Architecture for kids podcast with Dinah Bornat Director ZCD Architects

It's been a pleasure being involved with this project that I hope is a reflection of all the great ideas happening around involving built environment professionals with young people.

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

you

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Hello and welcome to another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast. I'm your host, António Cablón. I'm a trained architect, an architectural educator and founding director of award-winning Architecture for Kids CIC. In this podcast, I'm going to talk to practitioners and creatives that share the same passion as I do, to inspire and to engage children and young people to shape their built environment and the creative industries. The podcast is brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust, the Thornton Education Trust and the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. My guest today is Dinah Bornart. Dinah is co-director of ZCD Architects, a research-led practice based in London who work on residential, community and commercial projects. ZCD are UK research experts in child-friendly design and use their knowledge to help clients on a range of from large-scale master plans to small-scale developments. Their approach encompasses urban design, detailed design, and child and youth-centered engagement, using an innovative approach that bridges the gap between lived experience and project objectives. They have been involved in a large number of youth engagement projects, such as Aberfeldy Master Plan, that received several awards, and currently working on Oldscourt Master Plan. Dinah, she has co-authored a number of books and reports which support architects, planners and developers to design for and engage with children and young people. These include Child Friendly Planning Policy in the UK, a review and neighbourhood design working with children towards a child-friendly city. Dinah, thank you for coming to talk to me today and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

SPEAKER_01: 2:04

Thank you for asking me to come along and speak to you today.

SPEAKER_00: 2:07

What was your favourite subject at school?

SPEAKER_01: 2:09

I had two. One was art and the other one was math.

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

And what were you good Well,

SPEAKER_01: 2:13

judging by my result, maths was better than art because I managed to fail art, which is pretty spectacular for an architect.

SPEAKER_00: 2:20

That was going to ask you if your favourite subjects influenced your career, but I suppose they did.

SPEAKER_01: 2:25

Well, the failure was turned into the success because, and you are going right back, I didn't get into Sheffield University where I wanted to study architecture and I decided to take a year out and managed to get a job out of practice, now called Cullinan Studio, then called Edward Cullinan Architecture. architects and as an 18 year old I walked through the door I had absolutely no idea what to expect and if you're an architect you would imagine that it just completely changed the course of my life because that practice set me up basically for thinking about sustainability, architecture, people and telling stories in a way that is an incredible grounding for any young architect.

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

But the hands-on experience is it's really quite valid isn't it?

SPEAKER_01: 3:07

Yeah and I mean you know I learned from Ted and from the rest of that team why architects is so fundamentally important to people how to talk to people about it how to be passionate and think about how to make things out of my failure came a really good chance that's the sort of thing I always say to kids it's like sometimes something goes wrong you get a second chance

SPEAKER_00: 3:27

I think sometimes it's the best thing that happens is when things go wrong did you have an idea of what you wanted to be when you were a kid or growing up

SPEAKER_01: 3:34

well for me the fact that I liked art and maths just led on to doing architecture because I wanted to make things I loved making things when I was younger but I didn't want to just be an artist because I felt like my grandmother was an artist and she was a fine artist. In fact, she'd been at the Royal Academy in the 1930s when they didn't let women be sculptors. She became a fine artist, although deep down inside she wanted to make things as well. And she did make a lot of things, but I felt that architecture would give me that opportunity to be a bit scientific and a bit artistic at the same time. So to be able to do those two things.

SPEAKER_00: 4:06

Coming back to your work, you are a household name in terms of your engagement. How do you best describe the work The

SPEAKER_01: 4:15

youngest child we've worked with is five, and I think we may even go younger than that soon. And we go all the way up to 17, 18, and then young people in their 20s. I've been doing this kind of work in architecture for about five or six years, not for the whole of my career. But in my spare time, I'm a leader in a charity which takes children camping. So I have a lot of experience working with young people. That way of giving them opportunity and skills is something that I'm quite used to so I suppose I'd bring that to my work and that influences the way in which I think young people can really get engaged and we can work with them on their level.

