Danish Kurani

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m here with Danish. Danish, thanks so much for joining us today.

Danish Kurani: Yeah, thanks, Stacy.

SSR: So we always like to start at the beginning, where did you grow up? Tell us a little bit about your childhood.

DK: Sure, yeah. Well, I was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and we emigrated to the U.S. when I was about 3 years old. So I grew up outside of Atlanta, just in the suburbs—nothing special, just typical suburban Georgia and that’s where I spent my childhood until I left for college.

SSR: Got it. And did you always like design as a kid, or building things or anything that kind of pointed to the career trajectory that you have?

DK: Yeah, totally. As a kid, I was going to my parents’ dry-cleaning business with them as a 7, 8, 9 year old, and I would just be in the back while they were handling customers out front. I was back there with cardboard boxes from hangers and shirt boxes, and I was building robots and mechanical things. And as a kid, they also got me Legos. We didn’t have that much money, but they splurged on getting me Legos whenever I wanted really. So, I was building castles and desert islands and all sorts of things. Even art, I sold my first piece of art. I guess, my first art commission was as a second grader.

SSR: Oh, wow.

DK: Yeah. I had a classmate who wanted me to draw him the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so I charged him 25 cents and that was my first art sell.

SSR: So was art something that you did a lot of or was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just the first request?

DK: Well, I was constantly drawing as a kid. That was the first request, certainly, but I was drawing all sorts of cartoon characters and sports cars and sneakers—drawings of Michael Jordan and other athletes and just constantly drawing things and that went on even through high school. I guess you could [say] the beginnings of my love and appreciation for design was through art. I was also a big science nerd. I mean, I loved learning about space and biology.

I can remember in middle school, I think, we had this thing called mock trial, where you dress up and you review cases and you have to go pretend to do a trial in a real courthouse in our town. And I was on the prosecution team, and I was sitting in the courthouse and, of course, I’m supposed to be presenting soon or arguing my case and supposed to be watching what the defense is doing and instead of paying attention, I was looking at the door columns inside the courthouse and just marveling at the space that I was sitting in. Even from that young age, I started to be really cognizant and aware of my surroundings.

When I was 8 years old, we went back to Pakistan, to Karachi, where I was born and I remember, very quickly, as an 8 year old, I figured out how to navigate around the neighborhood. I could walk myself to the candy shop that was a mile away. Somehow, even since I was a child, I could basically see the world from above, I could just map out an aerial view of anywhere. And so I think there were so many things in my childhood where it was all pointing towards okay, he’s going to be an architect or he’s going to be in design somehow.

A lot of immigrant parents, especially South Asians, they’re really pushing their kids of these traditional routes of, okay, we’ve just come to America, what’s a safe bet? Well, you’re going to be a doctor, you’re going to be a lawyer, you’re going to be an accountant, you’re going to be an engineer, and not many immigrant parents are willing to, I guess, let their kids take a risk and go into a design profession. But mine did, and they trusted me and they saw that innate interest and ability.

SSR: And I loved the story that we did on you in our July issue, I loved that you entered a design competition at your mosque at the age of 12 and created a rec center where kids in Karachi could play safely. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

DK: This was in our Sunday school and we were learning about the Aga Khan Award for architecture, which, of course, celebrates architectural projects that serve Muslim communities and really uplift the quality of life for individuals. And so as far as that competition, we learned about the award, we learned about what it stood for and that was probably one of the first times I learned that architecture can positively impact people’s lives. And rightfully so, all my classmates, they ran off and they were designing hospitals and schools and, of course, these are all noble things that help individuals. And for me, I called on a very personal experience, which was just four or five years before that, that trip that I mentioned to Karachi when I was 8 years old, I had seen my cousin, Marab and his friends, they were only two years older than me, so these are 10 year old boys playing in the busy streets of Karachi. They were out there playing cricket. It’s a urban city, there wasn’t much land, there wasn’t that many places for them to play, especially when you’re not rich.

And so they’re out there risking their lives to play the game that they love, and they’ve got rickshaws flying by and cars and even animals in the streets, and so I decided, these kids in Karachi, let me design something where they can play safely. All kids deserve to be able to play and so let’s build a rec center. And so this was really pre-internet usage. I was using encyclopedia, Encarta, other CDs and popping them into my computer and figuring out okay, well, what’s the native plant species in Karachi, in that part? Okay, it’s banyan trees. Okay, we’re going to line with banyan trees. Okay, what are the dimensions of a cricket field and these other sports? And getting chart paper and meticulously, with the long edge ruler, drawing and charting out this design, and I lost the competition.

SSR: Oh, no.

