Redefining Participation (Part 1): Estefania Barajas in Conversation with Siboney Díaz Sánchez

Plaza Guadalupe:

The most successful public spaces have the ability to inspire and tell our stories. The ongoing renovation project of Plaza Guadalupe in San Antonio, Texas—a neighborhood space that for decades has been considered the city’s most deprived and physically deteriorated public area—serves as a case study of outreach and agency. Community members debated the installation of a fence surrounding the property to address loitering, drug use, and crime and the effect a fence would have on health and well-being, the accessibility of human services, the sectioning off of public space, and the criminalization of low-income communities.

Plaza Guadalupe is unconcerned with the authorship of the architect. In this project, designers act as transcribers to leave space for individual voices, hoping to amend the lack of representation and redistribute investment in the space to address the injustices Plaza Guadalupe has endured over the years.

Estefania Barajas (EB): Community has a very broad definition; I think when we envision designing for a community there is no system of reciprocity or alliance with the community; often there is almost no interaction with the future inhabitants. In an academic setting, we spend time imagining the commons, but not who the commons are for. We can argue that in practice and in schools we are not given the tools on how to properly communicate with the user.

I had the privilege to listen to you present on multiple occasions and speak about the importance of engaging community—to design for and with community. Why is it important to leave space for community? What is the significance of including community in the process?

Siboney Díaz Sánchez (SDS): I was taught to design FOR communities—prescriptive design. My education made me feel like I could help others by assigning solutions before engaging in processes that included community or acknowledged already existing brilliance within communities. Traditional architectural practices require compliance in land use frameworks, reliance on funding through power sources without questioning wealth generation, prioritizing political leverage without consideration of harmful policies, and exploitation of essential workers. Alternative types of practice structures and funding sources are shifting design approaches—consider Able City, Borderless Studio, Public Design Agency, Public Design for Equity, and Civic Projects Architecture.

As designers, we can be trained in specific materials and processes but we need to focus on understanding how to facilitate discussions about design, create accessibility, acknowledge existing designers within communities, and honor indigenous lands we occupy. I was speaking to my friend, role model, and artist, Mukhtara Yusuf, about architecture licensing and the emphasis on developing sketching skills. She said “My ancestors knew how to design before they knew how to draw.” Formal training is not a replacement for lived experience. Community-based design is not new, and I try to approach it from a place of remembrance. In architecture school I had to unlearn the ideas of collective thought for community solidarity that I was raised around. I think architecture practitioners in general have a fundamentally misguided way of thinking about success in design practices. Creating space for community voices enhances designs and is integral for the sustainability of the project, architecture, programming, and operations. Design can empower communities but only by prioritizing people and addressing healing.

EB: Do you mind speaking about the history of Plaza Guadalupe and your connection to the project?

SDS: Plaza Guadalupe is owned by the City of San Antonio but operated by Avenida Guadalupe, a non-profit community development corporation. Avenida Guadalupe installed temporary fences around the plaza in 2017 as the organization waited for permanent fencing permit review and approval. Community members reached out to the district’s councilwoman about the fencing approval and challenged any fencing proposal around a public space. At the time I was co-chair for the Latinos in Architecture (LiA) Committee within AIA San Antonio. Weeks of press about creating barriers for communities to enjoy their plaza led the city council office to LiA. Our committee was asked to facilitate discussions about “the fence” which meant LiA had to negotiate the scope of consultation with the local AIA chapter due to legal and political concerns. There was distress from the local chapter about the potential implications of an AIA committee addressing a spatially contentious issue. An agreement was reached and community meetings were set by the committee with support of the city. Every meeting was different and imperfect. We made mistakes, took ownership of them, adjusted, and processed what we heard. We apologized and expressed gratitude. Two conceptual plans were produced for public voting with the distillation of community voices; both plans included programmatic, physical, and operational improvements. A version of the more popular plan—a compromise between the plaza management and community groups—was approved by the city’s Historic and Design Review Commission in April of 2019. The plaza’s main entrances will remain open but fencing will be installed around select locations, such as the playground. The city has designated programming funds to activate the space. The week before leaving for my fellowship in Boston, I helped organize Family Design Day, a free design justice event at Plaza Guadalupe. We had over 20 collaborators, paid 4 local BIPOC performing artists, featured youth spoken word artists, fed people two meals, provided history about the plaza and the westside, and created a mural designed by youth. As a committee, we knew that facilitating meetings about access to public space is not the end; it is the beginning. We can go beyond moderation and collaborate to create.