SPEAKER_00: 4:54

What made you start this kind of work?

SPEAKER_01: 4:56

What made me start this kind of work was actually I was inspired by a group of women in Bristol who run a campaign called Playing Out who are now really good friends and their idea to close the streets for children to play outside their front door to me immediately seemed like a planning and built environment issue and when the initiative arrived in Hackney which is the borough that I lived in I jumped at the chance and opened a play street on our road and I was lucky enough that the council were also behind it whilst they were setting up other play streets I was getting on and doing it and then starting to have conversations with politicians about how we needed to think more about this experience for children everywhere and that set me on the journey of research which I did with university students to start with and then from there it just snowballed it was just as a friend of mine said at the time I was pushing at an open door and I think I still am. People are very interested in this as a concept.

SPEAKER_00: 5:48

What is your experience of working in this field in general and what are the challenges? What is changing? Tell us a little bit more about your journey.

SPEAKER_01: 5:56

Where we started, we posed the question if we're going to talk about children playing out, is it a spatial issue? Should architects know how to design developments so that children can play out like many of us did as children? And if so, what can we learn from what's around us today and there was a kind of deliberate move on my part to do some actual research so we did a lot of observational work and that's quite grounded in urban theory we started off with quite a academic approach what we realized is that we wanted to sort of triangulate that if you like the spatial and the observational with actually listening to children and hearing their reported experiences we started working actually with primary school children on an estate in Hackney in the south of Hackney with the blessing of the mayor of Hackney who we then laid down the to and said you should make this a child-friendly borough and he agreed in public at an event which was quite spectacular really and then continued with that work in the borough to produce a supplementary planning document. We felt that all of these things and all of the work that we were doing was definitely very relevant. I would say that the work that we did then talking to children and young people is the side that has really grown in our practice. Whilst we still do some observational research we really are focused very heavily now on creative ways of engaging with children and young people?

SPEAKER_00: 7:15

And how difficult it is to engage with the children and young people, as well as the rest of the professions, get them to understand what it is that you're trying to do and the importance?

SPEAKER_01: 7:24

It's a really good question. And I think most people don't really think very much about the spaces and places around them. And they don't think that we as architects and landscape architects and planners should be thinking very, very hard about how they're using that space and how they feel about it. What we do is we try and use our skills as architects so that we're thinking about space and we try and link that to people's lived experience. A lot of consultation might be and you could imagine maybe standing on a corner with a clipboard saying do you like this place? What don't you like about it? What changes would you like to make? And I think that's really bad engagement. What we do is we go to where children and young people are which is very easy to find them. They're all at school. Some of them go to youth clubs but often we just go and work with schools and we can work with whole classes. I think where we get the best results is smaller groups where we can have good conversations. And we just start really thinking hard as architects and asking the right kinds of questions that will lead to a spatial and physical and experiential responses, if that's a bit long winded, that we can then take and use as part of our design process. It's a job for us as architects to think really hard about the questions and the exercises is that we ask people to do.

SPEAKER_00: 8:43

And how receptive are the schools and the parents teachers associations if you have to deal with them to these kind of projects?

SPEAKER_01: 8:49

Oh they love them. On a very basic level people like being asked questions about their own lives. People like talking about their lives and children like talking about their lives and when you talk to children like we do a lot about play because play for us is a really good focus in terms of how young people use space. Play is quite central to us as human beings. It's a very important part of children's lives and when you start to talk through the lens of play you're actually talking about something that children are really interested in in fact they're really motivated by and they're very good at explaining it we start from that point of view and by the end of the session even if we haven't gone outside with them which we often do as well and they love to they really have enjoyed it and they always say they can't wait for us to come back to the next session the teachers like it and the teachers can see a connection from a kind of citizenship point of view and a geography point of view is relevance it's about them and the world of around them and it makes them think spatially. It ticks all the boxes. It's very easy.

SPEAKER_00: 9:46

How aligned is the work you do with the national curriculum? Does it have to be aligned? Do you consider that?

