Student voices centered in design of renovated science building

Malcolm Peavy, a senior biology major, tends to avoid Science Building 1 whenever he can. The aging building is a maze to navigate with classrooms and labs that haven't been touched in decades.

"This is a building that we're learning in," he said. "I'm hoping it becomes a more innovative, updated space that people actually want to go to."

As the long-overdue renovation of Portland State's undergraduate science building gets underway, students like Peavy are helping shape how the space could and should be. 

Peavy, along with a dozen other peers, all students of color, have lent their insights to the project as part of a new equity-centered community design approach aimed at ensuring the completed Vernier Science Center is an inclusive space where all students feel like they belong and can see a future for themselves in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

"In general, students should have a bit more say in what they want to learn, how they want to learn it and the environment they want to be in," Peavy said.

'WE CAN NO LONGER DESIGN SPACE WITHOUT STUDENT VOICE'

Getting students more deeply involved in the design process was always part of the plan, but the “how” only began to take shape after PSU leaders learned about Portland Community College's Space Matters project.

In 2018, Space Matters, a PCC initiative, brought together a cohort of 25 students of color to critically examine relationships between race, space and equity across PCC's four campuses. It was part of a larger effort to introduce critical race theory — a framework for examining the ways race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact institutions — into facilities planning. What came of their work was a better understanding of students' experiences and perceptions of campus space and new community engagement and inclusive design practices to help PCC align its built environment with its equity goals.

"When we think about the impact of educational spaces, we think about students and the way in which space either supports or challenges the overall experience of navigating college — feeling like you belong in an academic environment, feeling supported to step into your leadership potential, your research potential, your career potential," said Amara Pérez, the consultant who led PCC's efforts and was brought on to help PSU's project team reimagine its own process.

"We can no longer design space without student voice and we cannot design space in service to equity without hearing from the BIPOC community," she said.

The BIPOC Student Advisory Board, formed in late 2020, allowed PSU to do just that. The 13 students represent a variety of majors — advertising, architecture, biology, counseling, electrical engineering, environmental science, environmental studies, health studies and Indigenous Nations and Native American studies — and identities — Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, disabled, LGBTQIA+ and veterans. 

For the better part of the past year, they represented PSU students in a wide variety of planning meetings with Bora Architects, PSU Capital Projects & Construction, Campus Planning & Sustainability, Facilities, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences leadership and STEM departments. 

These meetings set the tone for how the project will go forward.

"As we made a lot of difficult decisions due to cost escalations, it really helped to ground the project in the vision and principles the students created as part of the work that was done with Amara Pérez," said Jason Franklin, associate vice president of Planning, Construction and Real Estate for PSU.

Derrick McDonald, one of the student board members, said that given that architecture and design professions are predominantly white and male, it's critical that the voices of communities of color are elevated in the design process and their lived experiences centered.

"That means developing new ways of incorporating perspectives of Black, Indigenous and other marginalized identities so that we can begin to create space that is representative of the people who inhabit that space," said McDonald, an architecture major. "When we achieve a reality in which a Black trans disabled woman can be their full selves without fear of violence or inhibition or any other problems, then anyone in our society would be able to exist fully as themselves."

The student advisory board was the first step in PSU's new approach. The second was training the entire project team — students, architecture firm, general contractor, college leadership, university planners — in critical race spatial theory.

"In my experience with PCC, it's been a gamechanger to do that," said Pérez, who led the workshops. "The lifecycle of a project like this is years, so for the whole project team to start off with a shared understanding and language is critical."

The critical race spatial lens, developed by Pérez, is a tool to examine racial inequities and other forms of oppression that are reproduced in planning, design and space. Pérez says the lens can be used to analyze spaces, study planning and design practices more broadly, and understand varied perceptions of space. 

Franklin says the lens has challenged the project team to look at space differently. For example, some of the students told them Fariborz Maseeh Hall — the most recently renovated building on campus — felt like a library where everyone was supposed to be quiet and serious. 

"I hadn’t really gotten that hit off the space until we went through that discussion," he said. "Now when I go in there, I definitely see that this is how this space can make them feel."

Franklin said the team applied the lens in all major decisions — even something as seemingly simple as the location of the trash room. They had to balance the impact it could have on student space and the safety of janitorial staff, who are primarily BIPOC.

