Using art to design a future home for all — Colloqate

BY SELINA McCALLUM

What does a perfect world look like for everybody, and can it exist? Imagine a space where you do not feel uncomfortable because it was actually built with you in mind. It was built for the person who is handicapped, the person who is experiencing poverty, and the person who is new to the country.

Colloqate is a multidisciplinary Non-Profit Design Justice practice focused on expanding community access to, and building power through the design of social, civic, and cultural spaces. Their mission is to intentionally organize, advocate and design spaces of racial, social and cultural equity.

The name comes from merging these three words together: colloquial, locate and collocate.

Colloquial means informal. Locate means to discover the exact place or position of. Lastly, collocate means to be habitually juxtaposed with another at a frequency greater than chance.

Bryan Lee is the Design Director of Colloqate and a national Design Justice Advocate. When he was younger, he moved all across the United States with his parents who were in the military.

“I lived in 32 homes throughout the entirety of my life,” said Lee. “I think a lot of travel opens your eyes to a lot of different places and the way in which we interact with those spaces. Fundamentally, that’s what shapes me into an architect.”

Lee has a decade of experience in the field of architecture. Lee is the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized the Design as Protest National Day of Action.

He knew he wanted to be an architect at the age of nine, when he compared living in Sicily, Italy for three years, and then returning to Trenton, New Jersey.

“When I moved back home to the states, it was very shocking. It was so drastic that it shook my little young mind into an acknowledgement into what different spaces were and what they did to you emotionally,” said Lee. “The people that I care about deserve more out of the spaces and places.”

Bryan has led two award-winning architecture and design programs for high school students through the Arts Council of New Orleans and the National Organization of Minority Architects.

The programs aim to speak to the potential for equitable spaces and attempts to visually and physically represent their collective aspirations for the future.

Lee works with Sue Mobley, the Director of Advocacy at Colloqate Design. She has a decade of experience in New Orleans non-profit and policy sectors. Mobley holds a Bachelor of Arts from Loyola University New Orleans in Anthropology and a Masters of Arts in Political Science from the American University in Cairo.

Her primary research interests are in urban studies, public history, and design ethnography with a focus on race, class, and gender.

“Part of our theory of practice is that nearly every injustice in the world has some formal, physical space that supports or manifests that injustice in some fashion. So, if we are able to recognize the places in which we built physical monuments to supremacy, monuments to oppression, and then dismantle them, rethink the systems and rebuild new things that support justice, support liberation,” said Lee.

The team at Colloqate believe the language of a built environment tells a complex story of place that can either speak to our values and ideals or reveal persisting inequity and injustice.

Through programming and design projects, Colloqate seeks to dismantle the privilege and power structures that use the design professions to maintain systems of injustice.

On Saturday, January 11^th, 2020, Lee was part of an all day workshop called Creative Practice as Protest at the OCAD University which was open to dozens of youth between the age of 18 and 25. The goal was for them to come together and think of ways to make Toronto an equitable place for all to live.

Saskia van Kampen, an Assistant Professor for the Visual Communication Design program at the San Francisco State University School of Design and Cheryl Giraudy, Associate Professor, Faculty of Design at OCAD University worked together on an interactive project in 2018 at DesignTO. They asked designers to display their work that, instead of succeeded, failed to be inclusive.

They wanted to ensure that the youth who participated in the workshop were coming from all over the city and GTA.

“This was important and as we immersed ourselves in finding examples of community-based projects for spaces, places, and other expressions of place making, we found a wealth of creative people and neighbourhoods engaged in advocacy, activism and justice projects across the city,” said Giraudy.

All the youth who participated came up with innovative and new ideas that would reduce injustice in industries like heath, shelter, food, entertainment and mobility. Each idea was so unique and viable.

“There have been so many amazing stories and projects that we have learned about through each of the forums and the workshop that I could not possibly pick one, but I can say that I have been humbled by those who have shared their stories, often very deep and poignant,” said van Kampen.

Lena Phillips, Program Manager for the Youth Opportunities Fund and Graduate Research Assistant on the project commented on the atmosphere of the room.

“I appreciated the supportive energy cultivated in the space. Folks were so generous in offering insights, informed by their diverse experiences, to help build up each other’s ideas,” said Phillips.

Tamarinn Alexander, a photographer and artist, enjoyed focusing on the solutions instead of the problems.

“It was nice to see everyone coming together to solve problems that not many people take the time to figure out. I think that workshops like these enable us and make us feel that our voice does matter,” said Alexander.

The research team imagines a world in 2030 where people are more understanding and empathetic, marginalized communities are included in discussions especially when it comes to gentrification, and more spaces of liberation and justice.

“When those most impacted by systemic barriers are designing and leading change in these spaces, I believe we will see transformative change,” said Phillips.

Lee added in his presentation that marginalized communities have to challenge power, dismantle power, and obtain power.

“We require that more people have access to the process that power is distributed in a more equitable and just fashion, and that the outcome reflects the voice of the people,” said Lee. “It is the healing that makes us whole. We have to continue to make actions that make us whole.”