the design team selected a 2-inch-thick, pre-vegetated sedum mat system, a lighter system than a conventional roof with pavers, which proved to be a cost-effective solution since it avoided the requirement for structural reinforcement of the existing steel space frame and acoustical metal deck structural system. Of all the layers that comprise a green roof, the depth

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Image

With improvement in the water quality of New York City’s waterways, more residents and visitors are seeking out opportunities for recreation on the City’s major rivers. Image © Bernie Ente

of the growing media has the largest impact on the weight of the overall system. The structural analysis of the existing roof structure determined that the maximum saturated weight of the total green roof system needed to be 18 pounds-per-square-foot or less to avoid new structural reinforcement. The selected pre-vegetated mats, the Xeroflor XF301+XT sedum system, satisfied the weight parameter while providing a system with a proven

performance record. During the green roof selection process, the design team toured a 450,000-square-foot Xeroflor XF301+XT installation at Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, to see first-hand how the four-year-old green roof was performing and to discuss the lessons learned experience from the point of view of the suppliers, installers, and operators. Green roofs, although not overly complex, involve more than just adding vegetation to the roof surface of a building. Green roofs are generally comprised, from top-to-bottom, of vegetation, engineered soil,

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

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Figure 7

Section detail of the Javits Center roof.

a water retention mat, a drainage mat, a root barrier, waterproofing, and a engineered roof structure. (Figure 7) Green roofs are categorized as either intensive, semi-intensive, or extensive, based upon the depth of the engineered soil, typically known as the growing medium. Intensive green roofs have more than 6 inches of growing media while an extensive green roof will have less than 6 inches of growing media. A semi-intensive green roof is one for which a quarter of the green roof area contains more or less than 6 inches of growing media. As the growing medium depth increases, there is a corresponding increase in weight, access, plant diversity, irrigation requirements, design flexibility, maintenance, initial

cost, and replacement cost. Through the use of one of the thinnest green roof systems available, the construction and maintenance costs associated with the new Javits Center green roof where kept to a minimum. (Figure 8) Green roofs affect the amount of water runoff in three ways: water holding or retention, slowing water flow or detention, and water vapor transmission or evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration occurs when precipitation falling onto a green roof is absorbed by the vegetation and then is released as water vapor through the leaves of the plant. The pre-vegetated mats for the Javits Center were grown in Central New York in the year prior to their installation in New York City and included 11 different varieties of sedum, a flowering succulent plant. Retention and detention both occur

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

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Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Image

View of Javits Center roof looking north.

in the growing medium, retention mat, and drainage mat layers. By promoting evapotranspiration, providing stormwater storage capacity, and delaying stormwater release into the combined sewer system, a green roof is effective in reducing both the volume and rate of runoff leaving a specific site. The exact hydrological performance of green roofs, however, is dependent on a large number of variables such as roof slope, drainage layer design, substrate depth and composition, and plant types. With so many variables affecting green

roof performance, present and future research efforts will be key to confirming and documenting the influence each individual component has on overall performance.

Green Roof Monitoring Demonstrating successful green roof implementation that is coupled with conclusive scientific research is a compelling way to ensure an increase in green roof installations. Fortunately, the FXCollaborative Epstein team had the opportunity to assist with the integration of a research effort jointly proposed by the Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Laboratory

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Figure 9

View of weather station installation at North roof of the Javits Center following placement of green roof system.

at Drexel University and Department of Civil Engineering at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Supported by funding from the Convention Center Development Corporation to conduct a Roof Monitoring Study at the Javits Center and directed by lead researcher, Dr. Franco Montalto, a professor at Drexel Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s College of Engineering, the Drexel University/ Cooper Union team is investigating three performance areas: changes to the microclimate, energy performance,

and stormwater runoff.12 The monitoring equipment includes a handheld infrared camera, three Parshall flumes, three weighing lysimeters, four weather stations, and fifteen soil sensors. (Figures 9) The infrared camera is being used to analyze exterior and interior temperature variations at 16 locations on the roof. A Parshall flume is a device used to continually measure the flow of water at the low point of each of the 2,000-square-foot green roof areas. The weighing lysimeter is a sensitive scale installed below the vegetative and growing media layers to detect changes in the moisture content to calculate the amounts of evaporation

12 http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2013/May/Green-Roof-Javits-Center/

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

NY receives

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81% of precipitation retained by green roof

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

and plant transpiration over time. The stormwater runoff research is focused on an analysis of the green roof performance in terms of capturing precipitation and reducing the peak stormwater discharge from the roof. The results of the rainfall runoff analysis to date prepared by the Drexel University/Cooper Union team have exceeded expectations. The research indicates that approximately 81% of the precipitation that landed on the green roof was retained by the green roof system and did not become water runoff that would otherwise flow down the roof drains and enter New York Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s combined sewer system.13 The research also provides insight on how the percentage of retention varies based upon the amount of precipitation that falls during an individual occurrence. While the results vary from weather event to weather event depending on amount of precipitation, the duration, and time between weather events, for the purpose of analysis, the rain events are classified as either heavy, medium, or light. Based upon the 32 rain events measured on the Javits Roof in 2015, heavy rain events with more than 1/2 inch of precipitation are 68% retained, medium rain events with more than 1/4 inch but less than 1/2 inch of precipitation are 77% retained, and light rain events with less than or equal to 1/4 inch of precipitation are 95% retained. With this data,

it is calculated that during a 12-month period, the Javits Center green roof is functioning to prevent up to 7 million gallons of stormwater runoff.14 It is anticipated that, as the green roof planting matures and is properly maintained, the Javits Center green roofâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to retain precipitation will improve. Publication of the rainfall runoff monitoring study prepared by the Drexel University/Cooper Union will be completed following the collection and analysis of additional data.

Conclusion In the last two and a half years since its completion, the Javits Center green roof has captured the imagination of those ultimately in charge of its care, the CCOC, and it is heartening to see the wide-ranging benefits of the Javits Center green roof expand through the addition of bee hives, public tours by appointment, and a live video feed on the Javits Center website. The overall renovation project earned a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver rating from the US Green Building Council with the green roof system contributing to an energy consumption savings of 26% over the pre-renovation performance of the building and the reduced heat island effect by covering 62% of the non-skylight roof area.15 Cities benefit when architecture

13 http://www.javitscenter.com/media/97557/7674_ javits_sustainability_report_060617.pdf, p. 13. 14 Ibid. 15 https://www.usgbc.org/projects/jacob-javits-convention-center

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Image

View on the completed Javits Center roof.

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Image

View of completed Javits Center roof looking north.

successfully serves as the mediator between the natural and constructed environments. In cities throughout the United State and the world, greater implementation of green roof projects will help improve the water quality of local waterbodies and create improved opportunities for enjoyable waterfront-related recreation and development. Considering that the history of vegetated roofs throughout the world is well documented, green roof scientific research is increasingly becoming available, and successfully completed green roof project abound,

itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time for green roofs to be considered the leading sustainable stormwater infrastructure strategy for metropolitan areas in order to ensure a blue future for all.

Follow the Water: Green Roofs and the Promise of a Blue Future

Peter Olney | FXCollaborative

Peter Olney joined FXCollaborative in 1995 and was promoted to Senior Associate in 2008. During the course of his 21 years with FXCollaborative, he has gained extensive expertise in the design, coordination, and execution of large-scale buildings in urban settings. From 2007 to 2014, Peter served as the chair of the FXCollaborative Standards/ Quality Assurance Working Group, completing the development and implementation of office project standards and procedures. In addition to his project work, Peter is active in the management of the firmâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Commercial/ Residential practice.

Machine shop class, Washington DC, ca. 1899. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston.

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

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questions and strategies in designing learning environments

Austin Sakong, AIA, LEED GA, Associate, FXCollaborative

Writing in the Winter 1969 Issue of the Harvard Educational Review, James Ackerman observed, “In the Middle Ages, colleges like those at Oxford looked like monasteries because the Establishment was theocratic; today, our high schools look like factories and regiment students like the labor force because the Establishment is commercial and industrial.”1 The fact that Ackerman wrote this in 1969, a watershed moment in history that saw irreparable erosions to its own political and cultural “establishments,” surely roots his two-pronged point: that the designs of schools are bound to the societal structures they serve, and that those structures will continue to change. “Architecture,” Ackerman wrote, “is the

physical form of social institutions.” 2 This simple insight, written during a period of rapid societal change and turmoil, resonates today as much as it did then, as we again experience precipitous changes in our economic, ecological, and social systems. It provides us with an opportunity to ask: what characterizes our establishments today, and how does that affect the physical form of our learning institutions? What evolutions in today’s post-Fordist, information-age society are being reflected, if they are being reflected at all, in the design of our schools? To address these questions, it is useful to remember why schools look the way they do now—and in fact, Ackerman’s comparison of high schools to

factories is neither merely facile nor entirely outdated. As Peter Lippman documents in Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools, the widespread transition from early 19th century one-room schoolhouses to larger public schools was driven largely by the Second Industrial Revolution. The urgent need for skilled labor, dovetailing with reform movements calling for free public education, as well as the growth of industrial cities, transformed the landscape of American education from that of disaggregated local schools towards a coordinated national endeavor to efficiently educate large numbers of students according to common standards.3 Schools were needed to fill factories;

1 Ackerman, James. “Listening to Architecture” Harvard Educational Review; December 1969, Vol 39, No. 4. 2 Ibid. 3 Lippman, Peter C. “Evidence-Based Design of Elementary and Secondary Schools” John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2010.

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Typical mid-19th century school, floor plan.3

20th century windowless school, floor plan.3

Crow Island School, 1940, floor plan. Architect: Perkins, Wheeler & Will

20th century open school, floor plan.3

Figure 1

Schools in plan, through history. (classroom spaces highlighted)

and after all, what better model than the factory itself to efficiently produce a consistent and well-trained workforce, at a large enough scale to meet the demands of a new economy?

Duke School, 2009, floor plan. Architect: Fielding Nair International / DTW Architects

Based on this model, many 19th century classrooms were simply large halls with hundreds of students, of all different ages, seated on long benches, and assigned to a single teacher with a few aides. By the mid19th century, these halls evolved to what we would more easily recognize as schools today: different divisions

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as art, music, and athletics. Finally, the 20th century gave rise to a number of pedagogically-driven spatial experiments, from schools that eliminated classrooms altogether in favor of completely open floor plans, to those with completely enclosed and windowless classrooms intended to block out any potential distractions, to those with clusters of classrooms organized around flexible common spaces.4 The evolutionary history of school design, from the 1800s through today, if nothing else, has been a continuous interrogatory into how students can best learn in their given environments (Figure 1).

An interior courtyard becomes a teaching space and vertical connector between divisions.

emerged to accommodate different age groups; class sizes were reduced to hold 30-40 students each; classrooms were organized around efficient double-loaded corridors; and new spaces were implemented to facilitate new curricular additions, such

And from this long interrogatory, certain tropes begin to emerge, all in varying manifestations, but all constituting consciously designed elements of the learning environment. The design of furniture, for example, demonstrates how, at even the smallest scale, design can impact learning; the long wooden 19th century bench bolted to the floor, as well as today’s caster-fitted mobile chair, both speak to learning modalities relevant to their respective eras and pedagogies. The degree of the classroom’s porosity, too, has been the subject of constant investigation. The ‘open air school movement’ of the 1930s emphasized access to light and air;5 a number of schools in the 1960s were built with few, if any at all, windows to the outside;6 while the ‘open classroom movement’, also of the

4 Ibid. 5 Baker, Lindsay. “A History of School Design and its Indoor Environmental Standards, 1900 to Today” National Institute of Building Sciences; January 2012. 6 Ibid. 7 Marks, Judy. “The Educational Facilities Laboratories (EFL): A History” National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, 2001.

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1960s, proposed the elimination of all interior walls and partitions.7 Other tropes include circulation, flexibility, and efficiency. In the end, these tropes can be loosely organized as a series of design questions operating at three distinct, but nested, scales: the scale of the classroom, the scale of the school, and the scale of the community. At the scale of the individual classroom, how can the furnishing and arrangement of the room itself best facilitate a student’s ability to learn? At the scale of the school, how can the physical organization of the school best encompass all that the student needs for a comprehensive education? And, finally, at the scale of the community, how can schools best ensure that the student’s education is relevant to the needs of the neighborhood, city, and/or global community that awaits them? One measure of an education’s relevance, of course, is its congruity to the economy; that is, jobs. And according to research published by McKinsey Quarterly, those jobs have dramatically evolved since the early 20th century, from being primarily transformational to transactional; that is, from jobs involved in transforming raw materials into finished goods, to jobs involved in conducting complex interactions using high levels of skills, knowledge, and judgement.8 Our contemporary workforce can no longer rely solely on

the ability to absorb knowledge and execute well-defined tasks, and neither can our students. Traditional productoriented companies are reorganizing to become project-oriented platforms, operating across markets through an ecosystem of multiple business organizations.9 Preparing students to join this workforce will entail cultivating their ability to thrive in such ecosystems, and construct new knowledge within collaborative and multidisciplinary settings. So to return to James Ackerman, and that elliptical symmetry between architecture and establishments: what is abundantly clear is that in most ways, contemporary life—which can be characterized by disruption, interaction, diversity, automation, digitization, and atomization—has long since moved on from the Industrial Revolution. Whether the architecture of our schools has likewise moved on, perhaps, is less clear. What follows are a series of scalar strategies and questions that probe how we can better reflect our society, and better align the design of our learning spaces —through physical form—to the aspirations of our learning institutions.

The Classroom In a way, the most irreducible module of learning space has always been the classroom: a defined space in which an instructor engages a group of students. The method of that engagement, often referred to as a learning modality (or teaching

7 Marks, Judy. “The Educational Facilities Laboratories (EFL): A History” National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, 2001. 8 Johnson, Bradford C; Manyika, James M.; Yee, Lareina A. “The next revolution in interactions” McKinsey Quarterly; November 2005. 9 Bughin, Jaques; Lund, Susan; Remes, Jaana. “Rethinking work in the digital age” McKinsey Quarterly; October 2016.

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

Figure 2

University Lecture, by Laurentius de Voltolina.

modality), is what determines the design needs of a classroom. A well-known 14th century illustration (Figure 2) demonstrates one deeply familiar learning modality, and serves as a useful reminder that, as much as things have changed, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve also remained the same: a â&#x20AC;&#x153;sage on stageâ&#x20AC;? fixed at the front of the room dispenses knowledge to a group of passive listeners, several of whom are chatting with each other or outright

napping. As familiar as this model is, are its many criticisms: that the static lecture too often fails to engage students; that students learn best when doing something, and not just hearing about it; that developing brains often absorb information better when visual and auditory inputs are accompanied by tactile and haptic inputs. These criticisms are especially acute today, when information is a readily available commodity, as useful (or useless) from a Google search as it is from an instructor.

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A library encourages participation with all surfaces, from all ages, at all scales. Photo © Chris Cooper

Another learning modality, which has become increasingly common in recent years, eschews the “sage on stage” in favor of a “guide on the side.” In this model, the instructor is not fixed at a teaching wall, but mobile throughout the classroom, individually engaging each student in completing individual projects and tasks, or facilitating student-led discussions and explorations in lieu of lectures. There may be several teaching walls, or none at all; and instead of being seated at rows of forward-facing desks, students are often clustered around tables in groups of four to six. The gaining popularity of

this modality, known as “active learning,” has been closely associated with a heightened focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) subjects. According to a 2014 study published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, students in active learning environments receive higher grades, and are far less likely to fail, in STEM subjects: "The impact of these data should be like the Surgeon General's report on ‘Smoking and Health’ in 1964—they should put to rest any debate about whether active learning is more effective than lecturing."10 But this, too, has its criticisms. In a 2015 New York Times Op-Ed, journalist and educator Molly Worthen argued against “an attempt to

10 Freeman, Scott; Eddy, Sarah L.; McDonough, Miles; Smith, Michelle K.; Okoroafor, Nnadozie; Jordt, Hannah; Wenderoth, Mary Pat. “Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; June 2014.

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

further assimilate history, philosophy, literature and their sister disciplines to the goals and methods of the hard sciences—fields whose stars are rising in the eyes of administrators, politicians and higher-education entrepreneurs.”11 In teaching the humanities, she argues, there is a value in the lecture format that isn’t possible to retrieve through active learning: Absorbing a long, complex argument is hard work, requiring students to synthesize, organize and react as they listen. In our time, when any reading assignment longer than a Facebook post seems ponderous, students have little experience doing this. Some research suggests that minority and low-income students struggle even more. But if we abandon the lecture format because students may find it difficult, we do them a disservice. Moreover, we capitulate to the worst features of the customer-service mentality that has seeped into the university from the business world. The solution, instead, is to teach those students how to gain all a great lecture course has to give them.12 If this spectrum of modalities reveals anything, it is surely not the need to determine how one solution is better than any other, but the need to accept and support the full breadth of that very spectrum. While pedagogy relies on specific spatial configurations to be effective, those configurations should not then limit or predetermine

that pedagogy. Rather, they should merely provide enough built-in flexibility to allow each instructor to experiment with, adjust, and invent his or her own teaching modality according to student needs, the subjects at hand, and the evolving role of technology in the classroom. In short, the design of a classroom should enable the instructor to question the nature of that classroom: What defines a classroom, and what, and who, should go in it? How do its available permutations enable different teaching modalities? In cases like ‘flipped’ classrooms, where lectures can be downloaded at home so that school time is reserved for one-to-one interactions, does the traditional size and scale of a classroom still make sense? Ultimately, these are design questions that empower pedagogical ones, and both are centered on the impacts of how a classroom’s fundamentals and furnishings are designed. Fundamentals Shaping a classroom begins, well, with its shape: its dimensions and proportions, in both plan and section. For example, high ceilings can help draw natural light deep into a room, but a ceiling that’s too high or too hard can create unmanageable acoustics or an inappropriate scale. Traditional rectangular classrooms can be ideal for lecture-style presentations, but also elongates the distance between the ‘front’ and ‘back’ of the room; on the other hand, square classrooms can

11 Worthen, Molly. “Lecture Me. Really.” The New York Times; October 17 2015. 12 Ibid.

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SPECIAL PERMIT SCHEME - LEVEL 4 PLAN SEP 18TH, 2014

FIELDSTON LOWER ADLER LAB

PROPOSED SSW DEC 4TH, 2014

FIELDSTON LOWER ADLER LAB

SPECIAL PERMIT SCHEME - LEVEL 4 PLAN SEP 18TH, 2014

FIELDSTON LOWER ADLER LAB

PROPOSED SSW DEC 4TH, 2014

Figure 3

FIELDSTON LOWER ADLER LAB

32 N

Left: Moveable glass partitions allow classrooms to expand and contract. Right: Plan diagrams test various states of porosity.

