So anchorage you know kind of back to a point where you were talking about earlier about can this place serve as sort of a alaska native or an indigenous place i think it It already has like a temporary camp kind of vibe, right? It just comes with a colonial look or a Western look of tilt up concrete buildings or corrugated steel or, you know, it has this like real temporariness to it already. But we can improve upon that. It's just, it's a means to an end.
I feel like is the city is a means to an end. And so how do we change that? Or do we want to change that? I don't know, but I think we can improve our capacity to serve one another as neighbors and have a cohesive community that is economically powerful, is safe for all, is inclusive to the extent that folks want to be included. That was Johnny Hayes. He's the chief design officer at the Anchorage Museum.
But before he was at the museum, he worked in architecture firms where he preferred to spend his time on projects that improved people's lives, like playground design and transportation. He enjoyed what he was doing there, but the more he learned about the museum, the more he appreciated it as a community learning space, a place of knowledge where people came to learn.
And then he realized how much the local community could benefit from the knowledge that comes from the archives and the artists and the community members that the museum works with. He believed then, as he does now, that by sharing more voices, visitors get a better sense of who we are as Alaskans. The work that Johnny does finds itself at a cross-section of people and the places they live.
That includes how people interact with each other and their environment, and how both of those things shape them. But how do humans interact with each other and with their environment? For Johnny, this is an ongoing and ever-evolving question. It applies to the work he does at the museum, as well as his insight into city planning.
So he's always thinking about how the city of Anchorage can be improved, be it through building construction, public spaces, or how roads impact communities and transportation. Because if we're better oriented to our environment, both natural and urban, then we're more equipped to live within the world that's around us. So here he is, Johnny Hayes. Welcome to Chatter Marks. A podcast of the Anchorage Museum.
Dedicated to exploring Alaska and the Circumpolar North. through the creative and critical thinking of ideas, past, present, and future. Music. Is there an architectural style that you prefer? Modern, gothic, art deco, neo-futurist, brutalist, any of those? Yeah, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, which was sort of on the East Coast, an architectural gem at the turn of the century with a number of different styles of that era.
And our city hall in Buffalo is a pretty amazing building, but prairie style. There's the Darwin Martin House in North Buffalo, and it's amazing. I mean, I've kind of cruised across the United States to check out Frank Lloyd Wright's work and just a big fan. Yeah. Not, maybe not of him as a person, but he's an incredible designer. Yeah. Okay. Are there any architects or designers you look up to besides Frank Lloyd Wright? Not counting all the mentors that I've had the great fortune to work with.
My assumption is you're thinking more on the larger scale. And Oscar Nannermeyer, I had the opportunity also to head down to Brazil and see some of his work there. It's very modern architecture, and it's pretty amazing within the detail and the simplicity how to create experience. So those would be, that would be one that I just would love to see more of.
Lecoubizier, his city planning, as well as his sort of ambitious social goals paired with the built environment and the, you know, the residences and all the parts and pieces that come with that. Also informative, again, but maybe not the unintended consequences of that design or, you know, there was a lot of thoughtfulness to it, but it was also missing some key pieces. Okay. What key pieces do you think it was missing?
Voices of people who maybe didn't have the same resources or it's a different world now yeah as well so you know learning from that or in my experience coming through professional practice and I'm a landscape architect I should say as well so the I've worked in architecture firms and I currently practice in exhibition design but when I've actually wanted to be an architect, I thought, until I worked in an architecture firm, that, yeah,
there's just a lot, there's a lot of engagement that can be done with communities so that the, maybe those ambitious plans and those buildings better represented the multitude of cultures and personalities from those places. So it's amazing to have statement architect pieces, architecture pieces, statement design, you know, capital D design from which to be inspired and raise the bar and just celebrate the details of the craft. But I think there's more of an ecosystem component to it.
And that's where my sort of fascination shifts from architecture to landscape architecture. What kind of structures do you like to design? I like to, my real interests are in sort of human behavior in the interface with ecosystems, generally natural ecosystems. But in the museum space, it's not natural. It's a very controlled environment. So it's sort of that right at that moment that someone is going to touch something or take a step or sort of walk through a threshold and seeing what they see.
So it's more of like the moment maybe than any specific thing. And that's why maybe I've transitioned the way that I have in my career to different scales because I'm always looking towards seeing what the reactions are on people's faces or thinking about how those moments can be improved or how they influence someone to read or smile or, you know, have a moment of fear sometimes. It kind of depends on what we're shooting for.
But yeah, so I don't know if there's like one thing that I like to design any particular structure or otherwise. I like the challenge. I like the broad array of the work that I've been doing.
Able to be a part of but if i have to specify like anything you know from my my past work it was working on schools was pretty amazing because those are spaces for that inform many people from many different backgrounds and you know a playground is a space of common joy and learning and challenge and risk and yeah i'd say like multi-generational playgrounds if i were to choose a thing to like become niche in but yeah yeah it's interesting how we interact with place and how place many
different places you know i guess we're talking about a playground here but how that adds to the development of who we are yeah big time yeah and i yeah i think it's who you're with if it's you know it's a social group there's there's social play in a museum space there's social moments within an exhibition within an architectural program there's social spaces gathering spaces you know a conference room or otherwise and there's areas for finding
independence or sort of tucking away to find a moment of solitude you know retreat spaces And those all sort of stem back to your basic fight or flight responses or prospect refuge, where as a species we've evolved. Quite frankly, not necessarily through play, but through learning how to find safety and also how to find food. So I see playgrounds, buildings, urban spaces. It was really a modern expansion of that theorem. So that for me is where are we as a species?