EB: Leaving space is in part about respecting the expertise of others and acknowledging that architects don’t have the best answers to every problem. I believe the Plaza Guadalupe Project is a fine example of stepping back.I remember two very opposing comments from our community meetings, both very emotional and hard to forget.

The first community member described the inequalities that the neighborhood was facing by not having a proper public space. They followed up by saying, "we need a place to make memories, we need a place for people to walk, play... a place for people to fall in love." Many of us clapped, some of us cried... It was a beautiful speech.

Another comment came from a person who worked at Plaza Guadalupe. They described their fear of looking out the window every time they came to work. They described how often they found needles, bodies on the floor, how often they encountered situations related to substance abuse or putting community members (children more specifically) in danger.

The comments throughout the weeks were both in support of and against fencing Plaza Guadalupe. We made two different plans and asked for community feedback. Looking back, are there additional efforts we could have made?

SDS: I believe so. We could have allowed for more time to process in smaller groups. We could have engaged youth more. We should have pushed harder on funding for landscaping, shading, and improved furniture. We could have discussed how people defined safety. We could have collaborated with established local organizations to provide services to people experiencing homelessness. We should have paid people for their time. We should have pushed harder to secure funding for programming and operations. We should have had more translators. We should have recorded meetings and mailed out updates. We should have prioritized moments for joy for LiA members working and compensated y’all.

EB: The narratives we gather are inherently subjective. How do we assure we make positive conclusions? How do we as designers and mediators begin to make decisions for a community?

SDS: I think the operative word there is “for”. It needs to be “with.” The meetings we organized were flawed. Community engagement, organizing, and advocacy are imperfect and messy in the most beautiful of ways because these processes involve people. I do not want to romanticize processes that unearth trauma or illuminate injustices. There is pain in community organizing and community design efforts. You have to respect the capacities of people and reflect when you are being extractive. You have to reflect on the accessibility of language and the transparency of the process. I think there is always a challenge of acknowledging “scope.” Architects are asked to respond to client requests, but we need to also challenge the scopes outlined to include community voices. We also need to allow ourselves to dream past scopes and still communicate the financial realities of a project. We have to build consensus as mediators, and that can be difficult in communities that are working to survive and/or heal from generational trauma. We need to invest in community perspectives because right now, for most projects, community members are unpaid consultants.

EB: You’ve mentioned in the past that "architecture is always political." What happens when your views and the opinions of a community don’t align?

When I was working on a design charrette for the Border to Boulevard project in the city of Laredo, we had a few community members suggesting anti-homeless architecture in the downtown area. We also collected a lot of comments with undertones of "othering."

More recently I heard a story from an architect in Houston working with a predominantly low-income and underserved Hispanic population. His mission was to bring more services into this neighborhood. The community was openly opposed because they did not want "those people” (i.e. Black people) coming in.

SDS: I stand by that statement. If you look at funding sources, historical use of stolen land, and firm creation you cannot deny that architecture, built and in practice, is political. Our practices are regulated by policies. My body and my identity is politicized, so yes, design work I am involved in is political. I think denial of the relationships between architecture and politics demonstrates complacency in practicing architecture. I came up against this debate in LiA’s negotiation about Plaza Guadalupe’s scope with AIA San Antonio. That led me to the Architect Magazine interview.

Are you asking how I converse with people who disagree that critical race theory intersects with architecture practices? Are you asking how I discuss racial discrimination with clients? Racist practices respond to racist policies—this is a reality, not an opinion, and denying it is delusional. Architecture has continued to uphold white settler colonial practices and has preserved white supremacy in built spaces. My community work is in communities that are living the realities of a racialized society.

Communities are not simply ‘underserved’ or ‘underrepresented’—they have been intentionally excluded. In discussions that involve ‘othering,’ it is our responsibility as humans to speak up. We cannot shy away from asking, “What do you mean when you say ‘those people?’” You can ask for clarification if the term is unclear, but when you hear something racist, homophobic, sexist, ableist, ageist, xenophobic... you say something. You do something.