SPECIAL PERMIT SCHEME - LEVEL 4 PLAN

SEP 18 , 2014 TH

FIELDSTON LOWER ADLER LAB

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

be ideal for seminar-style sessions (like the renowned Harkness method, for example), but are less suited for large class sizes. The area of square feet allotted per student can also impact flexibility; for example, while a standard lecture format requires only about 10-15 SF per student, active learning and group work can require anywhere between 35 SF to 50 SF. In early childhood education, even more can be required: according to a 2003 study from France which measured students’ cortisol levels as biological markers of stress, a minimum of 5 square meters (about 54 SF) was found to be necessary to maintain reduced levels of stress in toddlers between 18 to 40 months old.13 Consider, also, the classroom’s boundaries. Typically, a classroom is enclosed with solid walls, intended to keep students, and their undistracted focus, inside and attending to the lesson at hand. Sight lines are blunted, acoustics are modulated, and students are seated. But in his book How We Learn, Benedict Carey argues that an essential part of how the human brain operates is through foraging for valuable information while in motion. Learning and problem solving are not linear processes for acquiring and applying information; rather, they require a constant synthesis of unexpected linkages and inspiration.14 By building in an adjustable degree of porosity to its boundaries, a classroom can fold in the presence

of new sights and sounds—whether they are other learning activities, glimpses of students passing by, or even just the natural environment outside—which can play an important role in providing positive forms of “distractions.” A porous classroom can help merge planned lessons with unplanned discoveries. By allowing students to forage for their own new connections and relationships between the materials within and outside the classroom, instructors are able to give them a sense of ownership over their learning and maximize their capacities for creative discourse. And in so doing, that irreducible module of learning, which has always existed at the scale of the classroom, can shift to the scale of the individual student. Porosity as a concept can take any number of forms, whether through visually transparent walls or literally no walls at all (Figure 3). But as many possibilities as there are, there are also a number of associated design challenges. For example, some students require longer periods of visual and acoustic focus than others, and the instructor needs the ability to limit and control the presence of potentially negative distractions according individual student needs. Security is another concern; lock-down drills are an increasingly common part of student life, and protocols must be established to protect students in the event of an intruder. Finally, building codes are often an associated

13 Legendre, Alain. “Environmental Features Influencing Toddlers’ Bioemotional Reactions in Day Care Centers.” Environment and Behavior; Vol. 35, Issue 4, 2003. 14 Carey, Benedict. “How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens” Random House; 2014.

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challenge with increased porosity, particularly in older or existing school buildings: fire rating requirements, occupancy load tables, and public assembly requirements are often useful in designing for traditional learning modalities, but are often costly and complex impediments to implementing new ones. Furnishings As critical as those elements which delineate the boundaries of a classroom, are all those things found inside it. For example, because furniture most immediately defines the space of each student, designing to flexible furniture is an essential part of designing multimodal classrooms. Chairs and tables should allow for easy movement, and should enable both individual and collective arrangements as needed. A good example is Steelcase’s Node Chair; its swivel seat allows the individual student to easily shift focus and direction in place, and its wheel casters and writing surface allow students to cluster together in groups of two to four, or even larger groups when used with tables. Another example is the Shapes Desk by Balt; its curvilinear geometry can serve as a standalone single desk, or nest together in multiple group configurations (Figure 4). In addition to furniture, the classroom also requires infrastructure. The need for robust infrastructure in a classroom isn’t limited to having a state-of-the-art Smart Board, which is ultimately an

example of technological infrastructure in support of what students can see and hear (Figure 5). The classroom should also support what students can build, cut, smell, pour, mix, weld, dissect, or even cook. Such infrastructure can include drop-down electrical cord reels dispersed throughout the classroom ceiling, multiple wet sinks around the classroom perimeter, and even kitchen appliances like stoves and refrigerators. If it holds true that the roles of today’s students in the future workforce will depend on their ability to formulate new questions and hypotheses based on direct experiences rather than received information, then their education will need to engage all their senses and skills, supported by spaces that can facilitate a diverse array of hands-on projects. The design challenges associated with ensuring adequate infrastructural accommodations are a kind of paradox: on the one hand, the intent is to maximize flexibility for the range of an instructor’s lesson plans; on the other hand, by definition, infrastructural elements are costly and fixed, built into the fabric of the building and unlikely to move. Storage elements like cabinets, counters, and shelves are often impractical or impossible to re-arrange; and the more such storage is needed, the less flexible the room becomes. Or to take another example, the installed location of a Smart Board often becomes the de facto teaching wall, and can immediately limit the

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

Figure 4

Left: Node Chair by Steelcase. Images courtesy of Steelcase. Right: Shapes Desk by Balt. Images courtesy of Balt.

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range of teaching modalities. In the end, the fungibility of a space is often in direct conflict with its utility. The most flexible space may be the least useful, and what’s so useful for one teacher, may precisely be what makes it unusable for another. The design of each classroom, then, must strike a balance, in consideration of the needs of each individual school, curriculum, and teacher.

The School By transforming the space of the classroom to accommodate a diversity of learning modalities, from traditional static spaces with passive learning to dynamic spaces with active learning, teachers are able to customize their lesson plans according to the needs and pace of each individual student; and in so doing, students are given individual agency and empowerment in shaping their own education. The ways in which a learning environment facilitates this individual agency should extend beyond the scale of each classroom, to the scale of the overall school. The traditional “cells and bells” school organization, with long doubleloaded corridors neatly dividing rows of classrooms (cells), is a physical embodiment of the factory metaphor in which the consistency and predictability of the school anticipates the consistency and predictability of its students—and their future work environment. But in a model in which newly empowered students are seen

not as merely receiving knowledge but also constructing it, not just as products of an education system but as that system’s co-innovators, the school’s learning spaces must be as diverse and dynamic as its students. Studies such as Michael Horn and Heather Staker’s Blended argue for schools to be conceived not as an eggcrate of classrooms based on subject or grade level, but as a system of variously scaled “technology-rich” stations based on different modalities and individual progress. One station might be for direct instruction with fifteen students, another might be a group project space for two or three students, and yet another might be a central computer lab for a hundred students; each student moves from one station to another on a series of rotations, constantly engaging both physical and digital spaces and resources.15 Fully exploring the potential of this model would shift school design dramatically away from “cells and bells.” After all, as the authors of Blended note, “Who wants to be the school district that builds the last twentieth-century building?”16 The station model proposed in Blended is only one alternative to the traditional school design model. Practitioners such as Prakash Nair and Bruce Jilk, for example, have written and built a substantive body of work in pursuit of learning spaces more closely aligned with progressive pedagogical thinking.

15 Horn, Michael B. and Staker, Heather. “Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools” Jossey-Bass 2015. 16 Ibid.

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Figure 5

Technological infrastructure connects students to the classroom and the outside world.

Nair has advocated for retiring the term ‘classroom’ altogether, favoring concepts like ‘learning studios’ or ‘learning suites’ in order to place greater emphasis on integration over direct instruction alone.17 Jilk offers another radical model, based on what he has called “a montage of gaps:”

[I]n moving from considering learners as passive recipients to active players in their learning experience, the objective becomes one of engaging them in their situation (which includes the environment). To do this they must also become authors of their environment. Authority becomes shared between the producer (architect) and the consumer (learner). This is consistent with the purpose of developing creative

17 Nair, Prakash. “The Classroom is Obsolete” Education Week, July 2011.

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learners. Rather than an environment where all actions are predetermined, the goal is a setting that engages the learner by a design that requires them to participate in that environment. These places are incomplete without the user’s involvement. These building are not experienced all at once, but rather piece by piece, in moments separated by gaps in space, time, and climate. It is these gaps or relationships that become the focus of the design. This strategy of designing relationships, such that it requires the creative engagement of the user to complete the setting, has recently been identified as the ‘Montage of Gaps’. A montage is a composite of juxtaposed elements. In this design approach these elements are the gaps of space, time, and climate.18 What emerges from all these studies, in the end, are two essential focal points to the design of any twentyfirst century school: access and adjacencies. Access can be simply defined as the circulatory flow of students between and through learning spaces, and adjacencies as the programmatic logic of how those spaces are organized relative to one another. Access If the primary argument for the traditional double-loaded corridor is its efficiency in minimizing non-learning spaces, then the logical question that

follows is, Can they be eliminated altogether? How would circulation in a school work if every space became a learning space (Figure 6)? If learning weren’t limited to the boundaries of the classroom, the school could provide students, and their foraging brains, with learning opportunities even as they circulate throughout it. Corridors could be strategically widened, attenuated, and/or enhanced to accommodate breakout spaces, open study commons, tech bars, social spaces, and even assembly spaces. Circulation itself could thus become curricular extensions of the classroom, and vice versa. A broad diversity of different kinds of interactions at different scales would acknowledge the inherently interconnected nature of knowledge, and become an important part of preparing students for complex transactions between people, disciplines, and economies. In a way, the problem with the traditional corridor may not be that it takes up too much space, but, properly leveraged, not enough of it (Figure 7). The vertical mirror to the horizontal corridor is the stair core, which is typically a lightless, concreteencased column of vertical circulation throughout the school. Its requirements for fire separation and egress means it occupies as minimal a footprint as possible, both spatially and pedagogically. But like corridors, stairs are circulating devices capable

18 Jilk, Bruce A. “Place making and change in learning environments” Children’s Spaces edited by Dudek, Mark. Architectural Press, 2005.

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

A NEW A NEW PLAN PLAN Figure 6

Every space becomes a learning space, even outside the classroom.

Figure 7

EXISTING CONDITIONS EXISTING CONDITIONS

The existing plan is currently over-stuffed and overThe existing plan is currently over-stuffed and overscheduled. The building is overly rigid, while lacking clear scheduled. The building is overly rigid, while lacking clear circulation, orientation to daylight and breathing room. circulation, orientation to daylight and breathing room.

UNDERLYING STRUCTURE UNDERLYING STRUCTURE

PROPOSED FLOOR PROPOSED PLAN FLOOR PLAN

Working underlying within grid themakes underlying an entirely grid makes new floor an entirely plan new floor plan However, removing all non-structural partitions reveals a Working within the However, removing all non-structural partitions reveals a The perimeter possible. is The linedperimeter with consistent is linedbut with flexible consistent rooms. but flexible rooms. straight-forward 28’x28’ structural column grid, as well as possible. a straight-forward 28’x28’ structural column grid, as well as a The center is marked The center by soft, is organic markedforms. by soft, The organic spaces forms. between The spaces between limited number of cores that can remain intact. limited number of cores that can remain intact. them become multi-purpose them become breakout multi-purpose spaces.breakout spaces.

New plan strategies diagram the conversion of a traditional "cells and bells" school into a network of learning spaces at all scales, connected by commons spaces, breakout areas, study lounges, and 'neighborhood' centers.

of not just moving students between learning spaces, but also connecting and gathering students by creating its own learning spaces. Graceful diagonal connections between floors often provide unexpected visual and pedagogical linkages, and can help students map their own personal spatial and educational trajectories (Figures 8 & 9).

REFINED FLOORREFINED PLAN FLOOR PLAN

With the perimeter With ‘cracked the perimeter open’, circulation ‘cracked open’, is clarified circulation and is clarified and oriented towardsoriented light andtowards views. Making light and circulation views. Making spaces circulation spaces wide enough for wide multi-purpose enough for programs multi-purpose meansprograms corridors means are corridors are almost eliminated, almost and every eliminated, space—whether and every space—whether in or outside the in or outside the classroom—becomes classroom—becomes a learning space.a learning space.

Adjacencies Just as no single design solution can accommodate the learning needs of every student, there is no formula that will accommodate the teaching needs of every school. The programmatic organization of each school should reflect and enhance its unique culture (Figure 10). How might the design, placement, and

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Figure 8

Left: In section, stacks of flat space are connected through unexpected diagonal linkages in section. Right: In plan, classroom silos and corridors break open and collaborate.

ENED RONMENT ENVIRONMENT

ws! nt’sAlearning student’s environment learning environment should should ature, the city, life nature, and light. life and light.

UNIS IS A UNIS POROUS IS AENVIRONMENT POROUS ENVIRONMENT

ClassroomClassroom adjacencies adjacencies should reflect should the reflect interconnected the interconnected nature of knowledge. nature of knowledge. A student’sAlearning student’s environment learning environment should should encourageencourage unexpected unexpected linkages, collaborations linkages, collaborations and relationships. and relationships.

UNIS IS A UNIS POROUS IS AENVIRONMENT POROUS ENVIRONMENT

ClassroomClassroom adjacencies adjacencies should reflect should the reflect interconnected the interconnected nature of knowledge. nature of knowledge. A student’sA learning student’senvironment learning environment should should encourageencourage unexpected unexpected linkages, collaborations linkages, collaborations and relationships. and relationships.

Figure 9

An open forum anchors a suite of language classrooms, encouraging debate and plurality.

visibility of programs like cafeterias and gymnasiums speak to a school’s focus on health and wellness? How might the adjacencies between

a library and a media lab advance a school’s goal of re-inventing the role of libraries in schools? How might the programming of a forum between language classrooms celebrate a school’s international student body? A school with an emphasis on STEM

CLASSROOMS

GYM

SPECIALTY

OFFICES

MAKER

CIRCULATION

MULTI PURPOSE

CAFETERIA

GYM

SPECIALTY

MAKER

Reorganizing already existing programs allows science and maker tech spaces to become the 'heart' of a school.

programs, for example, could design contiguities between computer labs and chemistry labs. A school known for its arts programs might choose to place a performing arts theater in its geographic center, with equal access to classrooms and green rooms alike. These adjacencies could in turn encourage a plurality of related associations and personal discoveries, which could then be contributed

CAFETERIA

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

OFFICES

CIRCULATION

BOH

Figure 10

MULTI PURPOSE

to each class they attend and each conversation they have along the way. As it is at the scale of a classroom, the indispensable feature of learning at the scale of the school is to encourage students to claim responsibility and ownership in shaping their own education. The curricular expanse of an education—the range of subjects taught, the necessary milestones passed—may largely be in the hands of the school’s educators. But designing the bridge which can span that expanse—interrelating those subjects, gleaning meaning from those milestones—can be a collaborative

BOH

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work, each unique design with its own distinct attributes and authenticity, co-signed by both educator and student, and foundationally supported by their learning environment.

Conclusion: The Community A student’s transition from inside the learning environment to the community outside it doesn’t occur on the single event of graduation day, but over the course of a gradual and daily interface. And the design of that interface—which can include everything from the framed window through which students literally see the world outside, to the assembly space hosting a local community board meeting—can speak to the school’s relationship to its various contexts. These contexts are multiple, and will depend on each school; an urban school will necessitate designing its relationship to its urban context (street life and pedestrian flow, for example) (Figures 11 & 12), or an arts school may require designing its relationship to its institutional context (nearby museums or performance halls, for example). But if a fundamental role of any school is to prepare its students to navigate the shifting landscape of the global economy, one common thread shared by all schools will be the economic context awaiting their students. As famously noted by former Secretary of Education Richard Riley, “We are currently preparing students

Figure 11

Circulating through an urban campus inscribes learning spaces into public spaces, and vice versa.

for jobs that don’t yet exist, that will use technologies that have yet to be invented, to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” The World Economic Forum estimates that “65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist.”19 To add

19 “Executive Summary: The Future of Jobs and Skills” World Economic Forum, January 2016.

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

Figure 12

A university's 'student landscape' includes interior and exterior spaces, cafes and classrooms, art galleries and public monuments.

to this, our future economic context isn’t just impossible to forecast, but it’s accelerating as well. According to the US Department of Labor, today’s students will have on average 10-14 jobs before they turn 38. So in a way, a hallmark of designing to today’s establishment (to return to Ackerman’s term) will not necessarily be in our ability to predict the future, but in our ability to embody, facilitate, and constantly adapt to the dynamic changes by which we are today, if asymptotically, approaching that

future. In schools, this will not only mean creating flexibility within the school, but remaining responsive to its community through a continuous and open-ended interface. An elementary school may choose to shape its curriculum around maker tech and STEM subjects, and simply require spaces to support those subjects. A university business school may choose to model its spaces on contemporary open-office or shared working environments, and regularly invite professionals outside academia to interact with students. But in both cases, the school and its community become interdependent resources to each other; each are permeably

Room to Learn

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Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

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A college library as a programmatic bridge spanning multiple urban and pedagogical contexts.

defined and infuses the other with innovation, expertise, and newly constructed knowledge. In this sense, the school need not be just a starting point for a student in a linear process that ends in a professional laboratory or office. Rather, the interface between the research and innovations of the academic sphere, and the capital and expertise of the economic sphere, could become constantly symbiotic and dynamic. For example, New York City universities rank second in the nation in total research spending, while the City attracts less than 10% of the nation’s venture capital investment, ranking

19th in the nation when ranked in dollars per capita.20 There is a clear disconnect between New York’s investments in research, and the returns it sees in that research being translated into innovation. Here, it is important to note that recent trends like university-based incubators have now begun to address this disconnect. Startups, often initiated by faculty or recent alums, have begun to receive access to the multidisciplinary research and resources of Universities. There are challenges too: recent research focused on university incubators has found drops in patent quality, licensing income, and heightened competition for resources with other campus efforts.21 What these incubators potentially signal, however, isn’t just an alternative way to germinate ideas and inventions

20 F lorida, Richard. “A Closer Look at the Geography of Venture Capital in the US” CityLab, Feb 23 2016. 21 K olympiris, Christos. “The Effects of Academic Incubators on University Innovation” Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, January 30 2017.

Room to Learn

to take root in the marketplace. They could also incubate new spaces that exist simply to create meaningful perforations and deformations in the boundaries between learning spaces and their communities. These liminal spaces could be economic, cultural, political, or social resources; they could incubate both future professionals and future students. Whatever form these spaces take, they will constitute an answer to what is fundamentally a design problem. The result will be schools that are fully integrated, both pedagogically and architecturally, into their economic contexts. They will better equip their students to join the workforce, but also empower them to change the societal structures which drive that workforce. These will be schools with room to learn, capable of adapting to the global community they are helping to shape.

OVERALL MASSING FXFOWLE ARCHITECTS, LLP

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22 WEST 19 STREET | NEW YORK, NY 10011, USA | T +1.212.627.1700 | WWW.FXFOWLE.COM

A lower school shaped from both within and without by site-specific climate conditions.

Which returns us, usefully, to the notion of the transformational vs transactional. Rather than seeing schools only as places of transforming raw materials (students) into finished goods (the workforce), they could be re-conceived as operating in a transactional relationship, situated in a multi-faceted ecology of communities, institutions, and economies. And from those transactions, there may emerge schools with entirely new definitionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and designs.

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

The school in the city. The city in the school.

