Designing Responsibly: from visible to invisible infrastructure in Red Hook
In my final MFA studio we prioritized making something that would be tangible and beneficial to the community of Red Hook in the short time we had available. We didn't design an object or experience, but an attempt to create a methodology on how to work with a community within the constraints of an educational design studio. Through locating in the site of the underpass beneath the Gowanus Expressway we developed a participatory bottom up approach: talking to people, building trust, and responding together.
Role
Design Researcher
Design Strategist
Co-Designer
Date
Fall 2019
Team
Zoe Banzon - Channing Corbett - Natalie Tillen
Problem Statement
How might we, as graduate design students, engage in a community and practice design with care within the constraints of a one semester design studio?
Design Principles
Co-design with stakeholders: We want to make sure we consciously acknowledge our responsibility to not step in as “experts” doing a top-down intervention, and instead ensure we take a participatory approach to co-create with community members.
Make feasible impact: Given that the time frame for this project is roughly seven weeks, we want to ensure that we identify channels that are open and fast moving enough to realize our intervention.
Site
Red Hook is a neighborhood in New York City that was highly impacted by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The neighborhood is surrounded on one side by water and bordered on the other by the imposing Gowanus Expressway. Residents and visitors to Red Hook must use the nearby Smith-9th Street F/G subway station and walk beneath the Expressway through a pedestrian underpass.
With who?
Red Hook Neighborhood Senior Center - We worked with the program director, Maria.
Miccio Community Center - We worked with the program director, Roland.
Graphic designed by Channing
Talking to people
Following a human-centered design approach, we started by talking to people. Through short interviews with people in the vicinity of the underpass, we found that safety was the main concern to be addressed, rather than creating a “designed” and usable space. As we spent time in the space and reached out to organizations who were already working with Red Hook, we were led to the senior center.
Policy Proposal: Increase the Underpass Pedestrian Cross Time
For children and teenagers, seniors, families with strollers, people with different levels of physical ability, or just simple bad timing making it across the full underpass (both sets of traffic as well as the wide meridian) in one go is rare and difficult.
In our primary research, “danger” and “unsafe” emerged as the dominant description of the underpass. There is a clear need for safety when it comes to bringing design into this space. Currently, the space is designed for vehicle traffic-- what could it look like if it was designed for Red Hook residents?
We created a proposal to send to Brooklyn Borough Commissioner Mr. Keith Bray to add a leading pedestrian interval at the underpass, which will allow for a longer opportunity to cross the intersection and help people move across the whole section without getting stuck directly under the expressway. We worked with Brooklyn Community Board 6 and collected signed petitions from members of the Red Hook Senior Center in support of the proposal.
This entry point highlighted the conflict of who is (supposedly) caring for the site and the actual safety and care for the people within this hard infrastructure of the entrance/border of Red Hook.
Building trust
Building trust meant showing up for face-to-face interactions rather than communicating through phone calls and e-mails. Such interactions led to a more meaningful, collaborative partnership, as we carefully listened to what Maria was excited about and what her current ideas and initiatives are, which manifests in the trust-building artifacts that we created with and for them.
Floor plan design and Building signage for the Red Hook Senior Center
The site of the underpass led us to the Red Hook Senior Center and its wonderful and passionate director, Maria Sanchez. In our conversations with Maria, we learned that there were a few visual design needs of the center she was having difficulty fulfilling, including an updated floor plan design (which can be found in every room) and a signage for the building. We were able to complete drafts of these designs for Maria, iterate, and produce final products based on her feedback.
Our second deliverable helped to reflect the extreme care Maria has the senior center that she was unable to actualize herself. We know that these materials will be in continued use after the end of our involvement and become a regular part of the maintenance of the center. These trust-building artifacts showed the care we take to our work and our word, acting as a bridge to the final deliverable.
Responding together
Throughout our conversations with people at the Senior Center, we found what they are currently excited about and worked with them to create a plan for that rather than presenting something out of nowhere.
Intergenerational Civic Activism Workshop: Red Hook Senior Center and the Miccio Community Center
As we continued to work with Maria, we learned about her recent collaboration with the director of the Miccio Community Center, Ronald Knight, for intergenerational bonding between the Senior Center and the youth of the Miccio Community Center. These two centers have always been right next to each other, and there had been little collaboration between them until this recent initiative. We proposed to co-create an intergenerational futures workshop for both centers as we recognize the potential in the youth and the seniors collectively imagining the future of Red Hook.The youth are the future of Red Hook, and the seniors have the lived experience of the past of Red Hook. We have co-designed the workshop with Maria and Roland, which will be held January 2020.
As we transitioned from the hard, visible infrastructure of our chosen site, we eventually revealed this emerging intergenerational connection: how can these two groups become the soft, invisible, infrastructure of Red Hook, one to pass along knowledge and ownership of the space to new young residents who will build the future of Red Hook?