Accountability

to participate in the Cooper-Hewitt “I [heart] Design” conference in New York where the
students learned about “the capacity of design to influence, provoke and inspire.”
Reinvigorated, the student teams in Texas began to develop their own designs for the
square. A local architect held workshops with them where they looked at traditional
Mexican architecture and landscaping with native plants. With designs in hand, the
students were ready to face the City Council once again and were determined to see
their vision realized.
The intrepid teenagers again went before the Council, this time to present and defend
their designs. When questioned by a council member about a brightly colored play
ground, the students were ready. Why not use black and yellow, the colors of the
successful high school sports team? We did research, the student replied, young
children respond to primary colors. The council was impressed, as were the students –
in this poor community, where many students’ parents are migrant farm workers,
making their voices heard was a profound experience.
The town applied for and won a $500,000 matching grant from the Texas Parks and
Wildlife Department. In turn, the Council told the students, whatever you raise, we will
match. Unfortunately, because of the city’s poor fiscal situation, the council was
ultimately unable to match the state grant, but it has committed to working with the
students’ design and has hired an engineer to help make it happen.
Being teenagers, a number of students included skate parks in their redesign plans –
but they didn’t stop there. The students researched and found the Tony Hawk
Foundation, which funds the construction of skate parks. The students visited a skate
shop in the next town over and interviewed the owner about what was required to
sustain the park and shop. Armed with this data, the students applied for a grant to
implement their plan.
The project is still ongoing, but for teenagers who had never before had a stake in
politics, it was an eye opening experience. The students now have first-hand experience
of the civic process — and how to influence it.
Taking It Public
Design offers a different way of reading the visual environment, navigating culture, and
understanding the systems that shape our world. Designers know all about the
manufacture of desire and dissatisfaction, selling images and ideas. Design education
puts these tools in the hands of students and creates openings for greater selfexpression.
This is not just expression of emotion and style, but self-expression in a
fuller, richer sense – as an expression of values and of one’s own power.
Taken to the public sphere, design skills become transformative. A common theme in
the stories above is the relationship between ordinary folks and public space. In each
case, artists, designers, and students are intervening to shape the visual and built
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