How do we connect and gather? And then how do we live within the world that's around us? Is there a place you remember from your childhood that made an impression on you? Yeah, the woods. The woods, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we grew up. Yeah, we had woods behind our house that backed up to a bunch of farms, and we would spend hours and days as feral kids.
We had a loving family, and there was four of us, and I had an older brother, and so we'd be building forts and creating our own space and knocking down trees and all the things that a forested area on the East Coast could provide. And so that's even now when I travel, I try to find those few moments under a tree canopy and it takes me right back. The smells, temperature change, the humidity change, all that kind of stuff. It's a place where I feel like I belong.
There's a lot of research that suggests it's a good thing for us and that the artificial spaces we create are important. But the disconnect from nature can be unwieldy on your mental health or physical health or any number.
Emotional so yeah for me it removes stress or it's an opportunity to think more clearly or what have you but yeah nature and i feel like you know thinking specific to place in anchorage or where i came from the northeast like there's different environments for different folks right so it kind of depends on where you grew up where you found those moments are probably where you are most connected to but anchorage is perhaps if not the best place in the world one of the best
places in the world to have access to nature and still raise a family in a great school district or have a really great job or and so it's a it's been a wonderful transition for me from the east coast to to sort of celebrate and experience nature both the dangers and its risks but you know it's just epic beauty it's it's incredible yeah it's hard to be stressful.
Provided you have the right gear and know how to get out yeah get out of where you're at it's hard to be stressful up here you know throughout your work because we were talking about human behavior earlier what do you think you've learned about human behavior oh man oh in the museum space like what you expect and even in architecture and landscape architecture like how you anticipate people using it as often like we make reasonable assumptions right based on information but
there are some wild uh you know people sometimes don't want to read the signs or very rarely read the signs and so they start using things in ways that are sort of unpredictable even though there it should be able to be predicted so it's always fun just to see where folks stretch things you know or how something gets used beyond its intent or in you know contrary to its intent but yeah it's just sort of a big experiment that I think.
A little bit more deeply the next time around like okay i saw this like what what now with what the next step or yeah how do we how do we how do we use that to our advantage next time or what have you so it's you know people talk a lot about design thinking and iterative processes and otherwise and it's kind of life for me is that it's like okay what's the what's this step what's the next step and so yeah life is a prototype it's kind of fun so human behavior in terms of just.
You know in a museum space it's interacting with artwork that's clearly designated as not to be interacted with and then how that how that's interacted with is sometimes fascinating in a playground space you know it's the first place people go to is the roof of something or the the exact spot that isn't supposed to be used as the is becomes the focal area okay uh yeah you know it's like the top bar of a swing set right there's the swing that everybody loves but for
whatever reason you get to a certain age and strength where you can actually climb to the top and sit up on there stand up on there and and it's sort of i don't know youthful rebellion sometimes or and i enjoy that too yeah sometimes it's dangerous for folks but more often than not they people went exit relatively unscathed and she's like all right let's figure out how to take advantage of that next time let's go higher yeah so that's where you think
that comes from that kind of defying what's safe and what's unsafe you know going to the roof is that rebellion is it not like being told what to do a part of it is that but i also think it's like.
Challenge right so okay okay in those in those in those moments that individual is taking a risk and then there's this element of conquering the risk or conquering fears or or what have you and so it's not it's not a bad thing because they're learning along the way right that's what i always if somebody's really interested in an artwork or a you know experience at the museum and they just have to touch it that's a tactile sense that that person operates from so how do we how do we present
those opportunities in other ways. And so, yeah, so I think it's when you see those sorts of quasi rebellious acts, right? They're not, those individuals probably know you're not supposed to do those things or they're not the social intent, but there's something there within that individual that becomes really interesting or sparks a new curiosity for me.
Like, oh, okay. Like that's not high enough for them how do we get things higher so yeah so i think that's there's the element of rebellion or like hey those rules don't apply to me but there's also this really interesting moment of learning for both them that person and myself who's or whoever the observer is, what do you think got you interested in architecture and design. I would say that's a good question. So my parents were always like building things like they built their own house.
My mom was always, I would, she's an educator, a special educator, but she was always an interior designer and always looking at things like, oh, what would you change about this? What would you do about that?
And my dad was always kind of making things. I remember my brother's an incredibly creative and smart person as are my sisters too I don't want to leave them out of recording but yeah so I was sort of mentored all the time by those closest to me and then we traveled a bit like just road trips for family vacations and things we'd always kind of pop into these kind of nice spots and then yeah I think it was just kind of how I was raised out in the sticks to be resourceful
and make things and figure out how to make it better the next go. Then also just being around people all the time who were interested in geometry and, you know, math. My dad's a small business owner. Math and chemistry was bailiwick.
