15 minute read
with Meriel Vogliotti Karín Santiago
Karín Santiago
a conversation with Meriel Vogliotti
Karín Santiago is one of the Founding Principals of Lightvox Studio, an innovative practice centered on the principles of delight, function, and sustainability. An experiment in crafting a firm out of the desire to provide a high-level of thinking, design sophistication, and sustainability to a broader client base. She studied architecture and Environmental Design at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras and relocated to Arizona to pursue a Master of Architecture degree from Arizona State University. Karín completed studies abroad in Frankfurt, Germany and returned to Arizona where she lives and works. Her background is diverse with professional experience that ranges from small residential projects to large and very complex fusion facilities for institutions and universities. Karín’s perspective as a designer/architect can be best described as having a deep sense of respect for the site, local culture, and context. She is actively involved in community work and champions sustainable strategies and projects for all her work intending to generate value for all her clients and people everywhere. She currently leads a team of talented professionals at Lightvox Studio and is an instructor at The Design School’s Architecture and Interior Architecture programs.
Meriel Vogliotti: The theme for this issue serves as an effort to spark a conversation around the ability of the built environment to foster connections. My first question for you is how do our buildings connect with each other, connect with their environment, (whether it be physical, social, technological, cultural, political, etc.) and in turn connect us to each other?
Karín Santiago: That’s a great way to start an interview because we can start to think about buildings through their ability to connect us, and that’s one of the really good ways to engage with the city. Often, its hard within the practice to focus on one single aspect of what you’re doing. With us, for example, we tend to do a lot of work that is a continuation of something, often a pre-existing building that we’re renovating. So, we’re constantly thinking about connection as a way to inspire us to do the work. There are many programmatic components, but buildings always have a fixed location, they are always situated on something. Even with something as simple as retail architecture, connecting with the community becomes very important because the success of those projects comes in understanding that community as well as engaging with their own culture so that the brand can belong there and find meaning. It doesn’t seem like it’s the obvious way to think of connectivity, but I think it’s one of the smart things that architects can try and do. Not just being aware of the immediate vicinity of your
building, but where are you in the city? What kind of people do you want to invite into the space? We constantly try to provide spaces that are going to be for everybody, not just the obvious intended user. We should never design with a tabula rasa because we can continue to maintain and reuse some of the elements that are already there, which helps us stay more connected and grounded in history. It’s like there are certain threads of memory that we want to have so as to not start from zero to maintain a level of continuity which, to us, translates into connectivity in the general sense of things being a continuum and not a complete disruption.
Our built environment serves as a connection to the past as we continue to carry the trace of humanity forward. Can you elaborate on the importance of connection in architecture?
Architecture is about human beings. It’s not really about the buildings, it is about the people that that are using the space. We’re always interested in not just the immediate intended user but also the greater set of users. So, in that we consider the relationship to Nature and the city and how these aspects of context help us mitigate issues. For example, we’ve worked
in quite a few places where blighted building exist, so we consider how to make those buildings be part of a positive chain of lifting up certain areas of the city, which translates into safer communities. We’ve seen that in some of the projects that we’ve done, whereby transforming certain spaces and giving them a use, we are able to further connect everybody, not just the users of that space, but rather everybody who’s around so they too can enjoy the benefits of these public spaces. I think it’s important that buildings try to generate a condition that is good for the vast majority of people that it can address.
How do you go about establishing these kinds of connections in your project? Such as the connection to daylight, nature, materials, and the community?
Everything follows people. Your need for daylight is irrelevant if you don’t consider the user experience. We are always thinking of how our buildings relate to daylight, function, and then at some level, its social responsibility. So, we break it into those three categories to try and be successful, but they are all still very much grounded in the enjoyment of the user. You must think about how the material elements of a building
are being consumed by the user and I think that’s what we tend to do. Our buildings are connected to Nature regardless, through lighting for example, or the surrounding site and landscape. But the core of our desire is to place the users in a situation where they get to take the benefit of that. So it’s usually not so much about the exterior appearance of our building against the daylight, it is much more about the user experience.
