Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Patterns & Paradigms | The Pattern Podcast
Patterns & Paradigms | Season 2 Episode 02: The Architecture of Healing & Social Equity with Michael Murphy
Have you ever thought of buildings as a cinematic experience? Have you considered how architecture is used to welcome people into a space, to promote healing, or to narrate important stories through memorial? This week we’re exploring how the design of our built environments can improve health outcomes and impact our social systems with Michael Murphy of MASS Design, the firm named 2020 Architecture Innovator by Wall Street Journal.
This week's episode features Michael Murphy, Founding Principal and Executive Director at MASS Design Group, an architecture and design firm geared towards improving social equity and health outcomes through design innovation.
We are experiencing a paradigm shift, a fundamental change in the way we usually do things. We are intentionally choosing to see the silver lining opportunity arises. We can shine a light on the things that weren't working well on those things that weren't really working at all, we can regroup reevaluate and re-engineer it's time to explore new patterns and paradigms those that inspire us to rise above the chaos and explore how the conditions of today and take us to a better tomorrow patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast from Hudson Valley pattern for progress. You're listening to season two, episode two, the architecture of healing and social equity with your host pattern, president and CEO, Jonathan, Dropkin
Speaker 2:Welcome to another episode of our podcast. We hope you enjoyed Diana Mason's discussion on where we are with the war on COVID community health and other important issues. Especially a shout out to the nurses in the frontline. This week, we pivot to architecture. Joining us is Hudson Valley native Michael Murphy, the founder of the mass design group to listen to our podcast. All you need to do is continue to subscribe and download patterns and paradigms wherever you find your favorite podcasts, such as Apple, Amazon music, Spotify, and Google. If you have any ideas for future topics and episodes, please send them to pattern for progress.org/podcast. So I was trying to think of where do I want to go for the next big thing? And it's sort of like, it's not the next, but it's definitely time to reinterpret the delivery of broadband. We have learned throughout the pandemic of the critical need for equal access to broadband, whether it is for remote work, Calla medicine, online learning, and so much more broadband has moved from a luxury to witness. Essity just like electricity. The goal needs to create the infrastructure and regulation to ensure that this actually happens, that everyone has access to it. Defining being served is a false premise. How many days are you on your internet? And you're trying to have a meeting or a phone call, and it is this rough right in the middle. You're hanging on a word and you got to call the person back. The sun is shining outside. There's not a cloud in the sky. Why does this happen? Or for the family that cannot afford the cost of the internet or to the family that is told to pay for the last mile to carry broadband to their rural home, the pattern is clear. The post COVID world can no longer be divided into the have and have nots when it comes to broadband. What comes next is yet to be determined, but we hope all of our listeners join us and saying, it's not a luxury. It's a necessity. Before I introduce Michael, let's ask Joe Cheika what's up, Joe, Joe, we had a couple of good mentions this week. Maybe you can elaborate for our listeners, just what they were
Speaker 3:Sure we did. Uh, it's always nice to get good feedback on our work.
Speaker 2:It is. I mean, you know, often we work and, you know, we, we deliver the product, but these are some exceptions that made us all feel pretty good.
