This is one of the last memories of bonding with my father. He was an avid outdoorsman, eager to get the fishing rod or hunting gear out to escape the day-to-day grind. I struggle to keep a grasp on the gritty details as I was just a young boy when this happened. It is the memory that I find myself going back to as I accept the reality of losing him this year to COVID-19.

The pandemic has made grieving the departed difficult. How do we honor the dead when the act of congregating is dangerous? It is a constant struggle. Compiled with the unwillingness of people to adhere to the recommendations, it is an emotional cocktail of anger, confusion, isolation, and sadness.

My relationship with my father was rocky to put it nicely. Our paths and points of view strayed over the years. He was not present through most of my life and I never connected with his side of the family. It only fuels these feelings of isolation and confusion. How does one remember Ruben Herrera? I have been thinking deeply on who my father was a person. It is easy to point out the shortcomings and moments of pain I experienced because of him. The feelings of betrayal, the anger, the tireless effort to not be “him”.

I have spent so many hours remembering the bad I forget about some of the lessons and moments we shared as father, and son. I realized that I still knew very little about Ruben and the life he lived. I comfortably carried on, only accepting this perspective of him. We live in a world that expects perfection and is willing to write you off for anything less. Our lives are intertwined and influenced based on our lived experiences. We grow, adapt, and become what we need to. With the limited options we have for grief, I want to use this piece to honor my Father the best I can with what I know. In full honesty, many of the details are based on memory, stories, and what insights I have collected from my family. There is still so little I know, but in time, I hope I will come to know Ruben more through these insights.

As a young man, Ruben had to assume the responsibilities of head of household when his father died at a young age. He cared for his siblings which included three sisters (Jovita, Alice, Helen) and one brother (Robert). I think this made him very cautious to spending, a habit that was often showcased when him and my mother still shared marriage. He was always keen to an opportunity to save money, make a buck, or get the most out of something.
He was a veteran and served in the US Army from 1969 to 1971 proudly. This was often a topic of conversation with him, and it was an opportunity to learn the gruesome and humbling experiences the Army taught him. Emotionally, like many veterans, this affected him. It is an unfortunate consequence I wish I had more awareness to as a young man. I think it would have allowed me to see past some of our conflicts.

He was a hard worker and spent 37 years employed at Miller Brewing in addition to running a roofing company and engaging in multiple side hustles to bring the family money. He took pride in working hard and it was a judgment of character for him. He had me crush cans for recycling as a young boy to earn the toys I wanted for my birthday and Christmas. Looking at now, I can see the intention with this act, although my mother and I did not receive it as well. I wonder if this stemmed from the struggle of taking care of his sibling. A sheer determination to ensure we would always have the resources and know how to thrive in the event something should happen to him.

Ruben was resourceful. He knew how to get the most out of a product. He had a nose for sniffing out deals and was very aware of the money going in and out of the house. He had a reputation for being cheap, but I wonder again if this stems from his childhood. He was never without money, and I like to think if things did take a dire turn, he would have had money set aside for the family.

Ruben enjoyed his family. I had the pleasure of enjoying the get togethers later in life after I graduated college. He carried a presence at the table and was always the first one to call me to let me know that something was going on. He respected his elders and went out of his way to cater to his uncles.
I felt in his way, he tried to make attempts to patch up the relationship we had. Our definitions of “attempt” varied greatly, but exploring some of the mannerisms I use in my day to day, help me understand how Ruben’s subtle hints where his way to connect with me. Given the circumstances life threw at him, I think this is how he best knew how to take control of this situation.

Ruben was my father, he was not my dad. But as my father, both intentionally and unintentionally, he taught me the value of work, the value of emotional connections, the value of being honest, and the value of being resourceful. Between him and my mother I can proudly say I have zero debt and live life with low overhead. It is one of the major lessons that have helped me navigate the pandemic and staring a new organization in the midst of this global crisis.

It is hard to say where my relationship with Ruben would have ultimately landed. I do feel to some extent we were slowly getting closer. I often imagined a day out with him at a sports bar catching up and shooting the shits. Maybe not so much as father to son, but at least man to man. I think in our own way, this would have been our relationship. I ponder these thoughts as we coast in 2021. As many with grief, I often get hit with doubt. Could I, should I. These questions sap my emotional bandwidth and have me second guessing a lot of my decisions over these past few years. COVID-19 ended my father’ s life prematurely, so I am only left with pondering.