"We eventually got to a solution that everyone agrees is the best way forward, but it certainly took longer than you might otherwise think," he said. "But it's part of the process and the process is just as important as the outcome."

Michael Tingley, principal at Bora Architects who previously led the renovation of PSU’s Lincoln Hall, said the process has been unlike anything he's done in terms of the degree of intentional outreach and engagement from diverse communities and voices. 

"It's been a big learning process to step away from a culture of how you design, who you listen to and what values you're trying to represent in a building," he said. "PSU has been really intentional about saying this is a student-focused building and the voices we want to hear from are the voices that are most commonly not engaged in the process here."

CENTERING BIPOC VOICES

Part of the process was a student-led effort to identify the pressing issues facing communities of color in campus spaces and generating transformative ideas for design and placemaking. 

Pérez said architects are trained to gather input, but dialogue and storytelling offer a different line of inquiry — one that invites communities to share their experiences with space and how their personal identities shape those experiences.

During the summer, Pérez and a group of students facilitated four dialogue sessions with more than two dozen BIPOC faculty, staff, alumni and community members. Conversations centered around safety, inclusive learning environments, resources and services, diverse representations and ways of knowing. 

McDonald said there's something cathartic about creating a space where non-white people can show up fully and authentically themselves.

"It opens up the discussion in ways that are really important and valuable," McDonald said. "I think these dialogue sessions really unlocked a lot of things that I don't think our design partners would have anticipated."

What emerged were stories of spaces where they could be their true selves and let their guard down; spaces where they could celebrate and commiserate; spaces with murals and artworks that represented a diversity of cultures and people; spaces to reheat home-cooked food and eat with others; spaces to unwind and nap; spaces to connect with nature; spaces to talk in private and spaces to collaborate in groups.

The insights from the dialogue sessions, together with results from a survey developed for first-year students participating in PSU's Summer Bridge Program, resulted in an action-oriented guide for the project team, which Tingley said has been helpful.

"The most important thing is to provide ways to support and give these students an environment where they can actually thrive," he said. "When they move into the building, I want them to go, 'I know where that came from. We had a conversation and I can see how those ideas that I talked about led to this. This makes me feel like I was heard.'"

STUDENT-DESIGNED SPACES

Budding architects — students in a third-year architecture studio at PSU and BIPOC high school students from Your Street Your Voice — also had a chance to flex their creative muscles to reimagine what the Vernier Science Center could look like. 

"They come from these complex lives, all different backgrounds, ages and struggles, and they're trying to envision a person in the building who has multiple identities that need to come together in these spaces and be represented," said Anna Goodman, assistant professor of architecture. "I think that resulted in some very interesting designs."

Working in pairs to develop design ideas, the PSU students took on the ground floor and the second floor, which will be home to the STEM Equity Suite — program-specific and shared spaces for critical STEM support programs — and culturally affirming spaces such as a kitchen, gathering space and library to support the expansion of Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge-centered curriculum, practices and partnerships. The Your Street Your Voice cohort, sponsored by Bora Architects, tackled community-facing spaces.

"They're the future students who are going to be using this space," said Jackie Santa Lucia, program director for Your Street Your Voice. "Their lived experience was invaluable."

Design ideas ran the gamut. Some broke up the rigidity of the building's grid and worked to incorporate more circles and light. Others incorporated meditation and prayer rooms, student and family lounges, a storytelling room and interactive displays to showcase both the successes and failures of BIPOC, women and queer scientists.

"The three questions we always ask is, 'Who is being centered? Who is being burdened? Who is being erased?'," Santa Lucia said. "This studio and PSU's approach to this project is answering those three questions significantly differently than the traditional ways our cities get made, which is often at the cost of communities of color."

Santa Lucia and Goodman said they hope the students' ideas help plant seeds for the project's design team and prompt questions that they might not have otherwise asked.

Franklin said PSU will continue using an equity-centered community design approach on future capital projects. Next up is the Gateway Center, a new building for Art + Design — and Pérez has already been brought into the loop.

"I'm excited to be able to continue along this path because it's been a good one," Franklin said. "Each project is unique and has its own set of desired outcomes and challenges.  It's not a cookie cutter approach you can apply to each project, but it's a good foundation for what we can do with future projects."

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