Spotlight on Damaris Hollingsworth, AIA
The award-winning architect shares her approach to authentic engagement with clients and communities
By Sheri Hansen | September 21, 2023
Damaris Hollingsworth, AIA, in one of her firm’s recent projects: the newly opened Brooklyn Park Small Business Center. Photo by Chad Holder.
FEATURE
Ever since she was a child in Brazil, Design by Melo founder and lead designer Damaris Hollingsworth, AIA, NOMA, has been curious about how to make the built environment better. Her goal for every project is a building that reflects the needs and desires of its owners and occupants, and she has built a design process grounded in curiosity, humility, and inclusion that helps her achieve that goal.
The values-driven process employed at Design by Melo often shows up in the depth to which Hollingsworth and her team explore the history and context of a project before drawing a single line. “On 3030 Nicollet, a mixed-use affordable housing project we’re working on with Project for Pride in Living, we did more than six months of engagement during the design process,” she says. “I didn’t know the community, so I needed to ask: What makes this area of Minneapolis unique? Who used to live here a hundred years ago? Why did they leave? Who came after?”
Questions like these help her team develop and tell the story through the spaces they create. They also help the community dig into their values to inform the design.
“Many of the people involved in the project didn’t know the history any better than we did,” Hollingsworth notes. “Taking the time to explore the meaningful history of the site and context helps the developer and future residents figure out the outcomes they seek, how they define community for today and the future, and how they prioritize design features to reach those outcomes. The questions don’t have to be about the building itself to help us design the right solution. But without asking those questions about the context we’d never get there on building design.”
Hollingsworth’s curiosity comes with a healthy dose of humility. “I know that I can bring my training and my knowledge of the science, the codes, and the techniques, but if I just impose my ideas on a project without making sure I truly understand the needs of the owners and users, I will miss the mark every time,” she says. “So, understanding the limits of my knowledge and finding ways to grow is an important way I serve my clients.”
“Taking the time to explore the meaningful history of the site and context helps the developer and future residents figure out the outcomes they seek, how they define community for today and the future, and how they prioritize design features to reach those outcomes.”
Hollingsworth encourages her staff team to be vulnerable and teachable, as well. “It’s important to me for my staff to have full access to the consultants and project partners I work with, so they can take advantage of every opportunity to learn,” she says. “I encourage them to seek mentorship, and I give them the space to seek new information to inform their work and their development as professionals, because that was so important in my career—expressing that vulnerability and having mentors to help me find tools to improve my skills.”
Building trust by including perspectives from all stakeholders in a meaningful way is an essential step in Design by Melo’s design process. Hollingsworth notes that much of what she works with her clients on is fundamental to their identity—and often deeply personal. It requires her to recognize the limits of her own experience and exercise humble curiosity to pinpoint the elements of identity that are crucial to creating a successful building. “I have to be authentic with my clients and acknowledge that my own experience is often not theirs,” she notes. “A big part of my job is listening with an open mind. I need to put my own cultural experiences aside and embrace theirs.”
One of Design by Melo’s recently completed projects, the Brooklyn Park Small Business Center, is an incubator and coworking space designed to be flexible and adaptable for a wide range of businesses. “[Going into that project] I hadn’t had much exposure to the different space needs of retail, restaurant, and cosmetology businesses,” says Hollingsworth. “I also learned more about the cultures of the entrepreneurs who will be the first users of the space, which informed the design. It’s exciting to make connections with other entrepreneurs who come with completely different experiences and goals, and to help them create spaces that will get them to the next level.”
In some cases, clients may initially resist a deep, inclusive engagement approach because of concerns about timelines, budgets, and the potential for significant shifts to emerge in the proposed building. But when they embrace the approach used by Hollingsworth, the end product can be innovative and function better for everyone.
Photo by Chad Holder.
Engaging with the families and property managers who will live and work in the 3030 Nicollet building helped Hollingsworth identify the need for amenities like space for a family table (kitchen islands can’t typically accommodate a large family for a sit-down meal), storage for strollers and bicycles (an issue in buildings without significant parking garage storage), and spaces to rest and relax, like a rooftop deck.
“The future staff at 3030 wanted units that could accommodate extended families living together, units that allowed bunk beds for kids who want to share rooms, and outdoor spaces visible from windows so that the community can play and rest and look out for one another, and we confirmed that with the families that would live there,” says Hollingsworth. “Talking through these needs gave us the fuel to design a building that truly feels like home, and a home that really works for everyone.”
A teen center project gave Hollingsworth a chance to engage the youth who will use the space in design thinking. “It’s amazing to see them light up, to give them space to lead the conversation about what kinds of spaces will serve them,” she says. “My job in that moment is not to impose my vision but to translate their vision into a design that can work with the developer’s budget and goals.”
To ensure that the conversations are authentic and create space to build trust, Hollingsworth doesn’t use a traditional community engagement approach. “I never ask how many rooms they need, or what type, because that’s not what they want to share or the best use of their time,” she says. “I ask them how they want to feel in a space, what would make it fun, what would help them feel free and make them want to spend time there. And then once I’ve translated those ideas into design, I honor their time and trust by coming back to show them that I listened and incorporated their ideas into the design.”
It was also important to serve the staff at the teen center. “They talked about how different groups need to access the spaces, so that drove how we placed doors and windows and how we structured the outdoor spaces with our landscape partner, Ten x Ten,” says Hollingsworth. “We can create something great if we truly invest in including all the things we hear, in turning our curiosity into outcomes.”
For Hollingsworth, the ultimate outcome of a process driven by trust, curiosity, inclusion, and humility is a product that feels like the embodiment of a collective vision. “The best testimony I get is when someone at the business incubator or 3030 points to the project and says, ‘That’s my building,’” she says. “It means we’ve lived our values, brought their vision to life, represented their community well, and maybe even given them a chance to see themselves as designers. It means that the building is better than it ever could have been without doing the work to include history, ideas, and dreams.”
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