DK: Yeah. But that’s fine. In fact, I still have that design to this day; it’s still in my house. I’d say it was my first architectural design and it just so happens that the very first one I did was also focused on social impact. And so it’s okay that I didn’t win the competition because it was a great start, it really got me interested in architecture.

Khan Lab School

SSR: And I think it speaks to where you ended up, which is kind of amazing. Not many people’s careers paths start at the age of 12 and then continue down the road, so we’ll get to that. So you decided to go study to be an architect at Rice University, right? And then Harvard?

DK: That’s right, yeah. I did an undergraduate, a bachelor’s of architecture at Rice, and then a master’s of architecture in urban design at Harvard.

SSR: Wow. And did school help cement your love for architecture—obviously, you went on to get your master’s—but what was it that even made you have more of a love for architecture through your studies?

DK: Well, I think both schools are quite good at teaching you to think about the impact architecture can have. You’re not just designing or building for the sake of building. I mean, there’s enough crap being produced in the world, right? And so both schools, I think, did a good job of pointing you towards societal problems that you could address through architecture. I would say I probably got even more of it while I was at Harvard GSD because I was older and could really think about that more. I didn’t have to learn the craft when I was at the GSD. When I was Rice at undergrad, you’re still learning line weights and you’re still learning how to draw a section, you’re still learning about solar orientations and wind patterns, you’re still learning the craft of how to design. So, at the point, you are somewhat designing for the sake of designing because you’ve to learn that.

So even the last project at Rice was an international embassy in Dubai and the goal was that the building itself would create dialogue and foster goodwill and collaboration and partnership amongst countries, that the environment—that the physical surroundings that these delegates and members of the embassy were in—that could actually push them to speak to countries and forge alliances and do things that they typically wouldn’t. And so I think in your early years when you’re learning the craft, it’s hard to then, at the same time, be applying that to good. But as soon as you feel comfortable—now I know how to draw all of the drawings, now I understand how to deal with the elements—then you could start to apply it and say okay, well, now how do I use these skills for good? How do I start tackling the types of projects that mean something to me? Regardless of whether your professors had assigned it to you or not, now you can go off and say okay, now I know how to design, now let me start building stuff that’s good for the world.

SSR: Yeah. No, amazing. And after school, you worked for two greats, Richard Meier and KPF. What was it like being in those architecture firms, and how did you continue to hone your craft?

DK: So after Rice and before Harvard is when I worked at both Meier’s office and KPF. At Meier’s office, I learned how to put together a great drawing set. They are so meticulous about detailing. But on the other hand, I also learned that I wasn’t a formalist, which is probably a good thing. But it didn’t matter where we were putting a building. I remember I was working on a project in a small town, very traditional environment, and we were just dropping in this white metal panel church. And complete space shipping, dropped in the middle of a town and people were not happy about it. And I remember asking my boss at the time, ‘Hey, why are we doing it this way?’ I was referring to the aesthetics and he said, ‘Well, that’s just how we do things.’

And so I realized having this style just wasn’t for me. I felt like that prevents you from actually doing good architecture when you have this really strong style and you push the aesthetics no matter what, then you’re not really taking into account regional variegations and climate, you’re not taking into account local materials, local building practices, local knowledge. You’re sort of turning your back to that and so I think it actually produces subpar architecture when you do that. At the same time, I learned how to draw and put together a great set and it also helped me realize okay, I don’t want to be a formalist.

And at KPF, they do so many projects and I had the luxury of being involved in a couple, and quite large teams. I mean, I could say that I met a few really great people at KPF. The work, I found it not to be the most interesting, but I met some great people. And in fact, we would work on competitions together. As you know, in the design world, a New York typical work week is 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Right? On the grind. And so we would put in our 60, 70 hours a week and then on nights, starting at 9 p.m. and going till two in the morning, we’d be working on competitions for ourselves. This was for the Salvation Army, this was post-Katrina, we were developing housing that was sustainable, could accommodate a plethora of accessibility issues in New Orleans’ communities as well as be flood-proof for the next 100-year flood. And so things like that where we were working on that, I put in a whole day’s worth of work and then I’m up till two in the morning and then I’m walking home through the streets of Manhattan, and I’m just alive as could be. It’s because I was working on things that meant something to me, that were truly meaningful. And so those experiences really solidified for me that feeling, that high that you’re on when you’re working on stuff that really matters and you feel like you’re doing good for the world, it’s those years in New York when I was at KPF and working on all these competitions on the side where I really felt that.

SSR: Yeah. No, that’s amazing. Did you decide to go to Harvard then to continue that trajectory? Or why did you decide to stop working and go back to school?

