In this episode, we're going to dive into the topic of housing, this time of the "socially fit" kind. I know, I know, we've been talking about it a lot on this podcast, but it's a critical issue that still doesn't get the attention it truly deserves, while its root causes - by now broadly acknowledged and agreed upon by most - are still not being addressed aggressively enough to make a dent in the issue.
Joining me for this episode is David Peterson, a Toronto-based architect and educator who's passionate about developing socially fit housing that promotes the flourishing of its inhabitants. David doesn't just talk the talk - he's actually designed and developed multiple housing projects that are both desirable and well-received. One of my personal favourites is The Ritchie, a multi-family building in Toronto's west end that David designed and is beloved by its inhabitants.
David and I discussed socially fit housing. We'll explore potential solutions to the housing shortage and offer insights into how we can create housing that truly benefits its inhabitants.
So, if you're curious about innovative housing solutions and want to hear more, tune in!
About the podcast: Single Serves is a podcast where we interview experts on single issues of interest to architects and designers. The thought-provoking ideas shared here are intended to inspire our listeners to become well-rounded entrepreneurs who are the leaders of their field.
Credits: ©2022 Produced by Révélateur Studio & edited by Chris Rodd
Transcript below edited for clarity and brevity:
RVLTR:
So can you tell us who you are and what you do in your own words, in three sentences or less?
David Peterson:
As you said, I'm an architect and educator. I see those two disciplines as really related. For me, one informs the other and the practice has primarily focused on housing, although we've done and are doing many other kinds of building types. But housing for us really is this complex program that has a chance to speak to both our social values but also complex programs and teaches us a lot about other kinds of buildings that we engage in.
RVLTR:
So you gave a talk a while back at IDS Toronto on socially fit housing. Can you tell us what it is exactly?
David Peterson:
The term socially fit housing actually comes first from core housing needs, which is this term that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, CMHC uses to think about housing. And it has these kind of three aspects, affordability, which we can talk about, and also adequate housing. Adequate housing essentially is maintenance, and then they speak about socially fit. For CMHC, socially fit really means that demographically there is enough bedrooms for children in a particular kind of description that they use. But I've come to think of socially fit housing related to a demographic group and then their needs related to sociability and the relationship to both form and that's... Availability to social spaces essentially.
RVLTR:
So can you tell us why that's important to you?
David Peterson:
I think it's really important because we speak about all the time about sustainability and we know that sustainability, we often speak about it in terms of energy and the environment, but certainly sustainability also has a aspect of affordability. And so certainly something that's exceptionally energy or environmentally sustainable but is unaffordable, that we don't have a situation that's going to be tenable. And the same is true if we said that that same thing that we're calling sustainable isn't including social sustainability, then we have a problem.
So for instance, a good example, it might be that you're thinking about a housing unit that could be very small and its small size speaks to environmental sustainability and affordability, but it may not be socially fit, if we're asking increasingly families to live in smaller and smaller spaces that are increasingly isolated as well.
RVLTR:
And I think that's a very important point you make because I've heard in recent times more and more people speaking to the fact that while sustainability is important and we should be mindful of how much stuff we produce, how much energy we consume, energy in all its forms is also extremely important for human flourishing. So I can see a parallel between what you're saying and the fact that environmental sustainability should probably shouldn't come at the expense of human flourishing and human progress, otherwise we're kind of losing all the benefits of what we've seen since, say, the industrial revolution and how much the world has improved overall. It's not to say it's perfect everywhere, but how much it has improved overall. So I think you've touched a bit on that, but why do you think we should advocate more of that socially fit housing that you've described?
David Peterson:
I think it in large part because there are forms that for housing or other kinds of building programs we might say aren't necessarily any more expensive, but if we change that form, we may find we that we actually gain something socially. So it doesn't come with an additional cost. Really what it's requiring from us is a shift in our minds to say that, "Not this building form but that building form, not this arrangement of units, but that arrangement of units." And we can talk more about that, but essentially it's that as a beginning point. It's almost like at that early stage of conceptualizing the problem that we need to shift what we do.
RVLTR:
And so can you speak a little more to specific examples of work you've done, because I personally know some of your work or most of your work and I can see that in it. But can you give us some examples of how that's been a part of your design ethos and how that has made projects better?
David Peterson:
I think for me it begins by thinking about it as a site plan almost, like when we think about an... As architects, we kind of get taught this, the public space and then the private space. But what seems to get left off is semi-public space. It's that space in between. It's actually that social space if you think about public is the space of the sidewalk where strangers might meet and then the private space of that realm inside the space. And then for low-rise housing, the porch is that kind of semi-public space, that kind of intermediate space between these realms.
But that's, in multi-residential housing, that's entirely removed. So what we try to do in our buildings, like made a courtyard building that you mentioned at Richie, the courtyard is that semi-public space. It's that space that's not entirely public because it's not open to the street, but it's shared. So all the units that face onto it have access to it and then it becomes this kind of intermediate space that people can gather. And because their private spaces are adjacent to it, they're aware of the activities inside that semi-public space, which activates it, which encourages you to go in and out. It's all those sorts of things that create an ease of inside, outside that architects love to talk about but we see less and less because we've continued to remove so many public space from much of our design work.
RVLTR:
And even, I had that conversation with another architect recently. There's not even that many public spaces in this city anyway. He was talking about what's happening at Duffin Mall and the idea that there's this giant parking lot that's completely underutilized. And he suggested, I thought that was crazy, but interesting idea that this could be turned into a public plaza. So I digress a bit, but not only we like public spaces, but I don't think we have a lot of semi public spaces. Speaking to that one specifically at the Richie, what's always been interesting to me is that it's behind a glass door.
So when you walk by... Or maybe it's a grate, some kind of, but semi-transparent, you can see through from the street. And that space has always been very appealing to me. I've been lucky enough to go in at least a couple times just to check it out. But even to passerby, it's a very intriguing space because you can't get in but you can see what's happening. And I find that fascinating. So we've talked a lot on this podcast about the lack of housing and I think that's a drum that's been beaten to death, although the problem's still there. So maybe we can talk about that a bit more, but what do you think other challenges the city's facing when it comes to housing specifically?
David Peterson:
I think the challenge has everything to do with both regulatory challenges, but then challenges that we face from the market and are prescribed almost. We go into housing thinking there's really these two choices, towers and then low rise buildings that are private, and that there's much talk about the missing middle, but really we could still make mid-rise buildings and have them be mini towers. Still not including more semi-public space, still not include that kind of transitional between public and private, so that even our mid-rise buildings could still face challenges to try to accommodate families. Really part of the research that we've been thinking about in practice and as an educator is to think about those with limited mobility. So we speak about children, but it's also true for seniors where you've got limited mobility and the architecture is really starting to dictate then your connections to others.
Because if you can't just pick up and go and meet someone in that public space elsewhere away from where you live, then you're really relying on the architecture to make it easy for you. And if it doesn't, then your socialization suffers. And there's been an abundance of research that demonstrates this. During the pandemic we saw things get worse and there was this researcher from Maximum City that looked at children and asked, "Where do they play?"
And it was pretty clear that if you were a child and you lived in a low-rise setting, you had more places to play. Front yards, if you lived in a cul-de-sac, and those were easy places to get to that were safe where parents could kind of see you playing. But if you lived in a tower, then it was more difficult to get to some of those spaces and there were just fewer of them. And as a consequence, we saw wellbeing suffering in those children that were living in high rises.
RVLTR:
And so I keep going back to the Richie, but I think it's such a fascinating example. Because you've done it, you've built that building, what kind of challenges did you experience? And also I'd like you to speak a little bit to the residents' response to the building, because it's been around for a few years now and I'm sure you've kept somewhat in touch at least with how the building is doing. So let's break it down in two questions. First one is, how challenging was it for you overall to get this built? And then the second question is, how has it been doing since... Now that it's been around for a while?