Speaker 3:They, they did. And the beauty of working with our clients, if you will, is that we go back and forth with their feedback, with our input. And we come out with a product. I think that we're both happy with, and that takes a little extra time. And I think that's the difference between us and a lot of other groups is that we really incorporate what they're feeling, what they're doing, w how they know and understand their audiences. So, for example, up in the city of Kingston, we had been working with them for a good nine or 10 months on a project that was really designed to understand what their vacant and abandoned properties were like in the city, uh, in terms of one, two and three family homes. And so we did a lot of field work, uh, actually during COVID, we were socially distanced. We went out and wore our masks, and we did a lot of windshield surveys from the vehicle and walking around the neighborhoods. And we found that the vacant properties in the city of Kingston, majority of the one to four family homes are wooden structures, but they're not in really terrible shape, which is a good thing for a city. And by the end of, at the end of the day, at the end of the study, we created a series of recommendations for them, eight, eight recommendations. In fact, and the city mayor, Steve noble, he actually brought up the fact that we did the study in his state of the city address. And it was very rewarding for, for our entire team at pattern. And, um, there were some really good recommendations. I got to say that we came up with a few of them, they're going to be putting into place. Um, so that, that's a really good, positive feedback that we got from the city. Another good piece of information that we got back was, uh, from the city of Hudson way up in Columbia County, uh, back about three years ago, we did a series of community engagement sessions and working with a local housing task force. And we developed something up there called the strategic housing action plan, the Shap, if you will. And that's right where we try to get our acronyms. So it's kind of a fun thing to say. So with the Shap in hand, the community, the city went to a national organization called enterprise. They used our, our study, our recommendations as a foundation to apply for additional dollars to get our recommendations actually funded. And lo and behold, they were successful. They just received a$1 million grant for anti-displacement activities in the city of Hudson. They are going to be able to fund a brand new staff position to help coordinate the efforts, which was a major lacking part of their system delivery in the city. So again, our work setting, the foundation, our recommendations really move our work forward in those communities. So it's very rewarding to see, and I'm, uh, I'm really looking forward to actually continuing our work in the city of Houghton. They, uh, they're going to have us start a affordable housing development plan, which we're kicking off probably in about a month and that's going to help them identify three, four, maybe five developable sites for housing right there in the city. And so it's rewarding. And I got to say these communities, they're very progressive in what they're doing, and it's good. It's a good thing to see here in the Hudson Valley.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Joe. I appreciate you explaining these things. They often, you know, could go unnoticed, but it is part of the infrastructure of these communities, the work that you, the team of pattern are doing, uh, in order to ensure in this case housing, which has become, I can't remember in our 14 years together where this is been as top of mind, the need for affordable and workforce housing as it is now. And, and for all the years that you have been laying the foundation for this, um, kudos to you that it is not just being recognized, but that actually some funding absolutely. Sounds good. All right, Joe, thanks. And now on to our guests, Michael Murphy is the executive director of the mass design group, an architecture firm that leverages buildings as part of the design and construction process to become engines for health economic growth and longterm sustainability. Michael sits on the boards of the Clinton global initiative advisory committee, the Harvard graduate school of design alumni board, the center for healthcare design and is an expert in residents at the Harvard innovation lab. Michael is a true visionary, a disruptor before the word became common. And most importantly, he hails from Poughkeepsie New York, Michael, welcome to the podcast. How you doing?
Speaker 4:Hey, Jonathan. Nice to be here. Thanks. Thanks for this. I'm I'm doing, uh, okay. All things considered. I know that's probably the answer of a lot of people, but, uh, you know, we're in a unique moment in time and, uh, we're surviving okay. Both in my family and at the firm, but thanks for asking.
Speaker 2:Um, sure. Um, and just on the, from one of the things about your firm, that's so interesting is that you have offices all over the world. So you were almost, you didn't have to pivot, you've been pivoting for years.
Speaker 4:Well, and in terms of the, in terms of the zoom worlds, we, um, if you want to call it that we have been working remotely with teams dispersed across, across the globe, uh, historically, so there, wasn't an incredibly difficult pivot for us to kind of can be completely online. Although I would say that I certainly miss, um, connecting with my team in person. Um, and you know, I typically travel an enormous amount, uh, especially to project sites and to see the teams and we haven't been able to do that. So, um, you know, I am really looking forward to the end of this and being able to work again with the, you know, my team and the communities that we work with and just really be in person has been really different.