DK: Well, I think, for me, it was for a couple of reasons. One, it was, I guess, my escape out of the corporate world. It was my escape plan, so just find a way out of there. It’s like okay, this will be some structure or some other thing that I can go to. I don’t think the corporate world really suited me, especially not toxic corporate New York world, I’d say. And so, for me, it was okay, I’m going to get out of here. I was interested in the urban design scale, so I thought okay, let me learn more about that scale. I also suspected, at that age, that I’d want to teach at some point in my life, so I figured might as well get a terminal degree and go ahead and get that master’s. And I did want to continue learning. I mean, obviously, there’s this great feeling that you get from learning and deliberately learning. You’re literally going somewhere every day to learn and so I did want that experience. And I finished up my licensure while I was in grad school, I got all my tests out of the way and it was right after Harvard that I launched my practice.

SSR: Yeah. What did you want your practice to be? What was your hope when you started?

DK: So from day one, I wrote this down for myself, but a couple of things. One, I wanted to solve society’s biggest problems, the world’s biggest ailments, so that’s education, poverty, food and water scarcity, environmental crises, homelessness, even cultural and ethnic clashes and intolerance. All of the things that really were ailing the world, those are the things that I wanted to help solve through architecture. And the other thing that I wanted to do with the firm was demonstrate to the general public, to global leaders, that hey, architects should be at these conversation tables when you are getting together to solve these problems, right? Because if you think about, let’s say, homelessness in America even, when government agencies are getting together and saying okay, let’s try to tackle this problem, who are they bringing in? They’re bringing in economists, they’re bringing in CEOs from Fortune 500 companies, they’re bringing in—obviously, HUD’s a part of that—they’re bringing in maybe contractors. I suspect there’s not really anyone from the AEC industry that’s a part of those conversations.

Let’s take sustainability, for example, right? Both with the housing crisis and climate change, architects play such a big role. The amount of time and money it takes to build a building, the amount of emissions that come out of a building and energy usage, architects are part of the problem and yet we’re rarely called in to be a part of the solution. So, one of the things that I wanted to demonstrate was, hey, we can actually help, we can be partners in this, we can help you create solutions because, frankly, the built environment that we’ve helped create over the last couple thousand years isn’t that great and so we should be the ones helping remedy this.

SSR: Yeah. No, for sure. It’s such a big undertaking though, so where do you even start? What was your first part of your game plan?

DK: Well, in architecture school, we don’t really learn much about business. You have that one professional practice class where some lawyer just scares the shit out of you of like these are the million ways you, as an architect, can get sued. But it’s not really like, hey, here’s sound business strategy. And so, for me, I just looked around at what was happening. So, I remember, for example, Amazon, when they started, they didn’t say well, we’re just going to be a marketplace for everything, they said we’re going to sell books. We’re going to be the best online bookstore you’ve ever seen. And, in fact, our online bookstore is going to surpass physical bookstores in convenience and price and all these other things. And then they expanded into everything, right? And then they took over the world, right? So, for me, it made sense, from a business standpoint, to start with one thing, get really good at it, and so I decided that should be education. And the reason I picked education was for so many of the problems that we have, whether it is poverty and food and water scarcity, inequality, lack of inclusion, climate change, all of these things, I feel like we’re very reactive as a society. A problem pops up, it has to grow to catastrophic proportions and then we say, ‘Oh, my god, we need to do something about this.’ So whatever we do for those things is reactive, but I always see education as this proactive thing that if we have an educated world, if every person in the world have access to good quality education, we wouldn’t create these problems to begin with.

And I’ve had people say, ‘Look, Danish, we’ve got people that go to the top business schools in the world and they come out and they’re white collar criminals. Just because you have an education doesn’t mean you’re going to be a good person.’ I have a different definition of education. When I talk about it, it’s not just you’re book smart and street smart, but you’re learning how to be a good human, you’re getting that ethics education, good morals are instilled in you. Education, to me, means how do you live as a human in a positive way. How are you a good global citizen? And learning all of that. So, that’s why I always think if we can get everyone that, if we can get everyone that type of education, then we’re not going to have these problems, we’re going to create fewer problems for ourselves.

SSR: Yeah. No, completely. So what was your first education project?

DK: So I did a couple while at Harvard, I had a couple of funded research projects. I think I did three while I was there in that two-year span. A research team and I went down to Brazil, and we worked with the Ministry of Education in Rio de Janeiro. We helped them plan how to add schools and education infrastructure into the favelas down there. So they had favelas as large as 300,000 people that weren’t getting these civil services, and so we were doing a lot of urban planning and mapping and planning out where schools should be and how they can serve community needs and have all these wraparound services, like medical services, dental services, jobs training and all of these things for parents as well, not just for kids. These were community hubs. So, I did that.

