Katie Swenson is a senior principal at MASS Design Group, an international nonprofit architecture firm that builds and advocates for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity.
Before recently joining MASS, she served as vice president of design and sustainability at Enterprise Community Partners, working in affordable housing and community development. She was a member of the second class of the Enterprise Rose Fellowship, a program that partners architects and others with local community development organizations to improve neighborhoods and the lives of residents across the country.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fellowship this year, Swenson and photographer Harry Connolly have collaborated on “Design With Love: At Home in America,” a splashy new book that chronicles the experiences of fellows working in vastly different communities from the California-Mexico border to Baltimore, from the Badlands of South Dakota to the Mississippi Delta.
Swenson shares what she learned while writing the book, how this year’s COVID-19 crisis will change affordable housing, and how to create better developments.
What was your introduction to affordable housing?
I volunteered in high school at Rosie’s Place, a shelter for women in Boston. I witnessed the slippery slope of homelessness. Without a home, everything else falls apart. My real training in affordable housing came after grad school when I joined Enterprise Community Partners’ Rose Fellowship. As fellows, we received training in affordable housing finance and policy. Early in my fellowship, I attended a green building seminar with Dennis Creech of Southface Institute. Most of my learning came from working at Charlottesville, Va.-based Piedmont Housing to design and develop housing, and visiting the sites of other fellows, working with community-based organizations across the country.
Who are Rose Fellows and what do they do?
Rose Fellows are designers, architects, and artists dedicated to social justice. They work in partnership with local, community-based nonprofits to bring their design and planning skills to the benefit of the community. They learn as much from the community, and from each other, as they contribute. They work on affordable housing and community facilities, community planning processes, open space, and recreation, transportation, and economic development issues. They are designers, translators, instigators, supporters, cheerleaders, and spokespersons. They bring hard work and good humor, passion and energy, to their work. The fellowship is sponsored by Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit that invested over $43.6 billion in community development.
Why did you write “Design With Love: At Home in America?”
On the 20th anniversary of the Rose Fellowship, we wanted to lift up the stories of the fellows, inspiring a new generation of civic-minded leaders and the communities they serve. My goal was to share the stories of the passionate community advocates, who are working every day on behalf of their neighbors, in diverse communities across the country. I wanted to show the tenacity, creativity, and dedication that everyday people bring to the work of community development. I partnered with Harry to bring the stories—and people and places—to life in vivid color and beauty.
What did you learn while working on the book?
As our travels wrapped up and I began poring over transcripts and notes, I noticed that people described their work in remarkably similar ways. It became clear that the most successful communities—and fellows—were those that share the same core elements: a clear commitment to their mission, a common understanding of the philosophical and spiritual underpinnings of their work, and the tenacity to meet their community’s goals. Chief among these core values was love. That’s right, love. Love is not a word often used in architecture circles, yet it has enormous implications for the work of architects and designers.
What common threads did you find in the diverse affordable housing communities featured in the book?
People find their purpose and express their culture in different ways, but in each community I found a deep passion for work and that compassion for each other guides the work. Designing and developing affordable housing is not easy anywhere. In fact, I would say that it is simply too hard—too time consuming and complicated. People find a way, however, to leverage a remarkable number of sources to put projects together. Enterprise founder Jim Rouse used to say, “Whatever ought to be can be with the will to make it so.” He must have learned that from community developers.
What was your favorite moment while writing the book?
Harry and I visited Porcupine, S.D., on the edge of the Badlands a few different times, in the cold, wind, rain, and hot sun, to interview, photograph, and spend time with the staff of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corp. On the same day in early August, we witnessed the preparations for a sun dance and that evening tried to capture the thunder, which rolled through the valley on film. So much of what this fellowship is about is understanding the
communities they serve and how that relates to their unique familial and housing needs.
Looking back on the communities you visited, what architectural or design feature surprised you the most and why?
Beauty goes a long way. The more culturally specific the architecture is to a place or a people, the better it feels. I loved the deeply saturated pinks, blues, yellows, and greens in San Ysidro, Calif. Their warmth and vitality convey a sense of freedom and connection to culture. “Color is life. It changes your perspective,” said Rose Fellow David Flores, who was based in San Ysidro. “The brightly painted homes were also the first to be repainted and kept fresh, clearly a point of pride.
Share two or three specific design elements that are most important to affordable housing.
What we may call affordable housing, other people just call home. We are all gaining a greater appreciation for home—especially as families work from home and learn from home. We should design with the dignity of residents in mind, making spaces beautiful, well lit, and connected to the outdoors. Some elements that have been considered a luxury—a balcony or personal outdoor space—now seem like a must. The Star Apartments in L.A. takes advantage of the weather to make the corridor into living spaces. Hirabayashi Place in Seattle is home to the “Legacy of Justice” art project, which tells the history of its neighborhood.
