how to inhabit a world you didn't build

the act of creation is always an act of communication.

Everything around us is designed: Our homes and cars. Our kitchen appliances and televisions. Our street signs and roadways. Our skylines and billboards. Our bus lines and flight paths. Our political and social systems.

We must not forget, though, that to design something is to intend something— creation is always an act of communication.

The designed world around us is beckoning us to listen and respond. Whether we are aware or not, our world is always calling out to us, telling stories of who we are and how we should act in this place.

This designing project is what Willie Jennings calls the Built Environment: “small worlds, created by small hands, the human and more than human hands—a constellation of buildings, roads, waterways, landscapes, animal habitat communities, towns, cities—formed by design.”

The problem with the Built Enviorment is that we inhabit designs that “distort and destroy us through isolation, segregation, and strangulation.” Homes are marked with property lines and fences that communicate, “This is mine and that is yours.” Brands and logos are woven into our clothes and shoes to signify our superior sense of style or wealth. Our office buildings and hotels are designed with elevators that numerically rank our power: “You’re on the 8th floor? I’m on the 12th.”

Of course, this destruction works in the opposite direction as well. Commercials exist to convince us that we need their latest product. Pop-up political ads are broadcast algorithmically to evoke the greatest fear and concern. Exclusive clubs and societies have tall, heavy doors guarding them to remind you of the honor it is to enter. Even the person at Costco handing you a sample implicitly tells you that your life will be better if you just had a pack of these $6 pickle sears.

The question we must ask ourselves then, is what we will do in response to the Built Environments we did not create, yet must inhabit.

Following Jennings, I believe we must begin by recognizing the unnamed intentionality present in every design. In doing so, we can recognize the histories and stories these designs have inherited and seek to forward. Another way of saying this is that we must question what the desire or wish of the designer was for the enviorment they have built.

Take, for example, Trader Joe’s, which has the highest space-to-income ratio of all grocery stores. While you may run to Trader Joe’s to grab a quick frozen meal for dinner, the moment you step in the door you’ve entered an expertly designed enviorment built intentionally to sell you more things. Immediately, you’ve no longer made a quick walk to the frozen food aisle, but instead have begun to wander through produce sections, look at the flowers, smell the baked pastries, and scavenge through their assortment of cheeses and salami. Nobody has told you to do this—even the kind, floral-shirt employees won’t push their products on you. Yet, you finally arrive at the checkout aisle with five more items than you had intended. Trader Joe’s—like any other store—is a space designed to tell you what you need and then offer you the easiest path to attaining it.

Recognizing this intentionality allows us to determine what is being asked of us as inhabitants of a designed space. Where are we told to go? What are we asked to ignore? How are we supposed to respond?

At Trader Joe’s, we are unassumingly directed through aisle after aisle without an exit or door in sight. But this also functions on a larger scale—the roads and highways of a city are built to direct you to certain parts of the city and keep you away from others. Even more, grocery stores, coffee shops, hotels, and bus lines are all strategically located to do the same. Within these buildings we can examine this question further: Does a grocery store put public bathrooms near the front, or a liquor section? Does a coffee shop list its prices or just post a handful of unpriced drinks? Are certain roads under construction for years on end, making it difficult to reach a certain neighborhood?

In response to the destructive design of Built Environments that “masquerade as freedom,” Jennings offers a wonderful, redemptive conclusion: We take this knowledge—this deconstructive, system-breaking knowledge—and imagine new designs and build new possibilities. We reject the illusion of permanence that tells us nothing can change and insist that all environments are malleable energy, “open to change, movement, process, and transformation.”

“We meet God drawing us and showing us the life of one who yields and listens, and in this way, the yielding and listening prepare for us a life together of dreaming and building.”

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Reading:

• Laura Fabrycky, “The Birds and the Beguines” (Comment)

• John Inazu, “Unity in our Liberties” (Law & Liberty)

• Jacqueline E. Lapsley, Neal D. Presa, eds. Poetic Living (Wipf & Stock, 2023).

Watching:

• Only Murders in the Building — Season 3 (Hulu)

• It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia — Season 16 (Hulu)

Listening: