Out In Architecture Volume II: Gestures of Love

A When I was practicing, finding a detail meant digging through old models. That's why I'm glad to have Puros sponsoring this episode. They make every detail, family and standard searchable across your firm and ensure that nothing gets used blindly. See it@pyrdos.com that's P I R R O S.com. Welcome to Practice Disrupted A podcast exploring how architects can build better businesses, embrace emerging technology, and more sustainable, fulfilling practices. I'm your host Evelyn Lee, architect, angel investor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're running a firm, starting your career, or reimagining what's possible, this podcast challenges you to think differently about the future of architecture. Hello Disruptors.

A Welcome Back to Practice Disrupted Last week Sarah Woinich spoke with the editors of out in Architecture Volume 2. This week she is in conversation with three of its authors, Gabby Espinosa, Lisa C. Henry, and Cody Chung. The book is Out Pride is under way. This is a second of two episodes marking the moment every chapter in Volume two began with one person deciding to put their story on the page. Gabby chose an interview format with a friend who was a witness to her becoming. Lisa wrote in an excerpt she reads out loud in her own voice during this conversation. Cody, who first met the Volume one authors three years ago as a student, returns now as a contributor in his own right.

A The book gives you each of those stories on its own terms. What this episode gives you is what happens when those storytellers sit in the room together. A senior living architect in Pittsburgh, design educator working at the intersection of disability and queer theory. A thesis student translating yin and yang into space. Three voices finding the threads I'll step back and let them talk.

B Happy Pride hi everyone, I'm Cody and I am a current senior architecture design student at Drexel University and by the time of recording this I actually have my final presentation tomorrow, which I'm really excited. Growing up, I've always been very interested and I noticed that there are a lot of spaces where both of my queer and Asian identities sometimes feel separate and I've always wondered what spaces would look like that can value and support both of my identities. And I thus probed that idea for my senior thesis project and it's been really incredible and fun. I've been able to meet so many new incredible people voices and hear a lot of amazing thoughts ideas of queerness. One of them are of course the queer designers and architects and in out in architecture. I've met some of the queer folks in out of Architecture three years ago and it's really exciting to come back three years later after I explore more of my queerness and to be able to share my journey throughout. And I'm very thankful for this space because I feel like growing up there weren't a lot of queer influences in my life. And then finally being in a space where not only I was surrounded by queer people but also queer architects and designers really gave me not only the confidence to study and have a license, but also gave a cool sense of community that I valued when I was young.

B And so thus it's very I feel very grateful and fortunate to be in the spaces and to share my voice because being surrounded by everyone in art and architecture and sitting in the whether it's sitting in Zoom meetings or meeting them in real life in conferences throughout the years, randomly catching up has been very inspiring and I look up to all these mentors and so yeah, incredibly grateful to be in this space and to be a part of the space to also share my thoughts and voices.

C Hi, my name is Gabia Espinoza, I am an architect at HKS Architects and I specialize in senior living design. I'm also one of the contributors to out in Architecture Volume 2. My chapter is called Space to Be a Conversation on Finding Ground and it is actually an interview between me and one of my closest friends at the time who worked with me, Daniela. We both worked at a earlier in our careers at a firm in Dallas and she was there in real time for my coming out process. What makes this story a little bit different is that there wasn't a dramatic coming out moment. There was no big announcement. I just gradually became myself and the place where that happened first wasn't at home, it wasn't with my closest friends, it wasn't with family. It was actually at work in an architecture office in Dallas.

C That normalcy, the fact that nothing changed when people found out, gave me the confidence to eventually have the harder conversations with the people I love. I am a lesbian Latina architect. I grew up in Mexico in a Catholic conservative family and being gays, it wasn't something that you imagine for yourself. Now I'm getting married this year, living fully as myself with my families and friends support and getting to tell that story in a book alongside people I deeply respect. Being part of outing architecture felt important because representation in this industry still matters. Seeing yourself reflected somewhere changes what you think is possible and I hope this conversation does that for someone.

D This is Lisa Henry and I will be reading from my chapter Topographies of Becoming Salt Lake City, Utah Elevation 4,226ft. I'm sitting in a salon in Utah, getting dreadlocks installed in my hair, reflecting on becoming and transformation. The locks are an acceptance of some part of myself that I've struggled with throughout my life. My hair, my hair and all it has come to mean for others. A symbol of my mixed status, a desire to be or become white. A privilege that I will never fully understand. For me, my hair has been a source of insecurity, lack of control, and even at times a source of great pride. I've even referred to it as a Samson like power.

D Today I am in transforming it into a new embrace of myself, my blackness and my desire to embrace my gray hair and its changing texture. As I watch my hair transform, I am thrilled, almost giggling with it. I feel like I am becoming more myself, embracing every aspect of myself, including deep flaws, accepting my lack of perfection as a badge of humanity and not a failure in the face of white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, misogynation and homophobia. All of the hierarchies that have marked my identity and my life. In order to understand myself as out in Architecture, I had to understand myself across these many different matrices that have impacted me and my ability to see who I am.

E Hello everyone. We are back again and really excited to be joining practice disrupted as a cohort of out in Architecture editors and co authors and co collaborators. I'm really excited today to be joined not only myself and Beau Frail, but to be joined with three amazing co contributors and co authors of out in Architecture Volume 2, which is soon to be coming your way and soon to be something that you can join in the reading and the sharing of a whole new round of authors and stories. So we are joined today with Lisa Henry, Cody Chung and Gabby Espinosa. And I am just excited to see kind of what began as an idea and conversation and just the importance of sharing our stories continue to amplify and highlight even more voices. So we're really excited to get into it today and really just want to start by asking everybody and this is for whomever would like to jump in first. We're now into volume two of out and Architecture and I just want to know for the three of you, you know, what was the process like? Have you ever been a part of something like this? And maybe for Gabby, the interview format that you chose and Lisa in your kind of short with the podcast, those are very unique and so I'm really curious not only the whole process and what that was like for each of you, but why you chose the form format specific to sharing your story.

C So I definitely haven't been a part of anything like this. So I'm definitely very excited just that this exists to start with. So I feel very lucky to have been a part of this process. And, yeah, my story, I did in the form of an interview. And honestly, the main reason why it's in that format is because I just think I'm a better talker than the writer, and I think I'm able to express myself a little bit more as I'm talking. So when I thought about what the best way to share my story, I just figured I could have a conversation with. At first, I thought of my fiance just because she's the person I'm the most comfortable with. But then after talking to my editor, Julia, we realized that maybe someone that went through the process of coming out with me and work with me at the time would be the most impactful way to communicate the message.

E I love that. That's amazing. And I also love, you know, Julia was on and a part of our first episode of out in Architecture, one that we recorded. So I really love just to see the continuity and the thread and to know both the supports, but also that it was so authentic and just both meaningful, but also genuine to you. That's amazing.

C Yeah, it was a fun process.

B Yeah.

E What about you, Lisa or Cody?

D Yeah, I did actually decide in my brief introduction to read from the text. Text, for me, represents the way that I practice architecture, which is an academic practice for sure, but the idea is that I'm always addressing embedded experience and situated experience. And so when I was asked to give a brief introduction of my experience with this project, I actually kind of enjoyed reading that first paragraph of my piece because it was about the experience as not only a reflection of my practice, but also just a joyful experience of discovering my voice through this process, working with people who had already gone through the process. And I feel like in this last year, between this project and a previous project, which was actually very similar, working with Dark Matter University, I have discovered my voice as a writer. And so I wanted to share that in my introduction and talk about myself becoming both physically and sort of academically and intellectually.

E Yeah, I love that. And I'll share. Lisa, I think just to really be able to hear your words, that I think we often, we all, you know, are reading them, but to hear them spoken by you, that was so beautiful. I was just like. I got chills when I was just hearing that. And I hope anybody listening, whatever, that they Might have received that as. I don't know. It was just a beautiful and magical experience.

E I was like, I want every out in Architecture author to now go record, you know, their. Their story. Because just to hear through your own voice just took another layer and dimension of really being invited in and sitting with you in that joy and that experience. So loved it. I absolutely loved it. How about you, Cody? I know you have seen kind of a lot of out in architecture, so I'm curious what this process was like for you.

B I would say it's surreal after meeting y' all in out of architecture, like, out of architecture, like three years ago, I think was the first time that I saw and I met gay designers and architects. So that was kind of really cool, I would say, because it cemented for me that, like, oh, there's people out there that are practicing and become. And our architects and our academics and our designers who are also out. And I would say that my third year, when I met y' all at that time, that was when I actually fully explored my queerness. And I haven't seen a lot of queer people in this field. And that's. And I think after that AIAS event, it was pretty incredible. And that kind of made me, like, want to be an architect more.

B Want to be a designer more. Continue this field. Participating in the volume two about an architecture. I would say, again, it's pretty surreal. I just like Lisa. I like writing. I feel like when I do studio projects and all of that words are always something that I go back to. And contributing to the volume two while at the same time, reading volume one for my thesis project was kind of weird and fun because it was like, using the verbiage and people's thoughts from.

B From the previous book. Doing my project and all of a sudden writing and producing something for the second was incredible, I would say. I loved writing so much that at first when I was talking to Larry, my mentor, I was writing a little too academic. And so it was fun exercise to, you know, write something first and then take a step back and then add more of, like, the informality or the storytelling in it. So, yeah, that's. Yeah, this journey has been really fun. And I take every second for granted because I can't believe, like, I'm, like, here too, sitting in a recording session with y'.

C All.

E Yeah, well, it's amazing. I. I want to give a shout out to Cody. So Cody invited out In Architecture kind of Volume one. So the AIs kind of like their national conference in January two years ago, and Myself and Larry Pascal headed there and we joined Chris Damrick because it was in New Orleans, and Chris is from the New Orleans area. And it was amazing just to see what Cody pulled together from a panelist perspective. Chris and one of Chris's colleagues led a very, like, queer forward almost walking tour and architecture tour. And it was just like one of those wonderful, amazing experiences just to have the opportunity to, like, meet Cody and as an AIs leader and to meet a bunch of students that were just like, we just want to ask questions and have this conversation.

E And the three of us were like, we don't know that we have the answers, but you are the futures and you give us all hope. So, like, let's figure out the answers together. And I think really, you know, after that, Cody has reached out, you know, through your thesis and through really just having questions about being connected further. And I think that's been an amazingly beautiful part of this is it started as 24 stories, but it became a whole community, and now it's 23 stories, and it is continuing to become this whole community. And I think, Cody, just to have known you over the last three years and see that really actually weave together, I don't know, it's just been so amazing just to see your experience and just to know that you have been willing to share your story as a part of this.

B Thank you. And thank you for giving me the space to also share my story. It's so good to be here.

E Yeah, yeah, we have.

C Oh, gosh.

E It's like space is infinite. And it's like, how much time do we have to be able to share stories? And there are enough people that are interested in a volume three that I have heard. So I think. I think just to know that the space is there, and let's just keep filling and pushing the edges. I'm excited for it. Since you mentioned future volumes, we did ask Giselle to write a foreword for

D the book, which I was super excited about.

E Giselle sent us Rivera, who kind of sparked the whole idea for outdoor architecture to begin with.

B But in her foreword, she mentions that

E originally she said she wants 40 volumes

D of this, and she's not kidding.

E No, she's not kidding. If anyone knows Giselle, she is certainly not kidding. And we love it. But I think, you know, we're here for it, and I think there's never, never enough space for our stories to be shared. Moving on to kind of next question and curiosity. So all of your out in architecture stories really touch on the role of places, whether that's as hindrances or encouragement or maybe a mixture of both. But places in your becoming, can you share how any of those places have had an impact for you on exploring and embracing your identities?

D Yeah, I would be happy to start this conversation. My piece is called Topographies of Becoming because I actually sort of conceived of how to think about myself as art and architecture through my spatial experiences. So I grew up in New Orleans and went to school in the Big Red building in the middle of the French Quarter. And. And that landscape really had such a dramatic impact on my experience as a light skinned black woman, as a queer woman, as a dyslexic woman. Because of the complexity of the cultural history there. Right. There is a very clear sort of French area of the city and a very clear sort of American area of the city.

D And so you get these cultural classes across race and gender and sexuality in that space and they're really dramatically mapped in that city. And so even to the point where walking in the city, I walk differently depending on where I am, because there's different levels of embrace and different levels of danger or precarity in the different spaces. And I think it was actually the study of architecture and the practice of architecture that allowed me to start understanding that and in some way allowed me to start understanding how that impacted how I became who I am. To start to play in that space and discover who I want to be and how I am becoming was really extraordinary. So for me, my identity has always been tied to that place that's like the home of my soul and probably never want to live there again because it was really rough. But it's always a place that I go back to think about these things.

E I love that. Yeah, I think it's both the knowing but also the continued becoming. Gosh, we can't really ever separate those.

B Yeah. I wanted to add on to what Lisa said. I think the idea of places or spaces growing up have really shaped my identity. My piece is called A Query on Space and I can delve into that later on. But it started from this idea of just, you know, this started as my senior design project in school and just tapping into the spaces I've been in growing up. I've, you know, my Asian identity. My parents always brought me to Chinatowns and they made sure that I was growing up in a Chinese setting and not becoming too, I would say, whitewashed in like the American landscape. And so they made it a fact to, you know, to make myself know what my culture is and how to speak my culture and to interact with it.

B And I think as I continued, you know, going to high school and college, tapping into my queerness, that's when that type of the spaces that I've been in was very cultural, that I felt safe with. Started to feel a little dangerous or a little insecure because of just hearing all the taboos of queerness within Asian space and from my own family members as well. And then going into like, you know, queer spaces in Philadelphia and meeting queer like my queer friends and peers and becoming in tune with my queerness here in Philadelphia. That has been a big, I would say, change in my identity and allowing myself to grow in terms of what my queerness is. But also at the same time I was noticing that, you know, there was not a lot of queer Asian people or queer Asian spaces that I was like interacting with. Even though if I've gone to like Asian organizations in my school, it was very heteronormative and very straight. But when I go into like queer spaces, it was very, I would say white centric. And thus those ideas of the spaces made me recognize my intersectionality and how I can also.

B How do my identities interact with other identities but also interact with each other when I'm traversing through spaces? And I think that's been a year long question. I had this entire year in trying to develop an area where both of my identities can come together. And it's still continuing. I'm still learning about it. I feel like this is. I feel like if my first phase was learning about my Asian identity, my second phase is without learning my queer identity. I think this, I'm at like my third stage where how do I balance these two and what, how do they push and pull when I enter into different areas?

D That's beautiful way of talking about it. And I have a very similar experience with the black and the queerness. Because race in New Orleans was embroiled immediately. And then I was able to actually realize my queerness much later. But it was that struggle with race that was the beginning of my journey. So I appreciate your, your story. Thank you.

C It's beautiful to hear, honestly, like, because that's, I feel like at the end of the day that's what we are. Like just a tapestry of different kind of things that form us to where we are. It's very cool to hear your stories, but I'll answer the question, I guess with a little bit of a different approach. So the title of my story is Space to Be. So I moved to Dallas at 23 for my first full Time job, like essentially right out of school. And I didn't really have a community or anything when I moved there. But I got really lucky because the office that I joined became a really important part of my community. I mean, which kind of makes sense because that's where we spend a lot of our time of the day, right at work.

C So I mean, I instantly at work found like a best friend, an amazing mentor who's still my mentor to this day. And it is a place where I really felt heard and valued, both professionally and personally. And coming from a Mexican, conservative, Catholic background, and having a lot of friends who came from that similar background coming out was scary, especially when I still was figuring myself out a little bit. So work became kind of my safe place to exist and be able to explore that part of myself. And there wasn't really a pressure to define or label myself before I was ready or anything like that. I feel like work gave me the time and the space, or my office and my co workers gave me the time and the space to actually figure myself out. And it actually happened to be the first place where I came out and was more myself. And after doing so, it gave me the confidence to eventually come out to the rest of my friends and family.

