Do you ever wonder if your needs have been factored into a space? What makes a space inclusive where you feel you belong and are unafraid, seen, and welcomed? In our free-flowing conversation, Guest Mentor Architect Damaris Hollingsworth answers those questions and others.

Our first conversation taught us how early challenges led Damaris to develop grit and grace in becoming a multicultural architect designing inclusive and equitable community spaces. Today, you will hear how design influences our behavior in five core areas, how Damaris founded Design By Melo, and her aspirations and mentors. I experience a couple of ‘aha’ moments.

It was jaw-dropping to learn how airport security checks Damaris’ hair, of all things. How Damaris told the story of a recent airport security search made me laugh. The giddiness vanished when I settled into how she felt when a stranger touched her hair. We all go through airport security checkpoints; our experiences are not the same. Implicit bias has chilling effects and leaves all of us feeling diminished.

If you listened to our first conversation, you know when Damaris faces a challenge, she embraces it and innovates. Damaris has needed to design outside of textbooks because, she concedes, people of color aren’t the authors, so their voices and experiences are not represented in the way they need to be. Writing a book about her lived experiences and unique contributions to the architecture field through Design by Melo will inspire all people to fulfill their capacity and understand how places and spaces are created once we get her book into our hands. She is co-writing it right now.

Design by Melo is “founded in the belief that the built environment needs to do more than addressing the functional needs of proposed spaces; our clients benefit from a holistic approach to all that we do. Because places and spaces must also speak to the values of global engagement, cultural competency, inclusion, sustainability, and human performance, your benefit doesn’t stop when the project is complete.”

“Our behavior,” says Damaris, “is influenced by our reactions to our surroundings: color, textures, compositions, mass, void, nature or the absence of nature.” Her five company values listed above dovetail creating an inclusive and diverse representation of the people and stakeholders who occupy community spaces, whether for work, prayer, worship, celebrations, and other events and purposes.

An experience Damaris felt when working at THOR Construction allowed her to be her authentic self. She felt she belonged without any pretense and now designs with unapologetic inclusion. There was no proving oneself to others, just total acceptance of who she was as an architect and human being doing great things.

Damaris employs five people, including herself and a few subcontractors. We discuss how co-working spaces have changed, human performance, and how productivity is affected in non-inclusive spaces.

Another ‘aha’ moment. Did you know that temperature settings in office buildings have been set for men wearing suits? How productive can a woman be wearing a dress when one is freezing all day long from low office temperatures? We overcome unwelcomed barriers like these and become architects.

Cultural competency comes through understanding the needs of the people we are serving. A bank project off of Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis after George Floyd’s murder offered Damaris and her team a new perspective on drive-through banking and how Black Americans do business.

Sustainable elements in a design have become more relevant since the coronavirus pandemic began in 2020. We can influence our home office spaces to include the presence of natural light, fresh air, colors, and textures that lower stress. A recent study of over 2,000 U.S. adults by global visual communications platform, Canva, uncovers several benefits cited from working remotely:

• 50% say remote work has improved their productivity;
• 76% say their relationships with co-workers are stronger as a result of the shift to work-from-home during 2020;
• 75% have a new-found confidence in their role and position within a team;
• Almost half (46%) say remote work has improved collaboration with colleagues;
• 52% wanted a flexible work-home arrangement in 2021, and 30% wanted to continue working full-time from home.

We conclude our engaging conversation with DesignShop, a 12-week program that came out of Damaris’ research and the low percentage of women of color in the profession. Young people of color need to see themselves as architects. They need to learn about the profession from those who look like them. Damaris is visible, creating programs to advance our culture, creating inclusive spaces where everyone can feel they belong.

In 2022, using 30 million profiles, Zippia found over 140,137 Architects currently employed in the United States. The breakdown is as follows:

• 6% of all Architects are women, while 70.6% are men.
• The average age of an employed Architect is 45 years old.
• The most common ethnicity of Architects is White (71.3%), followed by Asian (13.8%), Hispanic or Latino (9.9%), and African American or Black (under 2%).

Our 2^nd conversation is a plethora of insight, enthusiasm, and brilliance with an undercurrent of determination and integrity. Enrich your soul and stimulate your mind. DOWNLOAD

NEXT STEP after listening: Challenge yourself and do the Conscious Attentive Leadership Mentoring (C.A.L.M.) Activities are below.