RBGC’s rendering for the mixed-use housing project in
Charlottesville shows the massing of the buildings.
continued from page 40 When it becomes powerful is when
that conversation spills out into the general public. And
when the general public begins to equate design with a
quality of life, then they’re going to demand it, just as
they demand good schools and good health care—as a
part of what they perceive to be their rights as citizens.
I think of this as democratizing design so that more
people begin to understand the relevance of the buildings around them.
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Sometimes architects don’t even understand the relevance of buildings around them!
You know, I was reminded of my time living in Italy, when
I would see schoolteachers taking children around to the
great churches and cathedrals, and they would talk to
these students about the buildings’ designs, the role that
they played in the community, and the architects who
designed them. Fourth-graders could name the architect
of their city’s cathedral. It was a powerful experience to
understand that they start so young. In my own experience as a parent—whose children were born in Italy, and
their nursery school in Florence was the foundling hospital by Brunelleschi—I have such vivid memories of
walking, holding my son’s hand, every day through that
courtyard. And to think they received this kind of visual
stimulus from their very early years, it’s no wonder my
kids are now urbanites and on the edges of architectural
and urban careers.
I’m sure you had no influence.
None whatsoever.
The sort of bottom-up advocacy you describe is a great
balance to the NEA programs that you are inheriting,
such as the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, which are
more top-down. As a former mayor, how do you feel
about these programs?
They’re the main reason I took the job. I know what it’s
like as a mayor to withstand the controversy over, for
example, a piece of public art like the 54-foot-long slate
chalkboard, designed by Peter O’Shea and Robert Win-stead, placed in front of city hall. Listen, in my experience, mayors and other policy makers are starved for
tools, for a vocabulary, to talk about design in a way that
reaches their constituents; and designers are in a unique
position to be advisers to them. And the Mayors’ Institute
gives many mayors their first opportunity to be grounded
by a group of design professionals. I mean, they are constantly advised by all kinds of professions, but…
Courtesy Maurice Cox
Rarely designers.
Exactly—who can show them what design thinking
and design problem-solving actually continued on page 48