David Peterson:
Well, the first challenge was around the idea of courtyard buildings because in North America we don't really have too many of them, especially in Toronto. So the idea of a courtyard building is that you're going to push the building's envelope to the perimeter, so it means zero setbacks so that you can maximize the space in the interior part of the lot. And that was a challenge, maybe a little bit easier at the Richie site because three sides of the property were industrial, so there was less resistance to first accept that we would have zero setbacks on those sides.
And that made it a little bit easier. And then it was also the idea that I wanted people to circulate through the courtyard because it was that incidental social contact that I was looking for. So it meant that I was asking people to not move through the building in hallways that were entirely interior. It was really forcing people to move from the streets through an open space like a courtyard and then into their unit.
RVLTR:
It has no interior circulation if I recall correctly, right?
David Peterson:
That's right. All the circulation is in semi-public spaces.
RVLTR:
So all the units are double loaded?
David Peterson:
Yes. So the units have... Are three units. You get light from at least two sides. So that meant that the possibility of cross ventilation was improved. You have multiple sun exposures, but then you also have the increased possibility of also seeing neighbors. So the circulation path was really seen as a place to pause at times. It was intended that there was these kind of view corridors from the corridor into the surrounding neighborhood. And then the courtyard was this place that was apart from the city where it was well treed. We continued the trees from the residential backyards into our area. So we saw it as a kind of continuous space both for people and a bird habitat. And then adding water to that space also just created a place away from the street that would be a place that people wanted to gather.
And I think that's what we've seen. Over the years, I've heard from families that have raised their children there and it really seems like it's worked as we had intended, which was to say that parents gathered and children gathered and fell into a lot of independence by moving in and out of the units into the courtyard. I had it photographed again in the last few years and while we were there photographing things, it was functioning in the same way, children playing, one parent for multiple households while children kind of did their own thing. So it was a success in that regard.
RVLTR:
And so if by any measure the building has been a success, why do you think this hasn't been replicated by you or other people as because now there's a precedent in the city of something like that working? Why don't we see more of that do you think?
David Peterson:
It think it's just because the market is so accustomed to a building type, which is to say towers. And on sites like that, we might have tried to make something increasingly larger. Since looking at Richie and doing that, I started to look at more and more places where we have quasi courtyard buildings, and in practice... We just completed a laneway house. And there was a main building and then a laneway house. And then the space between is functionally a courtyard and I think it's four units in that project. But it still creates a condition where you can imagine that that semi-public space of, that was a backyard functions very much like Richie's courtyard. So there's all those kind of small scale proposals and I've come across other town home complexes that arrange their town homes around a landscape, not architectural marvels in any regard, but socially they're functioning in the same way.
RVLTR:
Yeah, I've seen some of those too. And those spaces are always very interesting because the ones that I'm thinking about, the cars are kept on the outside and then that's right, the courtyard in the middle is strictly pedestrian maybe for bikes too. And it seems to be a very pleasant space to be in even if the buildings themselves are not that exciting.
David Peterson:
That's right. So it begins really with a site organization that suggests, first we're going to start with this shared space without having to eliminate private patios that everybody wants and should have.
RVLTR:
And so it seems like housing for family with children is one of your things. It's important to you, and Toronto continues to add housing in the form of towers. How are these accommodating households who have children?
David Peterson:
Well, the city of Toronto I think acknowledges that there is a need to move what everybody understands is a social isolating tower and try to accommodate families in them, because moving forward... Well, in some neighborhoods already, we have most of the households with children live in towers. And increasingly that's going to be the norm throughout the city of Toronto. So the city of Toronto has a document called Growing Up Vertical where they're studying families in high rises. But unfortunately the document doesn't make a shift in the design of the tower. Really their principle way of accommodating families is to have public spaces that are family oriented or children oriented adjacent to the building so that you could leave your unit and then find a park relatively close. The trouble with that though is that you still have a situation where that independence that a child has of going inside and outside that you have with Richie or other types we've talked about, is not there.