I also worked with the Boston public schools on redesigning schools for the year 2030, really projecting well, what is education going to be like a decade and a half from now, or more? How does our real estate portfolio need to change to really support the future of education? I had a grant from the Boston Society for Architects where I was working with a particular school, the Blackstone School in Boston. It was a turnaround school that had a lot of academic troubles, had a underserved community, and helping them redesign their campus for better education outcomes. And then as soon as I left Harvard, I started getting even more projects in education. One of the first ones where I traveled further, I went to Australia. This was in the middle of nowhere, suburban Australia, halfway between Sydney and Melbourne in a town called Wodonga, and I was designing a middle school—helping them redesign a middle school there—and that was one of my first milestone projects.

SSR: And what did you design for them? How did you think outside the box for what a middle school should be?

DK: Yeah. Well, it was funny, I did a lot of research, months and months of research on their community. In fact, I lived with the school principal, I wanted to see what his life was like. I spent so many days on campus. This technique from anthropology is the ethnographic studies, where you’re basically just a fly on the wall. I did that so I could see through the lens of a student, through the lens of a teacher, through the lens of an administrator, parent, and really put myself in their shoes and be able to empathize and design with that empathy. And so what I came up with for them, it was a restructuring of their campus where instead of kids shuttling from a math class to a science class to a history class, that teachers would actually move with students, with groups of students. And they wanted a design where kids would have the ability to go classroom which was more direct instruction to a studio space where they could work to specialty lab spaces. If they wanted to record something, there was green screen room and recording studio. If they wanted to build something, there was makerspace, there was outdoor areas to get messy. And so there were certain areas that were great for discussions and Socratic debates, and so they had this diversity of learning environments, not just your generic, okay, here’s a box that’s for math and the only reason you know it’s for math because there’s these laminated posters with fractions on the walls. And then the room next door, which is for science, is completely identical except it’s got science posters. So, it was giving them those types of diverse environments where kids could really thrive and take on this design thinking curriculum. And then also providing for the needs of the community. It was a very blue-collar town, so we added dental and medical services on campus, we added a computer lounge where parents could come and learn and take computer classes and get help with their résumés and jobs. And so we added things like that to get parents more involved on campus, and hopefully, therefore, more involved in their kid’s education.

The school said, ‘Well, we want a performing arts center.’ And I said, ‘Look, I’ve done the research, I’ve mapped out your town, your city of Wodonga has built a world-class performing arts center that’s a 15-minute walk away from your school, and it’s never being used. It’s used for events a couple times a month, so why wouldn’t you just build a partnership?’ So I even helped broker meetings and this relationship between the school and the city to say, hey, let’s not build redundant infrastructure, let’s actually forge alliances and start to utilize the infrastructure that you’ve already built in the city. So, it was things like that. There was an elementary school right across the street and I said, ‘Look, if you find a way to stagger a schedule like this and you could share that gymnasium, then we free up your gymnasium and so why don’t we turn this into a canteen where there’s going to be local food vendors and food trucks and stands that can take over your gym and that becomes a buzzing spot in the evenings and throughout the day? Even parents can come for lunch.’

So, it’s all these things that, at first glance, you’d never think oh, well, this is part of education because, typically, a designer comes in and says, ‘Cool, how many kids you got? All right, I’m going to divide that by 25 and that’s the number of classrooms you get and I’m going to throw in a gym and a library and a cafeteria and voilà, there’s your school.’ But for me, it was like no, these schools, this is social infrastructure, this is stuff to help the community, to help the kids, and so what else can a school do?

When I did the ethnographic studies with kids, I realized majority of these kids aren’t eating breakfast. Whether it was because they had blue collar families, that their parents left early in the morning, they didn’t have money for it, whatever it was, the majority of these kids weren’t eating breakfast. And so, it’s, like, how can you expect kids to nourish their minds when their bodies aren’t nourished, right? We’ve got to take care of their basic needs first, they got to have food, shelter, water, security. We’ve got to make sure they’ve got all these things before we expect them to achieve any sort of greatness. You’ve got to design with your eyes open, right?

And that’s what goes back to when I was talking about not being a formalist. If you just go in there saying I’m going to make this amazing sculpture that everyone in the world’s going to look at it and know, oh, that was done by this architect. No. Who’s that helping? How many Guggenheims can you have in the world where it’s, like, okay, this is going to help drive tourism? Okay, fine. But what about the other 99.9 percent of architecture that exists in the world? You’ve really got to design with your eyes open and think through these things and then, as architects, are we doing a service to humanity? Which is, in my mind, why our profession exists, right? Even if you think back to the first architecture in the world, it was probably a fence, right? Or it was a wall, a roof. It were these basic things that were providing for the needs for humans and you look at architecture today and it’s like well, we’ve got almost 8 billion people in the world and we’re not doing a very good job of providing for them.

