Designing Equitable Communities with June Grant
June Grant is an architect, designer and researcher committed to the craft of buildings, their potential to enhance cities and develop socially responsible solutions to complex real-world problems. She is the founding Principal of blink!LAB architecture, a boutique, research-based architecture practice focused on adaptive and transformative sustainable development. June has a master’s in architecture from Yale and has studied economics and sculpture. She is the immediate-past President of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (SFNOMA), where she is committed to growing practice opportunities for under-represented groups by strengthening the role of communication. June is a community builder in every sense of the word.
In this episode, June shares:
Her memories growing up in Jamaica and how they shaped her journey to be an architect.
The strength and joy of intergenerational living.
How AARP – the largest nonprofit organization dedicated to older adults – found her work and wanted to partner.
How “granny flats” (i.e., accessory dwelling units (ADUs), in-law units) can help support diverse, sustainable, and equitable communities.
The power of observation as critical to design and community building.
Episode Show Notes
(Transcript from our interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Erin: What's your earliest memory of being aware that built environments existed and how it can impact people?
June: Growing up as a kid in Jamaica, one of the family traditions was that my mom and I would drive to visit my grandfather, every Sunday. I would tell her which route to drive, so you have to imagine me at age 10, directing my mom which route to take to my grandfather’s house. What she didn't know was that I was actually looking at construction sites. So, every time we drove by, sites would have changed. They went from empty pieces of land, with nothing to suddenly trenching, to rebar to walls, to hundreds of houses, followed by families moving in. I would evaluate and think, “well, that is not how I would have done it.” I became captivated by watching how land and space changes, and imagine what family life was like on the inside. That was how I became fascinated by the built form but more about the transformation of space, the materials that go into it and the people who are involved. I don't remember at what point in time I learned the word architect, but since I was about five years old, I knew that's I wanted to be.
I didn't come from an environment where talked about architecture. My mom was an Administrative Assistant and my dad was an Economist in Housing. My parents are from the 60s. At that time there was the civil rights Black liberation movement in the US. My dad was studying in the UK and the UK was going through the socialist revolution, and in Jamaica we were going through the independence movement. From the 60s coming forward, there was this drive about agency and self-reliance. That's the background I grew up in, and the word architect or engineer was not part of that as far as I know. The energy, the network, and the coalitions that evolved at that time, I grew up surrounded by that, and I had that naturally ingrained in my psyche.
Growing up, I was also influenced by art. A few of my aunts from my mom’s side, danced in the National Dance Theatre [Company] of Jamaica. So, I grew up going to rehearsals or being aware about dance, and theater space. I became more fascinated with choreography, than actual dance movement.
“My parents are from the 60s, at the time when there was civil rights Black liberation movement in the US.”
Erin: You talk about these different spaces when you think of your childhood. When you think of a place that embodied community, what comes to your mind?
June: Someone said to me that “You spend your whole life building your past”. I lived in a neighborhood called Ashland for a short time. Ashland was designed with three community parks. They were not gated, and anyone could walk through them in the neighborhood. All the houses backed up to the park, in a way you might call The Commons, but it really was not The Commons. It was our neighborhood park. [Ashland was designed so that] the entire neighborhood was our playground. Sometimes we would prefer to sit in on the sidewalks as kids hanging out, skateboarding, cycling, etc. [There wasn’t a sense of heavy wall boundary. It very permeable. What I really remember is that every age group was accommodated. So, we didn't have a child space versus a teenager space versus an adult or senior citizen space. It was a big green space where once or twice a year, we had a neighborhood barbecue, but that was it. It was where adults could go meet, talk, sit and enjoy the breeze.
Looking back and thinking about it, at times it feels idyllic. I find myself thinking about that community often as I compare it to the US. As I get older, I’ve become aware that in the US, we have not been designing for the full lifecycle. It's as if we're in complete denial, and have designed our cities for the 25 to 35. Restaurants, cocktail lounges, multi unit structures with rooftop deck. Where is a child supposed to run? Where is an older person, supposed to sit and watch the city? Where is that the mishmash of what a city to me should be - which is accepting of ages, races and lifestyles in this messy soup, but yet it still works. We have been building not just [racially] segregated cities but segregated through age [as well] and that has become more and more concerning to me.