Speaker 2:Cool. I think there's a, you have a lot of company there. So, um, so let me just start by saying, so it was, uh, last month in December, I, uh, open up a wall street journal, the weekend edition, they have their annual innovators, uh, special section and there you are. And I was just, it was an incredible piece. I learned so much more, I think I know a bit about mass design, but I learned so much more. How did that come about? And were you excited? Pleased? What, what was your reaction?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, it was an incredible honor and we were really, really kind of shocked and humbled when we got the email over the summer, um, that they had chosen us as their architect of the year incredible company. Um, people we really admire Darren Walker and Titus Kaphar and, um, just incredible, incredible folks to be in that company. So it was a really nice, a nice shock and, um, a pleasant, um, email to, to open in the middle of this pandemic. You know, I think it's been, it's been a difficult year to know if how architects and architectural discipline and the practice is going to survive if we're going to see significant economic downturn. And, um, if that might affect a lot of building projects, um, but you know, actually we've seen the opposite. We've seen growth and a lot of demand for new projects. We've seen incredible effort to keep a building projects going. And, uh, and then just a lot of focus on the, on the, on the role of infection control that we have been thinking about for a long time. So it was, it was, you know, we were very appreciative of that kind of attention and, and, um, and really enjoyed the process going through it.
Speaker 2:So one of the first things in the article was that at the beginning of COVID, you were actually called upon by various organizations to help them with the redesign. I guess one was a homeless group up in Boston. Uh, one was one of the major hospitals that in New York city. Um, so that you've actually been directly using your architectural skills as a way for other organizations to adapt to the COVID world.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, you know, we've, our organization began, uh, with thinking about design's role in addressing epidemic airborne disease. In the case of, uh, where we, our first project was with the organization partners in health and the government of Rwanda building a hospital that tried to mitigate and manage, um, tuberculosis and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and its transmission it's airborne transmission through simple design measures, like, uh, natural ventilation, uh, careful planning of, of, uh, uh, of patients and staff. Um, UVG I lied. So we've been thinking about, and working on infection control for airborne disease since our founding. So when COVID emerged, uh, and we were had this experience, you know, our partners that we already had quickly reached out to us recognizing that, Oh, wow, there's a whole spacial reorganization. That's necessary to address our needs as in a hospital with serving our constituents. And, you know, and mass has experienced doing that. So, you know, we got right into it and developed a lot of, um, free guidelines to help so many entities or at least help organizations think about the spatial and physical implications of infection control in any of building that they might be within or be thinking about addressing. So, uh, yeah, it happened really quickly and we continue to work on reopening plans, reorganization plans, airflow strategies, and helping entities think about that today, redesign their systems.
Speaker 2:It was just incredible to read that. And they use that as the lead, obviously to connect to COVID. Um, one of the things that I especially enjoy about mass design is the way that you use your architecture to invite people into the space. And it is something that, you know, the photographs, especially if some of the health-related facilities and in Africa are, are just fascinating to me. I can, maybe you can help us on how do you begin that design process of saying here's a community, they have a need of health, but we need them to not look at it like a traditional hospital. It's somehow built into the landscape, at least that's my, you know, untrained, I looking at it and saying, it's welcoming.
Speaker 4:Oh, thanks for saying that. I, you know, and it sounds like you do have a really good spacial sense Jones. I know you do. And, um, you know, I think the process really begins with the, with the organization that we're trying to serve and their constituents, and they often have the answers, uh, and the kind of ideas that they are looking to spatialize, but, you know, need designers and architects to join them and helping articulate that they think they talk a lot about the impact of the work, what it will be. And, um, architecture can help address those broader impacts by the way we experience it, you know, in four dimensions. So when you talk about welcoming people, you know, we think really, uh, uh, you know, we think a lot, uh, and quite critically about what I would call the threshold problem, which is how do you create an environment which brings people in at many different phases, brings them into a threshold and allows them to understand the infrastructure that brings them further deeper into the space so that they benefit from its, um, from what's designed around them. And it allows them a way out. I really think about buildings as a kind of cinematic experience. Um, and each of those moments are moments for information for in the case of COVID like clean air, uh, for, uh, creating spaces that differentiate between let's say, contaminated or clean spaces or an understanding why the building is there and how it's supposed to serve us. So, you know, I think if we think about buildings as, as a journey, every time you're going through them, then the story of a building, the story of a space is really the story of the organization. What's the story they're trying to tell what's the agenda they're trying to bring to their constituents and that, that kind of narrative, uh, building, I often say as a narrative vessel is how we think about the design that needs to respond to their overall aspirations.
