Homelessness Charette

Ghenoiu, Erik, Masha Hupalo, Andrew Chittenden

| “Homelessness Charette” | Conference | Los Angeles, CA | Jan 2019

In a four-day, all-school workshop, we came together as a community of designers to make a contribution to the body of thinking on homelessness. In the short, intense, collaborative format of a charrette, we asked all 500 students of our Institute to affirm that design’s responsibility to imagine and shape new futures can be and should be in service of everyone. Rather than pursue a longer project from a small number of students, we made this an intensive short-term project for the entire school to signal that this is a priority for us all, and to begin a larger conversation that could produce many indirect impacts on work at the school moving forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voTmOsB7ajQ

We are neighbors to Skid Row, where the city’s homelessness crisis is at its most visible and challenging. SCI-Arc is known for meeting a design challenge with speculative and radical thinking, and though design alone will not solve the problems of homelessness, it might be able to identify new directions and fresh approaches for some of the many fields engaged with this crisis. We wanted to turn the energy, enthusiasm, skill, and inventiveness of our students toward this problem because they have the capacity to generate ideas that we could never have anticipated.

Working with faculty, students, alumni, and key voices from around Los Angeles, we identified a set of questions about homelessness, housing, policy, services, and public perceptions. Over four days, small groups of SCI-Arc students answered these questions with original research and design proposals. We prepared them with annotated documentation of the legal structures, agencies, nonprofits, and design precedents addressing homelessness. The charrette began with an opening event featuring presentations and discussion from major voices on the homelessness situation in Los Angeles, and experts on the situation joined the school’s faculty over the course of the charrette to help advise the student groups.

On the fourth day, in keeping with the tradition of the design charrette, the products of this short and intensive process were collected in a comprehensive, uncurated exhibition of all the projects to carry the discussion forward. Students, faculty, alumni, and trustees of the school were joined by many of the guest experts from the previous days as well as members of the public. Nearly eighty projects were shown at this exhibition.

Hernan Diaz Alonso, SCI-Arc Director
Erik Ghenoiu, SCI-Arc Faculty and Research Coordinator
View the full report: https://issuu.com/sci-arc/docs/report_sci-arc_homelessnesscharrett
Partner: Goethe-Institut Los Angeles

Welcome and Introduction
Hernan Diaz Alonso, SCI-Arc Director
Lien Heidenreich-Seleme, Goethe-Institut LA Director
Mark Ridley-Thomas, LA County Supervisor, Second District

Presentation: Framing the Problem
Jerry Neuman, SCI-Arc trustee
Chris Ko, United Way of Greater Los Angeles
Thomas Newman, United Way of Greater Los Angeles

Panel Discussion 1
Jerry Neuman, SCI-Arc trustee (Moderator)
Jennifer Kim, LA County Homeless Initiative
Christopher Hawthorne, LA City Chief Design Officer
Thomas Newman, United Way of Greater Los Angeles

Closing Remarks
David Ruy, Tom Wiscombe & Elena Manferdini, SCI-Arc Program Chairs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73W6x-O92Uw&frags=

Conversation
Mimi Zeiger, SCI-Arc faculty
Tanner Blackman, Kindel Gagan Public Affairs Advocacy