When I first opened the office in 2003, I was not licensed. Being a Jamaican immigrant, I always intended to have my own studio. The idea of working for someone else was not for me, it was just a steppingstone to the ideal which was to be independent. I opened the office in 2003 right at the downturn in the market. I opened it with the idea of my passion around form and graphic art, and more on the artistic side. When I became a licensed [architect], I changed the name from blink!Designs to blink!LAB Architecture. I was still very much focused on the artistic side of design, less about the community. However, I made a decision that the studio would be located in a historically political area, so my office is located close to where the Black Panther Party was founded. [In 2008 I decided to close the studio and went to work for AECOM. After several successful projects for wealthy client, I tried to convince AECOM leadership to pursue community-based projects in Oakland. I was not successful.] I didn't have enough grassroots connection, didn't have enough political support, didn't know enough people who would be advocates for what I was thinking about. So, I opened up the office with the mandate to design Oakland, not to redesign Oakland.
The reason why I wanted to design Oakland - I was looking at our streets and recognizing that we had these huge streets six lane streets that went through neighborhoods. That needed to be designed and addressed! It really takes an architect and an urban planner, who's in the community and committed to the community, to start to address some of these questions. Looking at Oakland and seeing these things, they made zero sense, but I knew that they had to be redesigned. [In order to determine] the design strategy, I would need to get to know the people who live in the community, because they could tell me the history and reasons why does one neighborhood look so different from the other? Just that one question allowed me the pathway to talk to people, to say, “Tell me more about this, because it's not making sense to me.”
When coffee shops started opening up [in the US], I was so excited because I had lived in Florence and Paris for a while. I've been in the European coffee culture where you to sit, watch and observe. The communities I wanted to observe didn't have any coffee shops. So, I started taking a different route home every time, just to see more; and I attended community meetings. It also helps that my office is literally a retail storefront in the community. I see the community walk by. I hear the community voice directly because individuals will literally walk up to my door, knock and say, “Can you help us with this problem or is it something you do?” They would tell me the issue, and I would help or guide them. This is how the studio’s work slowly pivoted from being just about the building, the profile of the building, or how the building works to sustainable design understood as an ecosystem of what's there. For me to even come up with a solution, I need to spend time understanding that ecosystem, and that is really how the studio has slightly pivoted, to have a wider community portfolio than a private portfolio.
“Sustainable design is actually more about understanding the ecosystem that's there”
Erin: Can you tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that people are facing, trying to keep their communities together so that we can start to understand the solutions that you came up?
June: Accessory dwelling units, also known as granny flats, In-Law Units, detached units, or basement units, are independent living units, smaller than a typical small house. They have a kitchen, bathroom, your own social spaces - complete independence, but in a smaller footprint. I'm attracted to In-Law Units and the role it plays as a solution to what's going on in cities. For the past 15 years, I've gone up to Ashland, Oregon and this unique city’s layout includes In-Law Units, or granny flats as part of the urban plan. Along with the main houses, there are 100-year-old smaller independent units. To support these smaller independent units, there is alley ways that provide a fine grain street system - there are main streets, access streets alley streets. Alley streets are not as smoothly paved and more gravel, but they provide access to the smaller units.
What I loved about these In-Law Units and gravel street was the community-spirit that was created by the people who live in these smaller units. They had their own engagement system - . They would have parties. But there were aksi small businesses. Jewelry designers and graphic designers were using these In-Law Units, some for living and some for business. I found that to be truly exciting because it meant that retail was not just on the main street. Office space was not just on the main street. Office space was webbed within the community fabric.. Meanwhile back in Oakland, 2016, we were experiencing an aggressive economy. The impact was that the housing stock rose tremendously, and most [African-American] families decided to sell. I was contacted by a young woman, who wanted to build an In-Law Unit on a property that her family had owned for five generations. She explained to me that there used to be 24 African American families on her block and there were now 5. Furthermore, she said that she no longer feels safe in her neighborhood. I was infuriated and really concerned after hearing this, because it's one thing to have a sense of isolation because there's few of you left, but another to feel that your sense of physical safety is no longer there. It's a story of not just African Americans, but of course it touches me more because it is an African American story.