And neither as an industry, I mean, the things we talk about and celebrate. If you look at magazines today, the top design publications, they’re too busy talking about oh, my gosh, this architect just did a house with a curved wall, and it’s like so what? What does that do? Tell us why we should care about that. Otherwise, let’s not talk about those things. That doesn’t help anyone. Frankly, until we stop doing that, until we stop making it so much about art and we stop talking about look how pretty this is, the general public’s going to continue thinking of us as this luxury item. But once we stop, once we say, look, we’re designing with our eyes open, we are solving problems, we are using design for good, we are building things that make people’s lives better, then the public will give us that respect, then the public and global leaders will call us to the conversation table, then we’ll be able to actually have some sort of status where we can help the world and be in those positions. And frankly, it’s on us, it’s incumbent on designers and the media that covers design to move past the superficial and really think about purpose and meaning in the work.

Riverbend School

SSR: So you took your experience with education to a different level, so to speak, with Black Girls Code and also, Code Next Lab. Did Google reach out to you? Tell us the background of how that all came to be.

DK: Yeah, Google did reach out. It’s kind of funny because until that point, I had only been a consumer, a user of Google. You never think your web search platform’s going to reach out to you one day and say, ‘Hey, we need some help.’ But they saw and I think a lot of Silicon Valley sees this, but Google really took this initiative after they saw, look, we don’t have a lot of diversity in tech, that’s a problem. We should be creating products that serve all of humanity and how can we do that if our people aren’t reflective of that wide spectrum of users and understands those needs closely? So they wanted to diversify the pipeline that’s coming into the tech sector and so they turned to education and they said, let’s start as early as eighth grade and give opportunities and exposure to kids that are from these communities, the African American community and Latin community, that are underrepresented in tech, specifically in hotspots like Oakland and New York, where it’s in the Bay area and New York City where Google has big offices and yet the kids are so close to the tech world and yet so far away because their schools aren’t teaching them computer science, or maybe they don’t even have computers at home, or maybe their parents aren’t computer savvy. And Google reached out, they asked me to come by their New York office to chat about this. We had done a lot of work with New York City public schools and that demographic, and so they were really interested in our process as well as how we involve the learners and really get to understand the needs of these underserved communities and designing for them, especially for people of color.

And so, they called us. It was a great experience working on that. We’ve worked on so many campuses since that first Code Next, expanding even into the university level and that age of young adults and helping them also be able to compete with the kids. I think Silicon Valley still uses your university as a proxy for whether your résumé ends up in the yes or no pile. I think sometimes the companies are still doing that, right? And so they’re looking at the did you go the Stanfords, the Carnegie Mellons, the MITs, and Georgia Techs? And so how do you help these kids that are at community colleges or HBCUs or Hispanic-serving Institutions and just these overlooked talent pools? How do you give them a leg up? How do you help them compete? How do you help them get noticed? How do you help them break into that ecosystem? And so, again, it’s really about getting these underrepresented groups into the tech world.

SSR: Right. And how did you design for that? What was your process and what were your results, what did you end up creating?

DK: So for Code Next Lab, there were a couple of key objectives. One was that kids needed access. So, immediately, that told us look, this needs to be in their neighborhoods, this is not a hey, you need to come to Google’s campus for this or it’s going to be down in Silicon Valley because immediately, that creates an access problem.

So, that was one. Another one was that a lot of people in tech, especially, talk about imposter syndrome, and so these kids, how do you get them to feel like they belong? Because when you look in the media or these kids look in the media, who does the media show them when they say this is who’s in tech? Well, you see Elon Musk and Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, no one that looks like these kids, right? That imposter syndrome can start as early as childhood, where you feel like well, I don’t belong. I don’t see anyone that looks like me, maybe I’m just not the right fit, this is not for me. And so when they walk into the Code Next Lab, these kids, we’ve really celebrated around the lab the stories of black and Latin inventors and scientists and technologists and those seminal moments and incredible milestones and achievements of these individuals.