This virus is still very much active in our communities. So, I have one request for anyone reading, please, take this thing serious. Your desire to go out, get a sip, and catch up could rob others of their opportunities to rebuild and connect with their family. You can unwillingly bring this thing home to someone that is vulnerable. My uncle Robert passed just two weeks after Ruben. In my family alone we have lost three major members to this virus. My heart goes to my aunt, who has had to bear the weight of burying her husband and two brothers over a 3-month period.

Ruben, father, I can not fully express all I feel, as this is a new emotional range for me. But know you are missed. I only wish we could have had more time to connect, more time to learn, and more time to understand each other, and hopefully more time to experience life as father and son. I love you.

Once upon a time I was an avid gamer frequently getting my excitement and social engagements from a friendly game and some fierce online battle. My genre of choice, strategy games in particular, Command and Conquer. Something about building an army and planning an attack two or three steps ahead and seeing it work perfectly, or the sudden realization you messed up and the frantic race to come up with a new solution! It was with strategy games to that I got introduced to online gaming. It was a brutal verbal arena so used my online experience to connect with old friends and do private games between us.

All that changed though with World of Warcraft. The world that was built was easy and enjoyable to get lost in. Warcraft has been building lore on their environment since their first game, with the owner’s manual filled not only with instruction on how to install and play the game, but pages of backstory and concept art of the novel characters you would be playing as. Fast forward to 2 games later and World of Warcraft was able to use that lore to build a huge interactive world. A fully generated virtual reality, that constantly changed and fully populated by online players. As we assumed our avatars, we rushed diligently to engage in quest and earn our treasures. Getting gear and completing these feats though required a team. This was unique to World of Warcraft, and frustrating at times, as it would require some patience and depending on the challenge, finding a crew hellbent on achieving the mission. Surprisingly though depending on how much time you wanted to commit, finding or joining a crew was not too difficult. The rewards remained relevant till the next expansion pack that brought new challenges and started the process all over again.

Gaming was a part of my life until most recent. Not long after I stopped playing, I watched an incredible TED Talk on gamification by Jane McGonigal. In it, she discusses with a meme worthy image of a gamers face about to accomplish the “Epic Win”, an outcome that is so extraordinary that it does not seem possible until you achieved it. Gamers at their utmost can get so immerse with achieving this experience that everything else is blocked out, not to dissimilar with some of the memories I shared earlier. It is the combination of having many collaborators willing and able to trust you at a moment’s notice to set together to achieve a goal. It’s an interesting phenomenon, one only appreciated by fellow gamers.

How is it that gaming can encourage such committed and determined behavior? Reflecting from my personal experience there are some unique insights to be gained. Rewards systems are a constant in games. Attributes are increased when completing a task, conquering a foe, or finding some random hidden element of the game. In real world applications, speed cameras were tested using a reverse lotto to reward good driving with potential earnings collected from those that chose to speed. However, the world of gaming is more than just the badges and collecting gear. There is an ethereal element in being able to escape the current reality and contribute to something grand, especially when the backstory is compelling. In a similar vein of World of Warcraft, reality is filled with pages of lore, many of which influence the games we play. Could history become our lore to the biggest and most complex game of all time, life.

Life though does not offer the same reward as the digital experience. There is a yearning to have our work to have meaning or impact, yet the harsh reality outside of the game world is often bleak. In Utopia for Realist, Rutger Bregman, dives deeper into how we have become quite effective at creating jobs that pay well but generate little real value to society. This, in term with the constricting purchasing power of today’s worker, pushes us to seek an alternative reality, rather it be an evening at the pub, immersing in a movie, or spending a night to early morning as your digital avatar. Yet how might we change this trend? How might we create an alternative, where reality is the ideal, and the game world allows us to re-immerse in the blighted history we have overcome? How might we use gaming practices for real world problems? What aspects of the digital spectrum could we introduce into day to day living?

