A Day with Beyond the Built's Pascale Sablan

Pascale Sablan is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond the Built Environment LLC, and a Senior Associate at S9 Architecture. She shares with us how her days have looked like lately, describing her mix of professional practice, family time, and advocacy work.

7:00am - Guilty Pleasure: Although I put my kid to sleep in his bed, I must say I find so much joy waking up to his face covered in curls nestled next to me. I begin scrolling through social media and online articles to get a sense of what is happening in the world, the status of protests, arrests, and/or policy changes. The quest for information comes with the trauma of seeing very violent and jarring imagery of those who look like me brutalized and it’s heavy. With that weight, I turn to my kid and kiss him, and begrudgingly get up and work out for 45mins in the morning. It’s important to start my day focused on me, my health, and well-being especially during a time when I feel my most fragile.

Admittedly I get “dressed” for work every day. My family and I have been quarantined since March 13th. To maintain some normalcy I find the ritual of getting ready, picking out outfits, and styling my hair, provides me with a sense of pride and ever camera ready for zoom calls that require them.

9:00am - Practicing Architect(ure): As the minutes countdown to 9:00 am I sign online petitions and respond to any urgent messages in my 4 different email accounts. Once the time arrives I log into my office S9ARCHITECTURE’s network through VPN. I check the calendar to map out my production times and be strategic about what I need to accomplish. I spend most of my morning in team huddles, connecting with my various project teams, discuss upcoming deadlines, and work through project decisions. These daily team check-ins are one of the positive sides of working remotely.

10:15am - X Time: In the beginning, it was quite sad, my kid would spend the whole day in his pj’s begging for our attention, while my husband Matt and I try to navigate this new working from home process. At the end of the day, we were scrambling to get his remote homework done. After being flooded with mom guilt I figured out a strategy. Every day from 10:15 am to 11 am is Xavy time. This time helps establish a routine for him, it also gives him the much needed and requested undivided attention from me.

We log into the school’s site for remote learning. We watch the lesson plan video while he eats breakfast at my desk. I then get him ready for the day, we discuss the assignments and how he would like to approach the work. This very opinionated 4-year-old has interesting ideas. Once the assignment is done and uploaded to the site, I sign back in and get back to work.

11:30am - Favorite time of the Day: With my intermittent fasting schedule, 11:30 am has become one of my favorite times of the day as I look forward to eating my pre-planned prepared meal. Followed by healthy snacks and infused water with cucumber, mint, and a slice of lemon. In line with taking care of myself, I must fuel the body with nutrition that will help me build the best and strongest version of myself.

3pm - Radio Interview (with commercial breaks): For the past few years, I have been a voice advocating for an equitable and just profession and world. I founded Beyond the Built Environment, LLC to represent marginalized people - both within the profession and within communities most underserved by the profession. My organization uniquely addresses the inequitable disparities in architecture by providing a holistic platform aimed to support numerous stages of the architecture pipeline. We promote agency among diverse audiences and advocate for equity in the built environment through our approach which utilizes a method I termed “the triple E, C”.

The triple E, C method is a strategy to: Engage, Elevate, Educate, and Collaborate. We engage diverse audiences through programming promoting intellectual discourse and exchange. We elevate the identities and contributions of women and diverse designers through exhibitions, curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their built work and its spatial impact. We educate the masses through formal and informal learning opportunities that introduce architecture as a bridge to fill the gaps of inequity. We collaborate with community stakeholders and organizations to crowdsource information and amplify opportunities to advocate for equitable and reflectively diverse environments.

Our belief is that strong and healthy communities, rich in diversity, make strong nations. As architects and designers, we have the power to represent more than ourselves and representation is quintessential to achieving equitable diversity.

Today I was able to echo that mission and a call for action when I was interviewed on the Jennifer Hammond SiriusXM UrbanView radio Ch. 126 alongside a fellow architect activist.

5:00 pm - Advocating in the Office: We had an S9 Advocacy Committee meeting to review the final statement for justice that we had been crafting for the office. Although like many firms this is not just a statement, it's the beginning of an ongoing conversation towards dismantling racism.

7:00 pm - SAY(ing) IT LOUD Virtually: Through the international SAY IT LOUD Exhibitions we’ve been able to gather work from over 250 profiles of diverse designers from all over the world. It is a traveling activation, that cultivates local talents in the states that host exhibitions. We had quite a few planned for 2020 and almost all were postponed to next year due to the COVID Pandemic. Although I had been working quietly by converting our past 15 exhibitions into virtual exhibitions.

Through discussion with one of the SAY IT LOUD - Tennessee collaborators I realized that the mission could still move forward while we were in quarantine by hosting various virtual exhibitions to be launched now and ultimately (most likely in 2021) have a physical exhibition. Before my next public appearance, and after I ate my last meal of the day, I reached out and contacted everyone who had expressed an interest in hosting an exhibition and offered my new strategy.

8:00 pm - Social Media for Social Change: Mike Ford, known as the Hip Hop Architect, invited me to do an Instagram Live with Azure Magazine to talk about the design competition that he has launched, where I will be serving as a juror. The designers are challenged to reimagine and design a Just City. A City that has defeated racism. It was my first time doing an Instagram Live it was scary and fun!

9:30 pm - Family Time: I then spend most of my night cooking dinner, FaceTiming with my family, and organizing our home. The bedtime routine requires us to read five books (he knows when you skip pages) and cuddles until he is fast asleep.

10:30 pm - Advocacy work: Once the house is quiet the advocacy work continues, as I write out more proposals, respond to more emails, and schedule appointments with various groups and organizations. Tonight, I worked on my presentation for the Civic Leadership Program where I will be keynoting this weekend.

I have a post-it note method where I jot everything down and before I shut down for the evening, and I check the list to make sure all that is left are efforts that can wait another day. The Gmail function of being able to schedule when my emails get sent has been a great resource to avoid recipients getting responses from me at all hours of the night.

1:00 am - Who Needs Sleep? …me: I stealthily make it to my room, in an effort not to wake anyone and lay down and once more scroll through social media and online articles to see what tragedies and victories that have occurred today. Again, my spirit is washed by these disheartening stories, these enraging events, and repulsive responses by our “leaders.” I conclude the day by praying for the blessing of having a healthy family and to being safe in my home, and I pray to express my immense gratitude. While I drift to sleep I welcome the rest needed to prepare me to use my tools and my voice to help the dismantling of white supremacy tomorrow.