Graduation Speech Delivered at the Commencement Ceremony of the College of Environmental Design in the Greek Theater, University of California, Berkeley.

May 22, 1994

Glad you all could make it. For those of you who came by air, I hope your baggage also came. And for those of you who didn't book a hotel room in advance, these fine students can show you places in Wurster where you can sleep, and our registration cards should be good to get you into the showers on campus for another few days. Its an opportunity to share in part of our experiences here.

Also, for those of you who were still hoping against hope that your son or daughter was really going to be graduating from engineering or law or some other potentially-lucrative field, I'm sorry, but your child is here today, about to graduate into a profession that is extremely challenging and rewarding only in other ways.

This being the case, I thought I would share some of the issues that we struggle with, and something of the perspective that we have gained while here. This is not easy, because I am trying to speak for graduates of three professional programs, three doctoral programs, and several other degrees as well. Visual Studies, Landscape Architecture, City and Regional Planning, and Architecture are each very different fields, but as a joint degree student in architecture and city planning, I feel compelled to express the some sense of the school as a whole.

What we do as a whole, and what we will do in our work is to render our society in visible and tangible form. Some of us will do this directly in the design of buildings, others indirectly through the policies we create and in the ideas that we transmit to future students. Whatever particular career we pursue, the nature of our work demands that we think and express our thoughts in very unusual ways.

First of all, we must think in the long term, often in the very long term. The spaces that we design and the policies that we develop usually last for decades and often for several generations. Our work is used and experienced and lived every day by numerous people. Our work affects them and they react to it, often very critically. Not so long ago, in a time when architects were experimenting with completely new building forms and materials Joe Esherick designed a building for this campus that would be tough but flexible: the studio floors are huge open bays, with lightweight interior walls that can be rearranged to create new spaces, redesigned to accommodate future needs of the College of Environmental Design.

The building endures, but the society has changed. On several occasions I have watched Mr. Esherick put up with harsh criticism for the appearance of Wurster Hall, and it has given me long pause to reflect on what it means to develop an idea, to commit to it and see it through, and then watch as the society perceives our work in unexpected ways. This is probably a lot like raising children, but I will let you be the judge of that.

Another peculiarity about our work is that we often need to function in several languages simultaneously. We draw in two completely different ways: finished illustrations and analytical diagrams. We also write and make oral presentations two very different ways of using words. We also have to think in terms of policy and implementation the political, legal, and financial side of getting thinsg built. In all of our disciplines we have to take a very comprehensive view, we have to understand the full context in which we work.

This is indeed what design is about: design is an act of synthesis. To design is to cope with numerous issues and factors that operate at entirely different levels of scale and time. We must resolve these factors into precise and specific designs that we and others will commit to, and live with, for years to come. The more factors we can successfully address, the better the design.

But design is not simply determined by all of the external factors that go into it. It is not just an act of synthesis but also and act of raw creativity, something purely irrational and powerfully emotive. There is a passion to design that we may never be able to explain fully. But to get at one part of it I ask the question: if we are the ones who express the ideals of our society in its built forms and spaces, what are we expressing about or time?

When Catherine Bauer Wurster was developing the public housing policy for our country in the late nineteen-forties, designers and most of the public believed that good buildings can make good people. If we could improve the physical conditions in which people live, they would be happier and better citizens. I suppose that Wurster Hall could be considered a supreme challenge to this idea.

What we have found, though, is that once the bare necessities of health, safety and shelter are taken care of, the need for delighful wonderful places becomes extremely important, even to the destitute. This is a gift which designers can contribute to our world, not just for the owners of a garden or a fountain or a building, not just for private consumption. Our designs are for whoever sees, or smells, or hears, or touches them. We design spaces to allow for daily contact, we design settings for people to remember. We design places that people can care about and care for.

Over the last two years I have watched teams of architecture and planning students work on the affordable housing challenge, which is a competition between several different schools to put together a proposal for an affordable housing development that includes the design, the financing , and the community support needed to actually get it built. This year Berkeley entered two teams in the challenge and they tied for first, so that the two teams had to make another presentation just to break the tie. I have never seen students work so hard, and lose so much sleep since E.D.11A--and if you don’t know what that course is like, as them! (the architecture undergraduates). No amount of money could get people to work so hard. What drives them, and what drives all of us is a belief that through design we can make a better world, and that everyone desires and deserves the luxuries of delight, and wonder, and beauty that we can give. This belief is very dear to us; it matters.

On the larger scale and in the longer term, the nature of our work has to do with the country that we live in. We must always remember that we are very unusual among countries in the world in that we stake our identity purely upon an agreed set of principles. Those principles rest on a belief in the rights and dignity of every human being. We fail alot in achieving this ideal, and our failures are vivid. We are failing now to take care of our own, to provide the bare essentials of shelter. This is not a failure of political will. It is a failure of public will, and that is all of us.

This bothers us. And I am proud of the fact that this bothers us, the fact that we think inequity is wrong, and that it challenges our hopes to make this a society which is humane and just. The struggle will continue to be very costly and very awkward and in my eyes very beautiful.

Normally we don't step back this far to think about the context that we work in, but it does bear directly on our work as designers. For those who are in housing and in community development, this is the immediate context of their work every day. Environmental planners extend thid ideal to include the entire ecosystem, and our collective right as living beings to a decent and delightful place to live. This ideal also bears on us directly through the American Disabilites Act, which affirms the right of all of us to equal access and equal accessibility. Making America accessible will be a tremendous challenge in the coming years. On the one hand it is simply a civil right. On the other hand it is a tremendous experiment that few societies would ever consider undertaking.: it strikes directly at who we are as a people. And Its implementation will be a rendering of our societies beliefs in built form.

As graduates of the College of Environmental Design, we will think and work in ways that range from the slow and vast to the intimate and fleeting. From the way that the last rays of sunlight will sweep across a wall, to the blossom of poppies on a hill-slope that we have kept open to be shared and enjoyed. These are deliberate acts, and they are acts of care. Remember us for this.