Speaker 2:Um, although we're dealing with a pandemic and economic unrest, um, and disruption, there's also been something else that clearly took place over the, you know, in 2020. And that was the social unrest. And, and I would think that this is a project that people would run away from. And yet you ran towards doing this pre, um, the events of 2020,
Speaker 4:I would say we're always seeking out the thought leaders and change agents who are trying to tackle the hardest issues. And, um, we started conversation where, uh, we asked how we could be of service. It's incredible to see architecture, you know, be of service for how we might rethink memorials in our communities. Take down memorials, recognize that memorialization is itself fraught with political and social impacts and that the design of the Memorial spaces or monuments spaces around us is not a neutral thing. It's a very complex and, um, conflicted, uh, uh, set of decisions about power and who deserves to be recognized and who deserves to be memorialized. And so I've been thinking about the role of memorials and advancing questions of social and economic and racial justice before. And I've been really encouraged by so many small grassroots organizations who have asked how they can change the Memorial landscape of their own towns and their communities. I've, you know, the Mellon foundation has recently created an entire fund dedicated to supporting many of these initiatives. Um, so this kind of reckoning about our national narrative and who tells the story is long overdue and what the events of the last week is, uh, has taken on a new form itself about how the history will be told. And, uh, I think we'll be asking this question for, for decades to come. Um, but I hope the work that's able to be accomplished right now in the next couple of years, while the attention is fixed on this question could really be a profound one to, uh, adjust and not just adjust and change, but write the narrative of the United States, right? The narrative of our, of our history and our future to be more, uh, Johs more equitable, more true. Um, and hopefully, um, come out of this a little bit better as a nation,
Speaker 2:I had one experience building a museum, and that was at Bethel woods at the side of the Woodstock festival. And I got to work with a number of architects and developing the ability to tell the story of the sixties and how Woodstock fit into it. It is a complex process of trying to understand what does the client want? What does the community want your place in history?
Speaker 4:No, we need to understand the history, but we also need to feel the history.
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that I learned about, you know, at least telling the story of the sixties is you wanted to people that pass through the doors of the museum, you wanted them to come out for lack of a better word move. They needed to feel something that was otherwise in a history book. So if I was to read you back, you know, a broad description of your firm is that it seeks to design in a way to foster economic growth, social change, and justice is that, uh, you know, a fair characterization of the work that mass design does.
Speaker 4:Uh, yeah, that is, that is how we state our mission statement. Uh, and, um, and how we're configured to ask those questions about how the built environment participates in, in crushed.
Speaker 2:So given the George Floyd moment, are there other projects that you've been approached on to try to say, you know, I think for most people, they never knew the story of Tulsa, Oklahoma. They never knew what happened in Wilmington, North Carolina, you know, when there actually was an almost insurrection and taking over the local government, these all seem like they would fall into this broad category of the work that you do in terms of how can we tell a story in a way that moves people? I still have you been approached on other projects or ideas?