So it's, yeah, I don't, there's not like one specific thing outside of the fact that like I grew up knowing I could make things and fail and try again, which is part of the design process and i also grew up within the guidance to observe and listen and think right so and that's kind of what design is i suppose and i'm not a super expressive person i see design as sort of a service like it can be expressive of course but i think there's this component
of like helping people are solving problems or identifying opportunities so that we can kind of move along in some fashion but yeah i don't know there wasn't like one specific thing about design until you get to this like college application process and you know as the as vabs told you you should be this or that and you're like okay well i was kind of i'm kind of interested in architecture anyway so yeah and then i found landscape architecture because growing up in
the woods it was basically molding and modeling outdoor spaces in the same ways that architects are working with building systems. So... Then that was kind of a scholarship. That was a financial decision. So yeah, it was, it was not, not in, I didn't grow up wanting to be a graphic designer or anything too specific was sort of just found, I guess, along the way. And how about community? You know, what got you interested in community? Because the work you do, the work you've been doing, I think,
finds itself at this cross-section of people and the places they live. Yeah. That was probably in college, realistically. I think in the creative spaces or, I mean, communities everywhere, right? Or hopefully people have a sense of community everywhere that they go.
That's kind of our ultimate goal, I think. Like, yeah, it was in college when I started to understand like how project development worked, you know, what public spaces were, you know, you're sort of researching, you know, how roads impact communities or transportation anyway, how habitat and ecosystems impact spaces and how neighborhood development can impact ecosystems and all these parts and pieces.
So it was really part of like the systems thinking and research that occurs through that higher learning area. And then I did some work in Costa Rica and Brazil specific to like ecotourism and then sustainable urban design and architecture in a favela outside of Porto Alegre. And it was in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. And it was like, that's where it became most evident to me that there are, there are skill sets of people who are in higher education and there are.
Real people living every day and if we marry these two experiences together we can make an impact for, one or many right and so i feel from those moments i sort of began to understand that, the impact of many can be a powerful thing and so if we can improve the lives of others collectively or collaboratively then then that's where my effort feels most useful i guess or if i'm to spend time on something i feel like to improve lives of others which which which
has a compounding effect hopefully then then that's just where we should focus our energy so i and then yeah taking those experiences learning from them and then applying them in different means and methods through projects like we talked about earlier schools or you know transportation projects or bikes bike routes and safe routes to schools like all those sort of one-off projects can have a compounding positive effect for the communities that use them or live adjacent to them or what have
you so yeah sort of sort of an evolution of that thinking but there's real there's moments of exposure not specific to design but more specific to impact and then design has a design has an element to that but the other thing that i'm like events or programs and moments like time-based.
So working on a you know planning design and construction project has a different timeline than if you were to have a happy hour and have a conversation and make sure that people feel welcome and invited right so i think the community can be impacted in many different ways both in by by construction or physical things or more the more ephemeral things where, there's just human to human interaction. Yeah. How often do you observe human interaction?
Because you know, this already is getting back to human behavior, you know, as we've been kind of peppering in here in this conversation so far, but in order to be aware of human behavior, I think that it has to be kind of a full-time gig, you know, you can be aware of it with the projects that you're working on and how people are interacting with those structures.
But I also imagine that, you know, when you take your kids to a movie or, you know, ice skating or something, you're also observing other people. Absolutely. Less so in a movie, I would be entertained in that sense. But the. I would say it's a full-time job but more it's just kind of how one operates right i think designers artists well a lot of people sort of look at the world around them for inspiration.
And you know you probably stay up to date on all journalism and uh you know i mean like there's a there's an element of just being in touch with what's going on around you in your profession that allows you to like learn from research by others or what have you or find like, Hey, let's try this or that. But yeah, in the day to day, I do try to be very, like an active listener for one.
And then also just very active in, I don't, I'm not necessarily a social person, so I shouldn't, that's, I don't, I don't actually love being social, but I do like, but I do like being in places where people are interacting.
So that's kind of a, that's a, that's a weird space to live but yeah the observation pieces are are where are people finding joy where are people finding barriers to joy and then how what things can be done to sort of lead us to more joy higher efficiencies or whatever what type of architectural design do you think would benefit a northern city like Anchorage? This comes up a lot. People really look to sort of Scandinavia for all the right
reasons. They're doing things nice over there, but they also have. We're a different place than that. I think in Alaska, I think we have Alaska Native people who have been here for thousands of years, adapting, thriving. And continue to do so. I think they're the knowledge bearers to our future. There's individuals like Julia Watson, who's a landscape architect, who's, she was a part of Anchorage Design Week when we went virtual in 2020.
And she has a publication on sort of indigenous knowledge and adaptation of how the future of spaces might look.
Okay but so i think it's a lot to do with who has been i'm trying to think of how to best to frame this but it's essentially like we can learn from those that have been here before and then we should be thinking of those who will come after and so whatever resources we're putting into you know urban design or architecture landscape architecture highway development any of these parts and pieces like what's the roi and how does it return on investment and how do we articulate to ourselves and then
hold ourselves accountable to the next generations not just myself when i when i age out and into retirement hopefully at some point if i can make it there. What are the you know our children's children or how does this how does this move the needle for.
For that so yeah I don't know if I necessarily answered the question but I think there's a lot of knowledge out there that's not part of the maybe not part of the mainstream you know there aren't too many textbooks about that it wasn't when I was in college it wasn't something that was talked about in every course you know you sort of had these architectural history courses and landscape architectural history and you learn about gardens in england and.