C So I think having those spaces where you feel like you can be yourself are extremely important. And work, which is a place where we spend a lot of our time, has a big impact. I think.

E I am thankful and I think it's really interesting, especially in architecture, not only in the places that we grow up, the places that shape inform us, but also in architecture. I don't know. I know for me, like, there were very. There were so many moments where I kind of just held my breath and it was the question of can I be myself or not? Like, can. Yeah, do you have that space to be? And I think just to know Gabby, like, that was so like formative and transformative in your experience. It's. I, I think sometimes that's not often the experience or even the perception. An example I have, I have tattoos on my, you know, arm, almost like a full sleeve.

E And I think just even that of like, question of can I wear a sleeveless shirt or a short sleeve shirt in a meeting? And just everything from physical perception all the way to how do you talk about yourself and your life outside of

B the walls of the office?

E And just to know that that was actually a space that was nurturing, informative in a positive way, I think so impactful and important. When sometimes people ask the question of, well, why Is it important to talk about our identities in the workplace? It doesn't have anything to do with buildings. No, it has everything to do with the people. People that are shaping and transforming those spaces.

C Yeah, I mean, I. I definitely got. I feel like I got lucky because I. I know that that's not necessarily everyone's experience. I was very lucky to be able to have that experience.

E Yes. And I'm continuing to shape that for everybody else who will continue to have the experience. Yeah. So I want to jump back kind of. Lisa, this one's specifically for you. So at the end of your story, kind of, you shared about the exercise with your students as that collective, liberatory practice, weaving in their own identities within architecture. And even kind of here, you've really talked about that embodiment from kind of your work and your exercises with your students. What are some outcomes and insights that you have really been able to bring forward into your practice and into your day to day?

D Yeah, that exercise actually transformed my class in really dramatic ways. To give you some context, I started teaching in Utah 27 years ago. Utah was much more homogenous. It was much more conservative. I have seen a lot of change in that 27 years. So I arrive in Utah as the only black person in the room, in the building, for the most part, and I begin teaching gender, race, and queer theory in architecture to a predominantly white, conservative audience. And the response was real hostility. It was really hostility.

D Because in some ways, there's a lot of anxiety happening in that space. Even the students that want to learn about these things feel anxious. They're scared about making mistakes. They're scared about how they situate themselves within these frameworks. And then the other thing that happens is that there's a sense that to talk about privilege along the lines of gender, race, and queerness to a predominantly white, male, heterosexual audience feels a little bit like an accusation. Right. Like we're like, I'm accusing them before I know anything about them. I'm accusing them of being privileged.

D And it feels sort of disrespectful to their own journeys and so that project. So over the course of the 27 years, as I've transformed this class, I've never taught it exactly the same way twice. I have foreground, moved to foreground student voices more and more and more and more. The more the students are talking, and the less I'm talking, the more we're all actually learning together better. And that particular exercise was dramatically transformative because it allowed everyone to give voice to how they situate Themselves in the class. And so you didn't start with this sort of sense of, oh, my God, she's talking about privilege. She's talking about me. Why is she talking about me? But you start with a reflection, right? You start with, let's look at the insanity of imagining that we can understand people based on like two or three or four really broad axes.

D Gender, race, sexuality, nationality. Right. Whatever the four are, we imagine that we can understand people based on just those categories. Here's the thing. You can have a person that. You can have two people that match exactly in all of those categories, and they could still be two like they are. So they're totally different people. They're just different people.

D So allowing the students to engage with those categories, to say, these are the conversations we're going to have this year, and I want understand yourself on this as a spectrum, not as a binary, but as a spectrum. So we can talk about class, for example, and we can talk about relative levels of privilege across that. And so maybe you do have these sort of markers of white male privilege, but maybe you grew up in poverty. So it allows people to express where they. How they're situated in relationship to identity and in relationship privilege in such a way that it doesn't start with an assumption about who anyone in that classroom is. And we are all discovering ourselves and what interests us through this process. And so I introduce myself with what I call the positionality introduction at the beginning of the. At the first day of class.

D And then we do this reflective exercise. And then over the course of the semester, each student introduces themselves in a positionality framework. And they talk about how they're situated on the axes, how they have experienced privilege and how they have experienced oppression. Understanding it as a spectrum rather than a binary means you get rid of yes and no. You get rid of black and white. You get rid of this notion that if you can see my race, you know something about me. And we start to explore what is the matrix, what is the system of categorization doing to us, to separate us and to confine parts of ourselves to private space or outside of the workspace. So this whole exercise is about inviting the students to bring everything they are to the table, to bring their situations, their knowledges, their experiences, and to all learn from each other.

D Rather than having a scenario where I have 60 students and they're all learning from me, right? They are learning from me, but they are primarily learning by engaging with each other and understanding that those categories are not as meaningful as we think they are, and that People are very different within those categories. And that is so critical to any kind of liberatory practice to understand that we don't have to be afraid of this category, that we can meet people in this category. We can talk in respectful ways across categories, and we don't have to make assumptions about relative levels of privilege or oppression or relative levels of effort or work. Right. It's not accusatory. It's. Everybody's invited. Everybody is invited to introduce themselves in a way that's most meaningful to them.

