Invited Speaker at Syracuse University | Diversity Equity & Inclusion Forum
Myself, A.L. Hu, and Francesca Perani were invited to speak at Syracuse University to talk about my work, what inspires me, and why it is important to have diversity in our graphic representation. It is part of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion department within the Architecture school, created after the murder of George Floyd. The university found me through my scaled figures published on the #CreativeComplements section of Madame Architect. It was a casual virtual event about expressing my personal thoughts on the subject. The launch site has been taken down, but here was my Instagram post about the original event, and the written script is posted here:
I am Stephanie Cheung, and I created my illustration business, small.family to respond directly to our visuals too often being authored and curated through a white male gaze. I graduated from Cornell’s Bachelors of Architecture program two years ago, in 2018. I am a designer on the pathway to getting licensed. At my last job in New York, I worked on all phases of design, but mostly spent my time on visuals for presentation decks and supporting with construction documents.
As much as I am flattered to be here to talk about inclusive design, I am new to the industry too. I am far from being an expert on this. I envisioned myself wanting to be big enough, or important enough to say something or do something and to be taken seriously, but my thoughts have completely changed. I am confident in the validity of my observations and lived experience. I also know that it is our responsibility to be thoughtful, thorough and empathetic towards the people we are designing for - and, for me, right now, with my skills and experience, this starts with contributing to increasing diversity in the unbuilt environment.
By definition, design should be inclusive and accessible. However, we need to make space for inclusive design because our spaces and experiences are too many times, exclusionary, even if it is unintentional. There are so many examples of newly contructed projects that are code compliant but present so many access barriers, even after multiple rounds of quality control and quality assurance processes. There may be disrepancies between what is on paper and what's on the field, but spaces that are truly inclusive and designed with empathy can empower people to navigate and socialize with more ease and confidence.
In the unbuilt environment, where we are selling services that capitalizes on aspirations, being exclusionary means a lot of things. This starts with, showing a homogenous ethnicity in projects located in international cities, only showing middle aged able bodied people in physically inaccessible spaces, only showing women in gendered poses or beauty standards through the male gaze. Thus, our visuals and services reinforce power imbalances between the seen and unseen. It doesn’t matter if we never had malicious intentions if these effects have heavy, expensive, physical and permanent ramifications. Our drawings and renderings that are in the beginning of the design process, way before construction, should reflect our diverse, lived reality. Architecture is political. Architecture is not amoral. We feel included when we see people like us in renderings. Your design vision includes us and that means that you have thought of us.
I also want to bring attention to the production of such imagery. While our renderings draw white figures in white spaces, the cities in which we built, the people who design and construct these buildings are also POCs and WOCs. After interning and working a little, I am realizing that the "lack of diversity in renderings" has become a widely accepted problem, even in 2020, and there are many workarounds that are really convoluted. I have witnessed and heard so many anecdotes. This ranges from having a “diverse” folder with people in cultural tropes, with problematic file names and racist categorizing, or even given the instruction to use photoshop to darken and make people more yellow to save on time and fee. Stories like this are so awkuard. We all know that this type of behavior is inexcusable, insulting and racist. Shrugging this off, or not taking this seriously shows complicity.Diversity should not just be lip service or a marketing device. There are many ways to make people feel included and not feel tokenized.
I am here to change this. I am responding by offering over 80 illustrated scaled figures, plants and accessories for students and professionals to use in their projects. I have also included links to websites with a similar goal but are responding differently. Use our work, or update your existing digital assets using a similar ethos. Starting here in the unbuilt environment is an easy first step for promote diversity and inclusion in the field.
As a first time business owner, I am figuring out a lot things out as I go. One important decision relates to whether I should be charging for this work, considering that free assets that are widely available. I decided to charge for these files because our time is valuable. Free labor, for anything undermines and undervalues efforts and our industry. For small.family, there is no perfect solution - and I admit that I feel slightly caught in a bind - why use the scalies from small family when many website offer them for free, aren’t you trying to reduce barriers of entry for students and young professionals? On another vein, based on price per scaled figure and time and minimum wage in the US, you are grossly undervaluing your work and labor. Are these scalies or custom, works of art?
I decided to take dual stance that does not need to exist in a binary. This is a passion project, where I want to be generous with my time, I also think scalies can be art, and I also want to take a stance on undervalued labor by WOC/POC in the AEC industries. I decided to price these scaled figures in a way that I think is accessible. Assuming that people use 5-6 scaled figures in a project, this makes this 10-15 USD. If you want to create a poster as art for the home, the total price of scaled figures would make the poster priced fairly to industry standards. If you want custom entourage, I charge hourly and these would not be part of this larger collection. If these products are price prohibitive for you, don’t hesitate to reach out. Pricing is an ongoing discussion.
I also want to talk about digital accessibility. I am familiar with Title 3, 4 of the ADA, ANSI, and Chapter 11 of the IBC. I admit that until recently, I wasn’t aware of web and social media accessibility, as well as the importance of websites and apps to meet clear criterion and legal compliance with web content accessibility guidelines. After doing a quick audit, I realized that small.family presents a sleuth of access barriers to people that use assistive technology. I am sharing this updating and learning process openly on Instagram so that we can learn this together. I hope that this transparency, collective learning and mainstreaming of accessilbity information is helpful, and can contribute to inclusive designs in all facets.
This is an ongoing project that started during the outbreak of Covid 19. My life in New York ended abruptly as a result of pandemic related project impacts. I had a sudden windfall of free time and I needed a project to work on to distract myself and keep my mind from spiraling. This was one of “those” projects that I had in the back of my mind for a long time but I finally have the chance to commit to. Drawing is relaxing and grounding for me. It is also a nice change from drafting construction documents, or modelling on Rhino and Revit. In terms of who I draw, I find myself gravitating towards people that are holding space for moments of pause - people sitting by themselves, looking at their phone, savoring brief respite and a moment of self awareness. I like to think of us as kindred spirits. I try to draw for at least 15 minutes a day, and there are so many drawings in the pipeline! I draw on the IPad on the App called Procreate. More architects need to use it. It’s a joy to use. It reduces the friction of starting to draw and it makes switching between digital tasks seamless. It is easy to slip in a little bit of drawing between PDFs and flashcards - it is so much more convenient than setting up an easel.
I want to continue doing my part in making our experiences and environments more equitable, inclusive and accessible. There is so much to learn and so much to do! Thanks for listening to me and for visiting my website.