You know like you said art deco and modernism and bauhaus and but you're there's something before all that yeah you know worked pretty well and obviously population is different the mechanization of society is different all these parts and pieces but there's something to be gleaned from those experiences and adaptations so i'm and i should say outright too that i'm hopeful i think we're leaning in this direction in a number of ways and so i'm optimistic that we can think
more clearly about the longevity of our of people yeah in place and in our in our flora and fauna peers and figure out how to live in symbiosis do you think That Anchorage could be a city that adopts indigenous structures or indigenous knowledge of the places we go to the places we live. The answer is yes. I think there's a massive opportunity. The caveat to that answer is, is that what the indigenous people here want?
Is that what Alaska Native communities wish to spend time and energy on, right? If they're sharing knowledge, it needs to be meaningful to them.
Mm-hmm so yeah so to me the short answer is yes i think it's an there's an incredible opportunity, especially because we are quote-unquote a young city in terms of western standards but we're a deep we're a place of deep history and so there's a real potential momentum there or potential energy and we're also in a place where i feel like hopefully that's being recognized but that But also attitudes are shifting and there's increasing support to think about it in that way.
And that's we're still an extractive state. You know, we rely on natural resources and tourism. But those industries can be influenced if there's financial reasons. So, yeah. So I do think we could lead the world in that way. In terms of thinking longer futures and deeper histories. In the past few years, city planning has just become really interesting to me. And I think it's because it affects so much of who we are and the world that we live in.
It affects our individual lives. It affects our mobility. It affects climate change. It feels like city planning will just become more and more important as climate change becomes more of an issue. And we have things like climate refugees becoming more of a thing. Yeah. I agree. City planning, and there's great people in place now in Anchorage. It's been around for a while, but it's evolving. It's an evolving field, which is nice.
But it's, like you mentioned, sort of where the rubber meets the road, right? So there's a ton of detail in planning code or, you know, land use mapping or transportation planning, approved documents like our official streets and highways plan or our design criteria manual or title 21. Like those are and it's kind of for like wonks and, you know, code nerds, which I consider myself sort of on the edge of. OK, but but it does impact our day to day living in a massive way.
It impacts future development. And with all that, sort of thinking back to the earlier statement about just longer futures, I think that we're in sort of a response mode mentality right now to address changes, both in terms of influx or outgoing populations, but also changing seasonality and precipitation patterns.
You know, changes in transportation technologies, self-driving cars are inherently more efficient in terms of commute times and all this other thing, because they're not reliant upon human error or judgment. So I think so computation, you know, precipitation and seasonal changes, the mobility of the masses, like all of those things are informing city planning now. And there's more powerful computation and predictable model, you know, model predictions and all this other kind of stuff.
But it kind of still all boils down to like what's in the document and how is it used and who's enforcing it or who's moving it forward. Again, a long answer to your simple question, but I think city planning has immense impact. We need to be thinking now about conditions that may not happen for another 10 to 15 years and all the best intentions still have unintended consequences. And so how do we consider city planning and all of its approved documents as
living documents that support the current population? Because that's important. People have made a choice or who are living here for other reasons outside of choice. Like they have to live here. But how do we welcome newcomers or how do we improve the lives of those who exist or who want to exist in our place? And then, you know, what words do we use? It's wordsmithing. It's shall versus will versus can, you know, it gets in a real...
Real nuts and bolts stuff. And it's hard to understand for most folks who are not reading it because it's fun text. So yes, it's a place where I would encourage people to be more active because in those public open houses or in those meetings, or, you know, if there's a hearing on something, just come and share your insights or make your perspective known because code will never change without it. It'll just rely on the same people who have said the same thing.
So so really it's a place of individual opportunity as well so like in a in a big fish small pond environment like anchorage individuals can have an overwhelming influence on how things are done so the more individuals that share their voice allows us as a community to to shape it for the additional folks who haven't yet shared their voice i read this book earlier this year called Happy City.
And in it, the author, Charles Montgomery, looks at a number of cities around the world to see what makes them so functional and also what makes their citizens so happy. And a common theme in the book is that happier cities have more foot traffic, meaning. People are able to walk to work, walk to a park, walk to a grocery store, walk their kids to school, you know, things like that. What's your stance on all of that? Oh boy, the happy city person is correct. Okay.
Yeah, I think cars are what many American cities are built around, right? So the infrastructure investments that have been made have generally leaned towards vehicles as the priority. You know, we spoke to our experiences in nature earlier. Cars are sort of a non-natural, it's essentially a building on wheels. So I would call it an artificial environment. You're traveling at speeds that are unnatural, generally, unless you're falling from something.
And so the connection to place when you're as a biped, when you're walking, or if you're on a bicycle, thanks to the invention of the wheel, is a completely different sensory experience. They're at speeds that are human and they, if the community is built around a walking environment or a walking priority, you have tighter knit communities with neighbors who interact more, right? So you pass somebody by on a sidewalk and you behave differently than when you
pass somebody in a car, less likely to flip, flip someone off. Right. So I think, or beep, right? That's a weird thing to do when you're walking. Yeah. And so I think like there are, there are areas within Anchorage that are hyper walkable in small, small sort of beautiful pockets and some of them lack the full suite of services that you would hope would support that sort of activity. But there's an immense opportunity there.
