Travel Log Episode 1: Getting the Ball Rolling, aka What’s The Plan?

Timestamps:

Intro: 00:19

Welcome to my Brain: 00:51

General Info: 1:31

Trip Planning: 3:31

Tanzania: 4:34

Spain: 8:40

London: 11:45

NYC: 14:04

Planning Thoughts: 16:36

Outro: 17:38

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Quick note before we start, while I have been doing a majority of this planning the United States is being taken over by fascism and I.C.E. A reminder that design is political, space is political, and we need to combat their horrible actions in every way we can, including planning for the future, which is what I hope to be doing here.

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Welcome to the travel logs, A Design Over Drinks Deep Dive series, following my experience as the Spencer De Mille Travelling Fellowship recipient. I'm going to take you along for the adventure. From proposal to planning, to travel and documentation process, plus the dissertation and final presentation later in the year.

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Somehow starting is always the hardest part. Just getting things rolling is usually where I hesitate. Because once I start, I’m all in and becomes my focus. Also this is a big THING, and I want to do it RIGHT. So I am thinking about it ALL the time instead of SOME of the time.

Also writing/talking this alllll out is going to help me organize. So welcome to the inside of my brain.

First off, what is this travel log for? Why am I doing it? Well in 2025 I applied for the Spencer DeMille Travelling Fellowship. The idea of the fellowship is to support designers pursuing immersive global research that elevates design thinking and strengthens the Pacific Northwest design community. 

It was established with funds contributed by the IIDA Northern Pacific Chapter Knowledge Advancement Fund in honor of past president, Spencer de Mille. The fellowship is intended to support foreign travel undertaken to research new and innovative practices related to the built environment that will further the recipient’s career goals and could have positive implications for the communities of the Pacific Northwest. 

A career goal for about a decade to go abroad and study design. Now that I was off the IIDA NPC Chapter Board after my president run I could finally apply. So in spring of last year I put together a proposal. I had been floating around ideas in my head for years. At one point pre pandemic lockdown I even interviewed someone investigating a potential proposal idea. So, I took the years of brainstorming sessions, random ideas on scrap paper, I dug for scattered notes across the many half used notebooks like a squirrel looking for where they buried their nuts, and thought about what I (Kendra at that exact moment) wanted out of this. 

Here is what I came up with: I want to explore the design of public space and how it can support the fostering and building of communities through different theories of Urban Planning, and how they can apply to the designing of interior spaces. I started with 6 places I could explore because of time and budget - and narrowed it down to four. NYC, London, Spain, and Tanzania. I had a short window to plan so I did reach out to who I could and crossed my fingers that it will work out if I get the grant.

I wrote it all out, including a proposed budget, and timeframes for travel, sent it to friends to review, made some adjustments and submitted. Selected by a blind jury, the universe was working in my favor and I won.

So what IS actually happening? After being awarded I reached out to my Tanzania contacts since it is the most remote place to get to and worked from there. 

This has been SO MUCH planning - especially because I’m hopping from country to country and working with other organizations so scheduling WHEN to go has been a bit of a challenge.

Finally, the timing of the largest portion of the trip got figured out - the rough 2 weeks in Tanzania - then it was planning out how the rest of the trip will go; from Tanzania I’ll go to Spain, then London, then back to the states via NYC before heading home to Seattle. So I booked flights (truly a feat in itself) for my transit across the globe. Then the hotels for when I am not crashing on a friends (seriously helping the budget!), and then applied for visas, and bought train tickets and scheduled vaccines. Logistics galore and I absolutely have a color coded Google Sheet to keep it all straight.

In the meantime I’m actively starting my background research, to better understand the theories I want to study and to help build my research program. To make this complicated on myself, each place I go I will be studying a new Urban Design Theory based on the building type.

As already mentioned the largest part will be traveling to a village in Africa to look at an elementary school. With this school I want to look at the Theory Of Community Development. I actually have a personal connection with this group. I was on this project in its early SD/Programming (back in 2017 I want to say, at one of my old firms) before it was taken over by a team led by Marc Oplinger, who was at Gensler Seattle at the time. Anyway, one of the many things that makes this project unique is the way the community was integrated into not only the design process but the building process as well. More about this later.