Room to Learn

Austin Sakong | FXCollaborative

Austin Sakong is an Associate of FXCollaborative. Since joining FXCollaborative in 2013, Austin has worked exclusively on projects for K-12 and higher education institutions, with experience in master plans, new construction, and renovations. He has taught architecture studios at Columbia University and Parsons School of Design, and is a Commissioner of the Jersey City Historic Preservation Commission. He has also served as a Board Member of the Harsimus Cove Neighborhood Association in Jersey City, a non-profit community organization which works with the City Administration to address issues of development, public space, quality of life, and zoning. Austin’s drawings have been included in several recent publications, including “A History of Housing in New York City” by Richard Plunz (Columbia University 2016) and “Open City: Existential Urbanity” by Diane Lewis (Charta 2015). He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the Cooper Union, and his Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University. Austin’s practice of architecture is informed by his view that architecture, like literature, is ultimately a humanist pursuit; and that its quality hinges on its ability to articulate meaning, stories, and life.

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Orchestrated Urbanism

The Race-Built City

Tyler Cukar, AICP, FXCollaborative

In the summer of 2015, my wife’s parents were en route to Kansas City to meet my family and see my childhood home. It was their first time seeing the United States outside the East Coast. As they flew into Kansas City from Oman, I found myself wondering: what will I show them to highlight how great Kansas City is? I felt an inherent pressure to impress global travelers, already versed in cuisine, culture, and lifestyle. I thought back to my childhood in Kansas City, remembering unique food, special events, school trips, music, and icons throughout the city. What had left an impression on me? (Figure 1) I plotted an itinerary for the few days I had with my in-laws. Mealtimes were easy, we focused on barbecue:

Arthur Bryant’s, Gates, Joe’s Kansas City, Q39—the options were plenty. Between meals I showed off the rich culture and history of the city. The Country Club Plaza and the grand homes along Ward Parkway were an obvious destination. The 18th and Vine District was a stop for both The American Jazz Museum and The Negro League Baseball Museum. Following another barbecue pit stop we hopped over to the Nelson Atkins Museum. To burn off our lunch we walked around Union Station, the Liberty Memorial, and the parks connecting them. We saw other highlights, like the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and The Power and Light District; however, these more recent icons did not

have the same richness or inspire the same excitement as the historic art deco architecture of downtown, the picturesque Spanish-inspired Country Club Plaza, or the energy of the Crossroads Art District. They did not speak to the history and character of the city but rather to contemporary aspirations meant to attract newcomers and entertain longtime residents. As the days wore on and our belts could expand no further, a theme to our conversations arose; why does this mix of history exist in Kansas City? Why are these historical and cultural places, all seemingly unrelated, located here? Having these conversations with my inlaws, focused on the relationships of Kansas City’s places to historic

Figure 1

1870 aerial view of Kansas City on a bluff. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

Orchestrated Urbanism

events, highlighted the need for a tool to tell the full story; a tool that allows places, events, and their causes to be understood as an interrelated and interdependent system. Multifaceted American cities, like Kansas City, are not happenstance: they are the well-orchestrated result of centuries of surreptitiously implemented racebased policies, social ethos, and long-lasting systemic ramifications. Patterns resulting from decades of racially motivated policies have become ingrained in our cities and the way we view them. As their origins are forgotten, their perpetually selfreinforcing impacts are not understood. This paper establishes a lens through which the contemporary American city can be viewed. This lens becomes a tool for viewing the cause-and-effect relationships of racial policies and built urban form which have fundamentally shaped typical American cities, leaving behind recognizable cultural icons and social ills with which cities still grapple with today.

of Kansas City can be applied to countless American cities, delivering unique results by identifying a series of cause-and-effect relationships resulting in a timeline of the physical roots of the city. A cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history is commonly viewed in a linear, sequential timeline; however, this method of viewing history is limited by failing to illustrate the non-linear patterning of events and their impact on one another. Instead, these timelines should be rendered as a web of interconnected points showing the impact each event has on future outcomes. The webbed timeline (Figure 2) will show a cyclical patterning of three types of events: policy, built form and community. Policies react to existing communities, resulting in built form. The combination of built form and policy allows for the evolution of a neighborhood and community. As each community elicits a response and reaction, a new cycle begins. This is the generative formula for the creation of the American city.

Like an onion, the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current form and culture must be peeled back for a layered relationship of events to be understood. Kansas City is an ideal place to illustrate this process: it is one of the most distinctly segregated cities in the United States, it has lasting cultural touchstones as a result of persistent, racially inequitable development, and it is a prototypical American city in terms of development, size, and demographics. The analysis

The American city is at a transformative moment; urban cores are being rethought, re-worked, and revitalized for a new residential population who want to live, work, and entertain themselves in one place. An influx of investment and people has put enormous pressure on land and property. As a result, the displacement of historically marginalized Black communities is on the rise, repeating patterns of the past. Designers,

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

1925 Tom Pendergast Controls the City

1912 First Sicilian Mafia Family Arrives 1914 WW1 Sparks Great Migration

1883 Porters Plantation Transitions to Millionaires Row

1893 Economic Collapse

1878 Kansas City Stockyard Expansion

1906 Nichols Begins Sunset Hill

1923 First Zoning Ordinances

1890-1908 Eastside of Troost Growth

1865 Civil War Ends

1945 WW2 Ends

1944 G.I. Bill

1934 FHA Created 1933 HOLC Created

1935 Redlining

1934 Housing Act 1949 Housing Act

1956 City Limit Expansion

1970s-2000s Suburban Boom 1968-1974 Realtor Induced Panic Selling

1945 Suburban Growth

1956 Federal Aid Highway Act

Figure 2 Web timeline.

developers, and city agencies are all looking to capitalize on this moment to shape the future of their cities. To ensure this is done in socially, racially, and economically equitable ways, comprehending how cities arrived at this moment is a critical step in moving forward. This paper ultimately aims to both inform and transform the discourse on American cities into a more open, empathetic conversation between policy makers, designers, and the public. Through this discourse, any urban project should react not only to its physical context, but to

2011 Beacon Hill Development

1960s-1990s White Flight 2008 The Great Recession

1968 Kansas City Race Riot

2017 Kansas City East Side Taxi Initiative

1971 War on Drugs

1950s-1980s Lack of Business and Jobs 1949-1969 Rezoning and Highway Construction

The Formation

Physical result or response Policy or legal reaction or result Other/interrelated but non dependent The East Side’s Critical Path

2010 City Market Housing

1987 Wayne Miner Houses Demolished

1968 Fair Housing Act

1949-1970 Blight, Urban Renewal and Public Housing

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1973 Nixon’s Moratorium on all public housing

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1968-1974 Section 235

1954 School Desegregation

1954 Housing Act

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1970-1974 Grassroots Community Associates Begin Fight for Fair Housing

1968 MLK Assasinated

1937 First Slum Clearance Attempt

1936 No Public or Private Investment in Redlined Areas

1904 Streetcar Begins

The Roots 1865

1939 WW2 Begins

1929 The Great Depression

1908 Racially Restrictive Covenants

1940 L.P. Cookingham City Manager

1945 Harry S. Truman Elected President

1920 NAREB Created

1932 FHLB Created

1893 Banks Panic Drop Housing Prices

1925-1939 Over 300 Speak Easys Clubs and Jazz Halls

1919 Volstead Act “Prohibition”

1909 George Kessler Parks & Blvd. Construction 1880-1930 Large Population Shift in Kansas City

1939 Tom Pendergast Arrested

1975 118% Increase in Crime on East Side

The Resultant 1968

what created that context, and for whom. Any re-populating city should ask not only who will live there in the future, but who was there in the past. A meaningful definition of “city” should incorporate the notion that a city is something that actively functions, rather than something that is simply there. With this narrative in hand, the conversation surrounding equitable city growth and policy decisions can be directed towards a more strategic and solution-focused question: “What do we do now?” Using this tool, highlevel approaches and strategies can be evaluated with a pointed focus on “undesigning” this racially divisive legacy. By illuminating a city’s collective memories, Orchestrated Urbanism hopes to empower a city’s collective aspirations.

2016 Kansas City Streetcar

2008 Kansas City Power and Light District

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Orchestrated Urbanism

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10 Black Core 11 Hyde Park 12 Roanoke 13 Westport 14 Rockhill 15 The Wards Property 16 Sunset Hills 17 East Side Development

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

The Roots The racial divide and inequity in our cities today is as extreme as it ever has been. To begin to analyze how cyclical events shaped the modern city, we need a baseline against which to measure development and racial patterns. Racial policies shaping cities in the United States can be traced back to the beginning of the country. When discussing the creation of the modern city, and the legal segregation of Blacks, the baseline can be set around 1865, at the end of the Civil War, when a great shift occurred in the way Americans lived and distributed themselves throughout the country. Kansas City was in its infancy in 1865, having only become a city two years before, and housing a modest population of 4,418 people, 190 of whom were Black.1 Perched high on a bluff between the Missouri and the Kansas Rivers, the area that became Kansas City had principally been an outpost for settlers heading west. Though Kansas City sat on the westernmost edge of Missouri, one of only a few union slave states, it did not have many plantations nor slaves. Blacks were distributed throughout the city, with the largest concentration south of Independence Avenue between Grand and Baltimore. The most notable plantation was the 365-acre Porter Plantation, centered on Troost Avenue.2 Following the civil war, as the city’s population boomed, Blacks dispersed and integrated

amongst White and European enclaves. By 1870 the population was 32,260 people, 3,770 of whom were Black.3 At this time, many Blacks and newly arrived European immigrants settled in “Hell’s Half Acre,” an area in the West Bottoms near the Stockyards and rail depot; this neighborhood located laborers close to their primary work: constructing the Hannibal Bridge. Completed in 1869, the Hannibal Bridge was the first bridge to span the Missouri River catapulting Kansas City into a position as a national railroad hub, allowing the city’s stockyards to expand. By 1878, housing patterns shifted away from the west bottoms, so residents in Hell’s Half Acre pushed up the adjacent bluff to follow urban development south, away from the river. While railroad construction and stockyard expansion thrived, a handful of wealthy entrepreneurs made Kansas City home. The initial location of the estates and subsequent developments of Kersey Coates, Webster Withers, William Rockhill Nelson, and Charles Morse would shape the physical and social geography of the city for the next 150 years. Between 1857 and 1886, these families created multiple iconic neighborhoods including Quality Hill, “Millionaires Row,” (Figure 3) and Rockhill. In 1871, the Wards, a family critical to shaping modern Kansas City, arrived. The Wards bought 450 acres to the east of Nelson’s property near Brush Creek, south

1 Numbers from Kansas City Public Library and Special Collections Staff. 2 Porters Plantation had between 40 and 100 slaves. The Big House sat at 2709 Tracy and was surrounded in a semi-circle by slave quarters. The plantation had livestock, a fruit orchard, and a cornfield that sat at 31st and Troost. 3 T he Ward’s bought their initial 450 acres from a trading friend, William Bent. He would keep and live in William Bent’s home. It still stands on its original location today at 1032 W. 55th St.

Orchestrated Urbanism

Figure 3

L.V. Harkness home. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

of Morseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s community, and abutting the Kansas state line.4 These pivotal developments would be used as leverage to create the Country Club Plaza, Kansas Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most notable development in the early 1900s. The final piece in this framework of city development arrived in 1903, when J.C. Nichols made plans to work in land subdivision and test new landvalue ideas. Nichols began buying tracts of land on the far south side of the city, wedged south of Westport between the Nelsons and the Wards.

He admittedly began there because the land was inexpensive, but later conceded that the location played off the financial lure of the surrounding developments. By 1908 he was acquiring tracts of land from the Wards and started the early stages of the Sunset Hill Neighborhood. He began implementing his land-value ideals which were nested in a belief that deed restrictions were one of the main drivers in the long-term success of subdivisions. Nichols noted that sub-divisions began to lose quality around the time the deed restrictions expired. In Sunset Hill, Nichols would tie the deed restrictions5 to the plats, as opposed to the typical approach tying the deed to the building, and

4 Worley, William S. J. C. Nichols and the Shaping of Kansas City: Innovation in Planned Residential Communities. Columbia, Miss.: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1990. 5 Deed restrictions are rules and regulations that govern lots or parcels of land. They are typically bound to land. They were meant to protect property value and control types of housing, setbacks, house sizes, colors, ownership, dues, etc. They would generally expire after a set amount of time.

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Figure 4

Church Hill. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

installed them as self-renewing lifetime deeds. These restrictions were initially used as a selling advantage as they indicated lasting quality; but as the restrictions grew increasingly strict they would serve as the backbone to a much larger organizing system of racial divide and segregation. While white elites were expanding their land grab, the Black population was growing at a feverish rate, from a modest 190 residents in 1860 to 23,566 in 1910, an increase of 12,400%. Early on, their housing

was integrated throughout the city. From Hell’s Half acre to the North End and Belvidere Hollow, Black, Irish, and German enclaves were intermixed. The Black core, however, was in “Church Hill,” (Figure 4) running from 8th to 12th streets along Troost. Church Hill evolved from the Perry Place neighborhood which existed at the same intersections in 1857. Perry Place had been established by Kersey Coates, who was active in the Free State movement.6 Here, property was only sold to Blacks and focus was on community-building by preserving lots for schools and churches.7 Black population growth was accompanied by a housing boom in 1883. Willard Winner8 developed the largest area,

6 T he Free-State Movement was a group of settlers, many times abolitionists from New England, who opposed the expansion of slavery into Kansas and would forcibly resist proslavery forces attempted expansion. 7 Within Perry Place three major institutions were located here: The Allen Chapel AME Church, the Second Baptist Church, and Lincoln School. 8 Willard Winner subdivided 2,000 acres on the East Side between 1883 and 1886. In 1886 he purchased an additional 2,400 acres along a planned boulevard towards Independence. The boulevard would be completed in 1887 becoming today’s Willard Road and would connect The East Side to Independence being flanked by 3 railways, parks, and residential development.

Orchestrated Urbanism

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Figure 6

A typical Negro residence district.

Figure 7

Asa E. Martins “Our Negro Population.” Figures 6 & 7 courtesy of New York Public Library Digital Collections.

a 4,400 acre parcel on the city’s East Side, extending from Troost Avenue towards the town of Independence. Winner’s development was entirely built on speculation. Following the financial panic of 18939 and the ensuing run on banks, the prices of homes plummeted on the East Side, creating a homeownership opportunity for middle-class citizens, especially the Black community, who were in dire need of housing. As a result, development on the East Side of the city, from Troost Avenue to the Blue River, exploded. Looking back at the development patterns at the beginning of the 20th century, the major organizational

strategies were driven by white upper-class entrepreneurs creating homes and enclaves for their own demographic. The white middle class had yet to establish an identity or distinct neighborhoods. Growth for Black and white middle and lower class within the established framework was driven by market forces and there were no regulatory practices controlling housing. There were, however, underlying social and racial drivers as Blacks did not have the same means of access to opportunities. Blacks, though “free” to choose where they lived, were becoming boxed into a few neighborhoods. Arriving initially on the East Side through the natural development of the city, Blacks would find themselves increasingly confined to small tracts of land by numerous conscious policies by both private and governmental entities.

Figure 5

1915 street map of Kansas City showing parks, cemeteries, park district boundaries, and street car lines. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. 9 T he panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States. The panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and poor railroad financing. This in turn set off a series of bank failures, runs on the gold supply, and a drop in the U.S. Dollar.

Orchestrated Urbanism

12th St.

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The Foundation Legal policy driving racial neighborhood boundaries.

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Jazz Club Redlined Area: 1939 HOLC map

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

The Foundation While middle-class whites struggled to define an identity within the city and Black communities began to establish, the first wave of the Great Migration allowed Blacks’ physical and social presence to increase.10 As homeownership increasingly became a badge of social standing and middle-class domesticity was valued above all, middle-class whites grew anxious and sought ways to control where Blacks lived, resorting to social, political, and physical means to achieve that end. Developers like J.C. Nichols used policy to achieve this control, implementing the first racial covenant barring Blacks from most new residential developments in 1908. Other middle-class whites resorted to physical means—bombings of Blacks’ homes became a frequent mechanism used to deter them from living in certain neighborhoods. The city itself used beautification projects as a controlling tool. The Parks and Boulevard System,11 (Figure 5) for example, plowed through Black neighborhoods, most notably the Paseo, ripping through the heart of the East Side and displacing thousands. The construction of a major railroad depot, Union Station, and multiple golf courses in tandem with the implementation of land-use changes began herding Blacks into specific neighborhoods.

Adding pressure to the white middle class were European immigrants, who were carving out their own neighborhoods. Many of these immigrants, especially Italians, settled in the North End immediately west of Belvidere Hollow, a Black enclave. As a result of the white middle-class’ purposeful control of neighborhoods and this growing immigrant population, Blacks were forced into derelict neighborhoods with substandard housing (Figure 6) and reputations for deceit and promiscuity. Slowly, neighborhoods inhabited by Blacks began to be associated with the woes of urban life. By 1913, three major reports, (Figure 7) two Federal and one academic,12 had tied personal character to physical environment; this mentality became ingrained in members of the white middle class seeking stable property value. This perception would further foster a propensity for residential homogeneity and spur the rise of aggressive forms of segregation in the city. Kansas City established the Citizens League in 1917 to organize honest and efficient government, but following the Chicago Race Riots of 191913 became most concerned with preventing racial disturbances. The 1920s saw the city’s Black population balloon by 26%. This population increase demanded more

10 T he Great Migration saw the relocation of some 6 million Blacks from the rural south to the urban Northeast and Midwest. The migration took place in two waves, the first wave was 1916-1939, the second 1940-1970. 11 William Rockhill Nelson, founder of the Kansas City Star, championed the City Beautiful movement in Kansas City and would advocate for and hire George Kessler to design and construct an initial 9.8 miles of boulevards and 323 acres of park space. 12 The three reports: The Board of Public Welfare’s 1912 Report on Housing, The Board of Public Welfare’s 1913 “The Social Prospectus of Kansas City”, and Asa E. Martins’ 1913 “Our Negro Population.” 13 T he 1919 Chicago Race Riots followed years of rising racial tensions culminating in a white man throwing rocks at a group of Black men, ultimately causing the death of Eugene Williams, and the white police officer arresting one of the Black men and not the white culprit. The following five days were marred by violence and anger, cities across the country were forced to respond.

Orchestrated Urbanism

Jazz music structure:

The high demand for performers and overcrowding on the East Side created a unique music scene. Competition was high and the clubs stayed open all hours of the night. Battles between musicians were common— each musician pushed the other, playing double time and going in and out of key. The dueling musicians, increased speed, and high level of competition all manifested in a time change in jazz, from 2/4 to 4/4, and ultimately fueled Charlie Parker’s creation of bebop.