SPEAKER_01: 9:52

It's interesting. I used to think that we had to explain the alignment, but I don't think that's the case. I don't think schools are asking for it. When you explain what you're going to do, I think it's really clear what they're going to get out of it. And actually, I think for schools, they're teaching children and they are really good at understanding the lives that they have. If you think of about a primary school or a secondary school child, the teacher's relationship with them extends in a way beyond the school day. They understand that they have to get to school, they have to walk to school, that their lives at home might be quite varied. They might live in crowded accommodation or they might live really near a park. They don't just see children as objects and they see that what we're doing is we're caring about their lives. So actually, I think we need to worry less about whether it's aligned with the curriculum and actually respect children and that's what the schools realise that we're doing.

SPEAKER_00: 10:41

It doesn't mean challenge Well, I suppose funding could be one of them for this work you do.

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

I think it's setting aside some money in the budget to do this work. And I think that for clients, and those could be local authorities or private developers, they have maybe different agendas slightly. Sometimes it might be because they want to, you know, get it through planning. They want to make sure that they are seen to be listening to their resident. They worry a bit about it as well because they might think that we're going to offer these young people everything and that we need to manage their expectations and they start to realise quite soon that actually what we're doing is we're giving them a way in to having conversations with children and with young people that they hadn't realised. We're giving them a way in to have those conversations and actually I think there's a light bulb moment for them there where it's like I'm not going in there with a blank piece of paper and asking them for a shopping list of ideas. I'm going in there talking about their lives, trying to work out what it is that works really well, trying to listen to them and learn about their lives and every single time we learn something new and then offering that back as a way of improving the development that we're working on. It takes time. It takes commitment. It takes everybody's time. I'm really insistent that the design team are there, that the client team is there. And that's, for example, on Earl's Court and in Aberfeldy that you mentioned, they are there. And that's what makes the biggest breakthrough.

SPEAKER_00: 12:01

I suppose because co-design or participatory design is relatively new. It's something that people are still getting their head around. Even though it's 1970s, but it's really in the last 10 years. and say

SPEAKER_01: 12:12

I think that's probably from my point of view that goes back to something pretty simple I mean we just weren't doing housing as architects we weren't building much housing at all so we weren't being asked to think about communities at scale when I first started doing architecture we were doing lots of commercial and lots of education buildings and that was probably quite common there were far less practices doing housing and now that the public sector is asking architects to design communities for them we need to start talking to people

SPEAKER_00: 12:40

if there's a property to developer or someone interested in developing a certain area, what is the advice you would give to them?

SPEAKER_01: 12:46

In some ways, it's comms. It's really, really good comms. So much comes out of working with young people. And actually, I should talk about the project that we were now called. It's a really large site. And actually, I have to say, I'm really enjoying the process. We started off with a group of young people from and around the site. So we're working in two boroughs because the site spans two boroughs. It's Hammersmith and Fulham and Kensington and Chelsea. And we're When we started working with them in the way that we normally work, and we went on some walking tours, the client, who are the Elles Court Development Company, asked us if we could expand our work and include other groups of people. So, for example, there were organizations locally that work with older people and people with disabilities. And we hadn't done that before. We were a bit hesitant, but we thought, well, hang on a minute. Some of the stuff that we do is very transferable. So we started using the same techniques that we use with young people. And it actually, funnily enough, goes back to this idea of play. and autonomy and I could talk a lot about this but this idea of feeling free and comfortable in a space is not unique to children and it's actually something that we all need so we started doing the same techniques with these other groups and then we combined the groups together we chose 15 of them from a few applicants and now we've got a group of under 18s and over 18s working together they've been working together for a year now it's been incredible it's been incredible for us as a team for the design team for the client and for that group I mean that just it's Everybody has grown in that process. And the conversations that we have are very sophisticated. Trying to introduce a group of lay people, if you like, to a massive master plan is a challenge. And also when you're doing that before the master plan's been designed, as you have to, it's another challenge. But actually, like I said, we go back to the same techniques. It's about lived experience. It's about tell us what you know. And now let's start having a conversation about what might be there and how we might be able to design a very, very inclusive environment. I think there's so many reasons why this is the way we should go forward now. I would always want to work with intergenerational groups. Last night we had a session where three of the panel members came to the community workshop which is a different group of people and one of those panel members is year 11 so he's probably 16 and he was the only non-adult in the room and that's quite a big daunting thing and he stood up and talked about the work that he's been doing and none of his peers were there and actually I didn't get that opportunity when I was his age and I think that for that group to hear him talk and for him to talk to them I think for both sides is exceptional and it goes to a really important point I think which is how little we listen to teenagers.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