So it's possible that a child living on the fourth floor and there's a child on the third floor and they'll never encounter each other, that kind of incidental contact, because their units are isolated, no sense of what's going on in the corridor to create any kind of connection. And this has been going on for such a long time that parents have found their own retrofits for these things. In my interviews with parents, they were doing things like leaving the door... Their apartment door jar, so that they could, if not see, but they could hear their kids playing in the corridor.
During my talk at the interior design show, I was told by a man that was in the room about what they did in their stacked town homes during covid. They again, no semi-public space. The closest they came to that was the parking garage that all the stacked town homes were sat on top of. And they use that as their place for the kids to play. They all moved the cars out of the parking garage. And because of that reasonable adjacent space to where they were living, the kids could easily gather there and they played soccer and hockey inside the parking garage. So it tells you that parents recognize this need for this and are finding any way to retrofit their existing conditions to make it work.
RVLTR:
And a friend of mine who's also an architect and urban planner was telling me that she wants to live in a condo because she's into that kind of urban living, but she had the hardest time finding a three plus unit condo. That's the biggest ones typically are two bedrooms, most of them are studios and one bedroom plus den perhaps. Why isn't that... I'm guessing that's primarily because it's the performer for the developers, push them to put more of those units out, but if people are willing to buy larger units, why aren't they putting more out?
David Peterson:
I think that's shifting. And the city of Toronto too has, as a part of that Growing Up Vertical document has been pushing developers to making two bedrooms and three bedrooms. And the reason in the past that it was less likely to see it had to do with the parking count. For the same unit you would require a higher parking ratio. And-
RVLTR:
Now that's gone.
David Peterson:
So now that's gone. So that's one problem kind of off the table and with the city pushing for it, we have seen more two and three bedrooms in new developments. But I would say though that the idea of accommodating families is one of space, adequate amount of space inside the unit. But really it is that those units are isolated and we put a lot of pressure on parents to overcome screen time or other kinds of things when the architecture is making it difficult for you to connect. Simple things could be done like putting trans inside of corridors so that you could at least have some visual connection to what was happening in that space, so that if you saw another child there, like the front porch of a house, you have some visual connection and that starts to move us a little bit closer to turning the corridor into something more than just an exit path.
RVLTR:
It just brought the idea to mind, could corridors become social spaces? Would that work from a code and safety perspective or is that something that's always going to be frowned upon?
David Peterson:
Well, I think there was a time where typical housing was very different than say housing for say seniors. But we increasingly, as the building code continues to shift, we come closer and closer all the time. Now residential buildings are sprinkler-ed and that has been the case for some time. When we have AODA standards that want the corridors to be wider, then we're also talking about increasing the width of a corridor as well.
So we are taking baby steps towards moving us towards what looks like more and more like a nursing home. This kind of group B classification for a nursing home that has use inside the corridor is something that we could start to really think about for our residential units. And in some ways I compare these populations of people, the low mobility senior or the child that also has limited mobility because of their age and cognitive ability, they have a lot in common. So it makes sense that in some cases when we make these multi-residential buildings, that we start to take on parts of it that look more like seniors housing. It could be seniors housing, it could be family housing and start to create floors where we do more of that.
RVLTR:
And it would be interesting to see, although in the Canadian context, I'm having a hard time imagining it happening, but it'd be interesting to see corridors being designed as programmed spaces where it's not just a place you go through to go from the elevator to your home, but it becomes a play space, a social space, maybe it's a bit more expensive so you have more room for those things to happen and still you can put your strollers in a corner and they don't... You don't trip on them when you go to the elevator. That would be very interesting
David Peterson:
And you could start to do other things where you'd say, rather than collecting all the amenity space in one spot, distribute it across floors. And parents find it difficult to find enough town homes to buy inside the city. Well you could essentially create floors that were more like town homes, where they have some connection to the outside, larger corridors that could have occupancy on them. And yes, they would cost a bit more but not more than your detached or semi-detached house that's in the low rise neighborhood.
