World Building — Tessa Crespo Design

We need a plausible fiction.

“We recognize that the field of design is inherently non-neutral and has an obligation in addressing the architectures of oppression that our society is built upon and our role in perpetuating them. We want to use our creativity and skills to contribute to the movement against racism by amplifying the voices of its leaders who are advancing justice and equity in design.”

— Design Yard Sale

Design Yard Sale was a month-long fundraiser in July 2020 to raise funds for two organizations fighting systemic, anti-Black racism - The Bail Project and Colloqate Design. It was co-organized by Yaxuan Liu (who came up with the concept), Izzy Kornblatt, Grace Chee, Edward Myo Oo Han, and myself.

the Bail Project

“The Bail Project, Inc. is a non-profit organization designed to combat mass incarceration by disrupting the money bail system ‒ one person at a time.”

Inspired by the country’s first revolving bail fund, The Bronx Freedom Fund, the Bail Project believes that paying bail for someone in need is an act of resistance against a system that criminalizes race and poverty. More than 450,000 incarcerated people in the US every day are unconvicted, and many of them are there because they cannot afford bail.

Colloqate

“The language of the built environment tells a complex story of place that can either speak to our collective values and ideals or reveal persisting inequity and injustice.”

Colloqate Design is a multidisciplinary Architecture and Design Justice practice focused on organizing, advocating, and designing spaces of racial, social and cultural equity. The choice of Colloqate came out of a conversation with De Nichols - Core Organizer of Design As Protest and previous Loeb Fellow at Harvard GSD.

For our small team of five that didn’t know the first thing about running a non-profit, the month of June was a crash course. Our first public call went out on Juneteenth. Before and following this call, we strategized Design Yard Sale’s entire scope, from establishing an e-commerce platform to sourcing design objects—as well as pricing, marketing, and shipping them—as well as studying the relevant international laws and policies governing commercial transactions. We secured fiscal sponsorship from the Architectural League of New York less than 24 hours before our July 1 launch.

We sold and auctioned donated design items from 356 contributing artists and architects around the world, including Virgil Abloh, Jerome Byron, Sam Jacob, and Denise Scott Brown. In just one month we raised $126,000 for the Bail Project and Colloqate.

Exclusive Print of Oana by Rachel Israela [autographed]

Courtesy of the artist and Oana Stanescu for Design Yard Sale. — Exclusive Print of Oana by Rachel Israela [autographed] Courtesy of the artist and Oana Stanescu for Design Yard Sale.

Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC by Ezra Stoller

Photographed by Ezra Stoller 1974
© Ezra Stoller/Esto and Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery

Courtesy of SOM for Design Yard Sale — Joseph H. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC by Ezra Stoller Photographed by Ezra Stoller 1974 © Ezra Stoller/Esto and Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery Courtesy of SOM for Design Yard Sale

Virgil Abloh™️ x IKEA MARKERAD by Virgil Abloh™️ [signed with the purchaser's name]

Courtesy of Virgil Abloh™️ for Design Yard Sale — Virgil Abloh™️ x IKEA MARKERAD by Virgil Abloh™️ [signed with the purchaser's name] Courtesy of Virgil Abloh™️ for Design Yard Sale

Lake District / Pyramid by Sam Jacob

Courtesy of the artist for Design Yard Sale — Lake District / Pyramid by Sam Jacob Courtesy of the artist for Design Yard Sale

Las Vegas, undated (late 1960s) by Denise Scott Brown [autographed and framed]

Courtesy of Denise Scott Brown for Design Yard Sale — Las Vegas, undated (late 1960s) by Denise Scott Brown [autographed and framed] Courtesy of Denise Scott Brown for Design Yard Sale

Sand Sea IX by Brooke Holm

Courtesy of Brooke Holm for Design Yard Sale — Sand Sea IX by Brooke Holm Courtesy of Brooke Holm for Design Yard Sale

Small Tenon Table in Oak by Akron Street

Courtesy of Akron Street for Design Yard Sale — Small Tenon Table in Oak by Akron Street Courtesy of Akron Street for Design Yard Sale

