Placefulness, Interview: Malcolm Rio
By Ellen Christensen (RISD GD MFA, 2018)
Source: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/218/
Malcolm Rio is a graphic and architectural designer and thinker from Amherst, Massachusetts currently pursuing his Master of Science in Architectural Studies (sm.arch.s), Urbanism, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rio obtained his Master of Architecture (m.arch) from the Rhode Island School of Design (risd) in 2015, and his Bachelor of Science in Philosophy and Bachelor of Fine Art in graphic design from Towson University in 2012. Prior to attending mit, Rio was an inaugural aicad teaching fellow positioned at the Maryland Institute College of Art (mica) in Baltimore, Maryland, where he taught graphic design, architectural design, and foundation courses. During his tenure at mica, Rio's research focused on the class and racial exploitation of mobile network technologies that hollow out the transit systems of medium-sized cities in the United States post-industrial landscape. His current research (in partnership with Aaron Tobey, ysoa) investigates the relationship between data analysis and urban planning to produce new forms of subaltern or "blackened" citizenship. Their recent work, Bias By Design, was presented at the "Architecture, Natures & Data: The Politics of Environments" conference in Estonia. Rio is the acting Vice-Chair of Outreach for the Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee (dis) at mit.
ec: Can you talk a bit about your switch from Graphic Design to Architecture and how you see the two disciplines overlapping? Do you draw connections between the two types of thinking or think of them as very separate disciplines?
mr: During my undergrad, I majored in both philosophy and fine arts. I had always regarded my studio classes in the arts as a medium in which to practice my philosophical interests, namely, the role visual culture plays in the production of subjectivity, notions of the self, and notions of the Other. By the time I was reading post-colonial and post-modern theory, it became apparent to me how much space and the environment played into the production of identities. I was also frustrated with the overtones of professional practice in the field of graphic design and had naively thought that a switch in discipline would resolve this. The two disciplines have strong overlapping formal language (gestalt, composition, hierarchy, etc.), but this made the transition from 2d (Graphic Design) to 3d (Architecture) actually harder, because I had to unlearn an implicit understanding of my formal language and re-learn it within a more spatial understanding. I have heard 3d to 2d can be easier than 2d to 3d, which is possibly why so many architects later flirt with graphic design but not the other way around. Overall, both have to utilize and consider a multiplicity to tools, mediums, and constraints, and in this sense the two could be considered similar, but from my experience, I find the connections between the two not as forthright as one may consider. I think this was most apparent in learning how to draw through orthographic projection. A line on a piece of paper in one plane could be a variety of forms once three dimensionally rotated (a curve, a parabola, a collection of segmented lines, etc.) which has fostered a particular way of seeing not apparent from my Graphic Design training.
ec: Do you apply architectural thinking to design, and if so, how?
mr: Yes, all the time. There were so many new tools, methods, and design processes that opened up to me when transitioning to architecture and I often find myself more comfortable doing Graphic Design projects in programs like Autocad or Rhino for tasks I would once have executed in Illustrator.
ec: Do you apply design thinking to architecture, and if so, how?
mr: I think it's impossible not to bring a level of design to architecture. 85% of architecture is truly graphic design, from the development of diagrams, to the production of drawings and of presentation boards. I believe the main difference is the way in which formal elements are read, which can make architecture somewhat pompous and exclusive at times. Architects are (truly) not known for being inclusive and are often defensive over their purported territories or knowledges.
ec: Why focus on space?
mr: In a book by Michel Serres, Malfeasance: Appropriation Through Pollution?, he makes a convincing argument that architects have less of a mastery over space than Graphic Designers. I do believe architects do not have any special claim to a knowledge of or mastery over space than any other discipline. Even within its own discipline there are contested claims of “mastery” or “truth” over space. The discipline is notorious for dismissing forms of knowledge that challenge its canonical bedrock. It's more than common to hear, “that’s not architecture, that’s art” or “that’s not architecture, that graphic design,” “that’s not architecture, that’s political science,” “that’s not an architectural thesis, that's anthropology.” And through these often-touted dismissive claims in attempts to establish Architecture (with a capital A), I think architects do not actually focus on space but rather the means of legitimizing Architecture as a valid discipline separate from other disciplines with its own particular and unique form of knowledge and Truth. (Insert massive Eye Roll.)
ec: How do theoretical frameworks like Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed or the idea of praxis play into your work? What is your process of creation?
mr: The bulk of my work and research at mit (and hopefully as a future phd student) has been on this issue of disciplinarity and the boundaries they ascribe in order to maintain itself as a relevant discipline with its own sovereign-thought. Paolo Freire offers a strong criticism to this issue.
ec: How do capitalism and power work together to deny agency to the historically oppressed? How is agency being reclaimed in creative ways by those without wealth and power?