Many of my fellow peers and myself included desire for meaning in our work and to be active contributors to solving a problem, rather than just collecting a paycheck for the rent. We want to achieve the impossible and know our actions helped make a difference. How might we use the “Epic Win” in this unique period of our lives? With a rising global pandemic, the full effects are not yet known, but it is undoubtedly a grand mission worthy of an “Epic Win”.

The high wears off again, and I am pulled back into reality again. It is an immediate blow, and I find myself on the emotional roller-coaster again. As I ruminate on the latest horrible thing, I come to another realization, with my previous though of “the slumbering beast being reawaken”. I recall a recent episode of The Late Show and reflect on how the distractions of day to day living such as hanging out at the bar, or grabbing a bite for dinner, or even my escape with video games can hinder our ability to see with clarity all the atrocious acts being committed. Being deprived of these distractions and limiting my hours of play with games has allowed me to see how sad the world has become. I am left in a bit of a pickle with this realization. My heart wants to engage and make a difference on as many issues as I can. My body reminds me with subtle shakes, twitches, and aches, that I can only handle so much, which fuels my desire to escape to my digital oasis, so I may numb the pain. What to do?

I reflect on this idea of the “Epic Win” more in depth. The plethora of problems we will need to solve are very similar to completing a raid on World of Warcraft. It is possible, but it requires a collective effort, with a diverse and well put together team, committed to the fullest to achieving this mission. Once this is overcome, we could apply this model of creative problem solving to other challenges, confident that the framework we have created will allow us to overcome anything. When a new problem surfaces, we could utilize this network of change agents to be the forefront of executing solutions. How might we use this idea to change the reality we are living in, where the burdens our communities of color are forever lifted, and the only mention of travesties are the horrible events of the past? How might the video game be our vessel to relive and teach these histories, as the realities we escaped, as we bask in the utopia that we have created?

Although my quests are addressing College Homelessness and Food Insecurity, they share many similar overlapping factors to other challenges we aim to solve. I realize the Epic Win is not about personal glory, or even the trinkets at the end of the battle, it is about overcoming the almost impossible. It is about banding together for a common cause and trying again and again till it is completed. All we need to achieve it is more players and a platform to let them get the work done. Ruminating on these realizations, I spend my afternoon reaching out to old contacts, making email introductions, and looking for common threads between our work as we prepare for a holiday weekend. Each connection becomes another player in this arena as we work to build a platform. The only question left to ask is…. are you ready to play?

So, it probably goes without saying, that I used to be an avid gamer frequently getting my excitement and social engagements from a friendly round of Command and Conquer, Halo, or F.E.A.R. But all my real game nerds will get me on this, my most anticipated moments were LAN Parties! The essential ingredients, a friend that works at a pizza joint. Tons of energy drinks and Coca-Cola. A big ass house or garage with plenty of space to set up a few monitors or TVs. Lots of internet cables to connect our machines. And the most important piece, a few folks with their spec’d PC’s and their own copies of the game, fully updated! Battle on! Aww, how we could go through hours of play in what seemed a short period of time. It was social engagement on a whole different level. We had our standard crew, my cousin, two mutual friends, and usually a guest. But our finest moment was a ten-man tournament on Halo 2, where we had access to my friend’s house. We wired each room, with exception to his parents’ bedroom and converge to game for 7 hours straight. We got a bunch of new faces and got to enjoy some mutual bonding over head shots and stealth kills, my favorite as I was always the sneaky bastard.

My genre of choice, strategy games, with Command and Conquer and the multitude of flavors it came in being my go to. Sorry Warcraft fans but I am C&C to the heart! Not that I don’t mind delivering a good HEADSHOT when playing Unreal or Halo, something about building an army and planning an attack two or three steps ahead and seeing it work perfectly, or the sudden realization you messed up and the frantic race to come up with a new solution before you got owned! It was with strategy games to that I learned about online gaming. We get surprised with some of the wild and crazy stuff we see in Facebook, but this kind of rhetoric, bullying, and trolling was widespread on online gaming before it became the thing to do on Facebook and Twitter. We were real trend setters. Noob was the all-encompassing derogatory term, that could send a gamer into a frantic rage, or that calm subtle laugh that says, your dead. The side effects included, throwing your controller, cursing and pointing at your computer monitor, or plotting your revenge in the most sadistic strategy as you tap away on the keyboard for a verbal quip to flick the rage off your shoulder. It was a brutal verbal arena, one that I experienced for a short time. I was not always fond of this environment so used my online experience to connect with old friends and do private games between us. It was my Facebook, just with some much-added benefits!