To shift our thinking from vehicle priority like vehicles are convenient i drive one i know what it's like to be able to get places quickly like there's something to be said for that but imagine you can get to those places quickly and get exercise and see and say hi to a neighbor and you know watch a bird do its thing or you know support someone with a smile who otherwise may not get one that day so i think that the the closer we can connect our places means
to me or there's a higher likelihood that the the people who are in those places are closer and so you're rooting for one another you're helping them one another out and that's not i mean that's a pretty. Optimistic or idealistic way to imagine all walkable places because i don't think that's the case and there can be neglect spaces or there can be you know inappropriate or, dangerous behavior in walkable places i don't i'm not pretending that if you make it walkable.
It's going to be all hunky-dory but i think it it improves the economic vitality it allows for neighbors to be neighbors and ultimately it's safer like very few people get hurt or killed by walking into another pedestrian and so and i say that with some sort of sarcasm attached but we have a dangerous condition in many cities including anchorage of just being someone who maybe can't drive due to health or any other number of circumstances or maybe not can maybe doesn't have the means to afford
a vehicle plus insurance plus fuel and so you're putting in a less pedestrian environment you're putting those people at physical risk and you're traumatizing families and you're removing community members ability to operate in the place in which they live and work and that's that's you know vehicles are essentially barriers so the more that we prioritize barriers in our community you can imagine you start to leave people out who make the community
whole and that's and that goes back to land use planning and you know the longer view what our places are, where our investments go and how we allocate time and energy to make our communities better. But that happy cities is spot on. Like take a walk and you'll notice your energy, your blood flow is different. Unless you're walking along like, you know, a highway. Those are stressful experiences, but pop around your neighborhood and you're like, oh yeah, this is nice. Music.
What do you think it would mean for a city like Anchorage to have less vehicle traffic and more foot traffic? And is that even possible? Less vehicle traffic, yes. We're already a declining population, and I think the numbers would show, contrary to projections of highway projects not too long ago. For folks who have been around downtown, you know, 4th Avenue is a wonderful space that prioritizes pedestrian and accommodates vehicular traffic.
And you can see in the summertime, the number of visitors that we get to Anchorage from outside have quite a nice, pleasant experience. And so those blocks are made up of smaller parcels, right?
50 feet wide. So you have more storefronts. So your economic activities increased yeah there's a whole suite of reasons economics your tax base increases so you can actually do more in terms of civic investment you yeah you create all sorts of magic in those in those moments and then you look to like our green belt system in anchorage which is world class and how that impacts mobility and it's you know cars don't go on it unless they're maintaining it, right?
Parks and Rec might plow it or sweep it or do a trash cleanup or what have you. But generally speaking, that's a non-motorized facility that provides immense recreational opportunity in addition to commuter traffic and a number of other things, right? Dog walkers, neighbors seeing neighbors. I think we could do more to encourage like economic development along our greenbelt system and also connect it to.
Other neighborhoods and sort of economic potential economic districts within our urban space and you would see people choosing to walk more and more year round too like if you go down on the chester creek trail or campbell trail any time of year rain or shine there's people on it and that's amazing and it's yeah you know most of them are lit you know in our city streets for good or bad there's there's also a lot of people using those corridors the safe ones and honestly the alleys there
was a there was sort of a research project about how alleys there's a design research project from a handful of landscape architects that were looking at like alley traffic right and so pedestrians sort of the invisible pedestrian connections of alleyways and how in areas where there's higher volumes of traffic like in Fairview along kind of the main corridors and in South Edition like those alleys are essentially pedestrian networks so yeah so I think they.
Exist in Anchorage already we have pretty decent resources for pedestrians I think are just connections and those you know the couplets the large transportation corridor couplets which serve a function. I'm not suggesting we, we don't do that, but yeah, if we can connect those, I think we'd see massive investment in her downtown East downtown and adjacent spaces. How do roads like highways affect the functionality of a community like a neighborhood? Yeah.
They're convenient, right? So people can pass through your neighborhood. But ultimately, in the case of Fairview, even Minnesota, where L and I turn into Minnesota, it separates neighbors. It's a barrier. While it is a corridor, a convenient corridor for many, for freight, for commuter traffic, for people heading into or out of town, ultimately it disconnects neighbor from neighbor. It disconnects higher densities or, you know, dense potential audiences for economic development.
And so your cafe or restaurant suddenly becomes dangerous to get to or more difficult to get to, or frankly, like depending on your mobility, maybe almost impossible to get to from neighbors who are only mere steps away. So they have a massive impact in terms of the user experience at the pedestrian level or at the neighborhood cohesiveness level. But they also, they have, you know, noise pollution, anyone who's lived adjacent to a busy road.
I'm, you know, a block and a half from Northern Lights and Benson, and it's, it's loud, I can hear it at night, especially in the summertime, you know, motorcycle races and all that stuff.
It's air pollution is an issue so you see higher levels of asthma diagnoses and you know all the things having to do with air and lungs so yeah they're just not good for business if you're hoping to have a neighborhood yeah and that comes with consolidated networks right so distributed network which you see in sort of older cities oftentimes in their downtown areas or in adjacent spaces where you have a functioning grid you
can people can move and navigate safely at slower speeds with lots of options from get you know from to get to point a to point b they're not reliant upon a high traffic corridor that essentially carves out some component of a city so.