Figure 8

Charlie Parker with Jay McShann band. Ira Berger/Alamy Stock Photo

stores, churches, and business, all of which limited land available for residential development and resulted in an average of 4.5 families per residence in the Black East Side. In hopes of mediating population growth and mounting tensions, the Citizens League created an interracial committee. The committee’s primary goal was to preserve communal peace and it believed maintaining racial separation within the city would prevent unwanted confrontation thus preventing riots. It proposed partitioning the city into homogenous

racial segments, deterring Blacks from moving into white neighborhoods by ensuring Blacks were satisfied with the physical condition of their neighborhoods. In addition to the committee’s actions, white residents, who were alarmed by the rapid change in land use brought by the population influx, created an “anti-ugly” campaign to preserve residential districts and home values. Believing the encroachment of nonresidential mixed-uses would detract from home value and attract Blacks, the committee advocated for singleuse development zones. To quell the outcry, the city passed an ordinance in 1922 restricting the locations

Tyler Cukar | FXCollaborative

Figure 9

REP24COL; RG 195/Home Owners Loan Corporation City Survey File.1939 Kansas City, Missouri Security Mapâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Location: 450, 68:3:6/Box 126.

Orchestrated Urbanism

advocated that racial covenants were contracts between private individuals and were enforceable. As a result, Armour Hills was developed with deeds prohibiting the sale or occupancy of homes to Blacks, with a goal of selling an upper-class lifestyle to the white middle class. In line with these developments, a 1925 Federal Council of Churches report stating that Kansas City, Detroit, and Cleveland were experiencing the worst racial tensions in the country, and finding that most of the strife revolved around housing. Federal policy and societal changes would only exacerbate these conditions in the coming decades.

Figure 10

REP006C; RG 195/Home Owners Loan Corporation City Survey File. 1939 Kansas City, Missouri Area Descriptions—Location: 450, 68:3:6/Box 126.

of stores, cleaners, and service stations. J.C. Nichols’ new white middle-class development, Armour Hills, would manifest these new policies and community mentalities. The 1917 Buchanan v. Warley case banned cities from segregating housing by race: however, the courts

While institutions and formal organizations were working to formally control the development patterns of the city, a series of key societal moments played out in coordination, exacerbating the ramifications of racially segregated housing: prohibition, Tom Pendergast’s reign, the Mafia, and jazz. In 1919, America said goodbye to alcohol with the passage of the Volstead Act. Kansas City, however, was run by Tom Pendergast, a power-wielding city manager with an eye for nightlife, gambling, and financial profit.14 Pendergast had an in with the Mafia15 on city’s north side, and would do anything he could to promote their business for his name’s sake. The relationship of these two powers would make Kansas City one of the “wettest most wide-open towns

14 Kansas City was controlled by a city manager selected by the city council. Tom Pendergast had control of this council and thus gained control of the city easily. Pendergast ran many companies, like a ready-mix concrete company, that was awarded city contracts and build numerous civic buildings during the depression. He had close relationships with the mafia and each allowed the other to further prosper. He was finally arrested and convicted of tax evasion in 1939. 15 T he Kansas City Crime Family, or the Civella Family, arose out of the DiGiovanni brother’s arrival from Sicily in 1912. Originally profiting off of a variety of criminal operations their fortunes improved greatly with prohibition.

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in the country”,16 and together they would establish and attract many illegal saloons and clubs. To locate these clubs with the least public resistance, areas were sought which already had debauchery or low property value; this fell primarily in Black neighborhoods, most notably along 12th and 18th streets. A high number of clubs demanded a high number of entertainers, so musicians like Count Basie, Bennie Morton, and Charlie Parker, flocked to Kansas City. Additionally, in 1920, the Negro National Baseball League was established and the Kansas City Monarchs became one of its most popular teams. The collision of these events is where policy, politics and culture meet. The racially restrictive covenants and policies established in the preceding decades constricted where the influx of Black musicians could live; the Troost corridor became a city within a city. Due to the advantageous local musicians union17 and promising number of venues, musicians poured in. The high demand for performers and overcrowding on the East Side created a unique music scene. Black residents, who were charged double the going rate for housing, hosted rent parties to help pay. Between performances at clubs musicians would play at the parties drawing neighbors who were charged a cover to attend. Competition was high and the clubs stayed open all hours of the night. The racial segregation

of housing, rent gouging, and the defiance of prohibition led to a fundamental change in jazz: the birth of bebop, time signature change from 2/4 to 4/4, and the creation of the Kansas City Style. (Figure 8) Due to its illicit economy, Kansas City did not feel the Great Depression as badly as other similar cities. However, federal housing policies implemented as a result of the Great Depression would alter the city’s landscape forever. As part of the process to help America recover from the Depression, New Deal policies were put in place to spur the economy. Sparking the housing industry was a major component, both providing financial assistance for troubled loans and creating money for new construction. Various institutions were created, including the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) to increase funds for mortgages, the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) to refinance mortgages, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to set standards for insuring loans. As part of the 1934 Housing Act, the FHLB asked the HOLC to study 239 cities and determine if a neighborhood was desirable for lending. The HOLC graded each neighborhood of a city by creating color coded maps ranging from green (A), the most desirable, to blue, yellow, and finally red (D), areas considered too risky for construction loans—a practice that would become known as “red lining.” (Figure 9) The

16 Hayde, Frank R. The Mafia and the Machine, The Story of the Kansas City Mob. Fort Lee: Barricade Books In, 2007. p 27-28. 17 Most musicians in the early 1900s were travelling musicians and played under a booking association, the most common being the Theater Owners Booking Association (T.O.B.A). TOBA was notoriously harsh on black performers holding them to higher standards and charging them a higher fee if they did not show up to play. Many travelling artists found the easy ambience of Kansas City enjoyable and put down roots only strengthening Musicians Local 627. The lack of law enforcement during prohibition would only increase the influx of musicians under the Musicians Union.

Orchestrated Urbanism

resulting maps were accompanied by write-ups for each neighborhood explicitly stating the reason for the grade. In Kansas City, the East Side neighborhoods, boundaries that had been established by developer and realtor practices and reinforced by public sentiment in the preceding 60 years, were, in their entirety given a D grade and redlined. The write-up of the 65% Black East Side justifies the grade, stating “a homogenous invasion of the negro … values were shot long ago.”18 (Figure 10) A D grade was also given to the area around Union Hill, with 0% Black residents the D was justified stating “hemmed in on all sides by heavy traffic business streets … there is virtually no demand for detached houses.” In short, this process guaranteed that no new money would be provided for home construction or renovation in Black neighborhoods, and any resident looking for a new home or moving to the city would not be able to locate in these neighborhoods. Investment in Black communities was officially over. In line with this new national agenda, policies pushed the idea of suburbs on White America, though there was little evidence showing a desire for this lifestyle. An enduring theory in American urban studies posits that white migration to the suburbs was due to a preference for low-density single-family homes. This notion of “preference” asserts that urban development patterns resulted from

free choice and consumer demand; however, it fails to identify why Blacks did not move to suburban areas while millions of whites did.19 While the concept of “white flight,” is common, the notion of whites fleeing in fear is misrepresented. The federal government provided no alternatives for housing locations. Due to redlining, if whites wanted to construct a home, the only loans available were in the suburbs. Similarly, banks would not provide loans for improvements within Black neighborhoods, and Blacks rarely were approved for loans outside of the city. As World War II approached, new housing acts, renewal plans, and city limit expansion would ensue, and the physical landscape of the city would be drastically altered. Barriers to housing for Blacks would move beyond legal and social control and into physical design as an impediment.

The Formation Faced with a floundering city budget following Tom Pendergast’s arrest in 1939, new city manager, L.P. Cookingham looked to capitalize on the start of World War II. After lobbying President Roosevelt for wartime opportunities, the city saw many new manufacturing facilities, jobs, and housing. Racial disparity would be the norm in these opportunities as well. No matter the increase in production needs, the percentage of Black laborers

18 From Zone 25 of the 1937 Red Lining Map of Kansas City, MO. 19 Gotham, Kevin Fox. Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development, State University of New York Press, 2002. p. 5-6.

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Orchestrated Urbanism

Figure 11

Interstate construction. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

in wartime factories never exceeded 6%.20 War time housing experienced similar inequality. In many instances, federally-provided housing for Black laborers was of inferior quality and located significantly farther away from factories, resulting in numerous riots across the country as Blacks penetrated white communities. As the war ended, Federal housing bills were created to accommodate the influx of returning vets resulting in an increased dispersal from urban centers while increasing the level of segregation for Blacks.

To provide post-war veteran benefits, the G.I. Bill looked to afford returning military service men access to aid for college, low- interest mortgages, small-business loans, job training, hiring privileges, and unemployment payments. The most pivotal component, low-interest mortgages, were designed to provide widespread access to home ownership. But the bill, run by each cities’ local officials, still fell victim to the same lending policies established in the ’30s. Of the first 67,000 mortgages handed out nationwide, only 100 were provided to non-whites. New housing flew to the outer peripheries, forcing cities to think differently about housing and find ways to maintain their tax base as population moved beyond city limits.

20 Sherow, Jim, and Virgil W. Dean, eds. ““We All Had a Cause” Kansas City’s Bomber Plant, 1941-1945.” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains, 28 (2005): 244-61. Accessed August 15, 2017.

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Figure 12

Urban renewal. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

Orchestrated Urbanism

In Kansas City, Cookingham was implementing strategies to contain this phenomenon. In his 19 years, he expanded the Kansas City’s limits from 60 acres to 130 acres, an annexation that allowed the city’s tax base to stay strong, but further decimated the Black inner city as funds were pulled further away from the core. Priorities shifted to connecting downtown to these far-flung suburban enclaves. With the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act, Kansas City implemented some of the earliest miles of the nation’s interstate system, much of which blasted through Black inner-city neighborhoods. (Figure 11) These infrastructure moves across the country evoked the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis, a D.C.-based committee from 1950s through the ’70s formed to advocate against the highways (and credited for coining the phrase, “white man’s roads through Black man’s homes”). Blight, a term that originally referred to crop-killing bacteria, was suddenly used to designate areas for urban renewal, a process most heavily applied within Black communities. The areas defined as blighted followed the same lines used for redlining, and those were the same boundaries and patterns established by racial residential covenants in the early 1900s. Blighted areas were demolished and re-established through urban renewal. To prevent

public backlash cities blanketed this designation on neighborhoods with low property value and decades of disinvestment. Proponents of renewal used these neighborhoods to illustrate the dangers of city living and to sell citizens on the modernity new development could bring. This allowed the entire East Side to be deemed blighted and slated for renewal. (Figure 12) Highways and housing were urban renewal’s greatest tools. Cookingham encircled the whole of Kansas City’s downtown inside the depressed I-670 freeway loop, (Figures 13) bulldozing historic areas, such as Church Hill, to accommodate it. The city propelled I-70 east towards St. Louis, down what used to be 15th street, splitting the Black East Side in two. (Figures 14) Cookingham began housing renewal on the south side of I-70 around the jazz district at 18th and Vine, creating the Attucks neighborhood. The resulting 500 middle-income homes were far fewer than needed to house displaced residents. To rectify this while minimizing the destruction of revenue-generating land, dense apartment blocks were provided on small tracts of land. These federallyfunded housing projects were segregated by race, and two of the first four projects were for Blacks: the T.B. Watkins homes and Wayne Miner Court, (Figure 15) both located within historically Black neighborhoods.

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Figures 13

15th Streetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;before and after. Image courtesy of Kansas City Now and Then.

Figures 14

13th Street and Troostâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;before and after. Image (left) courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

These neighborhoods were now surrounded on three sides by freeways and land rezoned for industrial use, cutting off the East Side from the rest of the city in three ways: financially, by the refusal of lending from banks, physically, with highways

and destruction of homes, and socially, by decades of negative perception created by false associations. The isolation would prove destructive to a community who had previously thrived despite being forcefully located.

Orchestrated Urbanism

Figure 15

Wayne Miner Court. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

The Resultant As racial strife reached its peak in the 1960s, the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Report, was established to determine the underlying causes. The report, released in 1968, would be critical of the federal government’s lack of equality in housing, economic opportunity, and education in the inner cities. The report famously states “our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one white— separate and unequal.” 21 Though the committee put forth numerous suggestions, President Johnson

ignored the report and its findings. One month later, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and rioting ensued in 100 cities, including Kansas City. The end of the ’60s signaled an ominous direction for America’s urban cores. (Figure 16) By the end of the decade, it was clear to housing advocates and civil rights groups that the housing programs established by the government were one of the main drivers of racial segregation, inner city disinvestment, and suburbanization. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 looked to rectify this is in a number of ways, primarily by shifting funds away from city housing authorities and instead providing subsidies directly to lending institutions and relaxing mortgage standards to allow more

21 United States. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Washington, DC: For sale by the Supt. of Docs., US GPO, 1968.

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Figure 16

Kansas City race riots. Image courtesy of Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

low-income residents to obtain them.22 Specifically, Section 235â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goal was to assist families with an annual income of between $3,000 and $5,000 to purchase new or renovated homes. This action was meant to level the playing field, but when analyzing where and to whom the funds were

distributed it shows that 80% of new construction was provided to white families in the suburbs, while, 90% of existing housing was sold to Black residents in the city.23 This led to high racial turnover in urban neighborhoods and propelled white flight. In 1950, only three of the 33 census tracts bounded by Troost on the west had 90% or more Black population, 28 of 33 by 1970, and 33 of 33 by 1980. Real estate agents profited enormously from Section 235 by

22 Gotham, Fox Kevin. Separate and Unequal. The Housing Act of 1968 and Section 235. Sociological Forum, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2000: 13-37. Kluwer Academic Publishing. Accessed August 15, 2017. 23 Ibid.

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selling inflated properties with only cosmetic repairs to unsuspecting poor. Once the low-income residents were in shoddily “remodeled” homes, underlying issues would come to light; unable to keep up with repairs and mortgage payments, residents were forced to abandon their properties. There was an 8.1% foreclosure rate on such homes, 99% of which occurred in the central city. FHA guidelines mandated that homes remained vacant during foreclosure, ensuring these homes were unoccupied through the ’70s and ’80s as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had little luck selling the dilapidated properties to investors. In 1973 Nixon put a moratorium on all public and subsidized housing programs. The discontinuation of Section 235 essentially re-redlined the inner city, as private interests and banks would not invest in properties there without government backing. Through Section 235, poor whites could obtain the greatest asset in personal wealth accumulation, a home, while Blacks in the inner city were further segregated into an increasingly neglected and inhospitable environment. The next 40 years would see the trend of disinvestment and a general perception of “the other side of the tracks” continue. Kansas City had become “hypersegregated,” 24 and out of necessity, residents of the poorest neighborhoods developed a new measure of success since

the traditional system25 had failed them time and again. In American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Douglas Massey points out that in the first few generations of impoverished classes, members of the neighborhood known as “old heads” “acted as a guidance counselor and moral cheerleader” 26 and represented traditional American ideals” of hard work and pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Similarly, there were “neighborhood mothers” who corrected and ensured good behavior from children on the block. As younger generations grew and saw their parents and their grandparents continually denied access to equal opportunity and financial growth, they grew skeptical of these neighborhood fixtures, and of the system as a whole. This generation would begin to find its own way to financial prosperity and establishing stature in the community. Ramifications like drug and gang culture came to be seen as rational economic decisions within this context. This new industry led to violence, as defending livelihood meant defending a specific income territory. This spawned the infamous “war on drugs,” and an increased police presence in these same historically maligned neighborhoods that led to increased arrests and created many singleparent households. These outcomes only exacerbated existing inequality and lack of upward mobility within the Black inner city.

24 Massey, Douglas & Denton, Nancy. American Apartheid. There are 5 dimensions of segregation, scoring above a 60 on 4 out of 5 defines a place as hyper-segregated. Kansas City scored an average of 85.7. 25 “ Traditional system” refers to the understood network of schools, businesses, and municipal investment that allows an individual to succeed based on his or her own merits and measure success off of education attainment, financial prosperity, and stability of health and family. This system was not only dismantled it was never established within the Black neighborhoods. Black communities were left to fend for themselves from the beginning. 26 Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. pg. 173 Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Orchestrated Urbanism

Naturally, many suburban whites’ perceptions of Blacks worsened; the economic and social conditions became intrinsically linked to race. When income levels, education levels, crime and murder rates are analyzed in Kansas City, they most always align directly with the East Side of Troost and the areas which were slated as blight and bulldozed in the 1954. These modern statistics align with the areas that were red-lined to prevent loans and investment, with racial covenants, and with the early housing boom of the 1880s in which Black Kansas Citians moved to these neighborhoods out of necessity. This overlap is a perfect representation of structural racism and the normalized and legitimized range of policies and practices that produced cumulative and chronic adverse outcomes for people of color. While the inner city continued to struggle, suburban growth ballooned as homeownership and exurban development continued to thrive for decades. Unfortunately, when the housing bubble burst in 2008, Black Americans were again disproportionately negatively affected, as Black high- and middleincome wage earners were 80% more likely to lose their homes than white homeowners of equal stature. The Center for Responsible Lending uncovered that during the housing boom, 6.2% of whites with a credit score of 660 or higher received

high-interest mortgages but 21.4% of Blacks with the same score or higher received the same loans. Following a long history of policies that misled, misguided, and oppressed Black residents of the inner city, several major banks had purposely given Blacks subprime mortgages, including to those that would have qualified for a prime loan.27 Ironically, the 2008 collapse and its subsequent wake of foreclosures were what finally ripened urban cores for their current redevelopment.

The Return As the dust settled from the 2008 collapse and the country began to pull out of the recession, a new generation of professionals entered the workforce. They had lived through the recession and learned a unique set of values that would lead them to seek new living patterns. This younger generation didn’t place the same weight on homeownership as previous generations, and rejected the notion of long commutes. To adapt, cities began to reimagine themselves and focus on redeveloping their cores with entertainment, shopping, adequate housing, transportation, and worldclass public space. After a 100-year hiatus, cities began to reinvest in their urban cores. In Kansas City, the Black residents of the East Side watched as newcomers came and “discovered” neighborhoods and city life; the same places that

27 “Staggering Loss of Black Wealth Due to Subprime Scandal Continues Unabated.” The American Prospect. Accessed October 30, 2017. http://prospect.org/article/staggeringloss-Black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated.