So, for example, even in the kitchen pantry/snack area for the kids, there’s the story of Guillermo González Camarena, who was this Mexican inventor who created color television in the 1940s, right? Who would have known that the inventor of color TV is Mexican, right? For these kids, it’s affirmation that look, someone who looks like me, someone who comes from a similar background as me has made significant contributions in tech and so can I. So, there was that issue of the confidence. And this is straight from the mouths of the program managers that said a lot of these kids in these communities, they grow up and the cool thing to do is become an entertainer, right? You want to be the next Jay-Z or the next Lebron James, those are the things that seem cool, but how can we make it cool to be a scientist? How can we make it cool to be a technologist, a programmer? How do we make this cool? For me, that was okay, well, we’ve got to show kids that it’s relevant to their lives.

So, for example, a couple things that we’ve got in the lab, we took a pair of Beats headphones. All these kids love the Beats headphones. So, we basically took them apart and created an art display that talks about wearable technology and all the little bits and pieces that go into that, so these kids can realize wow, that’s cool. Man, I could 3D print some of these parts or I could laser cut this or I could make a pair of headphones. We’ve also got an interactive display talking about printed circuit boards and how those have been inside of game controllers dating back to Atari and even back in the ’80s until now. And so we’re showing kids, look, computer scientists actually influence the way you play. And so they’re starting to see the relevance.

We’ve also got areas explaining how Neymar, a Brazilian soccer player, how he has sensors embedded in his soccer ball to help him track performance. So, again, relating to the things that in pop culture that these kids care about and showing them hey, you can make this stuff. You can make it cool or you can make it better. Computer scientists have created this stuff for you. So, the relevance piece was big.

Another thing that we wanted to do was get kids into a constructivist mindset, so getting them thinking like makers, right? Not afraid to try things, take on challenges, it’s okay to make mistakes and really start to see their built world as things that are made. Built and digital world, of course. And so we did a couple of things. I love the Pompidou in Paris, by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, where they really expose the guts of how it worked. And so we did that for the kids here, where they could see okay, wow, behind these walls or ceilings, there are all these pipes and ducts and all of these things, the guts of the building that make it work.

Between a couple of the classrooms, we had these sliding barn doors and we decided to make them out of clear plexiglass to expose the framing inside so kids could see okay, this is how it’s made. In fact, every single window that we created inside the space, I made sure that we had exposed screws so the kids could see how the glass and the window frame come together and how that’s inserted into a wall. So, there’s so many areas throughout where there are little details, little touches, it might not be obvious, it might not hit them on day one, but as they spend a few weeks, a couple months in that space, they may look up or look around them and just have this a-ha moment or this moment of curiosity of like, huh, I never noticed that screw, or oh, okay, I see there’s this structure inside this barn door that’s helping it move or keeping it up. I never thought about that. These little moments that will get kids to think about how things are made.

SSR: Yeah. No, for sure. What’s next? You are also working on a pretty interesting project in India, too, relating to education. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

DK: So we’re working on our second project now. We recently completed the design, this was two years ago, of the Riverbend School, which is, I guess, people online are calling it the school for happiness.

SSR: Oh, really? That’s an awesome title.

DK: Yeah, exactly. It’s really what the school focuses on is the social and emotional wellbeing of kids and their happiness. The founders are not educators and so they were coming from different industries, and so they weren’t held back by this inertia of what education should be, so they really questioned things and looked at it from a high level—a 30,000 foot level—and said look, content, which is what most schools care about, right? If you look at schools around the world today, it’s like all right, we’re just going to cram these kids’ heads with content. Content is easy to get. You can get that on Khan Academy, you can get that on YouTube, you can get it online, it’s really easy to get content these days.

So let’s not put our entire focus on content, instead, let’s focus on the things that matter in life, which is are you actually happy in your life? When you’re 60 and you look back on your life, or you’re 70 or even currently as a child, what matters most is your happiness, right? Otherwise, why are you doing any of the things that you’re doing in this world? And so if you’re not happy, what’s the point, right? Where’s the joy in living? And so they said let’s focus on that. So we designed this entire campus around happiness as that being the priority more than academics or test scores. I mean, India’s already got such issues with students committing suicide and high stress rates and anxiety because, literally, you’ve got a billion people competing against each other, right? And academically, that can be extremely stressful. And so it’s a reprioritization on what matters in our lives, what’s really important.

SSR: When you hear somebody say it’s the school of happiness or that kind of response, I mean, how does that make you feel? I mean, is that true success? Is that what you started out trying to do? Tell me how that feels and how you want to continue to do this down the line and in the future.

DK: So Riverbend was an incredible design experience. We had such creative freedom from the client, we were able to really design what we, as designers, felt like was the best solution for their problem, for what they were trying to achieve. And for me, it’s definitely a true mark of success in that construction’s just started and even before this thing’s built, it’s ignited this global discourse on education. I mean, for the last two years, since we really published Riverbend, people all over the world have been talking about it. I mean, the day you wake up and you see that Arianna Huffington tweeted about your project is pretty cool.

