Dominic LoGalbo
Adjunct Professor
Judson University, Elgin, Illinois
dominic.logalbo@judsonu.edu
Keywords: education, practice, ethics, architecture, urbanism, design process
What Does it Mean to be a Christian Architect?
Being a Christian architect goes beyond the design of places of worship or religious education buildings. It goes beyond the design of places that make explicit the beauty and power of God’s creation. It goes beyond bringing joy and delight into the world. More than just the physical, it means a different way of working that integrates faith, community and Christian values.
To be a Christian architect, we need a form of practice that embodies the values of love, compassion, and justice; a form of practice that advocates for the needs of people with limited agency and that can amplify their voices in the development process.
Tools: The Community Design Center and the Community Based Design Process
The Community Design Center (CDC) is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary design group that partners with community-based organizations to address facility and program needs. At Judson University, a Christian institution located in Elgin, Illinois, faculty are building the infrastructure to form a CDC. Currently, these efforts serve are the foundation of two graduate-level Community Engagement Design Studios (CEDS). Students and faculty work alongside partner community agencies and groups to identify challenges and develop potential solutions. The project types range from neighborhood master plans, conceptual building designs, research, and community advocacy efforts.
The CED studios are based on the Christian principles of love, compassion, and justice. We work in service of organizations that care for the most vulnerable among us – the homeless, hungry, and sick. While our client organizations have a deep understanding of their community and expertise in delivering needed social services, they often lack experience in navigating the development process for their facilities. The nature of the work requires us to provide types of services that are beyond what the American Institute of Architects defines as “Basic Services” (AIA). The work is typically focused on predevelopment tasks that define the project scope and budget in sufficient detail for the client to begin fundraising. These tasks include needs assessment, visioning, community engagement, feasibility studies, fundraising support, conceptual design and advocacy.
Currently, the Community Engagement Design Studios provide the work free of charge, with transportation and supply costs covered by sponsor donations. As we develop the Community Design Center model, long-term engagements will be provided on a sliding fee scale subsidized by philanthropic funds allowing us to serve groups with limited financial capacity.
Beyond technical assistance, we promote justice by advocating for our client organizations and their constituencies, amplifying their voice with elected officials and regulatory agencies, and promoting access to capital by translating the program vision into the language of the financial world.
The work is an act of love by prioritizing the well-being of others. While the students, faculty, and University gain some benefit from this work – primarily learning opportunities and program visibility – there is no financial gain and the work effort is significantly greater then in a typical design studio.
The Role of Community Engagement
Another key aspect of this form of practice is utilizing a community-based design process which offers benefits that overlap both secular and spiritual interests. In its highest form, community members initiate, define, and then develop projects that address the shared needs of the community with technical support provided by design professionals. In its lowest form, projects are externally initiated – typically a municipality or private developer – with only a token amount of community input that only serves to justify a predetermined decision (Rahnema).
Since the 1960’s, multiple frameworks have emerged to guide community engagement, the most prominent being Arnstein’s Ladder of Community Participation which defines a gradient of control based on who has the decision-making authority (Arnstein, Connor). While the form these frameworks varies, they all describe a tension arising from an imbalance of political control and financial resources. In our current CED studios, our experience is that each project, each client organization benefits from a process defined with them based on their needs, timeline, and internal expertise. While the top of Arnstein’s Ladder identifies the ideal form of community engagement where decision-making power is in the hands of local residents, lower levels of engagement may be appropriate – as long as individual retain a meaningful sense of control and opportunities to participate in the development process (Mullan).
In practical terms, even the most experienced design professionals benefit from learning the specific order of operations from frontline staff. Design solutions are more responsive to community needs when end-users actively participate into design discussions. Additionally, authentic forms of community engagement can build the kind of political support needed for publicly funded projects. On a spiritual level, an authentic participatory design process demonstrates the willingness to listen, responsiveness to concerns, and transparency in how decisions are made. In short, the process itself must reflect a respect and love of all participants.
Capacity Building through Sustained Relationships: The Community Design Center
While the CED studios allow students to integrate Christian values in architecture practice, the Community Design Center offers greater opportunities for meaningful engagement. In the CDC model, the Center has a year-round staff that operates independent of the academic calendar and with a consistent project lead instead of different students each semester. This distinction allows the CDC to work in the same community and develop a deeper understanding of the experience, culture and way of life of its members – a level of understanding that allows for a truer expression of Christian love (Francis, 2013).
The prolonged engagement made possible through a Community Design Center can potentially address another shortcoming of CED studios. Multiple authors have highlighted how municipalities and corporate entities operate at strategic level to maintain control while individuals can only operate at a tactical level to make smaller advances (Blauvelt, de Certeau). In our work to date, we are confronted by such limitations as we apply our knowledge to find opportunities within the existing political and economic systems. In the CDC model, there is the potential that the long-term collaboration can help to build capacity within the community for a self-sustaining political awareness, self-governance, and technical expertise (Avilla-Royo).
The Judson University Department of Architecture is focused on an educational model that helps students answer the question, “What does it mean to be a Christian architect?” The current Community Engagement Design Studios and the developing Community Design Center demonstrates a method of practice rooted in God’s call to care for the most vulnerable with love, compassion, and justice. Our goal is to develop a sustained partnerships with the communities we serve so that the resulting work is not an ill-informed external solution but rather a true expression of community needs, values, and aspirations.
Workshop Structure
Part One: Discussion
The workshop will begin with a discussion about the challenges faced by community-based organizations as they navigate the development process. The discussion will highlight how architects, as story tellers and technicians, are uniquely positioned to help organizations imagine, fund, design, build, and operate facilities. The conversation will also address how fulfilling this role requires a different approach to architectural practice – one that supports meaningful, community-based planning and design.
Part Two: Interactive Exercise
The workshop will continue with a facilitated exercise to explore the structure of a community-based planning and design process in a hypothetical scenario. The group will evaluate the key factors including:
- Identifying all project stakeholders
- Defining roles and responsibilities and setting expectations
- The timing of design, review, and engagement tasks
- Designing stakeholder engagement tools and events
- Integrating feedback and building trust
Desired Outcome
The workshop will demonstrate how the process of design is as important as the product in promoting love, compassion, and equity. Through conversation, attendees will better understand the benefits and challenges of an intentional, community-based design process. The interactive exercise will provide attendees the opportunity to think through how that process can be applied to their own community and how it may be integrated into architectural education.
Bibliographic References
- American Institute of Architects. B101-2017: Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect. Washington, DC: AIA, 2017. Available online.
- Arnstein, Sherry R. “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35, no. 4 (1969): 216-224.
- Blauvelt, Andrew, ed. Strangely Familiar: Design and Everyday Life. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2003.
- Connor, Desmond M. “A New Ladder of Citizen Participation.” National Civic Review 77, no. 3 (1988): 249-257.
- Francis. Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World. Vatican, 2013. Available online.
- Francis. “Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the Fifth World Day of the Poor, 14 November 2021.” Vatican, 2021. Available online.
- Mullan, Eugene. “From the Islands to the Highlands of Scotland: Citizen Participation Experiences in Practice.” In Citizen Participation for 21st-Century Urban Planning, edited by Luis Francisco Herrero García, 72. Valencia: ICARO, 2005, quote in, Díaz García, Vicente Javier. “The Possible Citizen Participation in Architecture and Urban Planning.” DIAGONAL 40 (2015): Analysis and Critique.
- Rahnema, Majid. “Participation.” In The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, edited by Wolfgang Sachs, 2nd ed., 142-157. London: Zed Books, 2010.