D Not in a way that's meaningful to me, but in a way that's most meaningful to them. And then we can all start talking about these things because we're not so terrified of making mistakes or. Or we're not so terrified of being accused of being privileged or having the incredible work of moving from, for example, an underprivileged, impoverished situation to a college situation. That's going to give you sort of. That's going to give you mobility in terms of class, mobility in terms of how you can impact the world and those kinds of things. And we're all taking that journey together rather than people sort of separating themselves into these categories. So the idea is to break the categories down and to invite the students to bring all of their embodied knowledge into the classroom so that we're all learning from each other. And it's been such a pleasure.

D I mean, I have learned so much in that classroom, right. I have learned where I am so privileged, I didn't even realize I was privileged, despite the fact that I'm a black queer female. You know what I'm saying? So those things are important, and it's important for me to show my learning as an example in the same way that they are learning from each other and I'm learning from them. It creates a different space, and it's been extraordinary. That one exercise changed the tenor of the classroom dramatically.

C I really wish I could have taken your class when I wasn't back in school.

B Same here.

C Can I go back? Sounds so interesting.

D Well, that's a really good way to pitch the. Not that I want to pitch my book, but that's a really good way to talk about the book. Challenging Patterns of Supremacy that I just. This was the previous experience that was kind of similar to this one. And what that book is designed to do is it's designed to give students access to the curriculums that we've developed to these curriculum. So, for example, that positionality exercise is in the book. It invites students to write their stories into that book. And weave their voices into all of the woven voices of that book.

D And so there's five exercises in that book that I use in my class, and they have all been incredibly rich and liberatory exercises for everybody involved.

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B And has this, like, this exercise, like, I know you mentioned the hostility during the beginnings. Has that, like, eased as you continue teaching this course? And, like, what was, like, the most significant change? I would say, I would ask.

D Yeah, you know, I will say, the first year that I did this exercise, I become anxious at the beginning of every semester. You know, like, I start the first class, I'm terrified, and probably the students are terrified, too. So we're all together. Like, that's important. But the first year that I ran this exercise, I ran it on the first day of class, and I had this group of students. After the class, I was walking back to my office, and I had this group of, like, seven students run, like, energetically up to me, and I was like, oh, my God, what's going to happen? And they just. They just. They were so enthusiastic, and they were so grateful.

D They were like, this has already been amazing. Like, this is not any. I have never had an educational experience like this. It's already amazing. I can't wait for the semester. And so I went from literally standing on a stage, feeling like I was going to get rotten to tomatoes any minute, to this level of enthusiasm to participate that was really extraordinary. And it really is about sort of, you know, allowing everyone a place to speak about their experience. It's just not something students are often invited to do.

D And so in that class, that class, I have never lectured in that class. It's always workshops. It's always student voices. It's always inviting students to bring every question, to bring every aspect of themselves into that class and give them the tools to have these difficult conversations. I mean, we talk about everything from tone of voice, facial expression. What's your body doing? Where do you feel tension in your body? And how can you let go of that tension if you know that? I give them a lot of tools to work together across difficult conversations. And it has really dramatically changed my experience. In that classroom.

D And I think the experience of all the students.

E I do have a question, and this is, you know, standing on the side of practice now, not just being a student in practice, but being a practitioner in practice. Do you or have you ever been in circumstances where you see that also as an opportunity for those not in academic settings to engage and almost, I don't know, kind of have similar exercises to really invite them, their own selves into the workplace, into practice, into their projects, in their day to day?

D Absolutely. And we have done exercises both for communities, for professionals and for schools. We are available to come and do an exercise with you. A lot of our practice and our pedagogy comes from organi. Organizing activism. Right. And so we can provide these tools to offices, we can provide these tools to classroom spaces with the hope that our students will bring these tools into the office. I will tell you another story.

D I have a student that was in my class years ago. She graduated and decided that she wanted to have an activist practice, an activist architectural practice. She got a job in a relatively large firm that was not necessarily an activist practice, a pretty standard practice. And the experience of that class and the desire to bring her whole self to that role inspired her to begin an activist group within that larger practice. And she started posting events on bulletin boards, lectures, opportunities to serve communities in different ways. Right? Like paint your heart out, like let's all go and paint houses for people that are not necessarily our clients on an everyday basis. They don't have the means to do that and still make a difference in our community. And she went from.

D She was an intern, she created this whole committee and organization within her firm that was focused on activism and focused on the role that architecture has in that space, and then eventually opened her own firm to focus on those things. And so by giving her those tools initially in the classroom, she had the confidence to actually start making change in a workspace where she felt like it needed to be more diverse, it needed to be more open. You know what I'm saying? And so this is why my practice is academic. Because on some level, not only have I always wanted to teach, but on some level I believe that I have more impact if I can plant seeds and sort of send those out into the world, as opposed to any one particular design that I might do myself. So, yeah, it's been extraordinary. And I have seen differences. I have had students come back to me. Some of those students that were hostile came back to me like five and ten years later and said, oh my God, I was so mean to you.

D I can't believe you're still here. And. But let me tell you what you did for me in my practice. And so it's hard in the moment because these are difficult conversations, but it really is an opportunity to learn. And it is. I do think it's unique and interesting that this class is happening at the University of Utah. Right place for this to happen.

E Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's exactly the time, place, space, and people that it needs to happen with. So I want to keep, like, teasing this out because I think there's a similar kind of thread, different but similar thread with kind of gabby a lot of your story because you really share about the importance of imagining future possibilities, but also empathy in both embracing your full self and in the work and being able to kind of do the best work that we do. And I think also you know this, the impact because of your. Your friend really interviewing you, who is both like an affirming witness, but also kind of like reflections in that space and in that time as you needed. So I'm curious, you know, how can seeing yourself reflected somewhere, whether that was like in a book, in friends, acceptance in your work experiences, and being able to embrace your full self, how do you see that as really helping to bring about future possibilities where we can live our most fullest and our most joyfully?

C Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And I think going through this process of architecture made me kind of sit down and think about all of this and honestly look back at an experience that I hadn't really kind of sat down and maybe analyzed. So there's obviously that internal reflection. Like I mentioned earlier, how I grew up in the environment I did is I didn't. Except for maybe some movies or TV shows, I didn't really see any representation of what being a lesbian could be. Though I did see movies, shows, heard about people or whatever is not even something that I could even consider for myself. So I didn't even give myself the space to go down that road, per se. So I think stories and a collection, like the art of an architecture collection of stories is so important just because we kind of always have expectations of how life is supposed to go and we don't really get to dive too deep into other people's experiences again besides the like pop culture and popular stories.

C But I think once you scratch that surface and you realize that not two experiences are the same, I think it opens your eyes to possibilities and like, what your future could be. And I mean, even in the book, right Some stories are hopeful. Some show resilience. Some show real adversity. Like, there's all sorts of stories and all sorts of experiences that people go through. And I think that range just really matters, because if someone picks up the book and sees that there's, like, maybe not one way to come out or one way to, you know, live your life or whatever it might be, I don't know, I think it opens kind of a world of possibilities. And I think that's what empathy, for me is all about. I think realizing that we are all different, even if we have similar experiences.

C Just like you said, Lisa, every person has its own world. So how do we create spaces where all these different worlds can come together in peace or harmony? And that's how I think about design, thinking about just creating these spaces where people from different backgrounds and stories and experiences can kind of just walk in and be free to be themselves. And I think as I look back into this process, too, and having that conversation with Daniela, I mean, if I released the audio of that interview, it was like three hours long. We talked so much. It was very interesting seeing my experience through her perspective. We had never sat down and talked about it. We kind of just lived through it and, you know, life goes on and you move on. But seeing her empathy and how she.

C I get chills just thinking about it. Like, sitting down with her and hearing her perspective of that time was truly special. Like, I honestly could not be more thankful that I had her by my side through all of it. And there was a part of the interview that I think was very impactful to me. She at some point described the moment where I came out to her, like, just like. And I finally said, like, I'm gay. Even though I had been slowly going through that process. And I think she knew I completely forgot about that moment.

C When she mentioned it, when we were talking about it, she was like, wait, you don't remember? We were sitting at the bar. I had, like, a pro se in my hand. And then we're at this patio drinking. And then you said it, and I just put my drink down and just wanted to listen to you and what you had to say. That was just so special. And I think the reason why I didn't remember this moment is because I think that's how she made me feel through the whole process. It didn't feel like it was this one particular moment. So to the reflection, it just.

C I don't know. It's been very nice to see. It's almost like looking into the future and what people can be, but also like kind of looking into the past and reflecting a bit of what that experience was like and honestly reminded me how again, lucky and grateful I am to have a good community around me that has supported me and walked alongside me through this process.

E Yeah, gosh, I also got chills and I think I even almost was carried back to just like what started all of our conversations, which is really just about that space that you could just keep filling up like there was no edge to it. And into her in. Throughout this process, through your three hour interview with her, all the way back to the first moment when you were sitting across from one another and it was like just the world stopped and the only thing that was important was however much space you needed to take up in that time. And I just like, I don't. I. I just like want to hug your friend too and say, like, I don't know, people don't realize when like they invite you in to you actually inviting your own self in. Just the magnitude of that. And Jadi Amazi, who we also interviewed on the first out in Architecture podcast and who I know was really integral throughout this process, just talks about that.

E And I remember just like that total brain shift for me. And I think that's a thread through a lot of Yalls stories and experiences is. Is just this fullness of space that you can take up, whether you're inviting your own self in, others in creating the for or like creating the space for having others create that space for even more people to keep inviting themselves in. And there's just something that becomes like liberatory, beautiful, impactful, formative about it that I think transforms not only our individual lives, but also our relationships and the whole space around us.

C Definitely. And that moment was so special that I honestly think not everything's that nice. Right. Just being realistic. Not everyone's reaction was that. But that's the one that I remember though, and that's the one that I look back and I remember thinking everything was going to be okay.

E At that point you just kind of knew. It can be such this interesting thread of just the way a person can just let you take that up in your own self and just that reassurance of like, no, this will be okay. Even when hard, this will be okay

B because there's that space to keep on filling.

E Yeah. So I want to kind of keep chasing this down because. And talking through this because, Cody, your story and also your thesis, like really unfolds this in both similar but also unique ways. And I think especially when and knowing, kind of. And having seen some of your thesis unfold from the very beginning, you talk about Chinese philosophy on yin and Yang and harmony over competition of kind of any contrasting traits. And I think what's interesting is that honoring of the past while revering community, while hoping for more equitable futures. And so yours is not just kind of stitching. And a lot of what I've seen with you is not just stitching this moment in time or in your own lived experience, but the collective kind of experience, past community, as well as present and future.

