equity commitment
Design should be a vehicle for advocacy and accessible to all.
Racial injustice is pervasive and entrenched. We stand in service to the BIPOC community to dismantle racism in ourselves and seek a truly inclusive future.
In our ongoing quest to apply design thinking to make the world a better place, it has become increasingly clear that the society in which we live and work has some unresolved fundamental issues. As white owners, we’ve benefited from a ton of privilege that has insulated us from the harsh realities of racial injustice and economic inequality that affect the daily lives of so many people right here in our own community.
It has taken us years of learning to hear the stories of others, and to think critically about the structures in which we operate in order to see the hidden mechanisms that perpetuate these inequities in our daily lives, defining who has agency to get what they need and who has been systematically disempowered and left out.
While we continue to unpack our power and privilege, one thing we know is that making a better world requires that the opportunity to participate in shaping that world along with the benefits it will yield must be equally available to all people. It is clear that women and people of color are vastly under-represented in leadership across the design and real estate development industry, meaning that the entire built environment on which most of us depend continues to be predominantly shaped by and for white men. By nature, this means there are entire swaths of needs and potentials that continue to be ignored.
We now understand clearly that the vast majority of access to land, funding for construction, and the values that guide it are controlled by a powerful few; and that what we call ‘good’ is filtered through the western lens as what is profitable first and foremost.
“It is clear that women and people of color are vastly
under-represented in leadership across the design and real estate development industry…”
We know we can’t change ourselves, our industry, and society by ourselves or overnight. Changing these paradigms requires an ongoing commitment to change through collaboration, humility, and effort. To that end, we commit ourselves and the agency we have to build a more equitable community, starting with our own design firm. We’re seeking to foster a diverse staff with pathways to leadership for under-represented people, supporting pathways into ours and other related professions through student mentorship. We’re learning from emerging research and the insights of our own staff to shape policies that support team diversity; and together we’re learning to ask and apply hard questions that help us recognize bias and exclusion so that we can seek out new pathways to robust and meaningful inclusion.
We’ve made some important strides already, including the completion of a major project that exceeded an 85% woman-owned design team including consultants, but we know that’s really just a tiny step toward where we need to be. It takes a lot of people to make social change possible, and we can only shift so much. This work is generational and it matters deeply; so we also strive to support organizations that focus on many more aspects of change through donations, pro bono collaborations, and direct partnership. It’s here that we find joy, purpose, and the spark that drives our work to do more and be better than anything we could otherwise imagine.
This reveals the deeper beauty that’s been missing in our world, that we believe everyone longs for on one level or another; people matter, and that should never be controversial.
“PEOPLE MATTER, AND THAT SHOULD NEVER BE CONTROVERSIAL.”
FIRM HER-STORY LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITMENT EQUITY COMMITMENT FULL CANON