Speaker 4:Uh, yeah. I mean, there's, you know, there are a lot of projects that have emerged in the last year, um, both in terms of what's coming into our office, but what we wanted to support other, other organizations and other designers to accomplish. You know, I, I've been very encouraged by again, that groundswell of re that kind of awakening to authorship of our built world and you know, why the Memorial fund at, at, at Mellon and some other, uh, grant making organizations is why it's a meaningful is because a lot of these ideas are coming out of small communities who want to tell important histories that have been raised abandoned, hidden, lied about that, actually reveal kind of key moments of the American story. And I would say, you know, as a designer and architect, you know, a lot of those stories have to be spatialized for us to understand them. It's not enough to just hear about them, you know, on, on a morning news show, we actually have to go and understand what, how they sit within this broader, uh, legacy, uh, of not just injustice, but it kind of legacy of narratives that have been hidden and been, hadn't been lied about, and that there are places in this country where dependent multiplicity of our backgrounds have been revealed, uh, with all sorts of hope and, and, and a dignity, dignity, and a dignity at the same time. Um, and, uh, telling those stories, I think helps, uh, helps us understand how each of our communities has the possibility to enact change. And it's not just one single hero, um, although that's important to have leadership, um, but you know, for example, the work we're doing, uh, in the Boston common right now, we're, we're, we won the competition with the great sculptor, Hank Willis Thomas to design the new Martin Luther King and credit Scott King sculpture in the Boston common. It's going to be very exciting, uh, project and hopefully a national one of its own accord. Um, but you know, one of the design strategies in that was to say, well, let's not only, you know, Dr. King and Coretta's stories are incredibly important to tell and to memorialize, but the stories of the community of this city of Boston who fought for economic and social justice, uh, for decades and, you know, built the momentum, their stories are important too. So we've tried to create a platform where many more of the hidden stories are also revealed in a Plaza, which tells the names of local heroes that are often not reported outside of the conditions of the kind of regional, uh, like, uh, oral history. Um, and, you know, while, you know, the King story is one of legends international legend, uh, it, it relied on to local movements in order for that broader story to, to be enacted with, with such profound, you know, legislative, um, uh, change. So I think it's our responsibility, not just as citizens, but, you know, in each of our professions, ours is in the spacial disciplines, but to ask how we can contribute and participate and to, and to read our environments a new, you know, differently. I think one of the, one of the positive outcomes of, of the events of the summer is, is how introspective communities are becoming an awakening spatially to, to a lot of things. Spatial awakening is just one of them, uh, um, to how injustice has been steeped into all of our systems, all of our, um, you know, all of our processes and how we have to kind of cut it out root and STEM, um, uh, together, uh, no matter where we find it.
Speaker 2:So architecture, I mean, that's why I love to give you credit to say, you didn't need this. So this moment of social unrest to know that this was part of your mission statement, but do you think that the disruption itself, and I think you were starting to go there was, um, is going to lead to differences in general for the profession of architecture to say, maybe we need to look at how we do things, or is your sense that, Hey, there were plenty of us that were getting it right before this, and maybe there'll be just a few more of us will think about it. I guess it's a common question that I ask guests, which is disruption in the positive sense that everything that occurred since let's say March of 2020 has led to disruption in supply chain and how we're going to do things differently, the use of technology. So how about architecture? Is there going to be a disruption of some sort?
Speaker 4:Well, I think there already is, and I think the disruption is profound. I think we're in a, in the next great existential shift in the, in the built environment, I would say architecture, but let's just say the spatial disciplines. I think they're going through the most significant existential shift. And they've experienced probably since really the full embrace of let's say, green or sustainable or environmentally focused architecture. That's probably the last great moment. This is the next great moment. And it's a, a moment of, um, not replacing the environmental moment adding to it. You know, the environmental moment, it was significant in that we started to ask of the built environment will what's his footprint? Well, now we have to ask what's, you know, what's its environmental for, but now we have to ask what's its a human hand truck, what's the impact it's having on people and on social systems. And is it reinforcing systems of power or is it liberating them? There are key questions that are being asked right now about the built environment and how it is complicit in reinforcing these systems of power or how it is potentially an agent and in addressing them. I think that is most evident in the response to COVID COVID as most epidemics do reveals how our systems, uh, are broken and it reveals the cracks in the systems. And really it kind of opens them up in a, in a radical way to reveal kind of where, where the system is broken and you know, COVID is, uh, has, has given us and given me a kind of evidence that, you know, the world around us is it affects our health every single day, the breathing itself, the ability to breathe as a spacial problem. You know, we don't have the right environment, we can't breathe. And I mean that both in terms of are we living in our houses or our places of work are they infecting us, but also to go out on the street. And of course the, I can't breathe mantra of the fight for racial justice, um, has not been lost on those who are arguing for, um, not just the ability to breathe, but access to breath and not just spaces that allow you to breathe. But, uh, but, uh, uh, you know, a social system and infrastructural system, which gives us the ability to have access to breath.