E I'm curious if you can almost talk a little bit about your process in arriving at this philosophy and uncovering it and how it has shaped the. Both your thesis, your story, and out in architecture, and also how you will continue navigating spaces.

D Totally.

B Sarah, you also just reminded me to send you an email about my update for my senior design because you've been such an integral part of it. So I just wanted to. Yeah. Send you a quick update. And I. Yeah, I. I think initial idea of. Well, I started thinking about queer space because I was like, there's no spaces for queer Asian people.

B What should I do? And that was basically it. And I remember talking to my professor about, I want to create a queer space because there's too many heteronormative spaces. And my professor was like. My professor sat me down and said, cody, you thinking about queer space in response to heteronormativity is already a colonial way of thinking. And I. That kind of opened my mind at first, because at first I also wanted to be like. I wanted to decolonize what it means to create space. And my professor told me to utilize queerness as an essence verse and to look at it not as a response or reaction to why there isn't queer space, but create something from a true essence.

B And I remember reading. I read Ocean Vlong, and they also talked about how, in terms of the colonial mindset is. There's a. There's a section of like, you know, like, I'm queer and I don't need to prove to people why queer people should exist or queer people should get health care or have rights. And that's basically the. Those two moments were like the ideas of toiling with what is the essence of queerness in my perspective. And I looked through it as like a phenomenal lens through phenomena, phenomenology, and then through culture and focusing on culture. I think it was just.

B I've always heard of Chinese folklore and how there was already queerness or everything and Started really researching into the Yin Yang. And then that the idea of the yin yang also started because I was like, oh, it's essentially two contrasts, two contrasting things working together. And I kind of thought of that as my, my identity. So my queerness and my Asian heritage. I'm like, if these two are quote unquote contrasts, how do they balance and create something and how do they create me? And I fell into a rabbit hole of studying Yin Yang and realized there was so much cultural stuff that really proved that there was queerness. Like, I was on the plane coming back from Hong Kong and I saw a video about Chinese opera. And in my mind I was like, at that moment I was like, that's literally drag. That's drag.

B But no one says it like that. And that type of, that idea of like, there's so much queerness, I'm going to say, within culture, within the past. And Gabi, you have mentioned something about, like the whole timeline of it all. It seems like you're reading about, like the past or the present and then like helping out with the future. And I know in terms of queering time, time's not linear. And I feel like that's how I think sometimes, where I just get things from the present and the past and realize that there's so much that is there already. And how can we just tap into that and find the essence of what queerness was already before? That really, I think, sparked the idea of my thesis or just the idea of designing space, of when it comes to figuring out or locating queerness within, like a cultural identity and figuring out that intersectional relationship of it all. For me, it was discovering or just finding the essences, the cultural essences or the heritage of what is there already that represents what we call now queerness, or what we call now what is queer.

B And that has been really exciting. And through looking at, looking at it through that lens, it's been, I think, easier for me to just like, arrive at a space and just look at things, whether it is from the past or the future or the present, and figuring out how not only myself, but how do people navigate through space and what their beliefs are. Because when I did this thesis, I also made like a little board game to play with my queer Asian friends, because I didn't just want to let them sit down and me berating them with questions, what's queerness to you? How is that with your Asian heritage? And they were able to like, recall things from their past as well. And like, and I think that's what all three of our, like, stories talk about is like, we looked at what happened in the past, whether it is our past or from throughout history, and realized, wow, those are the instances that allowed us to progress and flourish in the present time. So I think it's really important to like, go through our, let's say, intersectional identities through looking at what has happened back then. What has happened back then in our stories too, and how that will help us continue to grow.

E Gosh, yeah, I love that. And I think, like, for so many reasons, it feels like this moment in time and like this confluence in this intersection of all of these couldn't be more important. And I was reading some article the other day, not only about, like, spaces within the United States that are very like, rooted in queer culture, but also even just like memory and what has happened in the way of just like honoring it's like current and present day, younger generations, even awareness or honoring of like, like past generations and just like this. And that's just like from a generational perspective. That's not even like looking at it from like cultural perspective. And I think just recognizing and being able to welcome in like one person's own experience with how they've moved through life and how they've moved through history, culture, any of that, I don't know. I love that that was and has been what you've spent a year doing, but also like engaging like your friends in as well.

B One more thing is that.

C Yeah.

B What you just said, Sarah, about the generational stuff, I think I thought about it in my own family lineage too. I didn't know that many queer people, and there may be a possibility there were queer people within my family line who weren't out. And I kind of also used this way of thinking or just my project as a way to also honor those before me who were out or honor those before me who didn't have a chance or the opportunity to be out. And I think that was a nice way of talking, contemplating about what my relationship of queerness is to like, my generation or the past histories of my culture.

E Yeah, totally. I know that was something Giselle and I actually talked about when out in architecture was just an idea in San Jose, California, but talking about it as a way of really also honoring our queer elders and where any of us have come from, in addition to where we will all continue to be shaping and influencing where we're going. So that's been a thread and a genesis that has been impactful and been important from the beginning and how our stories not Only invite in, but also share that space. And I may be cautious. I'm not even cautious to say this, like, books can be destroyed and maybe in essence, some books are really being restricted and limited. But also there's this preservation and this memorializing that comes through. What do we intentionally claim through our voice and what do we intentionally write down, and how does that recognize and continue to weave the history and the tapestry of.

D Yeah.

E Where we. Where we are in this moment and where we will be in 100 years?