You can still have functioning transportation networks within urban spaces within urban neighborhoods but it's it's the consolidation of those to a single route that really starts to pull things apart when you see like the you know again anchorage has invested a lot in pedestrian safety upgrades so you have like ball bouts or tabletop intersections and i'm using a bunch of technical terms but hopefully folks who are interested in this kind of thing might use them
to their advantage next time they're engaging their civic leaders like you can do things in neighborhoods that slow traffic down and make for safer spaces for your children for your grandmother for yourself for your dog and so in in anchorages have been investing in neighborhoods for quite a while.
And that's nice we need more of that yeah and in reconnecting grids and less reliance upon highways i think is kind of where my attitude shifts because they destroy neighborhoods regardless where they cut yeah i don't yeah okay, Long answer again, Cody. No, it's great. It's very well informed. Yeah, I think. And I will sort of share, too, that the Federal Highways Administration, right?
So some of it is top-down. So the requirements for advancing projects with funding is oftentimes supportive of capacity expansion. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you fund something that expands capacity because it becomes more convenient and faster, it suddenly reaches its capacity. And so any highway project that goes through a neighborhood.
You know, past ones, future ones, ultimately, if they're trying to meet capacity or expand capacity, it only increases the demand on that corridor. And this is, there are hundreds of examples in the United States, if not thousands of where you add a lane and you end up in three years with the same capacity issues. So you need to add a lane and then you need to add a lane because it essentially makes it more convenient. So things spread out and you just end up in a traffic jam, man.
Like, so it's, it's, it's anti-density. You're spreading resources like water, sewer, power, gas. You're spreading people out so you lose your neighbor vibes and it's all because we're adding lanes and those are huge investments huge investments, but that's just kind of that's what communities are asking for and it's been prioritized for decades and it's kind of maybe I'm less optimistic on that changing but it has real profound impacts on our neighborhoods, our public spaces, our private.
Homes. So yeah, an even longer answer. You know, I think so often many of these concepts to fix these issues can come off as academic, idealistic, or even esoteric. How do you take a concept of design, for example, out of the abstract and into a functional reality? One of my favorite terms is pilot project. And this is just a, it's like a, an understood term for a prototype. And so I can't, I can't recall exactly how the saying goes, but it's don't let
perfection be the barrier to progress. Okay. So it doesn't mean, and that's, you know, don't quote me on this Wikipedia, but I think whatever the, whatever the try, like try small things and a pilot project is a way to get communities to test out a part or a piece of, of a bigger project. Right. So it becomes an example or a sample. It's the equivalent of a thumbnail picture. Right. So like do something small, see how it works and improve upon it each time.
And so it's, it takes that concept from like, Hey, we should do this or, you know, what if we change the world by X, Y, or Z and it just applies it at a smaller scale that's amenable to more people and they could see it for themselves. Oftentimes, we respond to things in concept that are just, as you said, like esoteric or idealistic or maybe unrealistic. Okay. But when you apply those things on the ground, people see it, right? They can orient themselves around it. They can look at it.
They can walk through it. They can touch it. And it becomes, sometimes it's bad, in which case, a pilot project is great because then you don't do the bad thing over and over and over again. Mm-hmm.
Oftentimes they at least come out with a lesson learned or if we're to do this this is how we would change it so that it's better for more people and locally i think the sixth avenue and a street bike lane pilot project this past summer was incredibly successful in the sense that you had policymakers engineers traffic folks you know multiple different agencies the department of transportation as well as municipality bike anchorage yet all these people coming together and saying like hey if
we tried this let's try it for a you know identified an agreeable amount of time let's understand how it's used and what its benefits are and then we can use that information and data points and those data points for future decisions and it costs money to do a pilot project because you put it in and you got to take it out but it ultimately is a lot less than it would cost to put it in wrong or make an investment someplace else that would cost more because it's permanent so yeah
i think moving things and this is kind of maybe not full circle but in that you know growing up and building things and having them fail that i referenced earlier you know making stuff with my dad or trying trying new experiments with my my mom or building forts that collapsed like if we can do that at the small scale and learn.
All the while then i think we have a real advantage of when we want to make that larger investment and so pilot projects are a way to take concepts or ideas make them realities for a short amount of time or some predetermined amount of time that feels good and they can be extended in perpetuity if they work really well right there are examples plenty of them out there that like oh this thing we just tried it and people loved it so we kept it yeah and other
ones that have informed the next iteration, which becomes a better thing for more community members. So yeah. Reading, you know, reading those plans, this is where, you know, you get back to sort of design literacy maybe is a component of this question and, or, you know, in code and all these, you know, approved plans. And it's, it's all presented in language that's not particularly understandable to most people. And so conceptual ideas can feel very distant.
And so the, again, the pilot project or the prototype or some sort of, even like it's just a build a model of the thing. Okay. Uh, and, and people can then wrap their heads around and be like, oh, this is what you meant when you said blue, right?
You might be thinking of a, a cyan or a sky blue and I'm thinking of a Navy blue and just using the same words and putting it into a visual or an experiential form goes so far into changing, not necessarily changing minds, but like creating, and I'm not even necessarily looking for consensus, but just building an understanding so that everybody's speaking on the same platform and can share their perspective and insights equally so yeah
and there's you know there's a thousand ways to do it corvus design was a part of anchorage design week last year and peter who runs that outfit you know he he did essentially a workshop with lego and it was talking about intersections and traffic lanes related to iowa project and it was all in lego so you had a number of just different individuals from all different backgrounds.