Speaker 2:I know it's a very subtle analogy to have a physical human being caught saying on a video, I can't breathe in the midst of a pandemic in which people are saying we can't breathe and it is driving people to, I don't know if they make the connection between it as, as you just did. So let me ask you a couple, I, you know, it's fun cause I have you here. So, so let me ask you a couple of questions. So one, is there a project that you looked at the architecture and you said either I really, really liked that. It's one of my favorites. I love what they did there. So let's start there. Any favorites that you look at around the world and say that's a must and that group or that person, they were brilliant and how they represented whatever the issue or story they needed to tell.
Speaker 4:No, it's fine. When you put people on the spot, you can have mind goes, my mind goes empty from some of the, for some of the folks. I mean, there's so many, I think great architecture exists all over and um, you know, it's, this, it's a beautiful resolution. Architecture is a resolution of the constraints of place that make it successful. And so those architects who are able to, um, narrate a story through their work, um, that reveals identity of place, identity of, um, social constraints, the aspirations, you know, sometimes with limited budgets, I think are ones that I gravitate towards, but also tell a material story as well. So one of my F certainly one of my favorite architects is, um, I think of Marlon Blackwell, Marlon Blackwell is in Northwest Arkansas
Speaker 5:And has built this absolutely just stunning, um, portfolio of genius work. That is about that region. That is about what kind of approach to materiality and, and form that is both heroic as well as local. It really changes the way you think about design. It's incredible. I think the American designers in the Southwest, uh, also, uh, really, uh, really doing incredible things cause they're dealing with the kind of extreme climate conditions of the desert and really finding resolutions of that, um, of that climate, which produced like absolutely stunning, uh, regional American architecture, which is really, I think, inspirational, worth, worth looking at. Um, there are, yeah, I mean, I think I'm always encouraged. I think architects are given a bad rap and there've been critiqued a lot these days, but I think they're, they're always struggling with these issues. It's just whether they have the, um, the kind of audience to accept it. The compromises that they're making, the advances that they're pushing forward are not just formal. They're not just like formal play. I mean, they're seriously considering environment and climate and social conditions. I really encouraged by those who were able to accomplish that. So, you know, I, I won't opine too much. That's fine. It's a diff it's a difficult question. So, all right. How about, let's try this one, which is so in the aftermath of nine 11, they struggled a long time with the appropriate Memorial to an event of that magnitude. Uh, Oklahoma city bombing also has a Memorial to it someday. Some way someone will want to make a Memorial or museum to tell the story of the pandemic of 20, 20, 20, 21. Let's be honest. This is a multi-year experience, any early thoughts about how you would take on a project like that. And, and I'm not pinning you down. I'm just asking process what, what would go into thinking about how to tell this story? Well, funny you ask, we have actually thought about this recently. Um, we, we, um, we, we worked on a proposal actually thinking that would, this is a hypothetical, but wouldn't it be interesting to have a, instead of an audience for Biden's inauguration have a Memorial to COVID they're filling the national mall, what a great idea. And so, uh, the amazing Gary Hildebrand landscape came up with a couple of concepts about putting up a tree for every victim on the national mall, instead of a person planting a forest to commemorate those lost in this horrific tragedy. Um, and that makes sense, especially since you're not going to fill the mall with a couple of hundred thousand people and, you know, actually today, the governor of the state of New York is delivering