SSR: It’s almost as good of a day as when Google calls you.

DK: That’s right, yeah. And when you see the CEO of Unilever saying, ‘This should be the future of education.’ I think what’s great is that it’s that even before it’s built, it’s shifting people’s minds, it’s getting people to rethink what are we doing? Why are we sending kids to school for this many hours a week? Is it literally just to pass tests and then come out and be corporate cogs? Is this what we want for them? Is this worth all this investment and time and energy? For example, even now with COVID, a lot of schools opening, my first thought is, well, is it even worth putting our kids in harm’s way or at risk, right? School better be damn good and better be worth it, they better be learning and they better be developing into great people, otherwise, why would I send my kid there with this potential risk factor?

And so I think with Riverbend, just that conversation that was started around the world on this topic of what is the goal of education? What are we trying to do? And what type of people do we want to develop and cultivate and create, essentially, and send out into the world, right? Do we want happy people that are going to go do good in the world, or do we just want people that have memorized a bunch of stuff, they’ve passed a bunch of tests about stuff that they don’t care about, who are then completely lost, trying to figure themselves out? And by the way, we’re stressed and anxious the whole time.

Riverbend School

SSR: Right. No. And, I mean, if you look at the school, and I’m looking at your website as we talk, but, I mean, it makes complete sense, right? Why don’t we approach education this way, right? You have a meditation deck and lake, you have pet stables and farming, you have dormitories that are built in a style that encourages community, there’s pavilions throughout the way, there’s a Zen garden. I mean, who wouldn’t want to go to school here? I mean, why do you think it has taken this long for us to start thinking about education the way we took lessons in urban planning and master communities, why don’t we look at schools that way? Has it just been space or just been legacy? What do you think has been the holdup on thinking outside the box? And to that effect, how do you think or do you think, people will start thinking differently because of COVID?

DK: I think legacy’s a big part of it. If you look at the school buildings in the U.S., they’re all based on this industrial model where the goal was to crank out factory workers or just crank out compliant workers, right? Not thinkers, they’re just like worker bees. And so it was very much we’re just going to drill information into your head, you’re just going to sit there and take it and that’s absolutely not what the world needs today and I would go out on a limb to say there’s probably very few people in the world that say yes, that’s what I want my life to be. And so I think legacy is a big part of it. I could speak for the educators in the U.S., they’re so highly regulated too, right? I meet teachers who are literally afraid to try anything different because they have to teach the test because their jobs depend on it, right?

So, we’re really not even setting up teachers for success by overly regulating. The good news is there’s a lot of people that are questioning it now and are starting to create micro-schools and independent schools and charter schools and even learning centers. We just designed a learning center down in Florida, in Delray Beach, which is essentially, it’s for kids who are [home schooled]. This was after the Parkland school shootings, there were a lot of kids who moved to homeschool, they felt safer. So, where do they come to socialize? Where do they get tutoring and extra help? And then also kids who go to school. After school, this is a place for them to come be social, learn. There are coaches floating around, like you’d have at the genius bar in an Apple store.

And this was even pre-COVID, this idea came up, I think it’s even more relevant maybe in a COVID world. So, all these beautiful things sprouting up around the world in terms of education and so, for us, that’s what we want to design, right? We want to help those visionaries who are coming up with new models and challenging the status quo and saying no, the old way doesn’t work. We’re not going to settle for that. We don’t want to torture our kids and put them through that. So, those are the people that I want to partner with and design for and help create those models that the rest of the world can look at and say wow, I want to send my kids there. That’s how it should be. And then they can start to model that in their own communities.

SSR: From a mom of three, who just found out that her kids aren’t going back to school this afternoon and are homeschooling, I totally agree. I mean, I think in this new world, we should be thinking differently and have to think differently. I’m excited that you have been thinking about it in these ways the last 10 years. So, what’s next for you? What do you still want to do? You said that you wanted to start with one thing, education. Are you looking to expand out? Are you looking to do different things or are you really happy in the education space because it might be more relevant now than ever and happiness is something we’ll all need as everyone goes back to school.

DK: Right. Well, I’ve already started that expansion out. I realized in doing so many of these education projects that we were also tackling other things. We were tackling social justice issues, we were tackling environmental issues, poverty, wellness. And so now, I’m looking at projects that, essentially, tackle the world’s biggest problems, whether that is how we treat each other, how we live, how we treat the planet, how we care for women, immigrants, people of color, the opportunities that they have. Are we living in sustainable ways? Are we helping create equal opportunities? Are we trying to eradicate poverty? Are we making sure that everyone has food and water and safety? So, there’s just so many issues that we’re starting to look at now.

