MANDEL SCHOOL
NEWS AND EVENTS

I commend the parents, spouses, children and others for their support and I share their pride, joy and wishes for your success.

I applaud the faculty, staff and administrators for preparing you to confront the world with critical thinking and true professionalism.

I welcome you with great enthusiasm, because I believe that architecture and the Applied Social Sciences have a common responsibility to understand and advocate for conditions that improve the quality of life for all.

I believe that architecture and some buildings which are in the public sector, have contributed to the decline of our once vibrant and bustling cities and destroyed the hopes and dreams of a number of our citizens.

I want to be very clear in my distinction between architecture commissioned for public use whose purpose is to symbolize the significant authority, and respect for those important institutions in our democracy, such as Courts buildings, City Halls, Justice Centers, State and Federal Office Buildings.

Concert halls, museums, libraries and religious structures give us a sense of the grandeur that architecture can inspire. The Cleveland Museum of Art and Severance Hall are world class and make us all very proud.
And this building, Temple-Tifereth Israel, is majestic, eloquent and sacred.

And of course the sports venues, dreadfully expensive to build, represent a certain status in competition with other cities, but there is no guarantee of a championship unless you have LeBron James—Go Cavs.

And significantly, we have architecture developed by private clients that seek exciting avant-garde solutions to their ideas and are providing quite ample budgets as well as the spelling of their name. The Peter B. Lewis Weatherhead School comes to mind and I am sure each of you has a distinct and vocal opinion about it.

Architects enjoy the challenge of these projects, and the fees that come with success and they are important.

However, they have very little or no impact upon the daily lives of large numbers of our citizens.

I am referring to those projects and buildings whose guidelines are established by public policy, by law and by agencies who make decisions without considering the impact they will have on human beings.

These projects commonly go by the names: Public Housing, Inner City Schools, County Jails and State Prisons.

The costs for these projects are enormous in the expenditure of tax dollars, and yet their mandate to build is not in terms of human values or architectural significance. On the contrary, they are required to establish minimal criteria for construction, not living and certainly not joy or delight.

This is the architecture that commands much of my attention. I am from the School which places the beneficial condition of mankind, as the central imperative of what we design and build.

My understanding of this ideology was encouraged and supported by my friends of many years, the deans, faculty and staff of the Mandel School of Applied Social Science.
Some years ago my office was asked to make an analysis of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago with the objective of reporting what might be done to provide a more viable and acceptable living standard for the residents.

This was the largest Public Housing Development in America, in a two-mile procession along Chicago’s State Street. This project was intimidating and imposing in scale, especially the massive 16 story high rise buildings (28 in number) containing over 4,400 apartments with 27,000 people, more than 20,000 of them children and nearly all of them African American.

In the Robert Taylor Homes there were approximately 1,000 people in each building with about 75 persons on each floor. And what was supposed to be creative solutions to recreational areas were these “playgrounds in the sky”, which, in translation, means each floor is designed with an oversized corridor that was screened in for children to play and enjoy fresh air. However, no solution was provided for the very cold winter months.

There were no study rooms, recreation rooms or community rooms on each floor; there were no public restrooms and a child heeding the call of nature had to ride the elevator or walk to the 10th, 11th or whatever floor, and many times never made it.

Policies stated that room sizes and total apartment units must be minimal and barely adequate for human comfort. Lighting at entrances, corridors and parking lots were restricted or totally eliminated.

I was depressed by these buildings. I was angry at public officials who could justify these conditions and I was outraged at architects who had little or no sensitivity to what they were designing in terms of human condition and I was frightened as to what this project had become, a warehouse for the storage of unfortunate citizens and a haven for the worst of our society.

We concluded there was no acceptable manner to improve the living conditions and, therefore, implosion was the only solution.

After 34 years, an expenditure of more than Five Hundred Million Dollars to build and approximately Thirty Million Dollars to maintain, the lives of generations of residents had been impacted for many years to come.

The project was reduced to rubble.

It was assumed that the residents of Public Housing did not need, nor deserve the same adequate living conditions as more affluent citizens. It was the architecture that made manifest this dehumanizing policy.

In addition, no Public Housing Project would be constructed in any area where they were not wanted by the local residents.

And that is why we never see them in our back yards. Neither the architecture nor the inhabitants of these estates.

Public schools in America have long been the backbone of the democracy which requires an educated citizenry to maintain the free society as we have known it. For years it existed as a system of preparing citizens for a future with hope and opportunity.