Gaming really helped open my creative curiosity particularly with modding. There was something about learning the mechanics of the game and creating new possibilities. Crafting radically unbalanced spells or the most perfect city that had natural terrain defense, perfectly placed defenses, and a beautiful layout. In a matter of fact, it was modding that attracted me to architecture. In many ways it’s a mod to the natural environment, the current environment, with optimistic predictions of a better possibility. I spent hours crafting, honing, experimenting, and creating new iterations all aimed at testing the limits and seeing how I might make a more interesting game.

Until recently, gaming was a part of my life. It was a good coping mechanism for me during a patch of my life when things where uncertain and I was still getting use to people again after time as a gang banger and a socially awkward college student. It was way for me to connect with family and friends simliar to how people allude to Facebook being a vessel for them to stay connected. It was a lifestyle for me including an old custom blue behemoth my cousin helped me build that helped me run my favorite games at the highest settings, definitely a bragging right, and render my architectural models. Granted I spent all my money on the computer, so my screen was an old and heavy Hewlett Packard CRT monitor. It was a chore to ship to a LAN party, but you bet your ass I always found a way if the time called.

Around 2010 I decided to purge them from my day to day when I was ready to make efforts to become sociable face to face again. I gotta say, it was tough carrying an old bag of games to Half-Price Books only to get a few measly dollars. But I felt it necessary to force myself to get out of the house. Shortly after that and moving for a new grueling job, I developed anxiety. I am not for sure if it was the lack of gaming, but as I reflect upon going through loading screens in anticipation for the next battle, I have to give it some thought. To say this was an effective cope measure was an understatement for me, it was my main means of social interaction. My only limit with pursuing this, outside of my desire to see the outside world, was having the budget to constantly update my damn computer. I do not regret my decision as it has helped me find some of the wonderful individuals that I have the honor of calling my friends and family.

As I que up another game of Command and Conquer, I pour myself a drink, get me some snackies, and dive into the digital spectrum for another few hours of entertainment, phone free, and worry free, unless of course I get into a screen screaming moment! I would challenge anyone who hasn’t tried it, pick a flavor of game, and immerse for a couple of hours, you might be excited to see how it can help with coping with these interesting times. If anything, it can give an additional outlet to explore as we hunker down for another month of social distancing. I will say there are elements of my day to day life I miss. I miss my friends, I miss my family, I miss being able to go to my favorite pub, and I miss being able to meet a new person at any of the events we host in our city. But I know this is our best option for preserving public safety. Who knows, this might be an opportunity to reintroduce gaming back into my life in moderation and iteration. So, till things get better, game on!

The evening of Thursday, March 12, 2020, Dallas County, the 2nd largest county in the United States declared a State of Emergency and in conjunction with several North Texas cities had shut down schools, community centers and workplaces to mitigate the community spread of COVID-19. While encouraging everyone to self-distance and take all necessary precautions to protect not only themselves, but those identified within vulnerable populations.

“And if everyone does their part, if everyone thinks about what is best for the community when they make their decisions, we'll beat this thing. If only some of us do that, then we probably won't beat this thing. So, it takes all of us," Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said in an interview. This drastically changed our once hopeful plans of visiting a different landscape and retreated to a staycation. Bringing us to early Saturday morning, March 14th, which started out as any other day, traffic was still full on the road, our local breakfast eatery was busy, but not the usual busting out of the door crowd, people were in a general jovial sense and nothing seemed too panic stricken. In order to prepare for self-distancing, the necessity of stocking up on some essentials was in order. This led to a trip to the grocery store. Upon entering the grocery store, there was a large crowd growing around the registers, but it was not an unreasonable line. The shelves were reasonably stocked, except for paper goods, which still boggles our mind. Once we completed our shopping about 30 minutes later, the line had built up to the back of the store. With only 3 cashiers dedicated to serving us for the day, it had become clear that we would be in line for a while.