Gravitational Cutting Mat by Benjamin Edgar Gott [autographed]

Courtesy of Benjamin Edgar Gott for Design Yard Sale — Gravitational Cutting Mat by Benjamin Edgar Gott [autographed] Courtesy of Benjamin Edgar Gott for Design Yard Sale

Vanna Venturi House Blueprints by Robert Venturi

Courtesy of Keast & Hood for Design Yard Sale — Vanna Venturi House Blueprints by Robert Venturi Courtesy of Keast & Hood for Design Yard Sale

“This student-led initiative clearly acknowledges that racism cannot simply be fixed through design alone but through how and where we choose to spend our money. Even the selection of charitable organizations points to a fundamental understanding that in order to combat systemic racism you have to disrupt the flow of cash to institutions that promote inequality and diminish the voices of the most vulnerable.”

— Jerome Byron

Projections on a New Climate

Experiences constitute our understanding of the world, yet many of the hard sciences avoid the experiential as a legitimate form of knowledge. We need more empathic forms of representation that make visible the links between climate change, resource scarcity, and forced migration. This project looks to the art of tarot as an alternative to orthodox climate projection methods.

Two of Swords reimagined as Diviner’s Rods

The Two of Diviner’s Rods depicts the practice of dowsing -- a form of divination used to locate groundwater, oil, and precious metals¹. Shown inverted, the rods represent the greed and ignorance inherent t — Two of Swords reimagined as Diviner’s Rods The Two of Diviner’s Rods depicts the practice of dowsing -- a form of divination used to locate groundwater, oil, and precious metals¹. Shown inverted, the rods represent the greed and ignorance inherent to current and past trends of natural resource depletion and environmental deregulation. Existing methods of extraction including fracking, mining, drilling, and excavating contaminate drinking water and cause air pollution posing serious, immediate, and long-term threats to public health². While in office, Trump rolled back or overturned over 100 environmental rules and regulations, including limits on toxic emissions and the reporting thereof². He approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, eliminated Obama-era methane emissions standards for oil and gas facilities, and opened nearly all of America’s coastal waters to offshore oil and gas drilling, to name a few. The Inverted Diviner’s Rods are a symbol of wishful thinking or more aptly a commentary on climate denial and the misguided belief that current extractive trends can be sustained.

The "8 of Cups" depicts two figures precariously balancing jugs of water, symbolizing scarcity due to global shortages and lack of adequate infrastructure. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification predicts that by 2025, 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and 2/3rds of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions. Alternative irrigation and distribution systems need to be imagined if we are to mitigate these risks.

The "6 of Pentacles" represents the onset of the Holocene - the 6th mass extinction period on earth - with the highest rate of species die-off since the loss of the dinosaurs. Although extinction is a natural phenomenon, it occurs at a natural "background" rate of about one to five species per year. Scientists estimate we're now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate. This means dozens of going extinct every day.

The "3 of Wands" depicts a scene of rapid deforestation. Through photosynthesis, forests employ the only direct and sustainable form of carbon sequestration, and as such our future is inextricably linked to theirs. According to the 2018 IPCC report, the world's forests contain more carbon than exploitable oil, gas, and coal deposits combined and are currently removing about 25% of our carbon dioxide.

"The Hanged Man" depicts a figure suspended form the border wall. Their right foot is bound, the left leg free, bent at the knee, and tucked behind the right. Arms crossed behind the back, halo around their head. A symbol of insight, awareness, and enlightenment in tarot.

“We can predict the future, when we know how the present moment evolved from the past.”

— Carl Jung

The stories we tell ourselves, about both our public and private pasts, determine so much of how we will show up for the present. How we interpret experiences has a profound impact on our capacity for both agency and compassion, and subsequently our personhood. The relationship between agency and victimhood is a nuanced one, and how we live our lives may be determined by the lens through which we view our own narrative and the ways in which we tell those stories.

RECLAIM AGENCY

The following are excerpts and images from my thesis entitled “Enacting Just Futures” completed at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in May 2020.