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Orchestrated Urbanism

Figure 17

Beacon Hill land use. Image courtesy of www.beaconhillkansascity.com

Blacks had been forced to live for decades, places they had made into thriving communities with little investment from the city. Black communities, however, remained supportive of plans that were good for the city. The East Side supported projects in districts the city legally

defined as “blighted” to get Tax Increment Financing (TIF) projects passed, including a new entertainment district, The Power and Light District, and the already world-class shopping district, the Plaza. The East Side continued to show support for city growth by voting in favor of fixed rail transit and new housing in the urban core. (In spite of this support, the city’s new streetcar line runs straight from the river to Union Station, completely bypassing low-income residential areas.) New housing was prioritized first in the picturesque City Market, then in converted office space within the central business district. White residents, looking for affordable neighborhoods, found themselves moving beyond the business district and south along Troost. Beacon Hill (Figure 17) has become the neighborhood most representative of this southward movement. Running along Troost from roughly 31st to 20th, the neighborhood matches the boundary of the Porter Plantation and Millionaires Row from the late 1800s. The neighborhood can be defined as New Urbanist, a mixed-use development with an array of singlefamily homes and townhomes, retail shops, and businesses. The mixeduse strategy is positive for the area; however, the target homeowner is 50% from out-of-town and 40% from the “Primary Market Area” west of Troost. Yet again, the primary market reinforces historical racial boundaries by defining a boundary

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that extends from Troost west towards Hyde Park and south towards the Country Club Plaza; the target area does not include the East Side. Kansas City has seen the largest change in available housing inventory in the Midwest,-55.4% between 2012 and 2017. With this growth comes the responsibility to form a new robust and expansive housing policy that is able to advocate and provide for new residents while ensuring housing for longtime residents is also a priority. By default, new investment and development will instigate a demographic inversion, with the affluent moving to the urban core and the poor pushed to the suburbs, acting as an accelerant to gentrification. A hot-button term that connotes many of the underlying conditions and policies outlined in this paper, the word gentrification is often an over-simplification of complex conditions. The simplistic view fails to address a fundamental question: what causes cities to be suddenly prime for redevelopment? Once development is physical and visible, the wheels of change have already been in motion for a significant amount of time. The forces that shape the city and allow for ripe development conditions need to be understood so they can be harnessed and used as tools to shape and create an inclusive future; otherwise, if left to its own trajectory, the city will manifest in away beneficial only to those with the agency and means to guide the change.

Benchmark Policies and Taxes:

Kansas City is using a citizen-led tax initiative for the East Side, which imposes a 1/8th-cent sales tax for all city residents collecting $8 million a year for East Side investment. The revenue generated will target broad goals such as blight abatement, environmental remediation, and land acquisitionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;ultimately removing key barriers that prevent developments from getting off the ground. Additional uses will revolve around crime prevention through technology and streetscaping improvements that would provide increased security and confidence within the community. New York City uses tax incentive and zoning ordinance to help provide more equitable growth. The cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 421-A (Affordable New York Housing Plan as of 2017) program creates incentives to provide affordable housing within market-rate projects. As of 2017 the program has expanded to require a greater amount of housing and fair wages for construction workers. The city is simultaneously rezoning neighborhoods through inclusionary zoning to mandate affordable housing. The zoning requires set-asides of affordable units between 25% and 30%.

Community Groups:

Community partners are critical to the success of any development project. At the corner of 31st and Troost in Kansas City, Reconciliation Services was founded to build informed relationships and cultivate a community seeking reconciliation to transform Troost from a dividing line into a gathering place. With a small cafĂŠ and computers, the center welcomes the public, offering job placement and housing services, community meals, and therapeutic services for thousands of community members struggling to survive poverty and trauma. The group acts as a unifier between the existing community and the newcomers, providing resources to those who are struggling and awareness to those unfamiliar with the area. The unique combination of community resources and education has helped Reconciliation begin to bridge a divide that has existed for nearly 200 years.

Orchestrated Urbanism

Image

Community-oriented architecture: La Central.

Developing the Future of the American City With an understanding of the forces behind the creation of the current city, the question turns to: what now? How do we design better cities and neighborhoods that position existing communities as focal points of development, as assets as opposed to liabilities? How can new development center on social and racial equity? The lens that has been constructed highlights the level of purposeful

orchestration that occurred in the creation of the American city. In order to address the ramifications of this orchestration, cities must make cognizant design and planning decisions that directly address the structured racism. American cities are in the early stages of a new cycle of growth and response, one of great tension and opportunity. With one side having experienced hundreds of years of systemic oppression while fighting to maintain their affordable communities, and the other seeking affordability and an urban lifestyle,

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Community-Oriented Architecture:

Architecture and design, in the end, are the physical manifestation of these policies and goals. FXCollaborative’s La Central, in the South Bronx, is a 1.1-million-square-foot development that is 100% affordable and embodies the ethos of designing with a community. Developed with Hudson Companies, the project was rooted in community from the very beginning. The project offers 992 apartments, a 50,000-square-foot YMCA, a home for BronxNet public access television, a public skatepark, a GrowNYC urban rooftop farm, a partnership with Bronx High School of Science to operate a rooftop telescope, 124,000 square feet of community space, and 46,000 square feet of retail space. Additionally, 160 supportive units are set aside for the newly homeless, veterans, and adults living with HIV. These residents are provided access to resources beyond housing. In Kansas City, a holistic planning approach is being undertaken in the Wendell Phillips neighborhood, where Kansas City’s Urban Neighborhood Initiative has joined the Purpose Built Community Group. A purpose-built community’s goal is to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by establishing a cradle-to-college education pipeline that ensures student growth, creates high-quality, mixed-income housing, and introduces community wellness programs that promote healthy living. The revitalization project is centered on a charter school that is overseen by the Kansas City public school district, allowing the neighborhood to then radiate out from this core.

how can these mesh? Today, there are numerous places and projects beginning to address inequality and racial division successfully. As with any design project, there is no single tangible solution that is applicable to all sites or cities; however, the successful projects are not rooted in design aesthetic, tax incentives, or community farms; they are driven by the unified collaboration of the design team, client, municipal agencies, and others building lasting relationships with existing communities and allowing projects to grow from the inside out. Applying this lens to each project will

yield three overarching approaches— awareness, advocacy, and action— and if implemented can steer projects towards an equitable future. Awareness must be the first step and is the primary purpose of this paper. To have awareness means being conscious and informed of not only what happened but how something happened. This paper provided an awareness of Kansas City’s story as a way of showing the layers of inequity. A project team, city agency, and even the public should be aware of a neighborhood’s history, who lives there and why it has the characteristics and boundaries it does. The awareness moves deeper into developing an understanding of the consequences of past actions. Developing an awareness for a city, a neighborhood, site, and community allows designers to more completely address shortcomings and propose solutions. It provides the tools needed to move beyond the physical environment and address the underlying conditions and causes. Developing an awareness may be the most challenging process as it requires a holistic questioning of motive and intent in the design of our cities. In return, however, it provides the grandest “aha” moment and gives clarity to the currently invisible structure of the city. The advocacy component may be the most vital piece of the puzzle. Historically marginalized communities,

Orchestrated Urbanism

with decades of oppression, do not always have the agency to fight for change. Generally, they are not in the room. These communities are not represented in the profession as professionals; for instance, the 2010 census showed that only 13% of city planners in the New York Metro are Black, making it even more challenging to have their needs heard, understood, and addressed. Designers, planners, government officials, and developers are the shapers of the city, it is our onus to fight for was is right in a given place. New housing or a gas station may have no explicit requirement to provide for the community, but each project must be seen as an opportunity and an investment in an existing community. The community must be seen as an asset, one with latent possibilities, and if positioned as the focus its untapped potential can become the driver and backbone of a project. Taking action comes in many forms depending on the project. Most projects, however, begin with defining the problem or need of a place. This is where the biggest change can take place. Defining a problem is one of the first steps. Often, design teams show up at community meetings, unroll a map with already identified problems, and proceed to tell the community what its problem is and how they will fix it for them. Projects must move beyond designing for the community and into an attitude of designing with

the community through investigative design charrettes, mapping through storytelling, and personal engagement within the community. Communities are warranted the opportunity to share their intimate knowledge, understanding, and experience of a place and how it functions. Once a problem is defined, project boundaries can be established. There must be cognizant design interventions which run cross-grain against historic borders. By focusing only on improving within a community and not building bridges within and between communities a majority of projects with goals of bettering a neighborhood generally end up reinforcing historical boundaries; an effort must be made to blur these lines. Projects and design interventions should be set up in a way that the success of one neighborhood is reliant on the success of another. The project should be mutually beneficial with other development. This will create opportunities for physical interaction between communities, thus bringing awareness to the public and uniting people from all walks of life. The three approaches work together. They show that the success of a project is not the result of a single player but the intentional coordination of all those at the table. Architects, planners, developers, city agencies, and community groups must all be on the same page at the beginning. Design, though it plays a role, is not what makes developments and

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spaces socially equitable. It is programs, opportunities, and policies that provide access for formerly underserved populations to be upwardly mobile that foster unity. This is what allows a project to be equitable for all and begin to bridge the racial divides endemic in our cities. Cities are not static, they are living organisms that are constantly changing and reacting. To design the equitable cities of the future, designers must acknowledge and address head-on the racial drivers of past events. The city of today was built on prior events, and the success of cities in the future relies on the reconciliation of past decisions with present needs.

Orchestrated Urbanism

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Tyler Cukar is an urban designer and architect experienced in visioning, town-scaping, and master planning. He has worked on a range of projects including regional growth strategies, district revitalizations, high-level reuse strategies, and transit networks and stations. Emphasizing the fundamental aspects that shape a place, Tyler strives to understand the particularities of every projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social, economic, and physical constraints. He is adept at working with communities, promoting integration and connectivity, solving issues of isolation, and enhancing value while maintaining the integrity of a place and its people. Tylerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has been published in Architect Magazine, Charter of the New Urbanism, City Vision, and many other publications.

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Bathrooms for Humans dignity in elimination / the all-gender toilet room

Catherine Joseph, LEED AP BD+C, FXCollaborative Whitney Odell, AIA, LEED AP, Associate, FXCollaborative

Choosing Visit any NYC Department of Parks Recreation Center and you will see a slew of signs posted around the facility. Some broadcast the aerobics class schedule. Others inform guests of a holiday closing. Many are stuffed in plastic sleeves, the ink slightly fuzzy from the humidity generated by the Center’s use. Plastered outside the locker rooms and bathrooms, and posted in duplicate inside, is a different sign. This one reads: “You have the right to use the restroom, locker room, and other single-sex facility consistent with your gender identity or gender expression.” It is clear that this city department is committed to ensuring the safety and comfort of all of its

members. The signs are also meant to ensure that staff do not commit unintentional acts of gender identity discrimination. But the reach of the city’s ruling regarding toilet rooms at city facilities1 is limited by the layout of the locker room and toilet room facilities. These facilities were designed with little or no privacy, relying on the presumed comfort of binary genders, what we might currently call the gender majorities, to meet expectations of privacy and protection. Though signs indicate that bathrooms and locker rooms are inclusive and welcoming, the actual composition and quality of the space says otherwise.

Bathrooms are contested spaces that are not immune to current political agendas. Bathroom access, and its use as a political tool, are inextricably tied to the passage of nondiscrimination laws. At the root of this is society’s understanding of gender identity, expectations of access and privacy, and the now-ingrained assumptions of gender-segregated bathroom design. Throughout history, the presence or absence of appropriate toilet facilities has served as the strongest signal to particular social groups that they are included or excluded.2 The absence of these facilities has been one of the clearest limitations for social groups to participate in society. Ultimately, bathroom rights are civil rights.

1 On March 7, 2016, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an Executive Order that mandates all City Departments allow all people to freely access the single-sex facility consistent with their gender identity and gender expression. Source: New York City Office of the Mayor 2 Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia, Temple University Press., 2009), introduction ix-x.

Bathrooms for Humans

Potty Talk

Colloquially, we use a variety of names for the space of elimination, virtually interchangeably. We say “restroom,” even when an area of respite is absent. We say “bathroom” even when there is no bath. In this study we follow a similar colloquial looseness with our language, except when we are discussing design speculation of ‘toilet rooms.’ We did this to emphasize that we have not considered bathing or lounge accommodations in our design thinking, but that we accept the linguistic fluidity of interchanging terms when speaking casually about bathrooms.

John

Potty

a toilet

Can

a toilet

Head

Latrine

a toilet or bathroom on a boat or ship

a toilet or outhouse

Outhouse

an outbuilding with no plumbing containing a toilet

Privy

an outhouse

Toilet Room

a room containing a toilet

Water Closet a room containing a toilet

Catherine Joseph, Whitney Odell | FXCollaborative

Commode

a toilet [or] a movable washstand

Toilet

Lavatory

the fixture that accommodates elimination

a room containing toilet and sink [or] a sink [or] a toilet

Loo

a bathroom or a toilet

Restroom

a room containing space and fixtures for elimination and respite

Bathroom

a room containing space and fixtures for elimination and bathing

Powder Room a womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bathroom in public building

Comfort Station a public restroom for travelers or campers

Rest Stop public facility to use restroom

Wash Room

a room containing washing and elimination facilities

Bathrooms for Humans

base design parameter, underscoring expectations of inclusion and access for all. Bathrooms for Humans is an effort to bring bathrooms out of the stranglehold of politics and back into the realm of public interest and design, where they belong. Our premise is that “inclusive design,” as it is broadly defined, is the responsibility of all designers regardless of current (and mutable) legislation. We aim to restore dignity to the mundane but necessary tasks of everyday living.

Figure 1

This sign can be found outside bathrooms and locker rooms in New York City Department of Parks Recreation Centers. Its language is specific and inclusive, but the space it applies to does not always productively or safely support its intent.

This study, Bathrooms for Humans, examines common assumptions about access, inclusion, and the gendering of space. Over the last few centuries, the design of multi-user toilet rooms has been driven by the socio-political constructs of gender. But current definitions of identity confirm that gender is fluid. As we study and offer ways to transform one of the most ubiquitous shared spaces in the American city, gender will be reevaluated as the primary

New York City can be on the cutting edge of this progress, and the city’s recent ruling for inclusivity in toilet facilities serves as proof.3 However, if gender inclusivity is the basis of our design, a better sign in the NYC Parks facilities might read: “You have the right to use the bathroom.” That is the crux of it. The right to eliminate bodily waste in a hygienic, safe, and private toilet room (used according to one’s preferences, not society’s expectations) is a human right, equivalent to access to shelter, food, and water. The most straightforward definition of a toilet room is that it is a compartment used for the purpose of elimination. Its functional necessities might be identified as a receptacle or fixture (i.e., the toilet or urinal), a plumbing connection or septic container, and at the very least, a modicum of privacy. Beyond that, bathrooms serve a variety of significant purposes during the day,

3 “ Mayor de Blasio Mandates City Facilities Provide Bathroom Access to People Consistent with Gender Identity.” The official website of the City of New York. Last modified March 7, 2016. http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/223-16/mayor-de-blasio-mandatescity-facilities-provide-bathroom-access-people-consistent-gender#/0.

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Figure 2

The #BeYouNYC campaign references a fluid understanding of gender identity and gender expression, as indicated by the effort to look past binary toilet room labeling of men/ women and pink/blue. Source: NYC Commission on Human Rights

as places to discreetly take medicine or address medical needs, take refuge from stressful situations, find privacy required by religious beliefs, change a babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diaper, and many others. Gender-specification does not seem to be a necessity to properly defining a toilet room. What has become increasing clear in the last few decades, however, is that the current design schemes and legal doctrines that govern bathrooms, which have not been significantly altered or addressed

in many decades, are inadequate in allowing all people to feel that they have the ability to comfortably and safely use the bathroom. In an effort to provide a useful study of and argument for the gender desegregation of bathrooms, this paper has been undertaken in parts. The politics of gender and the gendered power of space will be considered in the context of gender segregation in toilet rooms. Current toilet room design parameters and stakeholders will be analyzed, particularly in relation to proposed legislation, current code requirements and anticipated efficiencies. Finally, a speculative design discussion, fundamentally grounded in a new questioning of the

Bathrooms for Humans

From the Beginning: The History of Toilet Room Segregation in the US

Figure 3

Alexander Kira’s 1976 text, The Bathroom, is a comprehensive analysis of the ergonomics of elimination. The study and the resultant text is broad, addressing the anatomical plumbing of elimination, expectations and perceptions of privacy, considerations for cleaning the toilet facilities and many other topics.

space of the toilet room, will attempt to challenge the status quo of inclusion, accessibility, and function. The effort is not to provide a single, uniform solution for improved, genderless toilet room spaces. The intent is rather to develop new questions and procedures for designing toilet rooms for contemporary society.

Public bathrooms and civil rights make an unlikely couple. One accommodates a necessary indelicacy that is little discussed while the other impresses ideas of inclusion and the freedom to partake in society as a full, recognized member. As Gershenson and Penner write, the absence of public toilet facilities has historically signified a social group’s existence outside of the body politic, and outside of culturally acceptable identities. The absence of appropriate facilities cements the notion that there is no room for them in public space.4 During the Suffrage movement in the United Kingdom, access to public toilets was considered a right equal to the right to vote.5 During the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s & 1960s in the United States, bathrooms and locker rooms were significant battlegrounds for desegregation, and continued to be spaces of contention for many years after the legal achievement of Civil Rights.6 Toilet room segregation by gender has not always been mandated by law. One of the primary reasons for this was that women’s toilet rooms simply did not exist in the public sphere. The contentious arrival of public women’s facilities was a slow, painstaking fight. The first public women’s rooms, and thus, the first sex-segregated toilets were constructed in the 18th century in Paris.7

4 Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009). 5 Clara Greed, Inclusive Urban Design: Public Toilets (Routledge, 2016). 6 Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 7. 7 Maya Rhodan. “Bathroom Bills: How American Bathrooms Got Separated by Sex; Why Do We Have Men’s and Womens’ Bathrooms Anyway.” Time Magazine. Last modified May 16, 2016. http://time.com/4337761/history-sex-segregated-bathrooms/.

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1820

1860

Men’s public toilet facilities provided in Scotland. Women had no access to facilities in public, so they either didn’t go out, or they didn’t go.

1851

Construction of public toilets at Great Exhibition legitimized the existence of toilet facilities in public.

2002

2003

Clara Greed publishes Inclusive Urban Design— Public Toilets.

1990

Wisconsin amends Commercial Building Code to address Potty Parity.

2002

Americans with Disabilities Act becomes law.

1993

Restroom Revolution—UMASS Amhearst—“Do you know that you are sitting on a seat of privilege?”

1932

Jeannette Pickering Rankin, of Montana, becomes first woman elected to US House of Representatives.

1994

Hattie Caraway, of Arkansas, becomes first woman to win an election to the US Senate.

1977

James v. Stockham addressed charges of discrimination based on the presence of segregated facilities.

1987

First women’s room designated on the US Senate Floor.

1942

19th amendment to US Constitution gives women the right to vote.

1916

Women’s public toilet proposed in London vestry of St. Pancras. Opposition to the proposal complained that a women’s lavatory would lower property values, and called the plan an abomination. The site was abandoned.