I’ve become more aware that, as architects we have a lot of mechanisms that can bring inclusion or exclusion which are available to us. At a very simple level it is where we decide to put a fence. Is it to keep people out or is it to keep people in? What are we doing with these devices and how are we thinking about them? What is it that they translate into? So, we are constantly trying to filter these things. Like, you know, is it really that bad that skateboarders come to our buildings and want to use them? I don’t necessarily have this idea that there’s a preciousness in an object like that. I think we reap benefits from the most amount of people being able to use these spaces rather than excluding them. I think we can relax about certain things because the more that we can put different groups together, that translates into a better experience for everybody.
How can we find ways to connect with each other and embrace our interpersonal / cross cultural differences in the practice of design?
It’s the micro spaces that lead to those seemingly insignificant moments throughout the day that are actually really fundamental and I think that’s what we’ve missed so much about existing in public spaces this past year.
Nobody misses being in the classroom necessarily, I think what we miss is that moment where you’ve bumped into your friend at Charlie’s and you just had a really good fiveminute chat, you know that’s where we really make those connections. Those are the things that we remember.
These are super big questions and yet I always think that the simple answers are the ones that have proved to be true. You know, we can write a whole dissertation about cross cultural differences, but the reality is that at the end of the day we are human beings, and our interactions are facilitated very much like humans. We should become more aware of that as we design and think about every single device in a building as an opportunity to not just default to what has always been done before, but instead make more of an effort to make things visible and open to the public whenever possible. I think owners tend to discount the idea of creating outdoor spaces that are inviting to users outside of your demographic because of the safety concern that can be drawn from having people hang out in your in your building. We see that a lot in some of our public buildings, like university or campus buildings. But we try to be very efficient with many of our planning moves, not just because it factors into being functional, but because it’s for the main purpose of developing really good quality open spaces wherever we can. So, there is a play of how efficient we can be, where we have to design small offices or classrooms for a reason , but we also try to draw from that to create these spaces where people can be together and interact in different types of social moments that are less programmed. And it can be simple, like tiny spaces or bigger spaces. It doesn’t really matter. It is finding room in a stair so that you can hang out on the landing, you know, it doesn’t really have a rule, it’s more of a way of thinking. Because it’s in the moments of rest or moments where we’re sort of distracted or daydreaming, if you will, that are really good moments for us to learn. So, we think about that when we’re doing buildings for campuses.
House on Marion by Lightvox Studio Image via Lightvox Studio
The Marylin by Lightvox Studio Image via Lightvox Studio
Have the events of the past year changed your outlook on urban design and your work at Lightvox? For example, many of our public buildings have become obsolete as domestics spaces have adapted to absorb new programmatic functions. What lasting impacts do you foresee this having on the design of public and domestic spaces?
Ben, my partner, and I are of the mindset that really the only constant is change. Our job involves being constantly on the lookout for these changes so we can continue to adapt, and I think that the pandemic is sort of like a super highlighter on some of these issues. But even before then, resilience has always been a very high priority for buildings, in terms of flexibility and reuse, meaning that they need to become much more adaptable. We need to really be thinking about flexibility within our building so that we’re not demoing and rebuilding constantly. We need to start lending buildings a lot more flexibility which is a hard thing to do because buildings are by Nature hard locked in sort of Pentacles. This is an opportunity to rethink how we use older buildings, and to me this is very exciting. I think our sustainability goals can start to be met when we realize that we need less of these formal spaces that deplete our cities resources and instead create more informal public spaces that are flexible. We’re already seeing a greater urgency for change at a government level about things like climate change and many things that I personally am very concerned about and that we think about in our work, so we’re constantly thinking about these inevitable changes. So, it doesn’t really affect how we practice but obviously, the concerns are different when designing for a pandemic. But we can take the example of schools. Before the 1950’s, we had schools that were way better equipped to handle pandemics and then we began to go down this path where schools became more closed in with less windows until they became bunkers that we have realized are not that great at dealing with viruses and things that are floating in the air, so we were much better off having the windows. We knew that in the 1920s when we built with the flu pandemic, but we have this amnesia that happens when we fall asleep at the wheel. So, the thing is that we need to be more empowered to drive those ideas to clients. I think as architects we need to be more on a mission to get things done while being less prone to just acquiescing to the norm. We really need to take this as an opportunity to say, you know, we’ve been right in some ways all along about this and we need to continue to push and experiment how we to make our public spaces better. “ I think our sustainability goals can start to be met when we realize that we need less of these formal spaces that deplete our cities resources and instead create more informal public spaces that are flexible. ”
Do you hold the belief that architects have a strong social responsibility?
