Transcript: Podcast #1

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;28;17

Ron Acob

Hello and welcome to dialogue presented by Design for the Common Good. A resource that offers a collection of exchanges that are helping to shape perspectives and understanding in the space of community based design practices. I am your host, Ron Acob

 

00;00;28;19 – 00;01;03;10

Ron Acob

Welcome back listeners. This is the Oaks savanna and ITECK Center. The voices at the intersection of ITECK and architecture series. This is a two episode podcast series, so we highly recommend you check out the first episode as it lays down the background for today’s story. In a previous episode, we heard from Judy BlueHorse Skelton, Emma Johnson, Mendy Miller, Athena Rilatos, Clifton, and Christine Bruno and Emma Jewell Cohen as they introduce us to the story of the Oak Savanna in ITECK Center, which is short for Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge Center.

 

00;01;03;12 – 00;01;39;26

Ron Acob

They also shared how the collaborative process behind the restoration of the PSU Oak savanna serves as an example for restoring the health of other urban forests, and also as a call to action to approach climate change solutions through Indigenous lenses. You can find that episode now at designforthe commongood.net In today’s episode, we’re going to continue this story with hearing how the students and faculty from the PSU School of Architecture have contributed to this effort, and how the lessons learned from this project are contributing to a shift in paradigm within architecture, education and practice.

 

00;01;39;28 – 00;01;54;03

Ron Acob

We will be hearing from many voices today and I’ll be introducing them as you go through today’s story. I don’t really have much left to say here, except let’s continue on with the introduction of our first five storytellers.

 

00;01;54;05 – 00;02;19;22

Sergio Palleroni

My name is Sergio Palleroni. I am, professor of architecture and the founder of the Center for Public Interest Design and I’ve been teaching for this is the fourth decade, and they almost completed. And I’ve known for participatory design or what’s now called public interest. design

 

00;02;19;24 – 00;02;37;11

Eric Giovannetti

My name is Eric Giovanetti. I’m the center for Public interest design project manager and coordinator for the ITECK Center project. I am a recent graduate of Portland State School of Architecture Master of Architecture program, and I started work on this project in a design studio in 2022.

 

00;02;37;14 – 00;03;09;10

Travis Bell

My name is Travis Bell. I am a professor, here at the School of Architecture. I’ve been here for, I think, around 15 or 16 years. Prior to coming into architecture, I got a degree in philosophy from PSU, my alma mater, and then I went into carpentry, which was fantastic. And then, and then eventually found my way back to school through architecture.

 

00;03;09;12 – 00;03;45;11

Ardon Lee

My name is Ardon, and, my background is in woodworking and architecture. And music and my connection with the Oak Savanna project has been, that I began working on it with, through coursework here and then through interest and being asked by professors, I became involved and the Center for Public Interest Design, which dovetailed into also continuing work on arts.

 

00;03;45;11 – 00;04;24;00

Sam Barber

My name is Sam Barber.My I grew up in Oregon. I’m from Eugene, moved up to Portland for undergrad about 15 years ago, and I enrolled in, a masters in architecture at PSU in 2021 and graduated in 2024. And after graduation, I was hired by the Center for Public Interest Design, to work as, a designer and ambassador for the school, with the architect of record on the the ITECK Center Project.

 

00;04;24;02 – 00;04;25;09

Ron Acob

All right.

 

00;04;25;11 – 00;04;44;09

Ron Acob

So as a starting point for today’s episode, we’re actually going to take you a few years back. And no, not in 2019 when ITECK and the PSU School of Architecture first started collaborating. But actually back to when Judy and Sergio first started working together at Portland State University.

 

00;04;44;11 – 00;05;07;22

Sergio Palleroni

I just in this project, we we call it Oak Savanna. I just I knew, Judy from because we were both part of an effort which PSU is famous for, of having requiring a capstone experience which engages you in a community project. And actually, I had learned a lot from her, and we had become friends, but disconnected.

 

00;05;07;22 – 00;05;31;13

Sergio Palleroni

And then we were years later, just six, seven years ago, we were involved with the city and trying to create a resilience. Net framework for earthquake, because Portland is at the heart of the, you know, the massive earthquake. And the city was trying to figure out how do we create resilience. And and then in a moment, you know, that probably they changed our fates.

 

00;05;31;15 – 00;05;48;28

Sergio Palleroni

I decided to write Judy with the ex-presence Stephen Percy, and we both got cut. Judy needs to talk to this because this site the city had chosen was the Oak Savanna, but they weren’t seeing as an Oak Savanna. They’re as an empty field. So we invited Judy because we knew she’d been imagining a different future for this Oak Savanna.