New York City passes Transgender Rights Bill preventing discrimination based on gender identity or expression, including denying bathroom access.

1920

Women’s public toilet in London vestry of St. Pancras is approved.

1900

2002

Lawyer John Banzhaf II files “potty parity” complaint against University of Michigan arguing that not providing equitable provisions for woman may constitute a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. As with the Separate Facilities requirement in the Plumbing Code, this argument required emphasizing the gender binary to achieve parity.

1905

Women’s public facilities provided in scotland.

California passes Restroom Equity Act

1966

Alexander Kira publishes The Bathroom, a comprehensive study of elimination.

Western Electric Company, following a change in plumbing code, adopted a policy against segregated toilet facilities. Although desegregation survived great opposition, the arrangement of the new facilities promoted a de facto segregation.

1954

‘Brown v. Board of Education’ establishes that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.”

1970

Equal Rights Amendment is defeated. Gore Vidal lists ladies’ rooms as one of several “tried-and-true hot buttons”. Opposition to the ERA claimed that it would mandate gender-neutral bathrooms.

As of 2017, 36 states have ratified the ERA. In order to be added to the Constitution, 38 states must approve. The ERA has still not been ratified.

2007

Nancy Pelosi becomes first female Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

2009

Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner publish Ladies and Gents.

2014

Houston passes HERO, prohibiting discrimination in the workplace, housing, and public accommodation based upon sexual orientation and gender identity.

2016

Mayor Bill de Blasio passes Executive Order requiring New York City agencies to allow access to single-sex facilities consistent with gender identity and expression.

2016

New York City passes legislation requiring any single-occupancy toilet rooms to permit access to all genders.

2017

President Trump rescinds nondiscrimination protections for transgender students in federally funded schools. This protection had also previously requested that these schools allow trans* students to use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity.

2004

“Do Not Silence My Bladder” campaign for public toilets in Ghent, Belgium.

2005

New York City passes Local Law 57 amending the administrative code of the city to provide equal access to bathroom facilities (potty parity).

2008

Rose George publishes The Big Necessity.

2011

first women’s restroom in US House of Representatives Speakers floor is designated.

2015

2016

Houston rescinds HERO, on premise North Carolina passes House Bill 2 (HB2), that HERO would let trans* people “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act”, go to the bathroom consistent with specifically prohibiting trans* people their gender identity, which would from using the bathroom consistent put cisgender women at risk. with their gender identity in schools and governmental buildings.

Figure 4

A concise history of contemporary bathroom access.

In 1887, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate the establishment of separate toilet facilities in businesses, specifying that the gender identity of each facility “should be plainly designated.” At the time, mandating this separation, and in the end, the existence of a women’s toilet room, was a way of legitimizing women’s place in society. Specifically, it was a way to ensure that as women

began to pursue professional opportunities outside of the home, they would have a safe and private toilet facility. These laws, however successful, were rooted in the assumption that women need to be protected from men to maintain their safety and moral purity. As Terry Kogan told Time, it was an attempt to ensure that the comforts and protections of home followed women

2017

North Carolina overturns controversial HB2, but delays the inclusion of LGBTQ people in nondiscrimination statues until 2020.

Bathrooms for Humans

out into society. Between 1887 and 1917, almost every state in the country enacted a similar law.8 The fear of gender mixing at the time was in response to the mixing of both race and gender. Protecting white women is one of the primary arguments that was used to justify racially segregated toilet rooms. Protecting women is one of the primary reasons that the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass, with opponents arguing that such a law would require gender-neutral public toilet facilities. At that time, gender segregated toilet rooms were an important political tool, a significance which has not been lost to history. Public bathrooms have been, and continue to be, important battlegrounds for civil rights and inclusion.9 Sapna Cheryan et al, in studies about the inclusiveness of spaces to perceived outsiders, argue that “environments can act as gatekeepers by preventing people who do not feel they fit into those environments…”10 This feeling of fitting in has been termed ambient belonging. How a person relates to materials and physical objects within a space, or to the structure and spatial layout itself all contribute to one’s feeling of ambient belonging. Perhaps most significant, however, is the way that society imagines appropriate occupants of certain environments, projecting these assumptions, often inaccurate and restricting, on all who enter.

If we take the Ladies’ Room as a case study, we find that opposition to a public women’s lavatory was not based so much on the proposed function of the facility. Instead, argues Barbara Penner, the objection was to its proposed users: women. Sanctioning a public toilet facility for women sanctioned women’s presence in society and legitimized the female presence on the street. This, not the sanitary facility itself, was what violated social decorum.11 In assessing the presence of appropriate toilet facilities, or their absence, we were reminded of the representation provided in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures.” The scenes of actress Taraji P. Henson dashing back-and-forth to a designated black-only bathroom underscores the disadvantage that racial segregation imposed on the professional productivity of the brilliant Katherine Johnson and the talented black women of the Space Mission. Most significantly, the lack of an inclusive toilet in the building in which Johnson worked wasted significant amounts of her time and caused her to often be absent from the room. In the years after the space mission, the bathroom dash continued. The first female senator of the United States, Hattie Caraway of Arkansas, was elected in 1932. The first women’s toilet rooms on the Senate floor were designated in 1993, 61 years after Caraway’s election. Further, the first

8 Maya Rhodan. “Bathroom Bills: How American Bathrooms Got Separated by Sex; Why Do We Have Men’s and Womens’ Bathrooms Anyway.” Time Magazine. Last modified May 16, 2016. http://time.com/4337761/history-sex-segregated-bathrooms/. 9 O lga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 7. 10 Sapna Cheryan, Paul G. Davies, Victoria C. Plaut and Claude M. Steele, “Ambient Belonging: How Stereotypical Cues Impact Gender Participation in Computer Science.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97, no. 6 (2009): 1045-1060. 11 Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 5.

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female representative in the US House, Jeannette Pickering Ranking was elected in 1916, and Nancy Pelosi, the first female Speaker of the House, served from 2007 to 2011. The first women’s toilet room on the Speakers Floor was designated in 2011.12 For nearly a century, session break times were shorter than the time needed to reach the nearest women’s room and return.13

Admittance | Bathroom Bills If we take this precedent of exclusion and segregation and apply it to modern day public facilities, the absence of adequately inclusive facilities for those who feel they do not belong in either the men’s toilet room or the women’s toilet room conclusively de-legitimizes their presence in public space. One of the first occurrences, in recent times, of a “bathroom bill” controversy was in Houston in 2015. The city passed the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) in 2014, which prohibited discrimination in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. What was groundbreaking about this ordinance was that it included sexual orientation and gender identity in the nondiscrimination directive.14 Even today, most states’ nondiscrimination statues do not include people who identify as LGBTQ. In November of 2015, the city voted to rescind the

ordinance on the premise that HERO would let trans people use the toilet room consistent with their gender identity. The argument, ultimately, was that this allowance would compromise the safety and security of cisgender women.15 In February 2016, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, passed an ordinance extending nondiscrimination protections for marital status, familial status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. While Charlotte’s ordinance was intended to extend basic civil nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ people, lawmakers retaliated with bathrooms, stating that eliminating separate facilities would “deny women their right to basic safety and privacy.” And so the state passed House Bill 2, officially called the “Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act,” which nullified all local nondiscrimination ordinances and specified that all people must use the toilet room consistent with their birth sex, as designated by their birth certificate.16 All this was done in the name of protecting women in the bathroom. Meanwhile, a 2013 survey by the Williams Institute showed that 70% of trans people experienced denial of access, verbal harassment, or physical assault in an attempt to use the bathroom.17 In March 2017,

12 An achievement attributed to John Boehner. 13 Nancy McKeon. “Women in the House get a restroom.” The Washington Post. Last modified July 28, 2011. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/women-in-the-house-geta-restroom/2011/07/28/gIQAFgdwfI_story.html?utm_term=.80ef454e57ea. 14 A n achievement attributed to John Boehner. 15 Nancy McKeon. “Women in the House get a restroom.” The Washington Post. Last modified July 28, 2011. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/women-in-the-house-geta-restroom/2011/07/28/gIQAFgdwfI_story.html?utm_term=.80ef454e57ea. 16 “ North Carolina Repeals Portions Of Controversial ‘Bathroom Bill’.” NPR. Last modified March 30, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/30/522009335/ north-carolina-lawmakers-governor-announce-compromise-to-repeal-bathroom-bill. 17 Maya Rhodan. “Bathroom Bills: How American Bathrooms Got Separated by Sex; Why Do We Have Men’s and Womens’ Bathrooms Anyway.” Time Magazine. Last modified May 16, 2016. http://time.com/4337761/history-sex-segregated-bathrooms/.

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The Bathroom Travel Ban

In the course of our research, we spoke with many bathroom stakeholders. During some of those conversations, foreigners stated that they had stopped traveling to the United States because of the “bathroom laws” that a number of states have considered or passed. The personal safety of these individuals was rightly more important than business or personal travel, and so they stayed away. Bathroom bans are about exclusion from more than just the bathroom.

House Bill 2 was amended to remove the bathroom mandate, but instead prevented the enactment of local LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinances until 2020. What is hopefully clear by now is that protecting the safety of women in the toilet room is not the ultimate goal of opposition to inclusive bathroom policy. And none of these battles truly begin as bathroom concerns. The gender-segregated toilet room is a political tool being utilized to wage a war against anti-discrimination efforts. And currently, opponents to inclusive toilet room access are able to lean on building codes to defend their arguments.

It is significant to note that all of these efforts to regulate who is allowed in toilet rooms, as well as the metrics for evaluation, and who gets to do the evaluating, are being decided by politicians. In most instances, efforts to protest these restrictive and exclusive measures have centered around the terminology and graphic representations on the signs that label the rooms. These are a good stopgap measure, a move in the right direction. But the reality is that the spaces are still gendered. Or rather, each space requires you to announce your gender, definitively and publicly, to gain entry. A few examples have tried to upend the required gender declaration (e.g., “We don’t care. Just wash your hands.”). But no matter what the sign says, we do care. The signs do not go far enough in truly accommodating the groups currently excluded from our toilet rooms. One of the most remarkable aspects of New York City’s effort to provide inclusive toilet room access in city facilities is that the city’s ruling explicitly references a person’s gender, not their sex. While most people subscribe to a gender definition that matches their biological sex, New York City separates the two definitions, and preferences the expression of one’s gender over the statistical gamble of our birth sex. Because the protections afforded to gender identity and expression in New York City seem to be so

Catherine Joseph, Whitney Odell | FXCollaborative

Figure 5

This card was created to provide information regarding possible forms of gender identity discrimination. Please note that contact information on the card may no longer be accurate. TLDEF, Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund; NYAGRA, New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy; NYCLU, New York Civil Liberties Union. Source: Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund

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segregated facility.” At the bottom of the card a warning to the cardcarrier reads: “These rules are not well known. Show this card if you have problems using a restroom or other sex-segregated facility because of your gender identity or expression.” While some recent efforts to provide equal access have begun to recognize that building codes are one of the primary obstacles in the development and implementation of all-gender toilet facilities, very few have gone so far as to consider or understand the social and spatial effect of gender inclusive toilet rooms. What gender inclusivity means in relation to fixture count is a question separate from what it means spatially.

Bathroom Signage

Bathroom signs are the purported gate-keepers for gender-separated bathroom spaces. Updates to these signs are a good stop-gap measure, but ultimately, we do still care. Until the gendered nature of toilet room spaces is addressed, inclusion will never be fully realized.

little known, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund produced a card that provides a legal defense against gender discrimination. The card, cosponsored by the NYAGRA and NYCLU (Figure 5) reads: “The New York City Commission on Human Rights says that these acts may be gender identity discrimination: Stopping you from using a restroom or other sex-segregated facility that matches your gender identity and gender expression; Asking you to provide ID to prove your gender in order to use a restroom or other sex-

The Gendering of Space Many of us have never considered changing our appearance before entering the toilet room in an effort to comply, at least visually, with the sign at the door. For those who do not conform to a binary gender definition, altering one’s appearance might be necessary in order to safely enter and use a toilet room. When we talk about danger in the toilet room, it is usually about the safety of women. Few mainstream conversations regarding bathroom access include statistics about how gender non-conforming people are also in danger. Consider a man who was born with women’s genitalia. By some requirements, the law mandates that this man use

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the women’s room. But if this man presents his gender identity as a man, then, by appearances, he is unable to use the women’s room. If he enters the women’s room, he is thrown out. If he enters the men’s room, he either has to carry urination aids or hope that there is a door and partitions that reach the floor of the toilet stall, lest someone see which way his feet point when he pees. For any person who does not conform to the binary separation of our toilet facilities, any effort to maintain their own safety, physical and otherwise, in entering a gender-designated toilet room requires compromising their dignity and personhood. In beginning an analysis of gender segregated restrooms, and the spatial implications of all-gender facilities, it is important to demarcate the boundaries between sex and gender. Although sex and gender are often used interchangeably in colloquial speech, this study subscribes to a strict differentiation between the two for clarity of analysis and argument. Increasingly, sex is being scientifically defined as biological differences that are primarily dimorphic among humans. While some fluidity among sex traits does occur, the majority of the population can be categorized according to sex dimorphism. Note also that this relates only to the biological characteristics, not to sexual preference. Gender, in contrast, has traditionally been viewed as

a social construct that categorizes the binary sexes according to social and cultural expectations. Internal awareness also contributes to gender identification, and although traditional models of gender definition subscribe to a binary distinction, gender is now understood to be separate from sex, including a wide spectrum of definitions which have begun to undermine the status quo of the binary male and female.18 Nowhere, argues Gerard Lico, is gender dimorphism more conspicuous than in the segregation and layout of the public restroom. More generally, Lico concludes, architecture provides a stage on which human subjectivity is conceived, confirmed by society, and constantly performed.19 One might argue that public toilet facilities in particular provide a coalescing of human natural character with learned cultural and personal expectations. This provides a situation that, based on our need for (or perhaps, desire for), standardization in social and public matters, forces us to rely on cultural perceptions rather than our own subjectivity. Taking these studies of gender, the gendering of space, and the power of gendered space as a conceptual basis for the redevelopment of the toilet room, we might conclude, as political theorist Judith Butler has, that gender is a non-static, always contested, and always transforming, state of being. Gender, Butler argues,

18 “ Definitions Related to Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity in APA Documents.” American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexualitydefinitions.pdf. North Carolina Repeals Portions Of Controversial ‘Bathroom Bill’.” NPR. Last modified March 30, 2017. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/30/522009335/ north-carolina-lawmakers-governor-announce-compromise-to-repeal-bathroom-bill. 19 Gerard Rey A. Lico. “Architecture and Sexuality: The Politics of Gendered Space.” Humanities Diliman 2, no. 1 (2001): 30-44.

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is not a given or a starting point. Instead it is a construct that can be formalized in a “non-arbitrary way through a matrix of habits, practices, and discourses.” 20 Acknowledging this understanding of gender, and accommodating it in an inclusive design practice, means that we remove the construct as a primary origin of bathroom design.

…gender is a non-static, always contested, and always transforming, state of being. Gender, Butler argues, is not a given or a starting point. In furthering her arguments of the non-stable nature of gender, Butler argues that gender is a powerful social construct, possessing the ability to undermine the status quo, forcing progress and change in different social and political groups based solely on proximity and association.21 This could not be truer or more relevant than in the current and future attempts to re-design public toilet facilities. By proposing to omit gender as a base design parameter, we are not trying to undermine the strength of gender as a social motivator. Instead, we accept the power that the construct wields, and recognize that this current moment is a direct result of gendered power and gendered space. Moving forward, however, we believe it is important to begin the re-design of toilet facilities

based upon less-mutable conditions and characteristics, to create a base typology, or set of typologies, to which gender can be reintroduced on an as-needed basis. In all of our discussions, the primary sentiment regarding the importance of gender-segregated facilities was one of privacy. Only a few people remarked on the significance of the toilet room as a social space, especially mentioning perceptions of the women’s facilities as spaces of camaraderie and gossip. And while the importance of single-sex spaces, for both men and women, should not go unrecognized, we wonder why it is important that this space is confined to the toilet room, an apparently “dirty” space in which most who use it would prefer to be alone or secluded. As it became more socially acceptable for women to work outside of the home, the traditional gendering of space was upended. As this happened, the provision of gendered space within public areas seems, oddly, to have been squeezed into the confines of the toilet room. Are we sentimental about gender-separated toilet rooms because they represent one of the last vestiges of gendered social gathering space? If we eliminate gender as a primary design parameter, will we lose a kind of space that exists only in gendered toilet rooms? If so, is it important that this type of space be confined to the toilet room, or would it be acceptable to simply

20 Lori A. Brown, Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals Politicizing the Female Body (London and New York, Routledge, 2016), 23. 21 Ibid.

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SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology Bathroom Signage

Updates to signage are a significant first step towards acknowledging the need for inclusive bathroom spaces. The Fashion Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Gumus Design Group, redesigned their toilet room signage to be explicitly inclusive, and it has provided guidance and information about all-gender toilet rooms on their website. Though this initial signage effort does not immediately affect the spatial layout of existing toilet rooms, the direct language recognizes the necessity for inclusion in these spaces. Now, architects must turn our attention to accommodating this in the toilet room spaces themselves. Source: Fashion Institute of Technology

provide a social space in which both men and women would feel comfortable? These are questions that are beyond the scope of this paper, but we believe they are imperative to consider in order to redefine the space of the toilet room. Although Lico’s work focuses primarily on the dynamics and politics of gender according the presumed binary, his sentiments can be extrapolated. “The stereotyping of gender relations universalizes women’s needs as unchanging and, therefore, creates

building standards which trap women in the roles assigned to them.” 22 Similarly, presumed gender binary stereotypes and gendered spaces trap people within that dualism. Bathrooms in particular force us to reconfirm our association with a particular identity multiple times a day and in the presence of both our colleagues and strangers, exposing us to judgement and derision should we make a choice that is out of line with the expectations of others.

22 G erard Rey A. Lico. “Architecture and Sexuality: The Politics of Gendered Space.” Humanities Diliman 2, no. 1 (2001): 30-44.

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Some institutions have made an effort to underscore one’s right to access the toilet, even if it is not possible to actually alter the configuration of the room itself. To achieve this, they have redesigned the signs to add text that explains this. To be clear, when applied to existing, gender-separated toilet rooms, these signs, like those shown on the preceding page, state that regardless of your birth sex, if you identify as a woman, you use the women’s room, and if you identify as a man, you use the men’s room. And often, if you don’t identify as either, or if you fear that someone will question your use of what you deem is an appropriate facility, you must use a third space, a special room that is designated as Family, Handicapped, or sometimes All-Gender. For many, this is a temporary bandage for a more systemic social wound. In buildings in which retrofitting toilet rooms cannot result in a single, adequate, code-compliant toilet room, this is an expedient and efficient fix. However, a more effective, long-term, and spatial solution should still be the goal.