Operating within this relatively accessible and informative space and just sharing what they meant with these small blocky sculptures. And yeah, any number of design firms have their community engagement strategies. A number of the local outfits do wonderful work in trying to share what projects are happening and how folks can better understand the intentions of it, the impacts of it, and then how to look on the ground. But man, pilot projects, a thousand times over. Let's do it.
That's how you remove that technical expert mindset and hand over the actual... The empower the everyday person to, to inform the actual solution. Did you ever think that you'd be working for a museum doing what you're doing? You know, after I got the invitation for this interview, I thought back to like, what is he going to ask? And I thought back to like, what are my life experiences and where am I? You know, you're in this mid forties, you're going to get this in this sort of crisis mode.
I haven't bought a convertible yet, but it was an interesting moment to be able to reflect in how I got to where I am, what I think about the space I get to operate in, how fortunate I am to be able to do cool things on the daily and work with an incredible team, both at the museum, but also in the community. But no, not really. Like, I didn't imagine being as part of a design team in a museum space, but I did do an internship. I was homeschooled.
Okay. I had a number of different methods of education growing up. I think, I mean, I was a pretty weird kid. And so I think my parents were doing their best to figure out where I fit and they did a wonderful job. But as part of that, in eighth grade, I was able to do an internship at the Buffalo Museum of Science. Okay. And I was exposed to, and Bill Rogers, shout out Bill Rogers, Buffalo Museum of Science. He was a great family friend. He was great.
Just opened a door that I didn't know was being opened at that time and, and work with my parents. So he worked there and I got to work on a curriculum, educational curriculum with paragraphic designers, like twice a week. And I'd be there for most of the day. This is my homeschooling phase. And it was like the coolest thing. You go there, like I own the place, right? I get to walk around before it opens. You see all the, all the things in storage. Cause that was part of the curriculum.
I was working in Quark Express. So I was like in technology, like that, you know, I was operating from the Commodore 64 as a kid and they had the next best iMacs or whatever the Apple computer was. So I was like exposed to this technology. It was super informative. Just working with complete knowledge experts on all the different parts and pieces. And I still love the Belfin Museum of Science. All the museums that I've ever been to, frankly, are pretty amazing spaces for
a number of different reasons. But I didn't, like, I didn't think of that at that time as that. I was just like, hey, this is pretty cool. I'm learning a lot. So then I, as I mentioned too, like I experienced life, you know, I wanted to be an architect. I got a scholarship to be a landscape architect. I loved that. Did that for a number of years. And the director of the museum, Julie Decker, is an amazing individual, not to mention just a visionary leader.
She's often collaborating with the Alaska Design Forum, a super cool local nonprofit that, you know, focuses on design. And its impacts and inspirations from around the world and how they apply to Anchorage and Alaska. And so I was like in these kind of moments just sort of volunteering or attending museum, you know, symposia and sort of the academic things that they were doing at that time and just really came to love the space, the people.
So when the opportunity presented itself to be part of the design department, I really liked my job. I was at Bettisworth North I was working on super cool projects doing parks and playgrounds and all the things I mentioned too and yeah. The, my hope was to support the museum and its mission because it very much is a community space that, that, that's what drives me.
They work with incredible people locally from Alaska and around the world, which is super inspiring to me on the, each day having the opportunity to do that. But then ultimately I shared, like, I would like to take the, take the museum out, out of its box.
Like there's so many things that within the community could be benefiting from, from the knowledge of artists, from, you know, knowledge of collections and archives from curators, helping community members tell stories and all those parts and pieces. And that's, that's sort of what I shared my position. I could use my background, my network, my expertise to help support all of those different entities, kind of help make things come to life maybe.
And so, yeah, long, long story short was that the museum thing just kind of worked its way out. And I love it. I love it. It's a, it's a beautiful space, amazing people, the audiences and partners. And collaborators and visitors who come are really important to me and to the function of the museum.
So it's an incredibly fulfilling role, and I'd never imagine ever that I'd be sort of operating in this exhibition space and testing ideas and collaborating in that way and building things and failing, and it's pretty wild. But, yeah, it's been a wonderful journey, and it's a it's an incredible institution doing cool things yeah so yeah yeah hopefully it came off as fortunate or just grateful, For all of the things I've been able to experience, but the museum kind of brings
it all together in this weird little way and it's quite a ride. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, for the work you do now with the Anchorage Museum, you often work with people in the community on exhibitions. Do you think there's a benefit in local people who have been part of a community for 20, 30, 40, 50 years telling their story of place?
Absolutely. For one, it's, you know, the quality of the work that's being created locally, the concepts that are being shared are some real inspirational individuals and groups of folks just generating amazing things. And so it's, it's an easy yes to be part of a team that helps share that. But I think part of your question too is like, what's the value of those perspectives or how does, how does it inform someone who might be visiting from Mississippi?
Uh, and I think the, you know, the, to the extent that we can share more voices, visitors get a greater sense of who we are as a community.
And so having a minor role or any role at all and on the technical side of figuring out how to how to make that person shine the best or share the story in a way that they feel most comfortable sharing it i see that as a real responsibility but the value of that is immense because each time i learn i can then understand our place better our team understands our place better We can consider beyond ourselves each time just sort of feeds that the intention or the accountability to our community.
So yeah, we have really, really talented folks in Alaska. So it's, it's pleasant. It's nice to share their work. I think they learn from us quite a lot too. And we're a professional, large institution who, you know, we have an expectation of sort of quality or a professional execution.
