Harvard GSD's Sophie Weston Chien on Designer-Organizers, Countercurricular Efforts, and Unwavering Idealism
Sophie by Sahil Mohan.
Sophie Weston Chien is a designer-organizer who builds liberated communities by altering power in the built environment. Her collaborative practice takes the form of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, writing, and teaching. Sophie is pursuing a dual Masters in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Harvard GSD and has a BArch from RISD. She is one-half of just practice, core-organizer for Design As Protest Collective, active in Dark Matter University, initiator of Seeding Pedagogies Collaborative, and on the Board of Directors at DESIGNxRI.
JG: Why did you decide to study architecture?
SC: I decided to study architecture for the same reason I quit architecture — I believe in the power of the built environment to effect social and environmental change. Oppressive power structures are designed into our built environment — like redlining, urban renewal, suburbanization — and must be dismantled.
I am a second-generation designer, on both sides, so I came to the field to challenge the status quo. My goal was to learn the tools of design while trying to reduce harm in implementation of design. I quit architecture after my degree because it felt insufficient to meet contemporary crises, climate change specifically. I am back at school to deepen my knowledge of ecology and policy through Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning — with the goal of designing systems for liberation. My interest lies in designing relationships that build power for the future through speculation and critique, skills I learned in architecture school.
Do It Ourselves: Neighborhood timeline as hardscaping is removed and tree canopy matures.
Department of Earth Maintenance: City services and material flows.
What was the favorite project you worked on in school? Favorite paper you wrote? Favorite extracurricular?
My favorite project has always been designing community. In 2020 I joined Design As Protest Collective (DAP), which is a collective of BIPOC designers and planners mobilizing strategy to dismantle the privilege and power structures that use architecture and design as tools of oppression. DAP, and its sister organization Dark Matter University have been alternative schools for me, where reciprocity and care for each other and the communities we stand in solidarity with are priority. Our work is coauthored, intergenerational, and geographically dispersed. Coming from a NAAB accredited program, the activist spaces I now inhabit empower my radical perspective that was stigmatized in school. This is not extracurricular, but countercurricular, which is even more exciting!
“Design schools can be a place of experimentation and emergence, but also of extreme harm. In school I used design skills to organize for change, advocating for harm reduction on students and affiliated communities. I realized that to effect change in design, we can’t simply design new worlds, but also need to change the design brief itself.”
Countercurricular, I love that! On this note, what are some of the initiatives you’ve focused on in school, and why?
I developed a term for my undergraduate thesis called a designer-organizer, which I define as a practitioner that builds community power through social and physical infrastructure to liberate sites and histories, ensuring people have agency over their futures. This was modeled off of people and work I admired, but also after my own practice, where a significant focus I have is pedagogical reform.
Design schools can be a place of experimentation and emergence, but also of extreme harm. In school I used design skills to organize for change, advocating for harm reduction on students and affiliated communities. I realized that to effect change in design, we can’t simply design new worlds, but also need to change the design brief itself. If we are starting from the status quo, our work will perpetuate existing systems of oppression.
When searching for internships and jobs, what are you looking for?
I look first for people I admire because of the work they do and the values they hold. In undergrad, I had a list of non-profit architecture firms — I found only three: LA Más, Colloqate, and Civic Projects — that aligned with my expectations for what architects should be building and how to treat the communities they built with. I worked for LA Más for a summer and currently organize with Bryan, Colloqate’s founder, in Design As Protest. Both experiences deeply affect how I see myself as a practitioner and guide my current research.
Design As Protest: Core-organizers, prepared for our 2021 National Call.
What’s important to you? What inspires you?
I’ve been called unwaveringly idealistic, and I hope to never unlearn that!
Absolutely. With this quality in mind, what do you hope to do in your career?
I hope to work full-time as a designer-organizer, teaching and learning through a radical, interdisciplinary practice. Pedagogy is a big part of that, developing new ways to teach design to all ages. Weaving my disciplinary backgrounds into design research is another component, using my knowledge to keep pushing new knowledge around design justice. I view the disciplines of design and the role of a designer as a site of continuous self-construction.
Work-life balance is essential, and I want to develop my career in a way that doesn’t sacrifice my own health, and allows me to attend to my life, not just my work. My career will always be a work-in-progress, but I hope to develop it into a balanced and inspiring practice. Essentially, I want to do work that makes me and the people I care about proud.
“Developing your practice, however, is a lifelong pursuit of negotiating how to embody your values in space and society.”
Who do you look up to? Both in terms of women in architecture, and in general.
I deeply admire and stand on the shoulders of all the women that poured their time, attention, and care into me. My first design teacher was my mom, a brilliant and pragmatic Landscape Architect who taught me that design starts with curiosity and hard work. At RISD, I was surrounded by women that took me seriously and opened the door wider for me and the next generation of design leaders. Lili Dean Hermann invited me, President Rosanne Somerson mentored me, Erika Paradis worked alongside me, and Amy Kulper taught me, along with all the incredible classmates I learned from — Amanda, Lucy, Emma, Laurence, Nicola, Grace, and Jasmine to name a few! Zooming out, I look up to all the people I have learned from, who have radicalized me and shown me how to practice: Bell Hooks, Adrienne Maree Brown, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maya Lin, and Robin Wall Kimmerer.
I tend to form very deep relationships with people I work with and am constantly admiring the love and tenacity of my colleagues in just practice, Design As Protest, Dark Matter University, and Seeding Pedagogies Collective.
Icefisherwoman in Kigigtaq, RISD thesis on indigenous power building through climate change
Soft City: a large-scale textile series that maps the urban fabric of Black neighborhoods in the Boston area, made with collaborator Amanda Ugorji for just practice.
Finally, what advice would you give to those in high school now, choosing their field of study?
As the Canadian Centre for Architecture has provoked in its 2022 residency — in which I am participating — how can architecture do no harm? “These painful truths are emerging more clearly in the architecture profession as part of an intensifying desire, most acute among younger generations and critical practitioners, to respond to the shame of intertwined social and spatial catastrophes. To do no harm.” Acknowledging the inherent harm under current structures of oppression, I offer this advice: as you look towards the future, consider you will have many jobs but one practice. The difference is important because jobs are always tied to markets, profitability, and capitalism. Developing your practice, however, is a lifelong pursuit of negotiating how to embody your values in space and society. All this to say that in whatever you choose to study, your larger question is always going to be, “How do I live my life?”