his state of the state address virtually. So is there not something that's really cool? I like that. That's really clever. I think in this space of Memorial design, we have to think about what we can experience, but also engaged locally. So what I do with these trees would then be distributed across the country to all the different counties and communities naming their lost, loved ones. So, I mean, there's, there's ways, sorry, that's similar to nine 11. There are memorials all over, you know, people have their own remembrance of what occurred on that day. This is a malt. This is frequently people say, you know, the number of people who died in one day is equal and now surpassing the number of people that died on nine 11. Now the, the audacity of what occurred on nine 11 as an individual experience is one thing that the overall two year it's just that, it's the thing that history books will write about for the next 50 to a hundred years know, based on how long we wrote about the pandemic of 1919, you know? So, um, how about projects in your home, you know, uh, in, in the, bi-weekly sketch out that, you know, your family originally came from Poughkeepsie and how about other things you've ever thought about that you wish you could do in the Hudson Valley? Well, you know, as you know, I'm a proud Kipsy, uh, not resident, but a former particularly resident grew up there, went to high school there, middle school there, still call it my hometown. And, um, uh, this, this was a question that actually someone posed to me, uh, years ago, and I was working one of our first projects in Haiti after the earthquake and after the cholera epidemic there, uh, the amazing local leader, Brian Doyle runs a local nonprofit
Speaker 4:And Poughkeepsie reached out to me, which was an email and said, you know, great, great to see what you're doing in Haiti. We're going to come back to Poughkeepsie and work on stuff we're dealing with here. And I, you know, I thought that was a really, really powerful kind of call to arms. To me. It was, it was both sobering as well as encouraging, you know, that our hometown, which, um, which suffered from, I was always taught. It was like someone called it a museum of failed urban renewal projects. Um, was this, uh, landscape of, uh, failed, you know, designs like designs that were thought and were planned to revitalize renew re-energize reawaken the city 50 years ago, didn't work. In fact, they reinforced some of the same inequalities that they might have sought to address. And often with very progressive people at the helm coming up with those designs, trying to leverage, um, you know, dollars put from the Johnson administration. So I think the kind of, uh, realm of, um, it's, you know, it keeps me from me is where I learned about the built environment, uh, failing, failing its citizens. But it's also where I've learned that there are so many initiatives that have been wanting to happen for decades there, that haven't had the money behind the, the energy behind them or the designs, uh, really in front of them to, to build a momentum, to make them happen. So, a couple of years ago we, um, set up, uh, an office in Poughkeepsie, really just a team, uh, to really kind of mind those stories and mind those initiatives and see if we could throw our own kind of grit and support and connect, you know, connecting other folks in grant writing, make some of them happen. Um, and five years later, I'm like pretty encouraged that some of these huge initiatives, uh, are starting to get traction and I'd love to see happen in the next couple of years. Um, and, um, they were things I thought about for 30 years, like, uh, the arterial highways, which are this just horrible remnant of urban renewal designed for a city that would grow in size by like three times, uh, while the city's population actually shrunk. So you have these highways for 150,000 people. Weren't really only, you know, what you need, like a quarter of what we have in terms of highways for the current population. And they divided the city and sorry, go on for our
Speaker 2:Listeners, just do what you were about to do, which is how they, these arterials actually run right through the middle, um, and divide the city.