Privacy As we sought to understand and define the space of the toilet room, the most important question, and the one that we have grappled with most in our discussions with bathroom stakeholders, is how designers design for privacy. In an anonymous survey distributed to our FXCollaborative colleagues, we received the following

comment: “I’m still stuck on privacy… Answer privacy and you’ve solved the problem.” 23 Everyone, it seems, is stuck on privacy. While there are clear definitions of privacy, it is useful to dwell on it briefly to understand what privacy could mean in a multi-user toilet room. The multi-user toilet room might initially be classified as a public amenity. The space is a human necessity, one recognized by building codes, and used by all humans at various times throughout the day. Yet, the actions performed within this public amenity space are among the most private of our daily tasks. “Privacy” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the state of being free from public attention.” 24 In contrast to the urban planning phenomenon of Privately Owned Public Spaces, snappily referred to as POPS, one could argue that a public toilet room is Publicly Owned Private Space. Say that sentence out loud in front of design colleagues and observe the brows furrowing because it is unclear what sense this moniker actually makes.25 Public toilet rooms are indeed intended to be publicly accessible and inclusive. And within that public space is another space in which we partake in private action. No matter how inclusive the space, or how much privacy is afforded, to be in a public toilet is to be exposed to the judgment and biases of others. And it is this judgement and bias that defines the power of the space, and ultimately its gendering.

23 F XCollaborative, “Inter-Office Bathroom Preference Survey” (anonymous survey in author’s possession, New York, 2017). 24 “ privacy.” Merriam-Webster.com. Last modified 27 January 2018. https://www.merriamwebster.com. 25 In discussing the definition and possible applications of the concept of ‘Publicly Owned Private Space,’ and especially in considering ways to differentiate the acronym from POPS, it was suggested that a more appropriate moniker might be Publicly Owned & Operated Private Space.

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FXCollaborative Bathroom Survey

23.6%

In anticipation of the Bathrooms Rebooted design charrette, we issued a survey to the entire FXCollaborative staff.

Cleanliness

The survey asked three questions: 1. Aside from elimination, what do you use a bathroom/toilet room for?

22.1%

2. W ould all-gender bathrooms affect your use of the space? In what way?

Visual Privacy

3. W hen using a bathroom, what are the most important conditions for your comfort.

18.6%

Options were given for the third question and were ranked according to importance. We received about 60 responses and have summarized the primary toilet room concerns here.

Odor

6.8% Other

Cleanliness was the greatest concern, with over 50% of the office listing it as the foremost priority. Though not entirely a spatial problem, cleanliness can be addressed in the way that partitions are constructed and how accessible stalls are for cleaning.

17.5%

Acoustic Privacy

63.6% of respondents ranked Visual Privacy in their top 2 concerns. (94.5% ranked it in their top 4) Odor was identified as an important bathroom concern, but is not solved so much by spatial solutions as by ventilation strategies. Other factors were also identified, such as lighting, mirror availability, and decor.

11.3%

Roominess

60% ranked Acoustic Privacy as a moderate (3 or 4 ranking) concern. Roominess and Number of Users ranked primarily as the 5 and 6 concerns. Although these scored low in the FXCollaborative office survey, these are heavily influenced by spatial design decisions.

0.2%

Number of Users

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With all due reverence to linguists, one could convincingly argue that MerriamWebster does not effectively define privacy. At least not for the purposes of a public toilet. In order to access the private stall in a public toilet room, one must traverse a space that is under the surveillance of the public. One could argue that a new term must be defined, one that ties together the duality of private acts within a public space. As Alexander Kira discusses in his seminal work, The Bathroom, a shift in bathing practices over time mirrors the shift in our expectations of privacy when entering and using a toilet room. During the time of the Roman Empire, bathing was considered a public activity, often performed in a communal facility. This practice continued on through the 18th century, when these public baths began to organize into neighborhood baths. Eventually family bathing occurred weekly within the home, which shifted into the more frequent private showers or baths that are common in American households today.26 Similar shifts in expectations of privacy can be traced through the development of the toilet room or privy. Although privacy is provided while actually performing the functions of elimination, there is little that can be done about a person announcing their need to perform those activities. To some degree, we are all announcing to the world that we must perform the act of elimination each time we walk in the door of a bathroom.

In The Bathroom, Kira differentiates among what he describes as â&#x20AC;&#x153;Degrees of Privacy.â&#x20AC;? Specifically, Kira established three major categories: privacy of being heard but not seen; privacy of not being seen or heard; and privacy of not being seen, heard, or sensed. It is fair to say that third category is effectively being invisible to other users of the toilet room, and would likely be the preference of most people if they had a choice. As Kira explains it, compartmentalization is one of the most efficient and effective methods of achieving privacy, and it inherently accommodates the variations in expectations of privacy.27 In studying bathroom plans, we can identify how different configurations and compartmentalization techniques achieve these levels of privacy. A single-user toilet room would clearly achieve the third level of privacy, with complete isolation from other toilet room users. In a multi-user facility, floor-to-ceiling partitions might nearly accommodate this maximum privacy. A toilet room with minimal partialheight partitions allows a person to be heard but not seen, and the varied heights would accommodate differing acoustic preferences and levels of visual privacy. The desire for increased privacy in the multi-user toilet room is universal. One of the clearest ways to achieve increased privacy, in both single-gender and all-gender toilet rooms is to use full-height doors and full-height

26 Alexander Kira, The Bathroom (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977). 27 Ibid.

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Partition Height

Minimal Privacy—Not Seen

Partition Height

Moderate Privacy—Not Seen, Not Heard

Partition Height

Maximum Privacy—Not Seen, Not Heard, Not Sensed

Figure 6

Kira’s “Degrees of Privacy” illustrated with standard partition heights.

partitions between toilet stalls. In attempting to make a case for the spatial and cost efficiencies of allgender bathroom spaces, we began to investigate the cost differentials between full-height and partial height partitions, to see if we could

determine a general rule of thumb or cost adjustment factor. We hoped to discover a supporting argument for full-height partitions. However, conversations with a number of consultants led to an inconclusive ability to compare partition types

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based specifically upon height. Partition height is one of the less influential cost drivers; material choice and assembly type tend to be the controlling factors. One consultant stated that she would feel comfortable estimating a minimum cost increase of 35%, with a maximum upwards of 75%. This conservative and hesitant estimation of cost increase underscores the volatility of pricing, and the importance of considering all options when specifying toilet partitions. Arguments for full-height partitions, implying floor-to-ceiling stall-dividing partitions and doors, are undercut, literally, by the need for ADA accessible stalls. These require toe space clearance under the partition.28 Cleaning is also more efficient when the dividing partitions are not flush with the finished floor, though some newer full-height designs do cleverly address the cleaning issue. Furthermore, electrical and fire safety code requirements can influence the trend towards partial height partitions. When partitions extend from floor to ceiling, effectively converting the toilet compartments into rooms, the building code requires that each compartment be fitted with a sprinkler head and mechanical vent to ensure complete coverage in a fully sprinklered building.29 The added coordination and labor to fit each stall with its own sprinkler head and smoke detector is often a major cost consideration when determining partition heights, according to one bathroom partition consultant.

Bathrooms, by Law Section 403.2 of the International Plumbing Code specifies the requirement for Separate Facilities. The ruling dictates, simply: Where plumbing fixtures are required, separate facilities shall be provided for each sex. The ruling is specific and straightforward, with exceptions given for niche considerations, primarily for low-occupancy building uses.30 This requirement, beyond any social and political opposition, is one of the primary reasons that all-gender toilet room designs are difficult to execute. Section 403.2, when it was first introduced in the building code sometime in the early 20th century, was likely viewed as a landmark addition. The requirement for equal facilities for the sexes served to further legitimize women’s place in society. The observations of the current limitations of Section 403.2 are not meant to negate or ignore the significance of this mandate. Rather, perhaps it’s time for this Section of the Plumbing Code to be reconsidered and rewritten entirely. Signage is required to designate the gender specificity of a toilet room; until recently this included single-user toilet rooms that, other than the signage designation, appeared to be appropriate for all genders. In a recent update to the Plumbing Code, Section 403.1.2 allows fixtures within single-occupancy toilet rooms to be counted towards the overall

28 “ Section 304: Turning Space“, 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design. (Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., 2010). 29 “ Section 903.3.1.1 NFPA 13 Sprinkler Systems”, 2014 New York City Building Code. (New York City Department of Buildings, New York, NY, 2014). 30 “ Section 403.2, Separate Facilities“. 2015 IPC, International Plumbing Code. (International Plumbing Code Council, 2014).

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tally. These two Sections are the first steps that the code has taken to allow for the intentional creation of all-gender spaces.32

On Safety

In social and political discourse, notions of privacy in the toilet room have become inextricably intertwined with those of safety. At the height of homophobia, partition heights were reduced so that those using the toilet could be surveilled. This focus on preventing any untoward goings-on in the space of the toilet room reduced the general expectations of privacy.31 When HERO was being reconsidered in Houston in 2015, the opposition’s slogan of “No Men in the Women’s Room” echoed the resistance to the Equal Rights Amendment and brought truth to Gore Vidal’s observation that arguing for the safety of women in the bathroom would be the greatest tool in opposing any efforts for equal rights. Regardless of toilet room signage, sexual assault is illegal. And the truth of it is, a sign will not stop crimes.

fixture count, though the fixture must still be designated for either men or women, specifically in assembly or mercantile uses. This ruling, paired with an update included in Section 403.2.1, allows single-occupancy toilets to have gender non-specific signage, even if the fixtures are being counted towards a gender-specific

When Sections 402 and 403 were added to the building code, they equated to legally mandated inclusion for women. There are ways that the building code can and should evolve to provide guidelines for access, safety, and inclusion for all of us. David Collins, a champion of genderinclusive building code amendments, played a significant role in ensuring that Section 403.1.2 was approved. As he explains it, the interpretation of “single-occupancy toilet rooms” is still being debated. As the code is currently written, it is possible to argue the following: If code regulations require that you provide 6 fixtures for men, and 8 fixtures for women, you may achieve codecompliance by providing 14 singleoccupancy toilet rooms. And based upon Section 403.2.1, these singleoccupancy toilet rooms can have gender-nonspecific signage. But the question remains: What constitutes a single-occupancy toilet room?33 This definition is significant spatially because of ADA Section 213.2 Exception 3, which requires that in a cluster of single-user toilet rooms, 50% must comply ADA guidelines. Thus, the use of Section 403.1.2 to bypass the requirement for separate facilities is limited to situations in which space is abundant.34, 35

31 Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009). 32 “ Section 403.1.2, Family or Assisted-Use Toilet and Bath Fixtures“ and “Section 403.2.1, Family or Assisted-Use Toilet Facilities Serving as Separate Facilities.” 2015 IPC, International Plumbing Code. (International Plumbing Code Council, 2014). 33 David Collins , FAIA, in conversation with the author, November 2017. 34 “ Section 213: Toilet Facilities and Bathing Facilities“, 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design. (Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., 2010). 35 T he ADA guidelines further define a cluster to be a “group of toilet rooms proximate to one another, generally adjacent to or within sight of one another.”

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Efforts have also been made to address “potty parity,” which is the phrase used to describe the assurance that women and men have equal access to restrooms, with “equal” defined not by fixture count but by the amount of time that one must wait to access a fixture. Introduced in 1987 with California’s Restroom Equity Act36, the issue was again addressed in 1994 when Wisconsin amended its Commercial Building Code to require more fixtures for women.37 In 2004, Soldier’s Field in Chicago made an attempt to address potty parity by introducing more women’s rooms. The result was shorter wait times for women, but the efforts also introduced a wait time for men, when previously no wait time had existed. The solution, after a great deal of complaining and uproar, was to convert five women’s rooms into men’s rooms. The result? Double the wait time for women.38 When discussing what efficiencies might be achieved by allowing fixtures to be accessed by either gender, we found an interesting conundrum. Currently, the baseline assumption is that buildings are occupied by 50% women and 50% men. Logically, this assumption, paired with an accompanying calculation for elimination needs based on scientific study, would inform the fixture count requirements for the

different use types. This, however, does not seem to be the case. Although the differing gender-specific fixture counts cement the separation of the facilities, it is not clear to anyone that we spoke with how these fixture count differentials were originally calculated. In furthering our argument for the spatial and cost efficiencies achieved by all-gender toilet rooms, we found that we were unable to formulate a definitive argument. We hope that as we move towards all-gender facilities, we and others are able to reevaluate the requirements that the building code mandates and update and improve their adequacy. The ability of single-occupancy toilet rooms to function as gender non-specific compartments, even though the fixture contained within satisfies a gendered fixture count, echoes the guidelines for ADA conformity in existing buildings where alteration is technically infeasible. Section 213 states that in that situation, a “single unisex toilet room in the same area on the same floor is appropriate.” 39 The section then goes on to define what it means for that toilet room to be proximate to the non-ADA compliant facilities. Reading these regulations, and considering the solutions that gender non-conforming individuals are being offered for toilet room access, reveals nearly identical solutions to very different problems. Gender

36 Maya Rhodan. “Bathroom Bills: How American Bathrooms Got Separated by Sex.” Time Magazine. Last modified May 16, 2016. http://time.com/4337761/history-sexsegregated-bathrooms/. 37 Sarah Karon. “Potty politics: Why women are pissed off about restrooms.” CURB Magazine. Last modified October 19, 2010. https://curbarchive.journalism.wisc.edu/2010/10/19/ potty-politics/index.html. 38 “ T he Everyday Sexism of Women Waiting in Public Toilet Lines.” Time Magazine. Last Modified January 5, 2015. http://time.com/3653871/womens-bathroom-lines-sexistpotty-parity/. 39 “ Section 213: Toilet Facilities and Bathing Facilities“, 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design. (Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., 2010).

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is not a physical disability. Instead of ADA regulation single-user toilet rooms being appropriately reserved for those who have true need for the physical configuration of the space, these rooms are becoming a catch-all for any individual who does not fit our established social expectations of an able-bodied, gender-conforming person. The expansion of ADA to include genderidentity accommodations, as seems to be implied in a recent article in Architectural Products, is not a solution to the question of allgender toilet spaces.40 It is certainly an effective solution for ensuring the accessibility to toilet rooms by providing guidelines and regulations for their physical characteristics, but it does not solve the gender problem.

Plumbing Fixtures, By Gender When we began this research, one of the first questions we asked concerned urinals and the importance of their existence. We had conversations amongst ourselves and with other designers and our friends. Then, we came across an article in which a woman described how she was able to make the toilet rooms in her office all-gender. In order to do this, she blocked off the urinal, definitively making it unusable. Reportedly, this allowed women to feel more comfortable entering the room, and eliminated the only gendered fixture in the space. Because this solution involved reducing the fixture count of the office space

Inclusive Design

Throughout this study we have focused on the importance of inclusivity and accessibility, particularly since we believe access to a toilet qualifies as a basic human need. The British Standards Institution defines “inclusive design” as: The design of mainstream products and/or services that are accessible to, and usable by, as many people as reasonably possible...without the need for special adaptation or specialized design. One could argue that the specification of single-user or family facilities as the most appropriate space for gender-nonconforming individuals constitutes a special adaptation or specialized design, disqualifying that solution as inclusive design.

and potentially compromising code compliance, this is clearly not a solution.41 Reading that article further amplified our own doubt of the importance of urinals to a functioning toilet room. Statistically, urinals serve less than half of the population, and they function for only the act of urination. If pitted against a toilet in a competition of efficiency and versatility, the urinal is the clear loser. Although we heard testimony from a number of men that urinals allow for speedier elimination, we have heard an equal amount of testimony that men find them to be stressful and that they lead to slippery floors and unsanitary conditions. Considering the use or removal of urinals is where an understanding of fixture counts becomes particularly crucial. In determining the spatial adjustments that might be achieved by an all-gender bathroom, we began to wonder if it is possible to reduce the total number of fixtures. Because the occupancy assumptions define the gender divide

40 “ T he Future is Universal”. Architectural Products. Last Modified December 12, 2017. 41 Because of the potential legal ramifications, we have assumed that this suggested solution was made in jest and have chosen to not cite the source.

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as 50/50, perhaps the total fixture count would not be reduced. But maybe it could be. And in any case, the utilization of the fixtures, whether or not the fixture count stays the same, would inherently be more efficient because all people could access all fixtures. For example, a commercial office building is constructed with the 50/50 gender split assumption applied to its population. If that office building is then occupied by a company that is primarily female, the fixtures in the men’s rooms are severely under-utilized, while the fixtures in the women’s rooms will be over-utilized. Providing a configuration and accessibility standard in which all people can access all fixtures means that fixtures will be used in the most efficient manner possible. However, this aspect of our argument has yet to be mathematically proven, as we are unable to elicit information that would inform an all-gender fixture count. We also sought to understand the spatial implications of urinals. The American Society of Plumbing Engineers lists the requirements for clear space between and around fixtures that are not ADA-compliant fixtures. A water closet must be 30” wide and 60” deep. A urinal, by comparison, must also be 30” wide, but only 21” deep. 42 The smaller depth requirement for urinals, as the design need not account for a door and door swing and only has to accommodate a standing

person, means that a urinal requires approximately one-third of the square footage required for a water closet. While this provides a net spatial advantage, it is significant to note that the advantage lies only in the depth of the clear space. Urinals provide no spatial advantage in the width between fixtures. In many of the examples that we studied from our own projects, which were primarily drawn from our commercial work (Figure 8), the configuration of the toilet rooms was linear, such that the depth difference between the two fixture types offered no spatial advantage. And further, in most use cases, only half of the required fixtures may be achieved with urinals.43 This means that in some area of a men’s toilet room, water closets that conform to a 30” x 60” dimension must still be provided.44

People Who Pee In an effort to present an objective analysis, we have considered our design clients according to expressed toilet room expectations, rather than based on who the people are. We could spend pages enumerating the types of user groups we might encounter. But the truth is, our user base is all people, regardless of personal requirement or selfpresentation. Public facilities, such as parks and libraries, might encounter a wider range of requirements than a commercial office building. However, designing for inclusion means

42 “ Plumbing Fixtures.” American Society of Plumbing Engineers. ASPE.ORG/REadLearnEarn, (April 2013). 43 “ Section 419.2, Substitutions for Water Closets“. 2015 IPC, International Plumbing Code. (International Plumbing Code Council, 2014). 44 Section 419.2 of the International Plumbing Code allows that in education and assembly uses, 67% of required fixtures may be achieved by urinals. In all other uses, the replacement allowance remains 50%.

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21” min.

30” min.

60” min.

30” min.