Turns out, “Community Development”  is actually super broad (Urban Planners are probably like DUH) and so far have found nothing that actually uses the term “Community Development”. In  my initial research it was described as a “bottom up approach, integrating the needs of the local community.” Searching using this descriptor led me eventually to Participatory Planning. This began in the 1960’s and 1970’s as an alternate way to approach urban planning from the traditional “rationalist” approach. So you know, actually asking the end users what they want.

Participatory Planning branches out into more specific methods - Advocacy Planning, Transactive Planning, Radical Planning and Communicative Planning. 

The closest to the current model used in my experience is Transactive Planning. Replace “Planner” with “Designer” and the same applies. We conduct user group meetings and other means to talk with and discover the needs of the communities we are working in, and use that to inform and shape our designs, sometimes even including the development of specific programming goals. This in turn educates the public on interior design and architecture and some of the barriers we have in our work.

Advocacy Planning is what it sounds like; making sure underrepresented, marginalized communities work with the planner (or designer) to be sure their specific needs are met within the design and plan for the space.

Communicative Planning is holding meaningful conversations between stakeholders to come to a consensus about the design, and expertise is brought in when needed.

Truly all three are often used within the planning stages of the built environment. Which is why I want to look at this first project through the lens of Radical Planning.

Radical Planning is a model based on the idea that design should focus on "decolonization", "democratization"(de mock rid i zation), "self-empowerment" and "reaching out". John Friedmann, who wrote the basis of the movement, described this model as an "Agropolitan development" paradigm (para-dime), emphasizing the re-localization of primary production and manufacture. 

Instead of forcing modern/ mainstream ways of development upon rural spaces with outsourced everything, a more “local” approach where not just materials are from within a certain area but also production and manufacturing.Which is something we try to do and will find on a LEED or otherwise notable sustainable building. I believe today we can go farther by promoting skills that support the community beyond the single building.

I did have to look up “agropolitan development” and it breaks down to “agro” as in agriculture and “politan” as in metropolitan or city. Meaning a town or city that is in an area of agricultural land, or a farm in an urban area. 

It boils down to here we are going to look at radical ways we can develop agropolitan areas that support the sustained long term growth and health of the community.

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OK, I’ve got my first place into a better plan. Here is where I start reaching out blind. The timeframe in which I had to put together the proposal did not leave time to get responses from all the places I plan to study. Especially when I did not already have a contact there. Now that I have won the award and have an idea of when I am doing this trip I am hoping the places I want to look at will be willing to participate.

The second case study is in Merida, Spain where I hope to be studying a youth center, Factoría Joven designed by Selgascano Architects. Here I plan to be looking at the theory of Drive in Culture, developed by sociologist Gerard Saucier.

Being a space for the teenagers who are just on the cusp of adulthood, finding out who they are and what they want to do with themselves as they mature, the Drive in Culture made sense. This theory proposes that human behavior is driven by two things: the drive for autonomy and the drive for relatedness. Nothing is more being a teenager/ young adult than that.

The Youth Factory of Merida is part of a larger program by IJEX. They have two types of programming: Youth Creative Spaces, and Youth Factories. 

I chose the Factoria Joven of Merida because of its design, but also because it has been around for over a decade. I want to see how the youth that utilize it have molded its design to fit their current use, plus the sense of place within the larger community and how that connects with its design intent.

Selgastino Architects out of Madrid are, according to Wikipedia known for, “polychromy, creative exploration with new materials, and an understanding of the relationship between architectural work and surrounding landscape.” They definitely fulfilled that description with this project, and I hope to see how it has morphed from open in 2011 to today.

An add on to this portion of the trip, I will be in Merida for the Easter Holiday. This was not planned, but the timing of the Tanzania portion dictated the rest. My hope is that I will be able to take a few days and experience the way this deeply religious place celebrates. I have been searching what is happening while I’m there, and am hoping to respectfully observe some of the Spanish traditions.

I was originally going to also study a second theory, but have now decided to drop it. First, I think I did get the two types of IJEX programs confused. The Youth Creative Spaces utilized adaptive reuse of many old and unused buildings, which led me to want to integrate the Broken Window Theory. This would be an interesting combo to explore, but also I don't need more to study. I am already feeling the weight of 4 different theories, never mind a fifth.

So what if I don’t get permission to film? Then what? Well, luckily I have rep friends who are connecting me to other ways I could look at this urban theory. Not sure what that looks like yet, but something along the lines of observing the people of Spain during the Easter holidays could be a unique opportunity to still explore public gathering spaces through the Theory of Drive in Culture.