 

00;05;48;28 – 00;06;22;03

Sergio Palleroni

So it writes that. And so she came and spoke and we had this big PG&E grant that was bringing MIT fame, world famous, M.I.T. has a system where they, they go around the world and help communities. They could suffer earthquake damage or disaster damage to prepare for it and create infrastructure to prepare for it. And we had MIT there and all that wonderful thinking and machines and very like this technology hub there was to help people communicate after a disaster.

 

00;06;22;03 – 00;06;48;18

Sergio Palleroni

It was very bulletproof. And there comes in Judy and she talks about a different vision of life. She’s not even talking about hard technology or communication or anything like that. She’s talking about creating a space that would be resilient to the changes of the Earth. And everybody scientists, politicians, even in MIT, there was there had flown in. Everybody said, that’s it.

 

00;06;48;20 – 00;07;21;16

Sergio Palleroni

Forget the technology solution. It’s really about restoring the capacity the Earth. So and that resonated to me because I’ve been working with Native Americans in in Montana, South Dakota, Mexico, Peru, South America and, and their sense of what is, what is healthy and it comes from millennials observing and reflecting and taking a different, slower way of building and integration that was much more sustainable.

 

00;07;21;18 – 00;07;38;13

Ron Acob

So how exactly did Sergio and Judy see architecture fit into this effort? Well, first, I think that we have to know a little bit more about this emerging field in architecture called public interest design, which is a work that Sergio has been deeply involved in for many years.

 

00;07;38;15 – 00;08;08;12

Sergio Palleroni

My definition of public design probably shifts every year. It shifts every year because I’m beginning to realize it’s just it’s a human right and you know, the right to good design, the the right to a home, all the themes, the right to schools, good schools, the right to a good classroom, the right to a a beautiful living environment of the city, the the equal right to a good environment in the city.

 

00;08;08;15 – 00;08;38;22

Sergio Palleroni

And so it deals with all the issues of equality and, and sustainability and all those things. So normally those things will only be accessible in architecture to those who paid our fees. And, and public design postulates know that those should be available to everybody because they make a life. The difference between a life and a different trajectory you could have if you lived in a good home or went to a good school.

 

00;08;38;25 – 00;08;53;05

Ron Acob

And in the public interest design perspective, this is actually done through conducting participatory processes and design. It’s about bringing all of the voices together around the table and co-designing and making decisions about our built environments together.

 

00;08;53;07 – 00;09;23;00

Sergio Palleroni

I wasn’t the first to say this, but I think it’s a human right. It should be institute as a human right. So and then once you say it’s a human right, and you realized that you have to learn to talk to people, you have to learn to have meaningful conversations with people and make your relationship with people like reciprocal and and build trust between you and all the things that you’re never taught in school through the chain architecture.

 

00;09;23;03 – 00;09;43;26

Ron Acob

And the Center for Public Interest Design at Portland State University School of Architecture was established to introduce this practice in architecture education and equip future designers and architects with this knowledge. But now, what happens when you mix both ITECK and public interest design values and practices together? In the restoration of the Oak Savanna and ITECK Center?

 

00;09;43;28 – 00;10;12;12

Sergio Palleroni

So I started this conversation with Judy with a bunch of design studios through covid. After Covid and the students came up with some manifestations of how to build on this because we wanted to not just restore it, but we also built a technology center, which was like a living lab, which would be managed by students, where we would be just going out to the field, learning from the field, from what we were growing these native plants and things.

 

00;10;12;14 – 00;10;45;22

Sergio Palleroni

And so it’d be like slowly learning and implementing as we learned, just beautiful. There’s so much to tell here, but I’ll just end by saying that the the project that stood out was by one student still deeply involved here. So we had these beautiful projects. But at the end, the thing that struck most to Judy was one project we just said, what we need to do is build a table from wood from the Native forest and put it out there so we can all sit around and talk and reflect and decide what we’re going to build.

 

00;10;45;24 – 00;10;49;09

Sergio Palleroni

And she said, that’s exactly it.

 

00;10;49;11 – 00;11;08;21

Ron Acob

And since then, many more generations of ITECK and architecture students have gathered around this physical and metaphoric table, which will make a lot more sense in the second half of this episode. But to rope us back in, this really becomes a pivotal point because it shapes the way that we engage participants and invite ideas, expertise, and experiences.

 

00;11;08;21 – 00;11;17;23

Ron Acob

In a revisioning of the ITECK Center. And Eric, who was also one of the students, taught us about how all of this has been playing out.