So it would start to create more options of units inside our large multi-residential buildings.
RVLTR:
So Toronto is going to, it's slated to welcome hundreds of thousands of new immigrants in the next couple of decades. I forget what the exact numbers are, but quite big. How do you think we accommodate those people that are going to move in into the city in terms of housing? But also why do you think it should be incumbent on us and important to advocate for them? Because they're not here, no one is here to advocate for them, but eventually they'll be here and they'll be contributing members of society. What's your take on that?
David Peterson:
I think some people would say that we have to make towers in the same form that we do because we just need more housing units and we have to add housing this way, but all we have to do is look around the world to see that there's lots of places that are adding housing units that are green and are these and are facing similar challenges but are finding ways to have more varied versions of their multi-residential buildings. I really think that the next generation of multi-residential building will have more green spaces. We see that showing up in places like Singapore where their green standards for their multi-residential buildings are extensive, and the idea of kind of biophilic housing is what they're doing most often.
So often that the public sector is kind of leading the way for private sector development, because there's this lessons learned that the public sector, as they make more and more public housing, is teaching the private sector for how to be efficient, find, discover new models for making housing. And I think that's what we need. It's really a variety of building types that we can... Some already exist here but we don't have to look very far to find a whole new generation of tower.
RVLTR:
And Singapore is an interesting example. I'm not super familiar with their architecture, but I do know that they have a number of high-rise buildings that have public spaces at different levels throughout the building and they have play spaces, elevated gardens, courtyards that people can use. And so there's precedent out there. Canadian climate might be a bit more of a challenge, but you could also realistically assume that you build a greenhouse type of space that can be enclosed in the winter and open in the summer.
David Peterson:
I think it's part of our mindset that we've thought of the winter as such a challenge that we want to hibernate almost. But really landscapes in the wintertime are possible, next to our buildings, on top of roofs. There's still landscapes that we recreate in the wintertime in Canada and those landscapes can be in part on our buildings. And when we have them around, it's just really deciding that we'll do more of it and that they become, even in wintertime, social spaces that have a connection to our interior spaces.
In my growing up, I grew up in Toronto so there was a building that Arthur Erickson had done that was right off of the Gardener and I can't remember the name of the building, but it had a series of jack pines that were in a landscape that faced the Gardener. And as a teenager I always looked at that and I thought, wow, look at that. Look at how these four or five story pines were growing comfortably there. And it made me think that this was possible, that this is something that we just had to decide to do.
RVLTR:
It's possible. It's probably a bit more challenging in this climate, but it's certainly possible. I've seen precedents for that. So how would you get the private market to make changes that will lead to more socially fit housing for all demographics?
David Peterson:
I think the private market needs to have more demonstration projects and that's to say that something that can kind of say, "Look, here's a model for making changes to the tower you've done and see how well it works." So we just need to do more demonstration projects and because city programs like housing now and are involved in making new multi-residential developments, I think it's incumbent on those agencies to start to say, "We're not just going to take market solutions for building forms, we're going to look at how we can do this."
Because I do this constantly in my projects. The challenge of how do you make a landscape that's above the ground is not nearly as challenging as we might think technically, or from even an expense point of view. And we see it because it's happening throughout the world. We're just so convinced that the norm is what's possible here.
And that's why I say I think that more demonstration projects is what the marketplace needs and then that will kind of move the bar towards, okay, there it is. It's happening not once, twice, three times, four times in our climate. And then that starts to create a precedent for how the market can start to behave. And I think the more that we see that too, the public will start to say, "Okay, I see that happening in these other places, that's what I want. And if I can have that then I'll choose that over what is our current norm."
RVLTR:
So unlike you, I didn't grow up in Canada and I have still to this day, even after 17 years, incredible challenge with how conservative the Canadians can be in general. And I'm broadly generalizing, but what I've noticed also is that politicians are incredibly timid and reluctant even to maybe promote or facilitate those kinds of demonstration projects that you've spoken of. How do we change that or how do you convince people that it's actually a good thing and that there's really no risk in it because the precedents exist even in this city and there's not that many but they exist and it's extremely likely to make things work for the better? So why is there still that much hesitancy and how do you think we overcome that?