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Next up is London, UK. Here I did some initial outreach. The Barbican, built after WWII by Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon is a civic project, with public arts space on the ground floor, and a residential tower above. Combining community through art with the population post war is an excellent way to support growth in the economy, and the arts.

I actually came across an article by Spanish Designer and Historian, Alberto Martinez-Garcia who walks though why the indoor public space the Barbican provides is important. This led me to want to look at it through the lense of Theory of Creative Class, first developed by economist and urbanist Robert Florida in the early 2000’s.

This theory is a framework for understanding how the creative class (think us- arch&design- but also technology, engineering, and the traditional arts as well) drive economic growth, because it attracts new businesses, new ideas, and therefore growth. 

Factors that can attract the creative class are diverse and tolerant culture, a high quality of life, and a vibrant and dynamic urban environment. We’ll look at how the Barbican provides that to the public, but also its residents.

If you are a theatre person, like me - the Barbican is a dream of an idea, living connected to a place where art is nurtured, celebrated, and performed as part of the fabric of the building, not an add on or afterthought. This unique multi use center (which besides the theatre, also has a Library, School for Girls, and a School for Music and Drama, restaurants, and many gardens and terraces)  is still thriving after opening in 1982. Its 2027 season including Sunday In the Park with George with Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey - notable figures in pop culture (Wicked singing break here) - just one example how it is still a part of the global and local culture shifts. It will be interesting to explore how the spaces work together.

As the United States exists at this moment, things are rough. We are at the beginning of this particular battle, and have a long way to go before things are peaceful. But once we get there, if we get there, we will need a way to rebuild our culture and there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the Barbican Center design.

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Lastly, the first city I ever loved, NYC. I lived here right out of high school to chase my dream of becoming a professional company dancer. That did not come to pass, I did fall in love, and discovered Interior Design.

This is another one I am still working to make contact with, and honestly if it doesn’t work out, will probably also just be completely dropped as a case study. But here is the plan for now.

I want to study the HelpOne Building in Brooklyn. Newly renovated 1987-era shelter by Curtus + Ginsburg Architects through the lens of the Right To The City Theory. The idea was first proposed by Henri Lefebvre ( La ferver) in his 1968 book Le Droit à la Ville, and taken up by social movements since then. This theory says there is “a place for life detached from the growing effects that commodification and capitalism are proposed to have had over social interaction and the rise of posited spatial inequalities in worldwide cities throughout the last two centuries.”

Although that sounds like a lot, the TLDR is even though it feels like the inequality of space, and loss of face to face interaction that we are seeing as a result of capitalism, are taking over, we have a right to live a happy and fulfilled life that includes basic rights.

There are 14 rights that I am not going to recite at this moment, but many overlap with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the UNESCO 17 paths to sustainability. If you want to learn more about the UNESCO 17, feel free to listen to our Sustainability 101 episode.

I want to investigate how the new design of the Help One Building supports the rights of all members of the community to basic needs. This is so timely, and I hope I do get to explore this space.

So often, especially in a big city the needs of many unhoused, or low income families are far apart, and require travel and time out of the day. By basic needs being connected to and a part of folks' housing, builds community, and community is one of the best ways to combat not only fascism, but many of the social problems our society faces today. 

This building being the newest, completed in 2024, I am interested to see how the integrated community spaces have changed the way the residents live, and if the staff have noticed a difference in the people within the building.

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Booking this trip was a lot. I basically am taking a dozen or so one way flights, each to a different destination. This was not a simple there and back, it's a hop across continents. 

While I am mulling through how to best approach each one, I am ALSO booking flights, making sure I can stay within my 5K budget and still get the time I need to study each place.

My internal anxiety made the first leg (Seattle to Tanzania) a bit daunting, but once I got the flight into the country figured out…I somehow feel less concerned about the rest.

I got caught in a bit of a catch 22, i need to reach out to places, but dont feel like I could until I booked, but I didn’t want to book anything until I knew I could do my studies there (see above about outreach) and then that felt like a lot of working around OTHERS schedules and not the one I need to follow, so then that put be back to needing to book…and so on.

So now we're mostly booked (as of this recording) and focusing on the study procedures for each place….which will be our next episode!

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