 

00;11;17;26 – 00;11;45;27

Eric Giovannetti

Yeah, many of our engagements are periodic, so we have focus groups. That’s probably our most frequent. And those happen typically every other week. And that’s something Emma and I have been doing for a while. We, basically hold an open meeting. So it often the subjects I’ll often encompass kind of what is the day to day business of what we’re doing to realize the ITECK Center project.

 

00;11;45;29 – 00;12;18;00

Eric Giovannetti

But it is open to all students. And then there are kind of a host of other meetings that occur less frequently. The most notable being the seasonal gatherings, which happen typically once a term, though in the spring term the beginning has the spring gathering, and the very end is the summer gathering. Because most people are gone in the summer, we are in some ways trying to figure out what are the next steps to including more students.

 

00;12;18;02 – 00;12;20;24

Eric Giovannetti

Another way is through architecture classes.

 

00;12;20;27 – 00;12;34;27

Ron Acob

And there is one particular professor in the School of Architecture and faculty in the center for Public Interest Design who does quite a good job doing this engaging students in the classroom, then expanding beyond from there.

 

00;12;34;29 – 00;12;57;12

Travis Bell

The project first came to me through Sergio. Sergio, and Judy really, I think, came up with this crazy idea. And because I do a lot of design build work here at the university, Sergio came to me immediately to start to talk about what this kind of design build project might look like.

 

00;12;57;14 – 00;13;30;26

Travis Bell

Before we go on further, let’s break down this idea of the academic design build, because it’ll make a lot more sense as Travis goes over the courses and projects in depth and how it’s contributing to us, reshaping how we understand the role of the architect and what architecture practice can look like. That includes students, educators, and many more participants gathered around the design table and having hands on connection through literally building these spaces, which in many ways also parallels the way that Judy and Mechanics students in the land and the environment in their courses.

 

00;13;30;29 – 00;13;43;20

Ron Acob

Travis, you’ve mentioned this term called Design Build, and we’re bringing this idea to the eventual redesign of the high tech center. So could you explain a little bit more what is design build in the academic realm?

 

00;13;43;22 – 00;14;15;01

Travis Bell

So design build in the academic setting in schools of architecture refers to, the kind of simple premise that students can design and then construct what they’ve designed and that that creates this iterative loop for, for learning. And suddenly that the, the lines that you’ve put on a page, have more meaning because you’ve then tried to put them together.

 

00;14;15;03 – 00;14;42;08

Travis Bell

And so to your point earlier, I think design builds can happen at lots of different scales of investigation. They can be individual where someone’s just trying to figure out how to put something together. But usually when we talk about it, we’re referring to a collaborative process amongst lots of people to bring a collective design into reality by building it.

 

00;14;42;11 – 00;15;10;17

Travis Bell

But by building it with the designers who created in the first place. It’s, I think, fairly unique, at least the the term is fairly unique to the academic setting. And we really value it as a, as a pedagogical tool. And part of it is what I just described that it has, it has these, these really kind of rich loops of learning for students.

 

00;15;10;20 – 00;15;18;00

Ron Acob

But so what exactly has been created through these courses and academic design build projects?

 

00;15;18;03 – 00;15;47;08

Travis Bell

I had my students who do an annual design build class. They they worked with Judy and Emma to design a pavilion space for the Oak Savanna, which would be not the full ITECK center, but a kind of outdoor classroom space. And we coupled that effort with, an annual design build project that, that I’ve been doing for a long time for the Pickathon music festival.

 

00;15;47;09 – 00;16;10;09

Travis Bell

And so we got to work on that project together. And then most recently, I had a group of graduate students and undergraduate students, again, who had the opportunity to just focus on what the tectonics of the wall for, for the ITECK Center might be like just to begin to explore what’s possible.

 

00;16;10;11 – 00;16;17;23

Ron Acob

To further expand on this, let’s hear from Sam, who shared some of his experience being a student in these early courses.

 

00;16;17;26 – 00;17;00;16

Sam Barber

A huge component of it was, research, into the, the Indigenous principles, kind of driving the project. A lot of time was spent talking the Judy Blue Horse Skelton research into, Oak Savanna ecosystems, different, building materials and, sustainable, it’s just concepts. My, my involvement continued later on in graduate school in a class called Theoretical Tectonics, in which we studied how the, the, the constituent parts of a building.

 

00;17;00;16 – 00;17;22;07

Sam Barber

So the structure and the skin, and all the control layers, like insulation or moisture barriers, how all of those can be put together in a way, that contribute not just to the performance of a building or this building in particular, but also to the the goals, the bigger goals of the project.