And then in 1954 the Brown vs. Board of Education decision negated the separate but equal law.

It would have been a simple matter for the Board of Education to abide by the decision and proceed with plans, programs and actions to implement the total integration of the school system.

This did not happen, and policies were established in Cleveland to circumvent the law by constructing new schools deeper into the black ghetto and using architecture as a justification for these decisions.

In 1965 my office was selected to design a new school building and we were excited and doing fine until it became clear, as architects, we were aiding and abetting the maintenance of segregation.

We completed the plans and then joined the NAACP members and many other concerned citizens on the floor of Cleveland City Hall to protest the construction of our first school building, and go to jail if necessary.

Forty years later, they are still building schools and the student population is almost the same as it was before Brown vs. Bd. of Education.

Poor housing, and poor educational opportunities have a direct correlation in the development of the fastest growing specialty; the design and construction of jails, prisons and correctional institutions.

A few years ago the Wayne County Commissioners invited my office to design their new County Jail, and I felt quite excited to have the opportunity to provide a decent, safe and humane environment for those to be incarcerated, and we did just that.

We won design awards from the American Institute of Architects and the building, located in downtown Wooster, Ohio was excellent; beautiful and comfortable; so much so that some citizens would break the law in order to spend the winter in a cozy environment with three meals a day.

Architects feel pride when the users appreciate their efforts.

However, the sheriff took a very different view of this activity.
Subsequently we were commissioned to design the 500 bed Grafton Correctional prison and I began to get uneasy when the Warden instructed us to design 2 beds in each cell instead of one. He believed that before construction was completed, the prison would be overcrowded.

He was correct.

At this rate, we could never build prisons fast enough. No matter how well designed, how beautiful and sympathetic they do not deter citizens from breaking the law and being incarcerated within prison walls.

This is not only an architectural problem; it is society’s problem and requires the attention of professionals in the fields of social work, sociology, education, law enforcement, crime prevention and all other related experts.

And it shall be your challenge to address these issues as have Dr. Kathleen Farcas, Dr. Claudia Colton and other M-SASS Faculty.

I salute them all.

The shocking reality is that it costs Fifty Six Thousand Dollars per year to keep a person behind bars. These expenditures could provide a full year of study at most major colleges and universities and the One Hundred Five Million Dollars to build a five hundred bed prison could develop an entire neighborhood of schools, recreation centers, multi-purpose buildings, shopping centers, and a variety of mixed housing units for the benefit of mankind.

Architects prefer these exciting, uplifting and fulfilling challenges and I am sure you, Class of 2009, would also; this is our common responsibility.

However, the decision as to what we build will be made by society through public policies, procedures and public agencies whose sole purpose is to get them built.

In less than an hour, you will receive your Masters degree, which validates you as a legitimate, knowledgeable and committed voice in articulating the physical and emotional needs of our society.

I hope you will use that voice to bring about an understanding of the social and economic dynamics that cause inequality and injustice in the world.

And that you will get involved in the life of your community and especially the policy makers whose decisions have such great impact on so many.

And there is no better time than now when there is so much uncertainty about our established institutions, our faltering economy, our confidence in our future and volatile global conditions which effects our daily lives.

For the past few years you have heard loud and clear a call for
CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN and you are the embodiment of that change with new and fresh ideas, different ways of doing things, creative thinking and risks to be taken.

THIS IS YOUR TIME.

We have seen this before, my generation, referred to as the “GREATEST lived and survived The Great Depression, World War Two, Korea and Viet Nam, the changing global landscape with the founding of the United Nations and the creation of the State of Israel with all its attendant risks and problems.

The emergence of Africa from the Colonial Powers and of course the magnificent struggle for Civil Rights with all its unsung heroes and monumental consequences here at home.
In addition we safely landed a man on the moon.

THAT IS WHAT WE DID IN OUR TIME.

We were inspired by the words of President Teddy Roosevelt who wrote:

“FAR BETTER IT IS TO DARE MIGHTY THINGS
TO WIN GLORIOUS TRIUMPHS
EVEN THOUGH CHECKERED WITH FAILURE
THAN TO TAKE RANK WITH THOSE POOR SPIRITS WHO
NEITHER ENJOY MUCH NOR SUFFER MUCH
BECAUSE THEY LIVE IN THE GRAY TWILIGHT
THAT KNOWS NOT VICTORY NOR DEFEAT.”

Thank you and good luck.