by Tracy Ostroff
Contributing Editor

Summary: Two high school programs in the world of architecture that use design, construction, engineering, and the arts to bring to life to rigorous academic curricula also spark awareness of inclusiveness among mentors and mentees. Although both are urban school programs, they could be emulated anywhere.

While not the explicit learning mission, students from the Build San Francisco Institute—a partnership of the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco (AFSF) and the San Francisco Unified School District—and Philadelphia’s Charter High School for Architecture and Design (CHAD), say that learning about collaboration was a key part of their practical experiences, which supplements their classroom instruction on what architects and related professionals do.

Program officials view inclusiveness as an issue beyond race or ethnic orientation—although those issues are paramount—and agree it is also a matter of academic institutions creating a link to the more academically vulnerable students, such as those from the inner city, who might not have otherwise considered a professional career or may not have had access to an education that would prepare them for the rigors of college. By working directly with practicing design and construction professionals, they see how teamwork creates results as they also develop an appreciation that they can indeed be contributing members of that team.

More than a one-person show
“Architecture is so much more than a one-person show,” says former Build San Francisco Institute student Jamilla Afandi. “So much of the design process has to do with collaboration, working with other members of the design team, clients, and others. You have to make sure everyone understands budgets, timetables, and the overall mission of the project if you want a good outcome.

“I definitely learned a lot from the program, how design starts from scratch, how it’s important to have all the information for 3-D modeling, and how integrated the process is.” She says the classes and discussions opened her eyes to architecture in her community and that the lessons she learned about integrated practice will serve her well in the workplace.

How mentors establish those perceptions varies, but fundamentally includes introducing the students to real-life conditions. Former San Francisco mentor Michael Howe, an associate and project manager at Glumac, a San Francisco engineering firm, took his students through the integrated project delivery process to see how different sides of one project relate to each other. Some of Howe’s sojourns were to bare buildings, where the mechanical engineer had his team of students imagine all the components of the design that would make the space whole. “By the end,” Howe said, “they were asking deep questions that required big explanations.”

More on mentoring
Courtnay Tyus, CHAD’s director of Institutional Advancement and executive director of the Designing Futures Foundation, says she sees two different approaches: mentoring students so they go onto careers as architects, and those who mentor students so they can make informed decisions more generally about their futures in the workplace. She referred to R. Roosevelt Thomas, who addressed the AIA conference on diversity held April 14-16 in St. Louis (the subject of an AIArchitect article coming in May). Thomas spoke about diversity as inclusiveness; of having everyone at the table. “Inclusiveness and collaboration are part of diversity,” Tyus agrees.

Afandi, who is now studying architecture and design at San Francisco State University and City College, says she also enjoyed her experience with the program studying different aspects of San Francisco communities. “As I’m studying architecture now I’m thinking back to my experience in high school to remember lessons about place making and what architects can do to collaborate to make neighborhoods vibrant places of living, learning, and community.”

“Especially here in the city,” Afandi says, “students are not exposed to the profession of architecture in their education. They are not told that this is a field that they can go into.” She says the mentorship and education helps to “fulfill our dreams to learn more about the profession and build a career in a field that we didn’t think was open to us.”

Innate passion
CHAD 2003 graduate Toniko Cobb says her program was a dream for the little girl who would draw and build apartments and houses. Now a residential designer with the Northern Virginia office of Cubellis, she is fulfilling a life-long dream. “I was immersed in design,” she remembers of her CHAD experience. The Philadelphia charter school program nurtured her perception of architecture and instilled in her the ability to make connections both for employment and in her professional career. “I know who to call, who to talk to, where to go, and how to look,” she says. After CHAD she pursued a major in integrative arts and a minor in architectural studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Tyus says CHAD students have the desire to “pay it forward,” mentoring younger students to try to expose them to architecture at an even younger age. Students in the program take advantage of any opportunity they have to “play mentor,” she says.

Afandi also already had an interest in studying architecture when she entered the Build San Francisco Institute program, and the experience solidified her desire to pursue a career in the profession. For the first time she, too, is set to mentor other students. “It’s not such a convenient major, you really have to love it and want it, she says. She is determined that at the end of her academic studies, she will be an architect.