While waiting some interesting things came to mind as we pondered our situation. With social distancing being adopted as a viable means to reduce the spread of the virus, being cooped up in a grocery store for over an hour and a half for a mere 15 items seemed rather counter intuitive. However, with a deeper look we begin to realize how dependent we have become on a few select industries, and to some extend how dependent our economy is on this industrial model. The grocery stores need personnel to support the operation, and the personal need the work to support their livelihoods. Their employment, dependent on our ability to spend, and our ability to work ourselves.

This poses a unique problem though for this type of disaster, as each trip for necessities becomes a potential risk to infection. Even with the advances of technology, moving products, including food, is a human affair, requiring multiple hands of transaction to mobilize a product from one location to another. Each of these becomes a point of failure should one person either receiving a product or delivering suddenly forget to wash their hands, sneeze, or touch something contaminated. Yet, shutting the system down without an adequate safety net can cause severe unemployment and amplify the effects of poverty and homelessness.

This begs the question, how prepared are we for this type of event even if funding was appropriately allocated? Bill Gates did an interesting TED Talk in 2015, going over some of the highpoints of the Ebola Containment. While not an expert in infections disease, he did highlight the need for a robust global healthcare system, which also echo comments from a much more recent talk by Alanna Shaikh. Social Distancing was an effective strategy St. Louis used in 1918 to reduce the impact of Spanish Flu, however, in 1918 the internet didn’t exist and our transportation networks where not as robust as they are today. Even with these limitations, the Spanish Flu is widely regarded as the deadliest pandemic in modern history, affecting roughly 1/3 of the world’s population and killing over 50 million. The spread mainly fueled by the aftereffects of a world war, brought the virus to the USA in three distinct waves.

We live in different times, so our strategies must adjust to serve effectively, necessitating funding for research and simulations to proactively plan the worst-case scenarios. Social Distancing can still play a part in helping contain the spread, but adequate safety nets will play a crucial role in supporting the aftermath and providing a stable base for those that do get infected to seek treatment without the worry of economic burdens. The pandemic in 1918 helped illuminate these factors, as the populations most effected usually suffered from severe social-economic conditions, often limiting their ability to seek healthcare until it was too late. This laid the ground for a cognitive shift began that lead to drastic changes in public health strategies, which included in part, socialized healthcare.

This realization in combination with the risk inherent with our global economic models challenge us to think how we might do things better. In conjunction with a robust healthcare system, economic safety nets become a rising necessity for a community to thrive. Tasked with the choice to reduce the risk of spreading the disease or going to work to make rent is not a good set of choices. With Mitt Romney and the White House proposing a new $1,000 fund to cover families during these pressing times, it is apparent that for many, simply staying at home is not feasible option without help. There is a myriad of other factors we start to drift to such as climate change, gender inequities, and the capitalistic narratives of the bootstrapper which favor to pit us against those with misfortune.

With the bubble of this day drift popped with checkout time we mosey to the counter to pay for our groceries. It took an hour and thirty minutes for us to purchase a total of 15 items. During this time, we saw people patiently waiting in line and only one person that left the line. Things where calm, and we even got to exchange in mild dialogue with some fellow community members. As we check out these thoughts sit on us for the rest of the day. Every individual will be impacted by the pandemic in some fashion. With a looming cloud of economic uncertainty, the long-lasting ramifications are unknown. COVID-19 will be a part of our lives now, how we go about learning from it will be seen.

If we look at let’s say a mixed use building as an example. We can envision the process. A closed-door conference room with the architect, neatly dressed for the occasion, calmly writing notes and sketching as their client explains the project. No future tenants in the room, no neighbors. Yet without either can the project be a success? The design process is contained and built on the assumptions of what the architect considers great living space minus the funding restrictions. Our ownership ends with the design and any future evolution of the space is left to the will of the property owner. If we look at recent history in Fort Worth with the IBM Solana, designed by Ricardo Legoretta, the previous glamour of the flamboyant colors has been erased. What once stood as a modern example of Mexican architecture has now faded into the blur of travelling down 114. This brings into question how sustainable a designer’s good intentions for a project really are.

