"Building your city" lesson. Illustration by Irushi Tennekoon. Images and lesson plan © Ranitri Weerasuriya

Fellow Fellows is a series that focuses on the increasingly important role fellowships play in architecture academia today. These prestigious academic positions can bring forth a fantastic blend of practice, research, and pedagogical cross-pollination, often within a tight time frame. They also, by definition, represent temporary, open-ended, and ultimately precarious employment for aspiring young designers and academics. Fellow Fellows aims to understand what these positions offer for both the fellows themselves and the discipline at large by presenting their work and experiences through an in-depth interview. Fellow Fellows is about bringing attention and inquiry to the otherwise maddening pace of academia, while also presenting a broad view of the exceptional and breakthrough work being done by people navigating the early parts of their careers. 

This week, we talk to Ranitri Weerasuriya, the 2018-2019 Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellow from Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.

What fellowship were you in and what brought you to that fellowship?

I took part in the Percival and Naomi Goodman Fellowship, enabled by Columbia GSAPP. This fellowship intends to support a strongly humanist project of social significance, committed to the idea that lives can be changed for the better. It occurred that I might apply for this fellowship after I took a seminar by Professor Cassim Shepard called "Informal Urbanisms." For this seminar, I focused my research on an informal settlement that I was deeply familiar with in Colombo, Sri Lanka, about a 10 minute drive from my home. It was familiar to me because I had taught architecture themed "art" classes there for a little over two years prior to graduate school. 

I’m able to give back to a community that will probably never hire an architect but will have the tools they need to shape their circumstances through critical thinking and self-initiation. 

What was the focus of the fellowship research?

The topic of the project was called Let’s Build Great Things! It is an art/maker-themed education project that calls for a context-specific, design based series of exercises to be shared with a group of urban Sri Lankan youth aged 7-16. The project aims to use architectural/design pedagogy and easily accessible material resources as tools to empower children to negotiate their circumstances with confidence. Through trilingual documentation, this project hopes to advocate for the relevance of sharing design knowledge, and encourages professionals to share their expertise with children. 

This fellowship enabled me to re-think ways of contributing to my home country as an architectural practitioner. By focusing on architectural pedagogy as a tool for empowerment...

What did you produce? Teach? And exhibit during that time?

We are about 50-percent of the way in translating the Let’s Build Great Things! (LBGT) workshops into a trilingual illustrated curriculum. It’s a cyclic process involving immersive workshops and testing lesson plans. After elaborating on how the lesson went, it is documented by a local illustrator in a non-intimidating activity guide. Then it is tested again. 

The lead teacher, Sahani Gunasekera, ensures that the "things" produced at the annual workshops are revised and improved for an annual exhibition that is put on by the children each year. This year’s exhibition turned out pretty great!

How has the fellowship advanced or become a platform for your academic and professional career?

It’s too early to say. This article is perhaps a start! The fellowship enabled me to re-think ways of contributing to my home country as an architectural practitioner. By focusing on architectural pedagogy as a tool for empowerment, I’m able to give back to a community that will probably never hire an architect but will have the tools they need to shape their circumstances through critical thinking and self-initiation. 

There has been some criticism that fellowships are a cost-effective way for institutions to appropriate potent ideas while leaving the fellow with little compensation, besides the year of residence and no guarantee of a permanent position. What is your position on this?

I feel that too much emphasis is placed on ideas in this case. Ideas are not worth much if they aren’t developed, acted upon, and honed over time. While academic institutions may appropriate ideas, what we do with our ideas, and what we turn them into, is entirely up to us. When I applied for this fellowship, I knew what the compensation would be, and proposed a project that would fit the budget. While I did not expect the fellowship to provide me with a full-time job; I saw it as a chance to prove that a project I cared about had merit and was worth being pursued. 

While academic institutions may appropriate ideas, what we do with our ideas, and what we turn them into, is entirely up to us.

...I did not expect the fellowship to provide me with a full time job; I saw it as a chance to prove that a project I cared about had merit and was worth being pursued. 

What was your next step after the fellowship?

This project has been a long-standing, collaborative effort held together by a group of volunteer teachers for over 6 years. We all hope to maintain this steady yet consistent effort in the years to come, as well. 

The fellowship extended the scope of our work by allowing us to do more than just weekend classes; to work towards spreading these lesson plans further and to conscientiously think about what we were hoping to achieve. In fact, the annual workshops actually cost so little that we have enough funding to do workshops for the next four years. We just finished the second round. So, LBGT continues! 

What are you working on now, and how is it tied to the work done during the fellowship?

I’d like to think that I work on multiple projects that are intellectually diverse but able to inform each other. I currently work as a Project Designer at James Carpenter Design Associates in New York. As someone very early in practice, I’m still learning. Engaging in the practice of architecture and design keeps me constantly stimulated, and these experiences are frequently translated back into bite-sized lesson plans for kids. They may sound like different worlds, but it’s all part of the same practice.  

Engaging in the practice of architecture and design keeps me constantly stimulated, and these experiences are frequently translated back into bite-sized lesson plans for kids.

They may sound like different worlds, but it’s all part of the same practice.  

Any advice for future fellows?

Find your heroes or mentors! There are so many people out there asking the same questions. Read their work.