EB: When we spoke about Plaza Guadalupe, you also introduced the DAP (Design As Protest) Collective, an anti-racist, non-hierarchical, action-based collective dedicated to advancing Design Justice in the built environment. More specifically you spoke about Design as Protest Demand 6 and Design as Protest Demand 9. Can you speak more about DAP and its connection/application to projects like Plaza Guadalupe?

SDS: Yes! The DAP collective focuses on anti-racist practices. We had our national call on June 5th where members spoke about various efforts in policy, youth organizing, direct action, and collective care. The collective created demands and an anti-racist design justice index that outlines direction and action axes to move from equality to liberation and from acknowledgement to influence. Physical publications are also available on the website. I am most active in the planning and policy group that is currently creating voter justice guides that outline specific policy recommendations in support of the demands and provide references to existing national initiatives. It is important to note that DAP is a collective with community agreements. We operate with intention and respect.

Demand 5 reads: Center Community Leadership In Design and Planning Processes. Design Justice demands that we center community leadership in the design process across a range of project scales, types, and scopes to support community organizing and self-determination.

Processes we engaged with at Plaza Guadalupe directly reflect the desire and need to have community expertise within design processes. There are many issues with privatization, but when changes to public space are done without centering community, it can never be design justice.

Demand 6 reads: Create, Protect, Reclaim Public Space Through Liberatory Planning and Policy. Design Justice demands a genuinely accessible public realm, free from embedded oppression, and co-created by Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian communities through the democratic and transparent planning processes and policies.

Plaza Guadalupe, as I mentioned, is publicly owned. By installing a fence without sufficient community support, Avenida Guadalupe was privatizing it. It was not a transparent planning process, but Avenida Guadalupe, the operator, did not have sufficient funding to sustain a safe and clean open public space. LiA prepared recommendations for the City of San Antonio, Avenida Guadalupe, and community members, since safe public space is the responsibility of many. Efforts to sustain accessible spaces come best from collectives that acknowledge the importance of preserving places like Plaza Guadalupe.

Demand 8 reads: Preserve and Invest in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian Cultural Spaces. Design Justice demands we acknowledge the history of spatial removal and cultural erasure within urban design and planning and secure place-keeping of disinherited Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian cultural spaces.

Preserving and investing in Plaza Guadalupe needs to be a holistic effort. With histories of disinvestment we need to invest time and funding into acknowledging and elevating untold narratives. Community work is also an investment in healing. When we acknowledge past erasure and work to remedy representation exclusion, we are also healing. Reference Enterprise Building to Heal: A Framework for Holistic Community Development by Chandra Christmas-Rouse, Brandon C. Jones and Meghan Venable-Thomas.

EB: Not long ago I read the article Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning by Thomas Campanella. Professor Campanella describes the loss of identity and professional agency in planning as "legacies of the Jacobsian turn." In a profession driven by patronage and capitalism, we could say designers don’t hold much weight or influence, but if we do have some power, how do we reconcile leaving space without losing agency? Does acting as mediators suspend responsibility?

SDS: Absolutely. This goes back to scope. If we are designing with a community, we need to consider operations and programming of space. We have commissioned buildings to consider how spaces are operating environmentally. We, as architects, have not necessarily historically had the same commitment to sustainability of design justice efforts. As someone who now develops affordable housing, it is my responsibility to speak to residents about what we can improve and what we need to repeat. I am currently working on design standards for our organization to provide direction and clarity in stewardship and responsibilities. We cannot dismiss lived experiences, and mediation is one of many steps.

EB: The last question. So much of the work you do is considered unpaid labor. How can this type of work—community work—be valued when it is often provided by volunteering?