David Peterson:
Part of my education was in Holland and I had gone to Holland specifically because they were making exceptional housing. And what I came away from thinking after being in Holland was that it wasn't that their architects were better or more creative than us, it was that they had a variety of financial models. The way construction is designed and financed go hand in hand here. And that there was so few financial models like the idea of co-housing as a way of making housing. We have so few examples here, where in Denmark there's just an abundance of them.
RVLTR:
Co-housing, the model where multiple people share a home and then you have private quarters and common kitchens and things like that? Is that what you're talking about?
David Peterson:
Yeah, well apart from even the form, you start with the financial model for it, which fundamentally says you own a part of a corporation rather than a part of a building. And that already means that you are coming together to make a form of co-owned building, that whatever, its forms inside. Because I think here we get put off by it because the idea of sharing too much maybe is off-putting.
RVLTR:
That's also very common in France where when you buy, say you buy... Let's talk about Paris because it's what everybody knows. You buy an apartment in a building in Paris, you buy with it a portion of the commons, they divide it in thousandths. So you buy 200 thousandths of the building and that makes you a co-owner and then you have a say in how the building is managed and financed.
David Peterson:
So you're renting, but you're also an owner in some ways, right?
RVLTR:
That's for when you own. If you're a renter, the landlord will be the owner, part owner of all the commons that belong to the building. But that also exists in suburban developments where you have single family homes. The property the homes are on, not the homes themselves, but the commons like the roads and whatever public amenities there are also managed that way. So it's a model that works and it seems to be very effective. So I've always been surprised to know that that basically doesn't exist here.
David Peterson:
And I think part of what we look at the financial models that were used to make Regent Park, the redevelopment or other kinds of projects that are going on that housing now is involved with, I think that there is an opportunity there for the public to continue to be involved in ownership and find new forms. And I think, so that's why I come back to the public has to decide that we're going to increase the amount of public ownership of housing, which is incredibly small in Canada compared to France. Your example for France, 35% of the housing in France is in that public realm.
RVLTR:
Public housing?
David Peterson:
Yeah, I want to say. Public housing here has such connotations, but it's publicly owned. In Singapore it's more like 80%, but it still has a market relationship as well.
RVLTR:
So when you say publicly owned, what do you mean exactly?
David Peterson:
It may be a lease hold kind of arrangement where it was built on public lands, but it's a private lease hold onto that public land. It's actually a 99-year lease on those lands. So it has this kind of strange mix of both maybe being constructed by the private sector, but long-term ownership in the public sector so that you get a bit of both happening. But those sorts of mixes still here are very few compared to, I think France is 35 and Holland's around the same. Singapore is outpacing all of them, more like 80%.
RVLTR:
So if change starts with the financing models or the ownership models, why do you think we don't see more alternatives here? Is it that people are resistant to it or are there regulatory barriers to new models?
David Peterson:
I'm not sure exactly. I think our financing regime is very rigid, I think. And when you speak about conservatism, I think it's where it starts. It's really there first, because if you let architects... I get a little frustrated when I see architects from elsewhere coming to Toronto to design buildings. And I think the architects here are capable of all the inventiveness that we see else from elsewhere. It's just that when they are asked to do things in this context, we're constrained by financial models that assume a form because they go hand in hand.
And the idea of inventing a form that is not proven financially is what causes the kind of no-go situation. And I think that's again, coming back to public housing, that's the real opportunity where they could spend a bit more time in schematic design and work through forms and test them against the financial models to come up with things that can be demonstration projects.
RVLTR:
And if the city has land that's available, then they could just make it available for new models and say, "Let's experiment."
David Peterson:
If you've thought about it too, you'd say part of the next generation of housing is going to have environmental sustainability to contend with and I'm suggesting that we also need to contend with social sustainability. And so those, already, those challenges suggest new forms.
