The last few months have been a balancing act for architect Pascale Sablan, a senior associate at the 80-person, New York–based firm S9 Architecture. As the pandemic confined Sablan and her young family to their home, she and her husband have bounced between childcare and client calls, meals and meetings—all from the same space. This “new normal” was upended again late last month, after George Floyd was killed by police officers in Minneapolis on May 25. Sablan serves on the boards of several advocacy organizations; those groups jumped into high gear. She spent hours on the phone with likeminded architects and designers, honing in on how to make an impact and finding “the point of action.”
But at the same time, she found herself on work calls where conversations sounded different. “It was like, ‘Hey what’d you guys do for Memorial Day?’ ‘Oh, I had a barbecue outside.’” The contrast was stark, she recalls. “Like, you know, you guys have no idea how much torture it is on this side of the street. I already felt isolated as a diverse designer in the profession, but now, even more so. And I wasn't sure if I was even allowed to talk about how I was feeling to my colleagues and clients. When I see petitions and calls for action online, are those things that I'm allowed to share with my family at the office? Or can I only share them with fellow advocates?” She says the past few weeks have raised a number of professional identity questions with no clear answers.
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