And so I think it's also a great launching point for people who are emerging or coming, who have been doing it a long time in different spaces to be able to present their work internationally, frankly, through partners or peers or people may have seen it or curatorial teams who would discover it from being exposed at the museum. And I'm not saying that that's...
Why we exist but there are benefits to creatives or storytellers participating in the process of creating an exhibition so that they that they themselves can learn from it and be prepared to tell their story with greater impact in whatever the next venue might be, and so anytime we work on a project especially on the design side in particular it's i do what i can to just share any resource I can about like, hey, here's why we might do this or here's the dimensions I actually need or like
here's how the visitor will sort of step into the space and have you thought about, and not at all like directing artists on how to do things, but just having that body of knowledge from just working in that space and understanding what makes things go, not only here but in other places as well, is that that arms them to do their best time and time again i think and their insights and perspectives we change we change our standards uh
that's not that's not a great way to frame it but we we shift our thinking based on the experiences that are presented to us as well so the insights of someone who comes from a different background or who has a different intention informs how i work next time i can ask a better question or we can present concepts in ways that are. More in alignment with what they're thinking. And I take no personal offense to anyone sharing critical feedback or insights or any of this.
It's not my job is to help them do the best they can. So yeah, the quality and the interactions and collaborations are meaningful to me, obviously, but the, and hopefully to the collaborator, but I think the wider audience that gets to experience their work coming from Alaska, Cause there's a lot of pride in, in knowing that person, right? And we're a small community. We often know it's the six degrees of, of anyone really.
Yeah. Anchorage. I don't, I don't know if I have one to Kevin Bacon, but, um, or what that would be, but, but there, but there is that too. So then you, you, you just sort of continue to reinforce the relationships and we support one another. Yeah. As, as we kind of launch into different venues and spaces. Thinking about the roads and the buildings and the public spaces and also the people that make up Anchorage, what story do you think they tell of the city? That we love beige.
I don't know if it's the cheapest paint or if it's just people really love it. But man, do we like light browns. That is the story. No, I think... I say that and if it weren't true, it would be funny, but it's, it's really pretty, it's something. Yeah. And it's not, you know, it's not Adobe construction. It's not the color of our soil. It's none of that. It's just, there must be vats of beige paint that gets shipped up to Anchorage for a low cost.
But the stories of the buildings and the roads, I think, tells a counter story to the natural experiences, our seasonality, and sort of our distinct experience of light and dark here in the North.
You know streets are lit cars have headlights buildings you know serve as lanterns sometimes but oftentimes you're just cloaked in light while you're in them and so i think they're they tell a story of like the disconnect between humans in place and until it snows and everything kind of shuts down as we had last year we're doing better now but yeah i think they tell kind of a counter story to who we really are because many of the people that i know are here for economic opportunity or
are here to experience nature and and so i think anchorage serves the function of a capitalist society in a in an incredible outdoor oriented or a natural landscape.
And within those buildings and roads and public spaces and what have you is what do we do gather and connect and so it's it serves an important function i don't i don't mean to suggest those items are a counterpoint in the sense that they're bad i just think that when you think of why you live in alaska you're not like oh it's the buildings and the roads yeah like ever actually i mean the museum is a beautiful space but yeah yeah
it's not why i live in anchorage it's access to the green belt or the ability to hike flat top in 20 minutes, you know, in getting there in 20 minutes or power line trail or, you know, heading out to Talkeetna or what have you. And so I think that, I think they serve a human function. It's sort of the shelter component of our basic needs and sort of a launching point.
So Anchorage, you know, kind of back to a point that you were talking about earlier about can this place serve as a sort of a alaska native or an indigenous place i think it made it already has like a a temporary camp kind of vibe right it just comes with a colonial look or a western look of tilt up concrete buildings or corrugated steel or you know it has this like real temporariness to it already and.
But we can improve upon that it's just it's a means to an end i feel like as the city is a means to an end and so how do we change that or do we want to change that i don't know but i think we can improve our capacity to serve one another as neighbors and have a cohesive community that, is economically powerful is safe for all is inclusive to the extent that folks want to be included yeah so how does it in short i think there are a number of examples of really beautiful pieces of
architecture in this place i think the bp energy center often is like one of these interesting architectural gems set in a natural environment that people often regard as like hey this feels like it represents our place better than most things in midtown anchorage and so i I think there are moments that capture that vibe, but I hope our buildings and roads don't define us, or at least not all of them. Well, Johnny, those are all the questions I have for you.
I want to thank you for your perspective, the work you do at the museum, and for how much you're thinking about the current and future success of Alaska in general, and Anchorage specifically. I appreciate it. I like to be a ghost, so I don't like to be in the foreground of anything. This interview was me challenging myself to be able to share some insights and some appreciation of my experience and the people I get to work with since the day I was born.
So I just appreciate the opportunity, and I love Chattermark's podcast. I think Creek Conversations is pretty amazing, So I just want to encourage you to keep up the great work documenting people, place, activities and communities and just say thank you. Thanks for thanks for all that you're doing as well. Yeah, thanks. Music. Man. I really appreciate that.
For more information about the Anchorage Museum, visit anchoragemuseum.org, This podcast was produced by me, Cody Liska, for the Anchorage Museum. With additional help from Julie Decker. Music.