It's not just to listen to them it's about empowering them as well by at least because as you were talking and describing I was visualising this scene of this young person just talking and having the courage and thinking about myself at his age well I had the courage to have done that and I think that's amazing really. This project at more than a youth engagement project, which is a conversation that, for instance, Holland is doing quite a lot more than we are doing here. I mean, there are certain groups, but Holland, I was reading recently about young people that are at university and living with elderly people, and instead of paying rent, they do company or do house chores and so on, and I thought it's such a brilliant idea, and it's win-win for everybody. You talked about applications and looking through and selecting people to participate in these projects. What is the criteria We

SPEAKER_01: 16:13

had an application form and so anybody who wanted to take part whether they were a young person or an adult they needed to fill that form in and the young people I think far and away outstripped the applicant numbers for the adults and that's because there's really good youth work going on locally so they could support their young people and explain to them what the opportunities were. They had to say why they were interested in the project what they felt about their local area and what they could offer to the project just going back to the experience yesterday evening I think that it was really interesting we brought some of our technique to that community group and I think it might be true to say that for them it was a different experience they were being asked to think about the new development not for their own interest but to be more inclusive and actually having a different person in the room a young person in the room it refocused things and it meant that they did need to broaden their thinking and I think sometimes engagement is all about what's this going to do for me how's this going to impact me how do I I feel threatened by this and actually when you work with young people they tend to be incredibly optimistic about the future which is a good thing and we're going to need a bit of that optimism and so what you often can do is really work with that it's much much more fun to work with optimism than it is with people who have come to engage with you because they're angry

SPEAKER_00: 17:31

which generally is the case isn't it

SPEAKER_01: 17:33

yeah am I going to feel safe here am I going to feel welcome here am I going to feel like this is somewhere I belong these are really important questions and this is what we've been talking to them about and actually those are questions for everybody, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00: 17:45

Yes, absolutely. Give us a reflection on how much things have changed and how much they need to change. How hard do you think that change is going to be? How do you envisage that change?

SPEAKER_01: 17:54

I think things are changing very slowly. I think that our attitude towards children and young people in society is problematic and it has always been the case. The way we see childhood and the way we see young people growing growing up and the way we don't take their needs seriously plays out in the built environment as well and actually none of us usually as built environment professionals work with any young people we're outside of their world we might have our own children but my relationship with my children is all about being quite careful caring for them and in some instances wrapping them in cotton wool because I'm their mum and that's what I do but we all know that it takes a village to raise a child and we all need to be thinking about children and we need to be thinking about why can't we say hi to that teenager walking down the street who we've watched growing up because if we can then they feel part of society and that change from primary to secondary which can be quite kind of binary if you like and we see that when we work with primary school pupils and secondary school pupils and if this is international I'm talking about age 11 which is when children go from being probably taken to school by their parents and maybe starting to try and walk on their own because they're absolutely dying to by that age to being pretty independent at the age of 11 and going to school much further away and I'm imagining I'm not even imagining I know that that's the case around the world that's quite change in independence and autonomy and what I think is really interesting is that at the young age your parents are much more involved in the way in which you experience the world around you and then suddenly there's potential there's for it to really open up and physically you turn from a small person into adult sized person with a brain that hasn't fully developed yet and your behaviour is not the same as small children and your needs are really interesting and different and I think we panic a bit as society and we don't really know what to do with them. We're not very good at giving them those freedoms when they're younger and we're terrible and I know I'm talking a lot about teenagers but we're terrible at thinking about how to support them as they get under and so all of the planning that we do around them is a little bit confused I think. For example you'll hear residents saying there's nothing for young people to do around here and we cut youth services and we talk about life crime or we get them all pretty terrified about the world and then we don't give them anything to do or welcome them into spaces or understand why it is they want to sit on their phones but in massive groups or any of those things when actually they're just behaving exactly as teenagers should and actually their physical and mental development is really really critical and if we are designing a built environment that actually hinders that development I think that's hugely problematic and stupid of us, actually.