And it all happened because so much of education also ties into these things. And, like I was saying earlier, the Amazon model, where okay, we started with the books, right? We started with education and now I feel comfortable and I feel like it’s time. If we look in our country alone, with Black Lives Matter and just how hard that community has struggled for so many years to just be treated equally. And as designers, we can absolutely help with that, right? We can be a part of that fight, we can make things better, we can design cities and places that uplift and help these communities that for so long have been kept out of these opportunities and not given the fair chance. So, I’m starting to look at so much more now beyond education.

SSR: No, that’s wonderful. On your website, it says sponsor a project, design your own. So, do you find people to help make some of these projects possible? Just looking at, there’s a Black arts center, there’s a women’s accelerator, there’s a literacy lounge, a 3D-printed school in India. I mean, do you find people to help make some of these projects a reality? Because funding must be an issue for some of those.

DK: We do. And so while we still take on a few clients here and there, by and large, what we’re doing is we are finding the communities in need and finding problems that need addressing, designing solutions for those and then finding individuals or companies or groups or foundations that align with that cause, that care about immigrants or women’s rights or social justice or education or environment, finding those people who are willing to fund these projects. There are so many dollars that are contributed to these causes and a lot of times it goes toward programs and other things, but why not architecture? So, really, what we’re offering is tangible and concrete ways to put your money toward these causes that you care about and also, helping people connect the dots and see that architecture actually does impact education, architecture does impact social justice, architecture does impact the environment and poverty and all these causes. So, we’re finding funders to support and back these architectural projects.

SSR: I mean, you have such wonderful and amazing ideas and insights, was there someone along the way, a mentor, a person, somebody that helped you figure out which way to go or made sure you were on the right track or was this just something that was instilled from you from an early age?

DK: So many. I mean, it’s hard to even count how many people influence us in our lives. Obviously, it starts with your parents and then your local community and your cultural and ethnic communities and those values or even your fellow immigrant community. I’ve had such fantastic people, I’ve been truly fortunate of just the people that have come into my life. One thing that really stands out to me in all these years, this is when I was in Los Angeles when I was working at Meier’s office, and there was a gentleman, he was a professor at Pepperdine at the time and he attended my mosque. And I was talking to him one day, and I was feeling lost at the time, especially because, as I mentioned, the work at Meier’s office, I didn’t necessarily feel like that was what I wanted to do with architecture.

And he said to me, ‘Danish, it’s okay to step off the path and take a moment to think about where you’re headed and what you’re doing.’ It was a reminder to me that people are just on this path and going fast, just trying to get somewhere—zoom, zoom, zoom—and they’re zipping by you and everyone seems to be in this rat race all the time, where it’s like okay, I’m going to graduate and then I’m going to try to land this awesome job and then I’m going to try and make a lot of money and have the white picket fence and then just do that, which is fine and that works for some people and that’s totally valid. But it was a reminder to me, like, don’t feel like you’re going to get left behind just because you stopped to reflect and you’ve gone off the path, a step, you paused and you held there for a moment and you thought about where is it that I want to go? What do I want to do?

There was this incredible commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford. I was still in my early 20s and I remember listening to this and he basically said this thing that we call life around us, and I’m going to butcher this and I’ll do no justice to how Steve put it. But he said this thing we call life, this is just made up, essentially, right? These societal structures that tell you that you should do this or that, people no smarter than you and I made those decisions. If you don’t like it, if you think there’s a better way, if you don’t want to live that way, then screw it, go live how you want to live, design your own life. And so that, to me, even though that wasn’t direct advice to me, I mean, things like that really stand out to me of, look, we don’t have to take the world as a given, the way it is, the status quo. These are all decisions that other people made, if things suck, if education sucks, let’s change it. If it’s not doing what we think it needs to be doing, let’s change it.

SSR: No, that’s so great. And we always end this podcast with the title of it, What I’ve Learned, but I’m guessing that has been your greatest lesson learned along the way, unless there’s been another one.

DK: It’s that we have the power to change things in the world, we don’t have to just accept them the way they are and we don’t have to do things the way everyone else does, right? We can do things that’s right for us and feel right to us, we don’t have to just be blind followers or sheep. And, in fact, I think that’s when the world thrives is when people really start thinking for themselves and challenging things that don’t work and fixing them.

SSR: Yeah. No, I think that’s so wonderful and such inspiration that many need to hear right now, especially with everything going on in the world today, so thank you so much for taking the time to share your amazing work and truly incredible insights. It’s been such a pleasure.

DK: Oh, it was so fun. Thanks, Stacy.