 

00;17;22;09 – 00;17;43;19

Ron Acob

Also taking us back to 2022, Kevin O’Brien, an Indigenous designer of Craig and Miriam ancestry of the Torres Strait Islands, who was also a distinguished Visiting professor to PSU, got to collaborate with students and engage both ITECK and architecture students in a week long studio workshop on Indigenous design methodologies titled Finding Country.

 

00;17;43;21 – 00;18;12;22

Sergio Palleroni

So Kevin O’Brien, an extraordinary Aboriginal designer from Australia, came and I think changed our lives and kind of changed her perspective on what architecture could do. But he’s teaching us techniques that are transforming the way we are approaching design and even reevaluating how we live and the city who live. He asked us to sit down and erase anything in our cities that didn’t belong or wasn’t serving the community, and then reimagine it.

 

00;18;12;24 – 00;18;36;16

Sergio Palleroni

Had we had Kevin O’Brien here for for a week, and I was just part of our life, you know, we hung out with him. Everybody got to know him. The very person of a person he gathered. We took the effort to gather everybody, all the students at a certain level. There were over 100 students, and we’re all sitting around and following him in this exploration of our city.

 

00;18;36;18 – 00;18;55;21

Ron Acob

And the result of a lot of that work at the end of the 2022 school year, was a collaboration between ITECK and architecture students to create a book that would document all of the shared research, knowledge and collaboration that have grown since Judy and Sergio first started imagining what this collaboration could look like.

 

00;18;55;23 – 00;19;33;0

Sam Barber

The book was a product of the research, that had been conducted by our studio as well as, some of the work of an undergraduate studio a couple of years prior. And what is really cool about that book is that it, it it it shows that research. And then also it shows, for different, kind of potential versions of what the ITECK Center could be that were sited on different places on the, the site that took different approaches to, material usage.

 

00;19;33;08 – 00;20;00;14

Sam Barber

Had different relationships to kind of the natural order of the world, the sun and the rain, and different relationships to the Indigenous principles, that are highlighted in the project. And I think that book, you know, building off of the work of what the undergraduate students did, was just this incredible kind of jumping off point for the design process that we’re now in.

 

00;20;00;17 – 00;20;12;08

Sam Barber

And I look back at some of those projects, and I see I see so many different elements from all of them that have made it into this, into this final version.

 

00;20;12;10 – 00;20;34;09

Ron Acob

And the endless opportunities for student and community involvement doesn’t just stop there. More recently, in the fall of the 2024 PSU School year, a few PSU architecture students even got the chance to collaborate with Opsis Architecture, which is just a heads up. This is one of the architecture firm collaborators in this project, and together they help develop more design, build and research curriculum for a future generation of students.

 

00;20;34;12 – 00;20;40;16

Ron Acob

Here’s Razan and Sham, two architecture graduate students who will share with us what that experience was like.

 

00;20;40;19 – 00;21;05;10

Razan Zainab

So my name is Razan Zainab and I am originally from Palestine. I’ve been in the US for ten years. I am my first year for the grad architectural program. My name is Sham Aldura. I am in my first year in the grad school and I did my undergrad in, PSU in that project with, like my group.

 

00;21;05;12 – 00;21;32;29

Sham Aldura

And we did, start like an, a syllabus for the future courses in the ITECK Center and how students will get involved and how we will, try to get students from, the architecture department and then other school department, how we can get them involved in the ITECK center. We created three different type of topics.

 

00;21;33;01 – 00;21;57;23

Razan Zainab

Earthen walls. How can we educate people about earthen walls and how can they become more creative and create this, like, interior earthen walls, and then the water collections, how people can design these, like small modules to create, water collections for water celebrations and, the last one was, shading devices using, tree branches.

 

00;21;57;25 – 00;22;09;23

Ron Acob

To round out our conversation, let’s hear from one more architecture student who has also been involved in some of this work, and just so happened that I was able to catch up with him in one of the Oak Savanna seasonal gatherings.

 

00;22;09;26 – 00;22;34;24

Edward Hodge

My name is Edward Hodge. I’m a recent graduate from Portland State’s undergraduate architecture program. Last. So I graduated in the spring of 23. So I was first introduced to the Oak Savanna project. The project we added school working with, graduate students, partnering with them on designs for the future ITECK center.

 

00;22;34;26 – 00;23;13;24

Edward Hodge

And then later on, and then the following year, I worked on, project imagining a rocket mass heater and how that could support, events taking place here on the Oak savanna. Yeah. So my role has been in, in assisting and supporting some of those visions through the School of Architecture here on the Oak Savanna. And the first thing I really stuck out to me today is, in the typical, opening ceremonies that happen at these types of events, I think I just like the way that it really allows you to, like, take a moment and to breathe and to connect to the land that you’re working on.