SPEAKER_00: 20:45

You mention teenagers that are supported by their parents, but there's also the case and there's also a great number of parents that do not support their teenage kids. That's a different sort of setting and I'll look at that.

SPEAKER_01: 20:56

I think every element of the way in which the state and everything interacts with us as humans involves a number of different services, if you like. So there might be health and education and there might be jobs and there might be economic support and housing and the built environment and poverty plays a massive role in holding people back and usually poverty intersects on a number of levels young people who might be not well supported by their parents is a societal problem isn't it I think that what I'm really interested in is where we're standing right now is we're looking out of a semi-public building if you like onto a space that has been changed through taking the cars out and it's got lovely green spots to sit in and I've seen people coming and going and enjoying that space and I think about how in central London here I know that there are teenagers around here and I know that they understand the fabric of these streets the gridded system and they do walk the back streets and the main roads and it's quite commercial and for example later on you might see some young people meeting in that green space or you might not and it's about how much we open that up for them to do that and still concerned or worried if they do come and meet in their groups because at that stage of their development if you hang out with teenagers particularly ones that aren't your own teenagers who might be a bit more relaxed in your company you'll realise that actually this is an age where the group and their identity is so critical and yet we put in benches for a couple of people to have a sandwich on and actually we're scared of them meeting in groups because we see that kind of behaviour as threatening and in fact this is a long conversation that I could have for ages but they are completely different to how we were when we were younger because they are very very connected on social media and I think geographically probably have a knowledge of a greater area than we might have done that really explodes around that time when they suddenly grow up they start off as young children they probably don't have a phone maybe they're on social media but it might be a bit more games and then suddenly boom they hit puberty their brains start to change and they are completely motivated by their relationship with their peers and the built environment does absolutely nothing about that and possibly even stops them meeting up and then tells them off for being on their phones at the time. There's a lot of complex stuff going on there that nobody gets anywhere near and just says things like, oh, we can't let teenagers hang out in this space smoking weed, damning a whole generation of behavior in one sentence.

SPEAKER_00: 23:24

It's amazing. It's really, really interesting, a lot of this, and it's really exciting. Is there a question that I should have asked you, and I haven't, and what is that question?

SPEAKER_01: 23:33

I think if you'd asked me, as a non-professional, what is it I could do to make the world a a better place for children and young people? And I challenged that question. In fact, we used that question a few years ago to some play workers and said, I'm going to throw this back at you. But the next time you see a development on your doorstep and you're asked for your opinion, go and have a look at it and ask the question of where are the kids going to have fun here? Where are they going to enjoy it and meet their friends? Where are the small children going to play? Where are the older children going to hang out? And make sure that's included. Add the cakes for children and young people, when you see a new development, don't just think about yourself. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 24:16

Thank you very much to my guests today, to all the listeners, and please subscribe to Architecture for Kids podcast and leave your rating and a review. Recommend us to your friends and family and to find out more about it, visit our websites antoniocoplant-portfolio.co.uk buildingcentre.co.uk thornt and please join me again next week for another episode of Architecture for Kids podcast brought to you in collaboration with the Built Environment Trust the Thornton Education Trust and the Welsh School of Architecture Cardiff University Thank you.