I think we have a lot of power relative to the conversation. I don’t agree or accept the notion that we’re subject to these forces because there’s a lot that we can still do and we need to take that responsibility with a lot more Gusto, if you will. For example, we just had a very drastic change in our government. We went from four years of over protecting our assets and that led to changes in terms of regulations for climate change. There is a very sharp line has been drawn and, you know, I think the current administration is trying to induce all of those things so they’re a little emboldened. I think that that is true all the way down to everybody and the world should feel a little bit that way. And the reason why I say this is because we’re now finally over that hump where people thought that nobody’s ever going to buy an electric car. for example. So, these things have been slowly pushing, and we’re going to get there. So, I think the prime right now is right for us to feel that that responsibility and to start to act on it.
thing to do better every time. It doesn’t have to be everything, you don’t have to address everything at once, but you should always make it a point to tackle at least one thing that you think could be better.
The global issues have many moving parts so it’s important to focus on what you can do to contribute to a future with real progress.
What I don’t accept is that you can’t do anything about it, right? That’s a completely poor attitude. If you’re if you’re in a position where you have anything to do with the built environment, you can at least pick one
I wanted to touch on the Women in Architecture Exhibition that you’ve been invited to participate in. You are a strong presence in regard to gender equality in design, do you think you could speak on your experiences with these events and more generally how gender inequality has presented itself throughout your academic and professional career?
I came of age, grew up, and went to school at a time when architecture was super heavily male dominated and yet in school when I was doing my undergrad, we were pretty much 50/50, and sometimes even more women than men. But that thing where women kind of fall away from the position of being in the profession is very true. And in my own experience, I always sort of laugh when I see a headline in some article saying ‘why are women leaving the profession’, like you seriously have to ask this? This is not a question. Everybody knows exactly why and this is not just within architecture.
We do very poorly for women in general as a society. Women typically have two full time jobs, and that’s really the reason why women end up leaving. The job of caregiver and on top of that being an architect, which happens to be a super difficult profession in terms of just the intellectual horsepower that it requires. You’re constantly thinking, and it requires silence as well as the ability to focus and zone in. So, we put women in a very difficult position across society, but for architects it’s even more heightened. And it gets to a point where many women say “well, maybe I’m just better off not even trying.” And I know that very well, I know that for myself!
I remember when I became pregnant in a big firm, it was basically like having The Scarlet Letter in your forehead, its the kiss of death. You’re no longer going to be in the profession. I think that’s unacceptable. It took me starting my own practice to be able to find a way to deal with that and that was my way to handle it. Other people have different approaches and that’s perfectly fine, but because of my personal experience, I have a very different sense of urgency on the issue. I want to make sure that women who work with us feel as if they have a sense of balance in their career. But generally, we do not see childcare and paid leave as a priority like that. They are a lot of issues compounded that we need to be very truthful about because the fact is that this affects women disproportionately and it has to be corrected. And the United States historically has not been there, so I also I think it’s a cultural thing as well. When you look at the overall arc of how this issue has progress here, some people see feminism as kind of an evil word. I do not see it like that, and I think we all need to become feminists and start to advocate for women because part of the reason why women are not at the upper tiers in the field is not necessarily the fault of one firm. This is a much bigger cultural problem and I think the industry can do a lot more to address it.
I think that it is great that we are having the conversation, but it requires people really taking it on because there’s too many people not willing to because its iffy. There’s almost too much of this “I don’t want to upset anyone” and you know, I kind of feel the opposite. I want people to be a little upset about these things, let’s light a fire about it and see if we can get stuff done.