 

00;23;13;24 – 00;23;20;03

Edward Hodge

And I think that especially today with the sun shining, I felt really special.

 

00;23;20;05 – 00;23;43;09

Edward Hodge

Up next will be exploring how exactly the design process here at the Oak Savanna and ITECK Center is beginning to contribute to a shift within architecture practice and education. After the break.

 

00;00;00;00 – 00;00;32;22

Ron Acob

Welcome back listeners. Before we went on the break, we left off with the topic and how the design process here at the PSU Oak Savanna and ITECK Center are challenging traditional architecture practice and education. We’re going to explore this topic by going through some of the challenges that the team experience on the architecture side, but also how it was navigated and how the lessons learned might inform future architecture practices.

 

00;00;32;24 – 00;00;41;09

Ron Acob

For example, one of the challenges identified was, and how do we orient future partners and collaborators who may not yet be as familiar with ITECK values

 

00;00;41;09 – 00;01;00;14

Ron Acob

and design process, and to the many relationships created over the years? As the project expands and goes beyond the university setting, we’re taking it back to Travis, an architecture professor at the PSU School of Architecture and our student design expert for this project.

 

00;01;00;17 – 00;01;34;20

Travis Bell

The biggest challenges on my mind right now do not have to do with, with classroom spaces. They do not have to do with student engagement. They have to do with this this kind of friction that’s beginning to occur as we move from from kind of collaborating within the university and begin to push out. And we are now rubbing up against funding for a building, and we’re rubbing up against professional services for a building.

 

00;01;34;20 – 00;02;04;03

Travis Bell

And that’s where we’re seeing that. I think a lot of a lot of the relationship building, and trust building that we’ve already done, those loops are going to have to occur again now that we’re moving out. And so, for instance, we are we are asking for an architecture firm to join us in this process for the design of the AI tech center.

 

00;02;04;06 – 00;02;51;02

Travis Bell

And joining us in the process means deep student engagement. It means, you know, deep collaboration. And, and firms at this particular moment are really reaching out for clarification on what that looks like, because they don’t they’re not used to budgeting for that. It seems like sort of a, sort of a numbers kind of issue. But but it’s but it’s more profound than that because it just means that the values haven’t sort of been instilled in the architectural process to, to imagine meeting with the client, you know, 3 to 3 days a week for, for two hours.

 

00;02;51;05 – 00;02;57;16

Travis Bell

The process is much more sort of, in the office with these brief touch.

 

00;02;57;19 – 00;03;17;29

Ron Acob

On a related note, there has also been some challenges in the process of writing an RFP or request for a proposal, which, in its simplest explanation, a formal document that invites an architecture firm to submit design proposals. Of course, in the case of the Oak Savanna project, there is already an archive of student and community visions of the site.

 

00;03;18;01 – 00;03;41;08

Ron Acob

And so really, the role of the architecture of record here would be working with students and the ITECK team to bring these visions to reality, to ensure that this translate well on the document and ITECK values in the collaborative design process are well represented. It involved reframing some of the languages of a traditional RFP document. And of course, this process was not without its challenges.

 

00;03;41;11 – 00;04;07;22

Eric Giovanetti

In writing the RFP to hire an architect for this project. We wanted to bring in an architect who’s really aligned with our mission. And the challenge with that is that PSU has a very complete and dense standard RFP. And so we had to spend a lot of time working with our project manager, working with contracting to reframe that so that our values were well represented.

 

00;04;07;24 – 00;04;42;17

Eric Giovanetti

And I think we we made a valiant effort, and I think that there’s still room for us to improve in the future. It’s a really challenging thing because all of that language, anything that we changed, need to go through the project manager, the contracting people and the legal team, which is by the time consuming and expensive. And so we are kind of moving at what sometimes feels like a glacial pace, but having conversations so that people in all of those departments ask questions like we ask them.

 

00;04;42;20 – 00;05;09;27

Eric Giovannetti

And so our hope is that as we go down the line, it’ll get easier for us to propose the changes. And we’re already seeing that with our RFP for a general contractor, and that those people that work on, all of these things in contracting and the legal team and the capital projects team have tools to push back and to make things more reasonable.

 

00;05;09;29 – 00;05;19;22

Ron Acob

There has also been another issue within the RFP process that was not exactly in line to the way that we have been collaboratively working and making decisions together.

 

00;05;19;25 – 00;05;46;18

Eric Giovanneti

One of the challenges we faced in recruiting an architect was how the process was set up differently than what we’re used to. A lot of our work has been based on discussion coming to a shared consensus, really working together so that everybody feels on board with the solution. And when we started this RFP voting process, it was a total departure from that.