“She explained to me that there used to be 24 African American families on her block and there were now five.”
What was happening was the Third Migration. While the First and Second [Great] Migrations were voluntary economic pursuits in the sense that [families] were going towards a better economic future from the South and North, this [third event] was a forced push out, where families were selling and then moving to a second-tier city where it was cheaper to live. A place where families had very little social infrastructure, and would probably spend two or three hours in transit to get to their jobs in San Francisco. It was a complete disruption of life. It tore at me and when this young woman told me about her being one of five families remaining, I started looking at maps to see where families were going.. Why In-Law Unit were critical in my view was because it was a way of holding ground. One way for families to be able to hold onto their property was to invest in the property - to take some of the cash value out of the house and build a unit in the back that they could rent out. An ADU provides that missing spatial unit that we had not been built for the last 50 years. All that we've been building were units for 25- to 35-year-olds. Investigating ADUS was a way to look at a housing type that actually had a relationship with where you were in your lifecycle and be adaptable enough.
Family members being far and dispersed is a bigger loss than we realize. The In-Law Units can make a bigger contribution than we think because they can be a solution during the pandemic. A lot of people have not been able to pay their rents, and if you had an In-Law Unit, that family member could probably come back to the family unit. ADUS are also a great place to isolate and quarantine, an extra place for people working from home. Such spaces can also be used to run small businesses. Having these spaces and opportunities to come together around problem solving or creating and inventing as a group and as a unit is vital. I think we are missing these experiences, that are critical to not only our sense of self worth, but also for the health of our community.
Erin: Why AARP reached out to you about this topic and why it is so relevant for some of the challenges that we are facing right now?
June: When AARP reached out to me, it was a shocking moment. Working on the project had been a private endeavor [separate from the studio practice], with my husband coming in to make models for me. I was concerned about the number of African Americans losing ground. I had a tunnel vision about the fear of families being pushed out and feeling that we've got to do something about it. In the midst of creating design ideas and I was invited to do an online a 15-minute presentation. Shannon Guzman, a senior strategist at AARP heard it and reached out to me to learn more about what I was doing. I explained to her and she told me that AARP was interested in In-Law Units. They also brought the vulnerability faced by older adults to my attention. AARP made me so much more sensitive to the statistics. After the first conversation, I went back to the census, and found out that we are an aging society, not a young society. AARP has continued to support me in this push. By working with them, I was able to let them know which cities I thought were really vulnerable, how we needed to be able to broadcast that information, and to cities know that they need to be a lot more aggressive about the change.
I'm really proud of the number of cities that now have In-Law Unit ordinances on the books. We just finished writing the 20-year update for AARP's In-Law Unit ordinance which is a model code that is used to encourage cities to embrace the new ADU codes. I'm really proud, because for the first time, we have begun to address equity in the language which we did not before. Before [the code] was blind to race and history. My role in the group was to look at it from the perspective of those who have been disenfranchised or those who were not able to take advantage of opportunities in the past. [In the updated code we begin] to change the language to be a little bit more accommodating and more sensitive so that some groups are provided more leeway, and that's been incredible.
“They also brought the vulnerability faced by older adults to my attention. AARP made me so much more sensitive through the statistics. ”
Erin: What's one thing that you wish more people knew about designing for social connection that we could use to inform?
June: I think it is the power of observation, if we just pause and spend the time looking. Juan Pablo Gonzalez, a young film director said that “if you just look, the community will tell you what it is”. That is exactly it. If we just look. I think for me the key is, not just the community building, but the observation. I really would wish our architecture schools and our urban design schools spent a lot more time on observation and less on canon.
“I really would wish our architecture schools and our urban design schools spent a lot more time on observation and less on canon.”
June Grant at YBCA100 Summit