C I think what is really cool, after all of us talking right now is seeing the similarities or even the importance of sometimes, you know, we just are living life and walking through it and experiencing it. But at least for me, like, just sitting down and having a conversation of that time, Lisa, you with your class and exploring that and Cody, through your thesis and sitting that with your friends, even in the board game, like, it's just really kind of sitting down and talking about specifically this. Not. Not as a part of a conversation, but sitting down and talking about, you know, queerness and what it is. Like, it just so important. I don't know. I just kind of saw the dots being connected as. As we were all talking just now.

D Yeah.

E Yeah. And I think there's sometimes not intentionality given or made towards it and towards, you know, having those conversations. So I think to. To do it, to not. Not just weave it in, but to say, no, this is. This is what we are going to claim and be and talk about and share as much or as little as it might, you know, make sense in that moment in time, but that this is what it is and really living into and owning that. So wanna. We're coming right up on an hour and I think really just as a closing question, because we know that Volume three, there are.

E There's likely volume three coming at some point and hopefully continuing to pass on that legacy and that sharing of, you know, walking with the next round of authors, I really want to ask you all as authors and co authors and out In Architecture Volume 2, for those, whether they're listening or might be picking up Volume two, what is one thing that you hope that they really come away from your story with? And while y' all are contemplating that, I just wanted to show you a sneak peek. I have one of the proofs, but here's the COVID and all three of your stories. I've been taking notes on all your stories during the. I know the people on the podcast can't really see this, but I'm holding

B up the proof of the Volume two, which will be released by the time

D this podcast comes out. I actually have a story. I recently gave a talk and had a student come up to me after the talk. He was sort of struggling with his own identity, and he said, you know, I'm really curious how you address these moments of betrayal in your life. Right? Like, I've got these friends that are. That have been my friends for a long time, and I think that we're really close. And then they say something that makes it really clear that suddenly my queerness or my race or whatever it is, is on the table and has always been on a table, on the table. And it actually made me realize that one of the vignettes that I share in my story talks about that.

D That those moments of betrayal and the experience of that. And it just made me realize, you know, that every person that picks up these stories, that reads these books, can find aspects of themselves and their own experience in them, can find a sense of, I'm not the only one. I'm not isolated in this identity, can find a sense of community. For me, my writing has always been an attempt to weave together multiple forms of knowledge and to weave together multiple voices. And that the telling of the story, the reading of the story, for me is actually a process of community building. To know that there are people in the world who are struggling with these issues that we can reach out to, to know that we are invited to bring all that we are to every task that we do so that we can perform it with our full passion and our full engagement. Right? For me, that's what. That's what the book is about.

D It's really about building that community. And like you were saying earlier, sort of filling that space, I like to think of it. Sedgwick uses the term a becoming amplitude, that the more of these stories we have out there, the more opportunities we have potentially to connect with someone who is seeking a story that inspires them to become who they are and to be out in whatever it is that they are passionate about. Right. And so that's what I hope these stories afford. I hope that in reading about my experience of betrayal, someone who has had that experience can understand how. That they're not alone and that there are ways to be forgiving and understanding in that space, and there are ways to know that, to discover that someone is a toxic influence and maybe they shouldn't be a part of your friend group. So I just think these experiences that we share can touch so many lives across so many different ways that we think about each other, invite everyone to bring that sort of becoming amplitude to the table and not leave parts of themselves behind.

C Yeah, I think, just to add to that, because I completely agree with everything you're saying, I think this collection of stories hopefully helps people realize that there's not one path in life. There's just all these different paths, all these different experiences, a combination of a lot of different experiences. And I think that means that someone out there just might find exactly what they need in this collection of stories. Because coming out can be like, for example, a big dramatic moment, or it can be gradual, like it was for me, or it can be personal or. And quiet or communal or like a big deal. So I think just all of these things are okay. And seeing that reflected and collected, I think it's just very special. Just not knowing that not two stories are the same is really exciting, I think, because it means that the possibilities for the future are endless.

C So whatever your story looks like or whatever, wherever you are in your process or in your life, like, maybe this book can give you a little bit of peace or hope, or like you said, Lisa, the feeling that you're just not alone.

B Yeah, I want to expand on that. I think one thing that I hope that after a reader picks up these collective stories is to also have the opportunity to create conversation around these stories. Not just to read and just say, this is it or this is not it, but also take notes actively, like what Beau just done, to have conversations about these stories and how that relates to the reader, or how you can also add on to it, or like, my journey with queerness is different than everyone else's in this podcast. And I would love to see. I would love to hear people talk about their similarities or like, the differences between them, and to just have overall conversation to continue the conversation going.

E I want to just say I am thankful to all four of you for continuing the conversation both through the forms in which you have shared yourself and your stories, but also through joining this podcasts and through this last hour or so of conversation. I think, you know, you never can know, like, where things will go when they begin. You can just hope to have the opportunity to invite, you know, way more brilliant people into it, but also people that have just lived their own life and experiences and just have the space for them to. To fill it and to make it their own and keep passing that baton. So I just want to say thank you all for. For being here for everybody, for listening, and really hope that this is not just one conversation, but one of many so yeah, pick up out in Architecture Volume two because it is out. We'll also share a link to Lisa's book because we are here and all about supporting awesome and amazing work that people are doing and just want to say thank you to Evelyn and to Practice Disrupted for continuing to really invite us into this space and the many different ways we can keep sharing it.