海角社区

These fictional girls have come to life thanks to 海角社区鈥檚 Personal Development Grant, where I was given the opportunity of both time and resources to create a children鈥檚 book about the architectural design process. I wanted to do this because I think it鈥檚 important for kids to see themselves reflected in the heroes they read about, and there are so few opportunities for girls to see themselves as architect-heroes.

The book, Little Designers: Sea of Dreams, focuses on Kit, an aspiring young architect who embarks on an ambitious project to help an underwater community solve their problem of how to get a better night鈥檚 rest below a noisy pod of whales. She collaborates with a team of diverse designers and engineers who use their unique perspectives to create a successful project.

I鈥檒l admit, the mermaid motif is a bait-and-switch to get kids, like my own 5-year-old girls who judge books by their covers, to engage with topics that might be unfamiliar to them.聽 I also wanted to infuse more magic into the building industry to generate some of the awe that astronauts get.

I started out with the idea to write a story about an architect who isn鈥檛 perfect and doesn鈥檛 know everything but is open to criticism and learning new things from her teammates. 聽The characters are intentionally different. Yemaya was inspired by a well-traveled mythological water spirit who originated in present-day Nigeria. Sedna is named after the goddess of the sea and marine animals in Inuit mythology. Coral has a mechanical tail, and Kit has legs. None of this diversity contributes to the conflict of the story or creates barriers between the characters. Diversity is the unsung hero and isn鈥檛 even recognized in the text. Even the word 鈥渕ermaid鈥� is irrelevant and never once used.

As an architect writing a children鈥檚 book, I can identify with Kit being a fish out of water 鈥� or rather the opposite. I found inspiration, support, and feedback through podcasts, professional editors, and a large swath of my 海角社区 colleagues. It likely helped that I have an old degree in creative writing from before I pivoted to architecture. The grant provided funding for me to hire an Illustrator. Mika Rane was my first choice because I was already familiar with her work and thought her illustrations were as joyful as I hoped the story would be. We learned a lot from each other through our open-minded collaboration!

When Women鈥檚 history Month 2022 is over, and you find yourself thinking about the future, look for this book to help inspire the next generation of problem solvers. Profits will go towards a scholarship fund for female architecture students.

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