Urinal—4.375 SF

Toilet—12.5 SF

Figure 7

Minimum clear space for water closets and urinals, as stipulated by the ASPE.

designing for all people, whether or not they are an initially anticipated user group. And given the fact that our buildings are designed to last for decades, it would be irresponsible to not consider shifts in demographics and building uses that we are not yet experiencing. In considering our users, we have identified a number of unique needs. There are basic sanitary needs that are user-specific. For example, at any point in time, 25% percent of women globally are menstruating. Toilet compartments should thus accommodate a discreet and sanitary disposal option. In some facilities, the provision of feminine products must also be considered. Parents who must change their babies’ diapers

expect both clean facilities and a sanitary disposal accommodation. Elderly toilet room users might have similar needs for discreet disposal of personal sanitary items. Some users might need to self-catheterize or take medicine throughout the course of the day. The need to be able to accommodate gender-separation for religious and other modesty requirements is certainly a need. For example, a Muslim woman who would like to adjust her hijab must do so is a space that is private from men. Similarly, modesty, genderseparation, and sanitary guidelines exist for Hasidic Jewish people. Lack of privacy can have unfortunate consequences on the act of elimination. Although uneasiness and indignations are valid or clear results of a lack of privacy, the inability to eliminate in the known presence of another is a diagnosable medical condition. Paruresis, known as ‘shy bladder syndrome’, has varying degrees of intensity.45 For the purpose of this study, we have focused primarily on commercial office space in our discussions with stakeholders and in our consideration of code requirements. Our in-office design charrette focused on public space, primarily for purposes of broad speculation. Although restaurants, universities, and museums are oftdescribed pioneers in all-gender toilet room space, the use of the space and the interactions of occupants

45 “ What is Paruresis?” Urology Care Foundation. http://www.urologyhealth.org/urologicconditions/paruresis-(urinating-in-public).

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Figure 8

Much of our toilet room analysis focused on toilet rooms in commercial office buildings. This comparison demonstrates the spatial similarities of the gendered spaces, even when considering the spatial advantages provided by the use of urinals in menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rooms. In most cases, replacing water closets with urinals did not offer a significant spatial advantage.

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APPEARANCE

MEDICAL

ELIMINATION

CARETAKER/ ASSISTED USE HYGIENE

ACCESSIBLE

Figure 9

Uses, users, and necessary fixtures.

in those toilet spaces are different than occur in a commercial office space. In a restaurant or museum, the people that you pee next to are strangers. You might meet the person at the sink and mirror as part of the toilet room circulation, but there is very little interaction beyond this temporary proximity. In an office space, however, the people you pee with are those with whom you work, with whom you are fostering

professional relationships, and on whom you depend for professional advancement. As architects, our job requires us to be objective when considering the needs of all users of the spaces we design. We do not judge the hierarchy and legitimacy of any of the expressed or defined needs, but strive to accommodate all, or as many as is possible, in a single solution, through open-minded, conscientious design.

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Where Design Can Lead As we developed our analysis, we tried to formulate a set of case studies derived from our own designs. We looked to some of our newest projects, which, not surprisingly, are also the most socially progressive. But more than a set of case studies, our conversations elicited the articulation of a developing design process. In a number of recent projects, all-gender toilet rooms have been suggested as a base building design element, particularly in commercial projects, at the strong recommendation of the design lead and Senior Partner, Dan Kaplan. Kaplan and the design teams he works with take the future of commercial office space as their design challenge. The scope of this challenge encompasses all aspects of the use of the building, and his perspective references notions of ambient belonging in the formulation of the design briefs. This includes the toilet rooms. Architecture, particularly the design of spaces that are potentially accessible to all people, reflects the values of our society. It is the physical form of our culture and society. As architects, we have a voice in how those values are represented and constructed. Fundamentally, inclusion reflects the values of our firm. “When we consider and define the design intent for our projects,” said Kaplan, “we want every part of the building or buildings to function as

inclusive space designed for the dignity of all users and occupants. We are committed to designing in a way that celebrates the communities that make our cities so rich and diverse. We know that in order to properly celebrate these communities, we need to push for all-gender toilet rooms.” When describing his conceptualization of all-gender toilet rooms, Kaplan identifies four typologies that are appropriate to consider for commercial office design (Figure 10). There is the Binary toilet room configuration, in which two genderspecific toilet rooms are provided. There is the Binary + Single configuration, in which a single-user facility is provided for those who are uncomfortable or unable to conform. The Multiple Cabinets solution involves all-in-one fixture configurations in which the sink and mirror are included in the same compartment as the toilet. And finally, Common, in which a common sink and mirror area is provided with adequately private stalls. In recent projects, our design teams have begun with the Common configuration. As the design progresses and potential tenants request an option for separate toilet rooms, the Common option transforms to include a common sink area with gender-separated toilet stalls. If a tenant desired an all-gender toilet room, a partition could be removed, creating a single open space.46

46 T hese plans are for a study and were not submitted to the Department of Buildings and did not go through an exhaustive ADA analysis (Figures 11 & 12). We acknowledge that this design does not accommodate Section 213,2, which requires 50% of the single-user toilet compartments to be ADA compliant. (Source: ADA 2010)

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Binary

Multiple Cabinets

Binary (+)

Common

Figure 10

A summary of toilet room typologies defined in a study for a commercial office building.

Men’s Toilet Room

Optional Partition

Women’s Toilet Room

Toilet Room

Shared Vestibule

Vestibule

All-Gender Toilet Room 6 toilets—4 lavatories—406 SF

Figure 11

A Common toilet room versus a Binary toilet room.

Gender-Separated Toilet Rooms 5 toilets—1 urinal—6 lavatories—493 SF

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All-Gender

Gender-Separated

Men’s Toilet Room Toilet Room Vestibule

Women’s Toilet Room

Shared Vestibule

Men’s Toilet Room Toilet Room Vestibule

Women’s Toilet Room

Vestibule

Women’s Toilet Room

Gender Isolation

Shared Vestibule

Men’s Toilet Room Toilet Room

Gender Declared and Interaction

Opportunity for Maximum Isolation

Shared Vestibule

Figure 12

A brief comparison of all-gender and gender-separated toilet room spaces.

In developing and attempting to implement these designs, our design teams have come up against a number of difficulties, including the building code requirements previously discussed. However, a primary challenge, and one that is more difficult to quantify, is that although the client teams understand the significance of all-gender toilet rooms, there is less comfort as to

how the spaces would function. Are they physically distinct from our standard, gender-binary, toilet rooms? Or is it just a larger version of one of those spaces that everyone is allowed to access? “Furthermore,” Kaplan said, “the more we speak to brokers and leasing folks about these concepts, the more we realize that a majority of the endusers—and their human resources departments—have not developed adequate policies for addressing all-gender toilet room spaces.” But fundamentally, we have begun to consider how these designs would be formulated, and these studies and spatial configurations will certainly be a guide for future FXCollaborative projects.

Transforming the Toilet Room With the research we assembled for this paper, though admittedly not an exhaustive analysis of existing bathroom layouts, and the discussions had with stakeholders of different demographics and social backgrounds, we have begun to reconsider the design process for toilet room facilities. We don’t pretend to believe that we can devise a single, universal design. Every project and each building is unique, requiring a unique solution. Instead, we hope that providing the following overview of our thinking helps to formulate questions and processes for future toilet room designs.

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To start, we have assumed as our baseline parameter the necessity of the toilet. We further adopt the sentiment that toilet room access is a basic human right. Thus, knowing from our previous study that gender is a non-static construct, we eliminate it as a primary design parameter. Instead of beginning with two separated spaces, we instead begin with a total count of toilets and lavatories derived from current code requirements. We then considered the function of the fixtures included in the public toilet room. These are, simply, a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. By many accounts, the sink and mirror may function in tandem. We have chosen to separate the three fixtures entirely, for the specific reason of acknowledging their different purposes. Distinguishing the use of the sink and mirror, and emphasizing the order in which they are accessed becomes important when discussing the configuration of the fixtures and one’s procession through the space. Thinking more specifically about the spatial configuration and circulation of the toilet space led us to consider the organization of the fixtures. Because we have presumed a basic level of privacy, we might refer to the toilet as a toilet compartment. We have further presumed that the toilet compartment contains some type of sanitary disposal, as is already located in a women’s toilet compartment.

Bathrooms Rebooted

In October 2017, FXCollaborative spent an afternoon rethinking expectations of toilet rooms. An internal design charrette, Bathrooms Rebooted presented each team with a different design brief. One team addressed restrooms in airports. Another team studied toilet rooms in a Broadway theater. Two teams considered bathrooms in university buildings. Although the briefs were an idealized situation—i.e., there were no space constraints and ADA was loosely adhered to—the outcome included spatial configurations, and discussions and ideas beyond that. With only a brief introduction to the ideas presented in this paper, questions of privacy, and of procession and of the tools of elimination, emerged.

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Toilet

Lavatory

Mirror

Compartment

Check/Adjust Hair

Adjust/Put On Makeup

We have identified seven general configurations of these fixtures, and have summarized the function of each configuration (Figure 14). Note that “-“ indicates the fixtures are paired, and “( )” indicates that the fixtures are located in a private compartment. The first configuration is “(toilet-sinkmirror).” In this option, all fixtures are included in a single toilet compartment. Effectively, each compartment functions as a single-user toilet room, and as such would need to be adequately sized for the clearance and spatial allowances required. This configuration also requires that a person who needs to access a sink would inherently occupy a toilet fixture as well, compromising both convenience and fixture efficiency. This configuration, similar to the Multiple Cabinets configuration previously discussed, would satisfy medical needs in which a sink and/or mirror might be necessary. It would also be the most private of the options, but would prohibit the ability of the toilet room to serve as a social space.

Brush Teeth/Check Teeth

Wash Hands

Elimination

Feminine Needs

Necessary Gender Isolation

Change Clothes

Regain Composure

The “(toilet-mirror) + sink-mirror” configuration, in which the toilet and mirror are located in the toilet compartment and sinks and additional mirrors are accessible outside of the toilet compartment, is effective at addressing the need for genderisolation and privacy at a mirror. However, this requires that a person who needs to address their physical

Stretching

Taking Medicine

Medical Elimination Needs

Figure 13

Toilet room uses diagrammed according to required fixtures and need for privacy compartment.

Catherine Joseph, Whitney Odell | FXCollaborative

Toilet-Sink-Mirror

(Toilet-Mirror) + Sink-Mirror

(Toilet) + Sink-Mirror

(Toilet-Sink) + Mirror

paired

( ) private compartment

(Toilet) + Sink + Mirror

(Toilet) + (Toilet) + Sink-Mirror

(Toilet) + Sink-Mirror + Sink-Mirror

Figure 14

Seven general toilet room configurations, based on arrangements of primary fixtures and considerations of possible uses.

appearance in private do so before using the sink. It also requires additional mirrors. The standard configuration is “(toilet) +sink-mirror.” As is typically the case, the toilet fixture is located in a compartment or stall, and the mirror and sink are located together. In this manner, adjustment to physical appearance and cleansing occur in the same place. However, there is no private space for adjusting one’s physical appearance away from the gaze of another. This configuration is similar to the Common configuration previously mentioned. The “(toilet-sink) + mirror” configuration provides accommodation for those who might need to access a sink

in privacy or seclusion, for medical or other needs. It requires that a person who has need for a sink must also occupy a toilet. The “(toilet) + sink + mirror” configuration provides a complete separation of the fixtures and their associated functions and uses. The fixtures can be accessed sequentially or individually as needed. The “(toilet) + (toilet) + sink-mirror” configuration allows for genderseparated toilet compartments with a common sink and mirror. This preserves a level of genderspecific seclusion and privacy, but maintains a social area within the space of the toilet room. This configuration, however, does

spatial separation

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provide privacy for addressing medical needs or adjusting physical appearance. The final configuration, and the one we find to be most compelling, is “(toilet) + sink-mirror + sink-mirror.” In this configuration, as in others, the toilet compartments provide partitioned privacy from other toilet room users. Providing two sets of sinks-mirror would allow for varying levels of privacy to be accommodated. Locating one set near the entry/exit allows for the more social space to exist in the most visible area of the toilet room. A second set could be located further into the toilet room, allowing for a greater level of privacy, gendered privacy or otherwise, if so desired. The “(toilet) + sink-mirror + sink-mirror” configuration was discussed at length at our in-office toilet room design charrette. From our perspective, this design begins to accommodate all users without exclusion and without overcomplicating the spatial design. It also provides a compelling argument for feasibility, spatial allowance, and code compliance, as it is an adaptation of the existing fixture pairings, rather than a complete reconfiguration. This final fixture configuration also reflects another aspect of toilet room redesign that was a great topic of discussion during the design charrette: how to accommodate differing levels of privacy within

the singular space of the toilet room. In referencing Kira, we learned of his Degrees of Privacy. From our own discussions with toilet room users or stakeholders, we understand that everyone has different tolerances and requirements for privacy. The lesson here is that there is opportunity for spatial separation without segregation and exclusion. By separating the sink-mirror fixture locations, all are included within the toilet room, but the space itself is able to be adapted to the needs of the users as they happen. If gender-isolation is necessary, it can be temporarily achieved in a respectful manner. If it is not, the fixtures function for all genders. The division of fixtures within the singular space of the toilet room will require a greater consideration of circulation patterns within the space. In considering this, we realized that most toilet rooms only have a single door that functions as both entry and exit, leading to a circulation sequence that requires a ‘double-back’ (Figure 15). Airports are the clearest exception to this rule, though there are likely others. Considering the standard single entry/exit plan that requires a double back, processing through a space is a more efficient way of traversing the space. Depending on the ordering of the fixtures, processing through the toilet room might also create a slightly more private environment for elimination, as you do not need

Catherine Joseph, Whitney Odell | FXCollaborative

Figure 15

Typical toilet room design accommodates a single entry/exit point, thus requiring a user to double back through the space to access all fixtures.

to pass the sinks and mirrors, a clear means of surveillance, before entering the toilet compartment. Thus, the sinks and mirrors become the place for interaction among users, rather than overlapping with the more private space of the toilet compartment. Further, if we are to actually consider how to maximize the safety of individuals inside toilet rooms, it makes sense to provide two exits. This idea of processing through a toilet room was brought to the fore during our Bathrooms Rebooted

design charrette. The group tasked with designing a toilet room for an airport created a series of diagrams demonstrating the efficiency. It is significant to note that we have chosen to ignore urinals as baseline toilet room fixtures. We have a number of reasons, some of which we have articulated previously. Another primary reason reflects back on the notion of ambient belonging, and considerations of how the composition and material of the space and, in this instance, plumbing fixtures, provide

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Figure 16

This toilet paper drawing was created during the Bathrooms Rebooted design charrette as an analysis of the circulation through airport restrooms.

occupants with associations that elicit feelings of inclusion and belonging. If there is an instance in which urinals are the preferred or necessary fixture, perhaps they, and their appropriate and inclusive spatial integration, can be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Dignity, a Matter of Choice When we began this study we hoped we would be able to build a convincing argument—socially, technically, and perhaps financially—for all-gender toilet facilities. We believe that toilet rooms are in need of a fundamental reconsideration, for social, spatial, and efficiency reasons. We believe that by formulating new ways of considering toilet room design, we have been able to present work that will help to guide the development of future toilet room typologies, and perhaps most importantly, the future of building codes. And our work is not finished.

The current demographics of policymakers and designers are a sign of changes that need to occur. This matters, more than we realize. Unless we have designers and legislators with a direct understanding of exclusion and lack of access we will make little progress in moving towards equity and inclusion. We do not have statistics on the number of trans architects in the United States, but one could argue that of the standard gender binary, women, as evidenced by the discussion of potty parity, have the most real experience with lack of access to toilet rooms. Only 19% of the current US Congress is women. And the AIA reports that as of 2014, only 18% of registered architects are women.47 There are many changes that will need to occur before all-gender toilet rooms are the norm. Spatial configuration changes and updates to building and plumbing codes need to occur. Companies and institutions need significant changes in their human resources policies. But in making an effort to extend inclusive design to our toilet rooms, we might more

47 Steve Cimino, “Diversity: Not a ‘women-only problem’”. American Institute of Architects. Last modified May 27, 2016. http://new.aia.org/articles/13086-diversity-not-a-womenonly-problem.

Catherine Joseph, Whitney Odell | FXCollaborative

intentionally consider people who feel that their participation in society is limited on the whole. We might empathize with those who must spend time and brain power considering how to execute a bodily function that is a “no brainer” for most of us. In admitting that we don’t have the answers to all of the questions that we have posed, we are left with one final, fundamental question: What shall we do with our toilet rooms?

This action is about a great deal more than just bathrooms. This is about the dignity and respect we accord our fellow citizens and the laws that we, as a people and a country, have enacted to protect them—indeed, to protect all of us. And it’s about the founding ideas that have led this country—haltingly but inexorably—in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans. — Attorney General Loretta Lynch M ay 9, 2016; announcing a lawsuit against the state of North Carolina, Governor Pat McCrory, North Carolina Department of Public Safety, and the University of North Carolina on the grounds that North Carolina House Bill 2 violated federal civil rights laws.

When it comes to bathrooms, we all have a choice. For some, the choice may be which gendered bathroom facility to enter—a choice that is never straightforward and is often inconsistent. For many, the question is two-fold: How do we view and understand the space of the bathroom and who is allowed to be in what we often feel is our space? We can limit and restrict, using the bathroom to wield power over others in our desire for easily defined social boundaries. Or, we can choose to include, to allow our bathroom spaces to accommodate a fluid definition of users’ genders and an ever changing variety of uses. Architects in particular have a very special choice. If we choose to, we have the agency to push for and enact social change in the spaces we design. The bottom line is: We all must choose.

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Catherine Joseph, Whitney Odell | FXCollaborative

Catherine is a Junior Architect who works on the technical coordination and documentation of structural and mechanical systems for commercial high-rise buildings. Working with our engineering consultants, she reviews drawings, sketches, and details to compare thresholds and tolerances to balance the designs with the architectural intent. For her, the question of how she approaches design is really a question of how she thinks. Being trained as an engineer first means she’s constantly trying to tie together technical expectations, design logic, and conceptual intent. A hallmark of her career is the ability to combine these two ways of thinking.

As an interior architect, Whitney has a deep appreciation for how people live, work, and play, which complements her comprehensive understanding of design and mechanical and engineering systems. She balances conceptual rigor and a keen spatial sense—faculties she developed in her contemporary art studies and work in the art world—with an ability to anticipate the impact of environment on people’s health, well-being, and state of mind. Whitney’s expertise and approach have been instrumental in realizing an array of office and institutional buildings. Instead of allowing an abstract concept to dictate the design of a working space, she believes good design begins with the thoughtful consideration of what people do on a day-to-day basis—leading to built environments that profoundly enhance the human experience.

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