 

00;05;46;20 – 00;06;14;22

Eric Giovannetti

We were asked to vote individually, in private and in the first round, we weren’t given an opportunity to discuss with one another. This was a problem because some members of the team didn’t feel comfortable scoring all of the categories. And so they were unable to give what they thought was a complete, complete report or complete score.

 

00;06;14;25 – 00;06;55;09

Eric Giovannetti

And it pushed against our values where we like to work together so that we know everybody’s perspective and we can make a more informed decision as we go forward. This is a place where, through the process, we were able to change how Portland State does things, because at this first pass, when, a large portion of our team voiced concerns and voiced objections to how the process was, we were able to change it mid process and create space for discussion and invite in more voices who have been involved, even if they weren’t, what they call voting members.

 

00;06;55;10 – 00;07;33;16

Eric Giovannetti

They were still in the room and could still, express their opinions going forward. This has influenced us the second time where we can use our process more, and I think we’ve built up some trust with the Portland State contracting team, where they know that we will get things done in a timely manner and that, our approach isn’t, you know, slower or cumbersome, but that it helps us to make a better decision and come out feeling more confident about the results.

 

00;07;33;19 – 00;07;56;10

Ron Acob

So our storytellers have taken us through some of the roadblocks along the way. But how exactly did we navigate through all of this? Well, and this one, we take a step back and remember what the values and visions that have always guided this project and learn from what has always been practiced at the Oak Savannah. Here’s a line from a conversation I had with Judy that I think beautifully illustrates it.

 

00;07;56;12 – 00;08;31;13

Judy BlueHorse Skelton

With our our, classes, we have seasonal, where everybody is invited in in our class and every quarter where we come out and we attend and we plant and we create gathering spaces with big logs that facilities finds on campus and brings over. We call it treasure or big rocks that they have found. And now we have a reptile house of a pile of big boulders that we’re just kind of hiding, say, you know, in plain sight scattered around campus.

 

00;08;31;15 – 00;09;10;25

Judy BlueHorse Skelton

And, so it’s becoming home to a lot of our other relatives, birds and, reptiles and pollinators and, and us and that it’s that kind of came out of student visioning over 12 years ago and holding. Holding that space, holding that dream, advocating for it and then being able to communicate it effectively and having a leadership person that could listen and just say, yeah, let’s do that.

 

00;09;10;29 – 00;09;27;26

Judy BlueHorse Skelton

Let’s take a different path. Let’s keep the common ish, let’s keep access open, let’s, invite students and community to their own self-determination.

 

00;09;27;28 – 00;09;51;17

Ron Acob

Just in case you didn’t quite pick it up there. It’s many things. It’s about relationship building. It’s to honor, it’s gathering, listening, observing, reflecting, advocating, communicating. But most importantly, that we’re doing it together. So remember that table that resonated with Sergio and Judy in the beginning of this episode was to navigate and get through some of these challenges.

 

00;09;51;18 – 00;10;03;06

Ron Acob

The answer has always been to gather everyone around the table and talk about it and make these decisions together. Something our high tech team has always practiced at the Oak Savanna.

 

00;10;03;08 – 00;10;39;21

Travis Bell

I think our our our initial response to most challenges at this point is to invite all participants to come join in, for conversation about about how we can do this together. And so that, for instance, is happening with the architecture firms. We’re reaching out and saying, well, we realize this may be different than you’re used to seeing, but we are as invested in a successful outcome has as we want, as we assume you are.

 

00;10;39;21 – 00;10;46;22

Travis Bell

And so let’s begin to let’s begin to talk about this and figure this out together.

 

00;10;46;24 – 00;11;12;03

Eric Giovannetti

I think something that the the coursework has afforded us is this ability to run into a question and then, if a class can address it, then they might be able to address it in ten different ways. And then the rest of us can think about it as well. And then evaluate, you know, what options are are available and what students may have discovered.

 

00;11;12;06 – 00;11;33;15

Eric Giovannetti

And fold that back in. And so I think we have lots of tools available to us. This includes things like the focus groups that Emma and I have done where we we can bring architecture work to ITECK students. We can bring questions to ITECK students. We can just listen to what I take. Students have going on.

 

00;11;33;15 – 00;11;48;01

Eric Giovannetti

And so I think that because so many people are excited about this project, there’s a lot of opportunities and, places to listen and to brainstorm and to to get creative about what we can do.

 

00;11;48;04 – 00;12;03;15

Ron Acob

To really hit the nail here. Here’s a snippet from a conversation I had with Emma, our ITECK coordinator, that really emphasizes how important our collaboration has been and keeping our wheel agoing even when the wheel hits a rock along the way.

