“We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.”

- Winston Churchill

If Winston Churchill’s quote resonates with you, then do our environments have some relevance within the milieu of protests, awareness, and call for social justice after the death of George Floyd and others? One of the most potent characteristics of inequity is erasure. The history of how our neighborhoods, parks, and civic spaces were designed has marginalized people of color and this is often overlooked. Some of the stories are buoyant and positive, but have been erased. Others are dark with long, sad neglect or oppression. But whatever those stories are, understanding these layers of history will empower us to avoid repeating these mistakes and be more inclusive.

As a beta test that visiting places can change our understanding and perceptions, I led a mini-series of visits at the end of last summer to relevant places within Dallas for the AIA Communities by Design in order to more deeply understand the experience and history of peoples of color through sketching. Sketching slows us down and allows us to soak in the details of space – its scale, dynamics, and temporal rhythms. Architects, landscape architects, and designers are trained to draw on location, but few use the skill past college. It is often an act of courageous vulnerability to sketch since we cannot control how well a sketch will turn out. Those summer adventures are described here.

The idea sparked interest for the Architecture and Design Exchange (AD/EX) to sponsor a spring and summer event series open to the whole of AIA and the public to visit and sketch spaces that are often missed and misunderstood. The diverse committee that AD/EX thoughtfully convened took the idea and made it their own with the series name of Sketching Kaleidoscope. This committee included Alexander Quintanilla, Andrew Wallace, Brien Graham, Lisa Casey, Miguel Mendez, and Rachel Hardaway with AIA staff Elizabeth Jones and Jessica Boldt. Each month had a different group theme: women, environmental justice, Latinx, and blacks. Each month, we visited a different place, learned more about the issue, and shared a mutual experience through sketching together. We often went to lunch afterward to discuss what we had seen. At the end of the series, the AD/EX and AIA staff took submissions of sketches and shared them with the broader community in a three-week exhibit. You can see a link to it here or watch below.

There is a world all around us with a simplified narrative that might not be true. There might be another richer and more diverse narrative if you question what you hear and look with a deeper understanding. We would love to hear what you discover as you make that journey, hopefully with a pencil and sketchbook in hand.

To design a place with consideration, the design allows some things to be left to chance. Lines and edges are created that can encourage subtle adaptations. Instead of deciding every experience, there are moments for the unexpected. A designed landscape is an interpretation of a place that can be offered back to its community to be adopted as their own, and to be reinterpreted through lives and stories. In a dramatic shift of scales, a designed landscape is almost like the drawn black lines of a coloring book; it beckons to be altered and re-imagined by those who confront it with pens and pencils.

On September 6, 2015, Outsider Gwendolyn McGinn, and her partner, Isaac Cohen of buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, debuted The Dallas Coloring Book Experiment at the first Dallas Zine Party.

The Dallas Coloring Book Experiment is a series of coloring books. They contain a collection of drawings which present different interpretations of the city. Each edition of the coloring book takes a slightly different approach to what “coloring book” means with drawings that are meant to be interacted with, colored, cut, and reimagined. Part coloring book, part interpretation of a city, part collected histories of a place.

TDCBE is an experiment in alternate ways of engaging the city. Instead of drawing projected futures, TDCBE presents line drawings of the people and places that form the city. Collections of street corners, sidewalks, and signs begin to form a visual documentation of vernacular structures of the city. Places that we see everyday, are illustrated and layered to present the memories of a place instead of a perfectly drawn architectural record of a place.

By seeking drawings from many artists and designers, The Dallas Coloring Book Experiment begins to form a collective story of Dallas created by those who inhabit it. The act of drawing and coloring one’s own city begins to form conversations of what the city is, and how else it might be imagined. The act of drawing the city presents an appreciation of the places where lives are lived and stories are told. While Reunion Tower and other iconic emblems of Dallas might tell the story of Dallas to some, its sidewalks and bus stops have deep stories of their own.

The first series of The Dallas Coloring Book Experiment included drawings from several Outsiders. A selection of their drawings are included below. As a studio there are times for serious critical engagement, and times to playfully express the world around us. Through lines we can depicts unfinished places, and share them for others to make into their own.