mr: I do not know if this answers your question, but one of my frustrations about mit (and many Ivy League / prominent institutions) is the way it goes about supporting students. Under the guises of equity and meritocracy, the department ends up giving large or full-funding packages to students who have economic privileges. I have peers at mit who receive full departmental support while also driving Mercedes-Benzs or bmws or live in luxury lofts while other students are working two taships and constantly applying to grants or loans agencies to meet the high costs of being here. This is one way in which Power constantly engages in my daily life, where the systems of support meant to ease the stress and burden of graduate life at mit are often given to those who have had a legacy of economic privilege that has allowed them to accumulate works of merit. The metrics that distinguish works of merit are skewed in favor of those who have had the time and ability to put all their effort into their work. It is not that there are no students with financial need receiving departmental support, but there is a noticeable trend of throwing money at those who already have money, and whose work is about the further betterment of means to accumulate money. A lot of the work towards racial, gender, or economic equity at this institution is often done for free as additional labor to their studies by these very students who are financially struggling.
ec: What inspired you to go into academia?
mr: My mother is an academic and I grew up within academic environments, so there is a level of comfortability and “home-ness” being within academia, but the better opportunities throughout my life have been in academia. After risd, I was offered a few low-income architectural jobs in nyc and the aicad Fellowship. Comparing the two routes, I chose aicad because I knew I would never get another opportunity to teach at a prestigious school like mica with full-faculty status at my age, fresh out of graduate school. After mica, I realized I was lacking a lot of architectural knowledge and returned to school to complement risd's formal-artistic architectural education.
ec: I went to a majority-minority public high school in Richmond, California and was stunned by how white the student and professor population at risd is when I first arrived here. How can we improve academia and push for more diversity? What practical tactics do you see as most effective?
mr: It's hard to answer across the vast range of academic disciplines and education models, but within architecture there is a definite lack of racial representation. Only ~1.3% of all licensed architects in the u.s. are African- American. This number drops to just 0.3% when looking at licensed architects who are also African-American women. Jonathan Massey, professor and dean at Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at University of Michigan has dedicated his professional life to answering this question. He recently made a visit to mit to talk about the racial problem within the discipline, and noted that architecture’s educational climate can be quite alienating and elitist, which is a major contributor to students of color leaving to pursue another discipline.
ec: Your research at mica was about class and racial exploitation of mobile network technologies that hollow out the transit systems of medium-sized cities in the u.s. post-industrial landscape. Can you talk about this work and which cities you were focusing on? Why transit systems?
mr: A quote:
Properties, prisons, borders: it is through the prevention of motion that space enters history... with the prevention of motion, force— in the most literal sense, of applying physical pressure to bodies — assumes a special kind of necessity. Quite simply, being in a place is something you do with your body — nothing else — and therefore, to prevent your motion from one place to another, your body must be affected. The history of the prevention of motion is therefore a history of force upon bodies: a history of violence. (netz 2009, xi–xii)
I was only focused on Baltimore. It was the city I was living in and this allowed my to live what I was writing about. Though it was written as an academic paper, it was also very much a personal testimony of my frustration with Baltimore. I never really expected to write about transit, but after living in Baltimore again, with a new understanding of space from my time at risd, and without a car, it was so clear to me how the lack of urban transit played a critical role in urban poverty and its correlated consequences. Like the human body: when one has bad blood circulation or has a problem with their nervous system, larger systems get affected and it is critical. Urban transit is like blood flow...if a city has poor circulation the entire body suffers.
ec: How do you balance studio work and interaction with communities outside of the studio?
mr: I do not. My entire waking life goes toward my studies at mit. Sadly, I have returned to an academic bubble.
ec: What organizations or individuals do you think are really forward-thinking about designing for more equitable societies?
mr: I am currently writing a paper about alternative economic practices in Baltimore City and how these models help foster urban solidarity. I would take a look at what is happening in Baltimore in regards to worker-cooperatives and alternative currencies. Jonathan Massey is another person you could put on that list. Dayna Cunningham is a professor of Urban Planning here at mit and Executive Director of CoLab — she does awesome work. Bryce Detroit is another interesting person. He is a Music and Cultural Curator of Oakland North End’s (o.n.e.) Mile Project. His focus on Black representation through music and media, as well as his collaborations around the Detroit area are really interesting. Malkit Shoshan would be another person to add to this list. I got to know her when I took her class this semester at Harvard gsd. She is extremely invested in these topics, and the class I took with her was called Spaces of Solidarity.
ec: How do you stay hopeful about the potential for change? What can we do on a daily basis and in the long run as designers and architects in order to create more equitable futures?
mr: When I was working at mica as an aicad fellow, I had the opportunity to listen to Melissa Harris-Perry speak. At the end of her talk, she ended with an Ella Baker quote: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” It reminds us that change is always necessary and that there is no utopian end/end to the Hegelian dialectic. This is why attempts at diversifying institutions like risd cannot come from admitting more students of color or hiring more faculty of color. Sadly, the typical attempts by institutions to diversify themselves — from tech companies, university and colleges, to labor work forces — are often more a means to get over a political and ethical annoyance than real systemic change. Many institutions approach the need for equity and diversity as a necessary obligation while refraining from truly questioning their internal structure and constantly having to (re) evaluate and (re)structure themselves.
ec: What issues do you think are really pressing as design challenges that will impact real life in the future?
mr: I am going to answer in an overly simplistic way: class, and individual and collective political agency. Class underlies many of the unequal qualities of relations people face and this has a direct effect on who is able to obtain political agency either as an individual or as a community.