 

00;12;03;17 – 00;12;33;21

Emma Johnson

It’s kind of this really cool community of folks with very specific professional experience from very different worlds. But there’s also parts of their worlds that connect so seamlessly, and being able to draw those out and highlight like, oh yes, of course we can talk about this because it connects to this project Sergio worked on 20 years ago, and Judy knows this architect because of the project at the Native American Student and Community Center.

 

00;12;33;21 – 00;13;04;04

Emma Johnson

That was done going on 24 years ago. And so bringing together shared experiences where the lens of ITECK really benefits community spaces is like the most powerful part of, I would say, our partnership. And then just like our students getting to know each other, which can be a challenge at times, but definitely we have some cool student partnerships and relationships that have been really exciting to see based upon different gatherings and projects.

 

00;13;04;07 – 00;13;18;27

Ron Acob

So this brings us up to the second part of the question. Well, how is this design process beginning to push the boundaries of traditional architecture education and practice? And maybe for us to begin to imagine or perhaps reimagine what it can be?

 

00;13;18;29 – 00;13;39;06

Sergio Palleroni

What we’re trying to do is to bring this new ideas that are challenging some of the ways we do things, and how we might build it, that we might not just contract it out, that some parts are going to involve students, the community. Because if we don’t, the building will not belong to the community and to the student.

 

00;13;39;08 – 00;14;12;03

Eric Giovannetti

Different generations of students have gotten to participate, and many of them have come back to see what has changed and, how the project has moved along and I think that early in a career, that’s a huge opportunity, and the opportunity to be in important meetings and be influential in design decisions at different points is a really great opportunity for students and a way for them to, have these public interest conversations in a context very similar to what they will be working in, in the field.

 

00;14;12;05 – 00;14;39;18

Ardon Lee

So the way that it’s changed how I think about going about pedagogy and architecture is, it’s really taught me how to listen. I think previously I came to architecture thinking that the role of the designer was to bring their own paradigm to the situation. But now I understand that it’s actually help other people’s paradigms shine through.

 

00;14;39;21 – 00;14;47;19

Ron Acob

And here’s one more thought from Gianna, a current graduate student in the School of Architecture and part of the 560 course, which I’m in, Roseanne.

 

00;14;47;22 – 00;15;22;03

Gianna Sullivan

My name is Gianna Sullivan. I’m in my first year of the two year Master’s of Architecture program at PSU. I think a lot of us imagine our future within design careers to be, very small scale or or individual, kind of self reliant. And I see that overlaid from somebody’s personal design practice all the way to something like the food sovereignty movement, which really prioritizes, self-reliance of different communities and their food systems all the way up to, like, a national level.

 

00;15;22;05 – 00;15;57;17

Gianna Sullivan

And then, coming all the way back to the scale with the Oak Savanna project on like a really, ecologically integrated type of, community focused, interconnected and empowering, type of project, I think is a grounding experience because it, it is reminding us in design fields to come back to our role as, community builders.

 

00;15;57;19 – 00;16;18;18

Ron Acob

So this brings us all up to date with where we’re at with the Oak Savanna and ITECK Center project on ongoing learning, building, and rebuilding. One. But before we conclude today’s episode, like what I had asked from all of our storytellers, from the AI tech team, I had also ask our storytellers and the architecture side. What did they also hope to see you at the Oak Savanna and ITECK Center?

 

00;16;18;20 – 00;16;27;14

Ron Acob

Currently in a year or in 2 to 3 years and more, and this is what they had envisioned.

 

00;16;27;16 – 00;16;58;12

Ardon Lee

What I’m hoping to see and ITECK Center 2 to 3 years from now is, really simply just, different sorts of meeting spaces. I think that that is one of the most direct ways to address the diversity of people who come together to both help with, ITECK Center and the Savanna site, but also, just people who are interested and want to learn more.

 

00;16;58;15 – 00;17;28;15

Travis Bell

One moment is being able to continue to meet with students and, and faculty with Indigenous Nation studies out of the ITECK center to talk about, why these decisions were made. So I can kind of continue to learn maybe, maybe at this point it’s not design something. It was trying to learn from some of the things that we designed and to talk about that.

 

00;17;28;18 – 00;18;01;13

Sam Barber

The other part that’s really exciting is that, there are a number of, components of the kind of landscape design, the bigger project, that are slated to be design build projects, for the School of Architecture and ITECK students. And, I’m really excited to see I think all of those are like, such rich opportunities to, you know, make this place as special as it should be.

 

00;18;01;13 – 00;18;09;13

Sam Barber

And, yeah, seeing seeing how those turn out is going to be really, exciting and fulfilling.