SDS: [Laughs] I think often about my friend Rodolfo Rodríguez Avila, a RWJF Culture of Health Leader who reminds me of abundance in the world. At the 2018 Design Justice Summit organized by Colloqate and AIA National, we were talking about design justice advocacy. People were discussing challenges, hopes, and case studies. Rodolfo raised their hand to ask, “And how are we paid for this work?” Applause filled the space. This goes back to funding sources. How are groups valuing community efforts? How are groups valuing empathetic facilitation? Committee work can be exhausting, but it has also been the most life-giving. Advocating for community voice in formally defined architectural design spaces is where I started to realize that actually I was advocating for changing how we thought about design processes and creative thought. Community members are designers. I applied for the Enterprise Rose Fellowship because I saw the ability to formalize and be paid for the community work I was prioritizing in committees in San Antonio. It is important to find a chosen family where conversation baselines are such that you are not emotionally exhausted. —Find your people—they are all around. It is also important to document labor, time, healing and create invoices. You might submit an invoice to document the value. There are opportunities to be paid. I am also learning the word “no.”

EB: Please correct me if I am wrong, but your method is very human because your approach comes from autodidactic knowledge; your skill-set was self-thought. There are no certifications, no degrees. How do you validate your work? How do you compare or make improvements since this work is difficult to assess?

SDS: Who am I validating this work to? Community? Employers? Funders? Academics? Colleagues, architects or developers? Myself? My ancestors? Artists? I do not—cannot—measure “success” with awards. I only mention awards because that seems to be a familiar metric in design spheres. In 2019, before leaving my role as LiA San Antonio co-chair, I fundraised and coordinated the committee’s application for the AIA National Diversity Recognition Program. It was emotionally draining because I realized I was pushing to complete it to legitimize the committee’s work on an institutional level, and national recognition could help committee efforts after I left. I was able to complete the application because I remembered that applying was about acknowledging those who made the committee work possible. We used some money from the Plaza Guadalupe efforts to hire Latino filmmakers to create a video for the award submission. LiA San Antonio is a 2020 recipient of the AIA National Diversity Recognition Program. That means something to some people.

Before my fellowship I worked on ChildSafe, a new construction project at Overland Partners. It has won awards, but I often wonder how the space is facilitating healing for counselors experiencing second hand trauma inherent in ChildSafe services. Since being in the fellowship, I have applied for and won grants for projects and low income housing tax credit awards. These wins keep me employable, but what is validating to me in housing work is increased affordability and resident joy and access. I think, “Were we able to incorporate Marilyn Salgado’s needs from Resident Services in the community room?” And increasing the budget for public art for a project—that is where I find validation.

I am a new board member of the Association for Community Design which means I stay connected to people who challenge me. I learn from people in the organization daily. I am reading Disability Visibility edited by Alice Wong and Undrowned Black Feminist Lessions from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. They are a part of my self-imposed community health syllabus.

Part Two of this conversation can be found here.

Siboney Díaz Sánchez is community advocate, and former zoning commissioner. She is a NOMA Empowerment Committee Co-Chair, Enterprise Rose Fellow at Opportunities Communities in Boston, and a lecturer at the Boston Architectural College. Siboney is a licensed architect in the state of Texas.

Estefania Barajas is a first-generation Mexican-American architectural designer and a master’s of architecture candidate at Rice University. Barajas graduated in 2018 from the University of Texas at San Antonio with a bachelor's of science in architecture. Barajas served as an active member and director of Freedom by Design, helping with the planning and construction of pollinators and community gardens in San Antonio.

She has worked at AbleCity (formerly Frank Architects Inc) and Lake|Flato architects under the eco-conservation studio and research and development program. While at AbleCity, she had the opportunity to work on an award-winning comprehensive plan (Plan Viva Laredo), community-driven projects (such as John Valls Skate Park) and urban agriculture ordinance. During her time at Lake|Flato, and as a committee member of AIA San Antonio Latinos in Architecture, she helped facilitate community meetings for the revitalization of San Antonio’s Historic Plaza Guadalupe.

She is a recipient of the ACSA COTE Top Ten for students award and SARAs National Design Award. Most recently, she was awarded the 2021 RDA Houston Design Research Grant for her project titled Tables in Deserts and Swamps: How Food Education Can Help Solve the Root of Food Security.

In 2020, Barajas was an editor and contributor for PLAT 8.5 tl;dr. She currently serves as a member of Rice Architecture’s Anti-Racism Collective (ARC).

with Estefania BarajasSeptember 3, 2021