Furthermore, if we are to talk about environmental sustainability, no career engaged in the industrial system can support this in their business model. Screw makers must make screws, car makers must make cars, and architects must make buildings. Without the next product to sell, each business fails. Imagine a restaurant let’s say in South Fort Worth. Elegantly designed and launched with a plethora of menu options. Over two years the restaurant fails, and a new tenant takes over. It is likely the architect will be on the forefront of helping to remake the place, tearing down existing finishes, equipment, and millwork to meet their client’s need and fuel their own business.

How can we be practitioners of sustainability when a large requirement of our profession’s success is destruction? Let me be clear in saying it is not a sole failure of the architect. They are doing what the system requires them to do to sustain their business and support themselves. It is failure of the system designers work in. It is incapable of allowing any other solutions in its current state. So, with climate change and other pressing world issues, how do we prioritize equity and wellbeing? How do we ensure a better future not only for our communities but our profession?

People are the DNA of cities. It is what drives our economy, our innovations, and the things that make home, home. Within cities are webs of diverse systems that keep industries on the move and affect our lifestyles. Although there are great marvels to cheer for, there are also many issues that inhibit equity. Many of these issues have been imbedded for so long that they are second nature. I am sure we have all heard “well that is just the way things are”. I often find the better statement is “why and, what can we do to change it”?

The major issues we face are ambiguous, ambitious, and immense. Due to the complexity of addressing these challenges, a collective approach that emphasizes broad stakeholder involvement is more necessary that ever. This requires a new design method that prioritizes collaboration and connecting with those most affected to incorporate them as part of the process. It requires experienced problems solvers able to address both the most urgent and the most daunting of challenges. It requires us to remove ourselves from the nuance of capitalizing from product to product, or building to building, and reinvent our profession to fully utilize our creative capital. We need practitioners that can look deeper into the underlying causes of today’s challenges and effectively execute solutions.

Pressed for time and resources, most organizations will not have the capacity to independently address the perplexing and complicated hurtles to enact systems wide change. If we look at the North Texas area as a case example there are almost 30,000 registered non-profits in the region with over 75% providing some form of social service [1]. Yet despite the abundance of resources, one in five children living in poverty resides in Dallas [2]. What does this state about the effectiveness of our resources or the condition of our economy? If we look deeper we find each non-profit works to address a specific challenge and competes with the same funding and talent to enact their programs.

“As resources become limited and the challenges ever more difficult to solve, most non-profits limit their focus to addressing a symptom of a problem rather than the cause.” (Jesse Herrera) #IAMVISIBLE
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As resources become limited and the challenges ever more difficult to solve, most non-profits limit their focus to addressing a symptom of a problem rather than the cause. The reasoning is not ill minded, but it is the result of working independently with fixed and often very limited resources. For volunteer non-profits, this becomes exponentially more difficult as time and resources are extremely finite. If you take homelessness for example, it is more than just not having a place to stay. There are a multitude of factors that contribute to this such as lack of transportation, lack of income, lack of food, and lack of employment to name just a few. These underlying issues, similar to homelessness, also require an intense focus and a commitment of resources to engage properly. Many of these specific elements also have their own contributing factors as well, making the challenge even more difficult.

Considering the complications to addressing some of these issues, it is easy to see why many non-profits opt for an easier and much more achievable option. Looking at it from a business perspective we start to find similarities to the example on architects. As a non-profit you’re in the business of helping address those in need. Without people in need you cannot justify being in business. How comfortable are we putting non-profits on a timeline where the completion of their mission results in a shutdown? Should be more intentional with planning an organizations closure. Or is it more practical to evolve these organizations so they can provide a stable profession adept at solving the multitude of challenges we face today and tomorrow?

I have been ever curious about trying to answer these questions. Unable to find the answer here locally I embarked on a series of global trips to understand the vessels used to enact change and address pressing issues. I participated in multiple global conferences on urban innovation and embedded myself in the subject, learning off thought leaders and contributing heavily to the conversations.

After many trips and research I found my answer to systems change in the innovation lab model. Able to develop and facilitate the toolkits necessary, the innovation lab works at multiple scales to engage the whole system and align grassroots innovation with government and institutional priorities. This platform enables organizations, community champions, and innovators to work together to accelerate impact while localizing solutions. The concept is not completely new, but there are opportunities to evolve its core framework based on lessons learned, local conditions, and advances in technology.