 

00;18;09;15 – 00;18;33;06

Gianna Sullivan

I’m also excited for the chance that this, space can be more than, higher education type of space that it can outreach to members of the community and, and tribal communities, in the Pacific Northwest and beyond as kind of a, a beacon that that things are happening.

 

00;18;33;08 – 00;19;01;03

Sham Aldura

So, just, being the voice for, Indigenous culture is so important. And for me, I came from a country that have been going through a lot of, like, conflicts and, like, people are trying to bury those in the Indigenous culture, too. So I feel like it’s so important that CPID is start to be the voice for everyone here to show that they’re here.

 

00;19;01;06 – 00;19;27;27

Sham Aldura

They have their language, their culture, their amazing life, amazing way of doing stuff. Amazing. Handmade like techniques they have, like their rich history about the land itself. Just the CPID if it if it’s able to make their voice louder and like show the world that they’re here.

 

00;19;27;27 – 00;19;47;05

Razan Zainab

Every time I walked around Oak Savanna, there’s a lot of people gardening and helping.

And like a lot of different type of people and communities are working in the Oak Savanna. And I see so many events are being held there, like the Salmon bake. So I hope to see that happens even when the project is finished and complete. I hope to see that that part continues.

 

00;19;47;07 – 00;19;49;20

Sergio Palleroni

My dream is that.

 

00;19;49;22 – 00;19;51;21

Sergio Palleroni

This day in five years, everybody in.

 

00;19;51;21 – 00;20;09;29

Sergio Palleroni

The neighborhood would know each other and they’ll know each other through the common action of this, that this will become a forum or gathering place for people to get to know each other and to know what they share, you know, and begin to find what things they share.

 

00;20;10;05 – 00;20;10;12

Sergio Palleroni

Right.

 

00;20;10;13 – 00;20;31;07

Sergio Palleroni

And divide it. Like we’re live in a super divided country. The world is divided into hard opinion. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to begin to find consensus around the survival of the Earth? And I’m hoping that this will be one of the nucleus where people start like like saying, yeah, that makes sense to me, to having something that I identified early on.

 

00;20;31;07 – 00;21;20;29

Eric Giovannetti

Is that, well, we do hope to complete the building, the ITECK Center in the next couple of years that the project as a whole is about building and rebuilding and, adjusting and adapting. And so I think the most exciting thing would be to come back in 2 or 3 years or in, you know, 5 or 8 years and see that students are still excited about this knowledge and practice, that Judy and Emma have been, working so hard to bring to Portland State and that they’re looking at the space and imagining ways that they can adjust it and things that they can learn from it or ways to use the principles to

 

00;21;20;29 – 00;21;42;18

Eric Giovannetti

adapt it to what they’re doing. Because I think as much as the architecture of the Oak Savanna is, you know, what a place for that. It’s like a physical reality. It’s really a process. And it’s so much about how we interact with space and how we interact with the environment.

 

00;21;42;20 – 00;22;07;27

Ron Acob

And this concludes the series. The Oak Savanna and ITECK Center has been a really special place for everyone for many reasons. That’s not hard to list. For some it’s about designing a place of belonging and safety together. For others, it’s bringing them home through restoring, reconnecting, and honoring all of the relationships here at the Oak Savanna and their responsibilities not just within each other, but to all of the natural world together.

 

00;22;07;29 – 00;22;35;08

Ron Acob

And it’s also bringing Indigenous leadership and wisdom at the forefront of environmental stewardship and community based design practices. But this is just the beginning of an ever growing list. Because, as the title of the series suggests, what else is there for us to learn more? At the intersection of Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge and Architecture, and maybe in other fields, and how that might inform something else, which might be another topic for a different series.

 

00;22;35;11 – 00;22;40;17

Ron Acob

But until then, thank you.

 

00;22;40;19 – 00;23;08;26

Ron Acob

I want to take the time to thank all the folks who made this podcast series possible. First, to all of our storytellers in the architecture team Sergio Palleroni, Eric Giovanetti, Travis Bell, Ardon Lee, Sam, Barber, Razan Zainab, Sham Aldura, Edward Hodge and Gianna Sullivan, and in the ITECK Team Judy BlueHorse Skeleton, Emma Johnson, Mendy Miller, Athena Rilatos, Clifton and Christine Bruno and Emma Joel Cohen.

 

00;23;08;28 – 00;23;29;00

Ron Acob

I also want to say a special thank you to Lisa Abendroth, Sergio Palleroni, Eric Giovanetti, Sam, Barber and Todd Ferry for their guidance and support for this series. Thank you.