How will the COVID-19 pandemic change affordable housing?
In our guide “Designing Senior Housing for Safe Interaction,” MASS Design Group outlined a number of ways that housing should be designed to keep people safe and healthy, including suggestions to make spaces breathe better, sequence flows through spaces, reduce pressure on high traffic places, and encourage people to get outdoors. We also suggest designing housing into “villages” by clustering people with a small group of neighbors and paying attention to the threshold spaces between them. Embedding technology into each unit is a must to create equitable and easy access to information and services.
How will increased attention on racial inequity this year change affordable housing?
Housing in U.S. cities and small towns still reflect the racist redlining history of the past, and household wealth disparities by race reflect generations of housing policy, which have a practical effect on the present and will continue to do so in the future unless we make proactive efforts to understand our system, reveal its flaws, and amend them. I hope that we will not only come to see housing as a fundamental human right but also recognize the role it plays in providing opportunities for some more than others.
You write that “it is time for a new era for architecture.” What do you mean by that?
The profession of architecture is currently organized for firms to serve clients on a project basis. In academia and in practice, there are still people who talk about architecture that is either “high design” or “social impact.” In 2020, it is finally time to admit that architecture must serve social justice in order to be beautiful. The Rose Fellows show that a career in architecture and creating social impact are one in the same. I hope that the architectural field learns from the fellowship, learns to work on behalf of communities, not only clients; to serve the public interest or over others, and some workers over others. I learned about the horrible conditions in the fields, and the importance of a safe and comfortable place to come home to. Nate’s ability to connect with the clients with empathy and understanding was humbling and instructive.
What can affordable housing developers and architects do to create better developments?
Think for the long term—not 15 years—but 50 to 100 years. In my travels for the book, I saw a lot of poorly built and poorly maintained housing. Everything we build today should be built for durability, flexibility, and adaptability over time. It takes so much time, energy, and resources to make affordable housing happen in the first place—cutting corners at the beginning may be a cost savings before the building is built, but it does not save money, or serve its purpose, over time.
Best advice you’ve received:
“Think of this the next time you’re in the grocery store,” Yakima, Wash.-based Rose Fellow Nate Poel said to me. Poel worked with the Office of Rural and Farmworker Housing. “Even in our mechanized age, every scrap of produce on the shelf was harvested by a human hand.” As I learned about temporary housing for farmworkers in the Yakima Valley, I learned about our agricultural industry and how we value some labor over others, and some workers over others. I learned about the horrible conditions in the fields, and the importance of a safe and comfortable place to come home to. Nate’s ability to connect with the clients with empathy and understanding was humbling and instructive.
Advice for young architects:
I’ll share Rose Fellow Nick Forest’s advice: “I think it’s important to communicate to people who are just coming out of school that there’s another opportunity, another avenue. If you really want to create an impact, think about working for a community development organization, because that’s where it starts. It gives you a seat at the ownership table. As architects, we get lauded for design and the way things look, but being in the decision-making chair, there's a lot more impact from that point because you make the decisions; you say yes or no at the end of the day.”
Architecture or design hero and why:
Theresa Hwang is a community-engaged architect, educator, and facilitator who has her own community engagement and planning firm called Department of Places. She worked with Skid Row Housing Trust and Michael Maltzan Architecture to create some of the most architecturally innovative affordable housing in the country. But perhaps more important, she is the director of a program called the Design Futures Student Leadership Forum, a national anti-racist design education initiative. Theresa’s work with Design Futures has allowed her and her collaborators to chart a new path for architectural education, one which recognizes the role that racism and bias have played in creating inequity and equipping future architects to design safe, healthy, and just places.
Best thing you’ve done during quarantine:
My three adult children and a grad student friend all came home from school to quarantine. The five of us had to reimagine how to use our home to Zoom to work and school, share in internet access, and create private work spaces while also having fun and enjoying our time together. Cooking three meals a day at home changed our relationship with our kitchen, and with each other. It was a joyful time within the safe confines of our home, and time with my family that I know I will cherish!
What are you reading?
“Girls Garage: How to Use Any Tool, Tackle Any Project, and Build the World You Want to See” by Emily Pilloton. I have been doing so many household chores during COVID, and learning that there is always a better way, a trick for getting it right, and a strategy to do it well. I’ve enjoyed getting my tools in order and feeling more comfortable keeping my old house in shape.
You’re now a senior principal at MASS Design Group. What are you working on?
Building on MASS’ 10 years of experience in designing to prevent the spread of infectious disease in medical and nonmedical environments, my first big project at MASS was to be part of the COVID-19 Response team, working on a series of spatial strategies for medical environments, housing, restaurants, carceral environments and asking the question, “What is the role of architecture in fighting COVID-19.” We are working to apply those lessons to a number of affordable housing projects on deck.