The Local Economic Development (LED) Lab in Vancouver is a great example on how this platform can be used to support community driven social innovations. Pressed with a growing homeless population in Down Town East Side (DTES), the LED Lab was able to develop (11x) social enterprises to create a more vibrant and inclusive local economy, creating multiple opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment. By partnering with Simon Fraser University (SFU), they were able to recruit student interns and project coordinators to aid in implementing the projects. Their success resulted in the LED Lab being fully absorbed by SFU and now they operate as part of a network of (4x) innovation labs working on a multitude of local and global challenges.

Locally, Clean Slate, a social enterprise through Presbyterian Night Shelter offers those experiencing homelessness a pathway to employment. By partnering with the City of Fort Worth, they have secured stable janitorial jobs for those in need while providing an essential service to municipal facilities.

Design in this platform becomes a framework that develops solutions by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. Technology becomes an extension to this, helping to accelerate results and foster effective collaboration. The lab functions as a dot connector by gaining a full understanding of the challenge, it subsets, and the opportunities available locally. When new prototypes are needed, it offers a haven to rapidly experiment with concepts and stimulate grass roots innovation. When an issue requires urgency, resources can be allocated online via crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, offering quick results. It’s a framework that can focus on the singular issues that encompass a challenge while being able to look at the bigger picture and phase resources appropriately towards an end goal.

So, what does this look like? It starts with a series of community conversations around food and drinks, discussing in depth topics that are relevant to each challenge. The audience is composed of diverse participants from different disciplines, perspectives, and backgrounds. These conversations help each stakeholder become comfortable not only their similarities but their differences as well. It is essential to have different points of view to discover solutions. It helps to spark creative thinking and a shared language for the group to navigate the ups and downs of complex challenges. Roundtables and interactive design exercises help each of the stakeholder’s gain clarity not only on the complexities of the challenge, but also where opportunities lie. As momentum develops, phasing and mobilizing action between the collective groups becomes key.

Looking back on the previous example of addressing homelessness, no one organization can tackle everything alone, but together they can build a strategy to achieve a common shared goal. As the challenge becomes clear, potential solutions arise from the network of partners, fueling short term changes and aiding in the long-term policy and economic changes that will be needed resolve the issue in full.

Looking into preparing the future for these challenges, what role do educational institutions play? How do they best position themselves and their students to tackle these daunting task? The university has an opportunity to be an active partner in not just teaching the skill sets but implementing the solutions as well. By developing pathways to social entrepreneurship, colleges can be on the front seat of change. Students could be recruited from multiple degree paths, like the LED Lab’s model to work on projects while completing their degree. This could position students not only to graduate with a degree, but a social enterprise aimed at addressing a problem.

For architecture students, the lab could foster radical new approaches to design, construction, and problem solving by encouraging the use of unconventional materials such as plastic or cardboard. Once the students master the materials, they could be launched as a team to address a critical housing or infrastructure need in a third world country. More importantly by bringing in other college programs to collaborate with the architecture students, new radical solutions could be created as the students step outside of their professional bubble and learn to look at problems through a collective lens. Curriculum could be scripted to focus on problem solving and evolving the design practice to better prepare students for the challenges they face. Additional opportunities for co-curricular credit would also be available through volunteering offering the students ample opportunities to engage. The research gained from each project will be an asset to teaching the next generation of problem solvers and providing practical toolkits for anyone looking to enact change.

Back on the designer, it puts them in a position to transition from creating products to developing process frameworks and executing solutions. It also makes us think of the design process in totality. Critics, for example are a key part of vetting the project’s success and looking at the nuance details of a building. Yet they are active only after the building is completed leaving little that can be done. The project is completed, and for better or worse the building is there to stay. This new design process would bring a diverse mindset to the forefront early and would ensure human equity and environmental preservation is part of the conversation throughout the project lifecycle. This framework could ensure that professions like the critic have sustained purpose in any project.

Under this new mindset what unique journeys would be able to embark on professionally? Through this framework could we develop a truly sustainable model as we take greater ownership of the projects? What amazing things could we embark on if our creative capital was not restricted to just buildings? Time will tell. The big question till then is, what role do we want to play?