Speaker 4:Yeah. They really divided the city. And there was a big move to build arterial highways in the mid century because thinking that, Oh, the car we've got to bring people in to, you know, to the downtown and then move them out. And so there was a big vision that this would be a progress, but it actually destroyed so many downtowns and Poughkeepsie really got beaten up. So as you know, across the nation cities with more resources have, you know, been able to take those arts, same arterial highway designs and turn them back into bi-directional streets and, uh, you know, boulevards and, uh, sometimes eliminate them altogether. Um, and you're seeing those kinds of projects in Buffalo and Hartford and elsewhere, but it gives you smaller and doesn't have the resources quite to do that. So we need to build momentum. We need to help people understand the damage these highways did to the city and, and also, you know, render a vision of what it would look like if we got rid of them or if we, you know, um, reduced their size and the arguments for them are hilarious. They're just straight out of a kind of mid-century playbook. Oh, we need to move through fast. So we need, you know, we don't want traffic, you know, we, you know, there's not enough parking and these arguments really, um, are not, actually, they're not true arguments. I mean, you know, when you start to dig into the numbers and Poughkeepsie has something like 75% more parking than it needs, right. You start digging into the, as an urbanist or just sort of looking at the numbers you say, Oh, wow, those are real issues. It's the amount of their public realm committed to parking, committed to highways could be given back to the city for development, for housing, for public and social services. Uh, but we just need to kind of move those ideas along, um, uh, together. And so something that we've been working on trying to push forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Your, your effort to Poughkeepsie, uh, you know, Chris kroner, uh, just terrific. Uh, but you mentioned housing. So I'm going to make this, my last question, which is, there is a desperate need for affordable housing as an architect. Have you ever thought or spend time saying what it could look like? So that communities, instead of saying, we don't want that housing in our community and let's face it, there's a history of how to build it bad. Um, but have you ever thought about how to build it in a way that people would go, wait, wait, wait, I blight that that's really attractive. It's interesting. I know there are costs, elements involved. It has, I, I know that this is really not in the, you know, like the recent wall street journal article. It's not in that you wouldn't find it there, but you're a curious person in the sense that you think about lots of different things. Have you ever thought about affordable housing?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah. I mean, we're, we have an entire portfolio of affordable housing that we're working on right now. And, uh, we'll probably have a half a dozen projects that are in on the boards. And, um, our first, uh, initiative in Boston is under construction is going to be under construction this year. Um, and we've been looking at affordable housing in a number of different ways. Um, uh, but in particular, you know, senior housing or aging in place housing. So housing that is wrapping around services really with specific, um, uh, social needs and embedding that within the building itself. And I think to your point, you know, we often have, have given affordable housing, a bad rap because we've designed it to be as cheap as possible. Absolutely. The bare minimum cost to serve, you know, the, the most, um, needy constituents. And then once we need the housing the most. And I think that kind of devil's bargain is really misplaced. We, you know, these organizations great one in Poughkeepsie and in Hudson river housing, you know, they're fighting, fighting for grants or fighting for state dollars to try to build better housing and serve the communities that need it the most. And they do a heroic job in our community, but every community in a lot of communities, not every County, a lot of counties have these housing nonprofits who are doing their best to wrestle with very limited resources to serve the under housed and the, um, and the homeless. And, um, that's only increased in the pandemic. And of course, before that was the opioid pandemic, which also increased our need for, um, housing. And, um, the economic injustices that we're facing now is only going to only further, uh, disenfranchise those in terms of not just affordable, but appropriate housing for them. So it's a huge design problem, but it's also a financial problem. You know, it's also about creating new, um, uh, new financial models and mechanisms of paying for, you know, creative mechanisms to pay for housing, which serves this population, which isn't just based on the current really, I'm gonna say, um, it's not ineffective the current system, but it's just, it's not obviously meeting the need of the tax incentives and, you know, grant and grant support and, um, and, and a basic, you know, market-based strategy of building affordable housing. It's not really, it's clearly not serving the need that's out there. So we need to come up with new financial structures, new models of paying for this, this work, and then new designs, which integrate, uh, affordable and market-based housing together,
Speaker 5:Uh, refill these downtown districts, which had been abandoned. I think there's an incredible opportunity. We're seeing this with the market and Poughkeepsie is for the first time in 50 years, like exploding, you're seeing that all of these old towns around the, around the nation. So it's an important moment. I think, an opportunity that we can take a hold of Michael Murphy. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your creativity. Thank you for your willingness to take on issues that most people would run from. Um, we're, we're fortunate that you come from lots and Valley and, um, we can share a little bit in, in your, um, disruption and creativity. Disruption to me is a good word. It's not a bad word, so thanks. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thanks for all you all do. It's really a pleasure to talk with you and, um, you know, too much, too much more exciting work in the Hudson Valley in the future. Thanks for including me.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to patterns and paradigms the pattern podcast. For more information about this episode, visit our website pattern for progress.org forward slash podcast.