RVLTR:
I would put social sustainability ahead of environmental sustainability because if the social fabric breaks apart, environmental sustainability is pointless.
David Peterson:
Yes. So they both necessitate new models. So it makes sense that we're not going to get that from the private industry. They're not going to all of a sudden invent ways of doing either of these things better. So we really need the public sector to step up, demonstrate that, and then the private sector is more likely to follow suit once we've got increasingly more examples for them to look at.
RVLTR:
So how would get involved in the process or the discussion or the public discourse to start changing things? Because there comes a point where talking about those things is fine and I'm glad we're doing that, but I think if things are going to change, how do you see that happening? What would you suggest to say one of your students came to you and say, "I want to make a difference, I want to try new things." Where would you tell them to start?
David Peterson:
I think this is where my life as an educator is important because if we give students problems that say, take those housing now sites... And I think the last time I looked there were 21 sites, give those sites to students and have conversations with the profession. So there's this kind of dialogue between educators and students and the profession and really work through new models and move that discourse away from aesthetic appearance towards understanding things socially and environmentally.
I make this point that when we look at our towers that now we are making these towers that stagger and twist, but they're exactly the same social models, double loaded corridors where the corridors are unconnected, they're not connected socially and a single elevator that gathers hundreds of units. So it makes it really difficult to know your neighbors. And if you have amenity space, then you're also gathering the whole building in that spot. So again, you don't get this smaller grain of social connections. And it doesn't matter that the building is twisty or 1970s boring and flat.
RVLTR:
Yeah. Makes no difference. I lived in one of those buildings a dozen years ago and it had pretty decent amenities for a basic condo, but those amenities were only open in the summer, namely a pool and a deck. And so in the summer it was very social, although overcrowded, but very social because people would meet on the pool deck and hang out, have barbecues, whatever.
But in the winter it was dead because everything was closed. And so basically eight months out of the year you had no social space to speak of. You had the usual party room, whatever. But these are not social space because they're just rented by a group of people to get together, but it doesn't allow residents to connect with each other. So maybe the gym, but the gym was completely underutilized. Every time I went I was the only one there.
David Peterson:
Yeah. Gyms are really, I think they could get rid of gyms inside of buildings and decide to do something different there.
RVLTR:
So I think that's all the questions I had for you. Do you have any last words or any last thoughts you want to share with the audience?
David Peterson:
I think that we're speaking about how to make a shift and I think educating the public, but I think too that for a long time, and it's still the case, that architectural education and interior design education, design education, architecture in particular has been associated with engineering for good reason. There's a strong connection there that we will continue to have, but I think you can equally make the argument that architecture should be connected to social sciences and life sciences, and that an architecture school that's also highly tied to the social sciences makes a lot of sense. That, in fact, architecture with public health is what I'm advocating for. Which is the idea that you would have sociologists in your crit, not an engineer necessarily. Or someone from the building science faculty or-
RVLTR:
Or psychologists.
David Peterson:
So in architecture school, you go through and you have building science courses and engineering courses that are compulsory. You have a litany of engineering courses, mechanical, electrical, structural, but there are no courses... There are no mandates for a social science course or a psychology course or environmental psychology course or biology. That might help you understand that yes, it's possible to grow some of these plants, trees in these environments.
RVLTR:
Or if they are, they're electives and they're not part of the curriculum.
David Peterson:
Exactly.
But I think it's, my point is that it should be a fundamental part of an architectural education and that schools of architecture need to be tied to public health.
RVLTR:
And I remember from my architecture education that there wasn't really any conversation around how will the building affect people's wellbeing? When they do. Good or bad, no matter what you do, the building will affect its inhabitants. So it's critical to know at least on a surface level that what can be done to go one way or another. It's interesting.
Well, I want to thank you very much for your time. It was a very interesting conversation and hopefully we can have more in the future.
David Peterson:
Yeah, great Arnaud, thank you.