It’s quiet outside the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning building on the U.C. campus when we meet Priyanka Sen. We each wear a colorful cloth mask, and the wide concrete benches outside this building where she’s spent so much of her time allow for a distanced conversation on a beautiful, blustery afternoon.

Priyanka is a person who sees the possibility of things, be it a blank sheet of paper or an application for affordable housing. A common thread throughout her story is that of going after worthwhile endeavors with all that she has. It was a privilege to hear about the journey her life has taken so far, and where she’s going next.

Interview by Laura Leavitt. Photography by Angie Lipscomb.

How’s your summer going so far?

“Unprecedented” is pretty much the word people keep using. I’m still teaching – teaching the second-year interior studio here at the School of Architecture and Interior Design – and also working full-time at G.B.B.N. Architects downtown.

If I’m not busy, not working and thinking about how to transform myself and the work I’m doing, I just don’t feel very fulfilled. There are also those times when I just want to watch Netflix and tune the world out for a little bit, so that’s also important. I don’t know how not to be busy, which is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

I’m either running at 160 miles per hour, or I’m on a beach reading a book and not thinking about anything.

Why architecture and design? Where does your interest come from?

I studied art history as an undergraduate at Boston University, and I kind of fell into architecture. They had a fantastic professor, an architecture historian, who became my mentor, and I studied architectural history and art history and then got the design bug. I love learning the history and theory of these things. What if I used my skills differently? I think I always loved watching buildings go up. Thinking about how we build community and society’s fabric – that’s what led me many years later to design school at the University of Cincinnati.

I wanted architecture to be more than it currently is. I wanted it to imprint more on community and society, and how we think about each other and spaces. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve focused my efforts on thinking about that, changing how I think about teaching. With everything that is going on in the world, I’ve been thinking more deeply about how we need to impact future generations and our earth. I would like to leave more of a legacy, getting my students to think about projects more deeply.

I bet teaching this year has had some major shifts.

We took a really big pivot in what our studio was meant to be this summer. It’s an interior design studio, and we study the workplace. The workplace has changed so much because of COVID-19. How we think about working has changed. We’re addressing COVID-19, and we’re revolutionizing how we think about ourselves as workplace designers, plus everything else in terms of Black Lives Matter has happened. It felt like an opportunity to talk about these things.

It was a decision I made as a designer that I thought would be meaningful and inclusive, but it was quite the opposite.

We’ve pivoted our studio project to talk more specifically about power structures and power dynamics in society and how those express themselves in the urban fabric. Exterior and interior, a lot of what we talk about is how we make inclusive spaces: How do we celebrate memory and history? How do we acknowledge what’s happened in the past and try to change the future? I think the most interesting piece I’ve learned in the past few weeks of doing this is that I don’t know if you can design inclusive spaces the way we envision them, but we have to try. We have to have conversations about it.

It’s a strange culmination of certain things that have happened in my life, leading me to this moment. The story hasn’t even started yet, for me. It’s just beginning. There’s an energy around that change right now, and I want to see where it goes and how we think about it.

Do you always notice how people use physical spaces, as a designer yourself?

I know designers are all different in their ways of thinking. Still, I think architects and architectural designers, most of them have a really specific vision of how they want a space to be used, and it’s good to have that vision. But, you’re also making spaces for people, and for people to engage with them: What have you done as a designer to help them experience this place? As a young designer, that’s what I’m striving to do in my own career.

You mentioned this year feels like a culmination. Were there any big moments along the way when you felt a big jump forward?

Not an immediate, in-the-moment realizing; everything for me has been hindsight. There are moments when I realize something is happening, and I can acknowledge it at the moment, but [this was] the first time I felt in my professional career like something pretty special was happening. Every stepping stone has built to this moment, a reflective piece of looking back and saying, “Wow, that small thing did catapult me into something different.”

Looking backward, you can see all the steps you took to get here. It all makes sense, but at the same time, sometimes it doesn’t. VOUCHED was the first moment when the stones were coming together to make a big landing pad. I felt the gravity of it all. That was pretty exciting and powerful for a young designer.

How did you get connected with people’s Liberty to start the VOUCHED project?

I'd heard of it through the grapevine in graduate school. I looked into different grant opportunities, and I’d had a crazy idea. In 2009, I was part of the Commonwealth Corps in Massachusetts, where I worked for an affordable housing nonprofit helping people fill out Section 8 housing paperwork. Even getting on the Section 8 list is difficult, and you may not know what to do, but you can see what isn’t working. I wanted to help as much as I could in the process.

Fast forward eight or nine years later. When I thought about People’s Liberty, [I’d think] they are all about the crazy ideas. I thought, “There’s no better time and no better place to try this out and see if they take it.” I applied, saying I was interested in Section 8 housing. There’s a lot of news about eviction and housing challenges in Cincinnati, and I said, “What if we were able to create a resource for the individual?” As much information as we can compile as a booklet; not thousands of pages of text, but rather a visual resource to make it clear.

About a month later, I interviewed with them and ended up getting the project grant. It was so exciting and incredibly nerve-wracking. I knew the research was needed, but how, as a designer with some research on affordable housing and affordable housing policy, could I marry these skills I needed to have with the knowledge? I wanted it to be a useful thing for the community; it could be really meaningful to Cincinnati.

How did you go about the project?

The process was six months long. I met some of the most amazing people in the Cincinnati community, and they were so crucial to giving me the energy I needed to go out and do the work. I ended up using a method called participatory design, where you reach out to the community you’re working with and let them give you all the knowledge they have because there’s no way I’d be able to know all the situations of Section 8 housing. I asked, “What is the experience you’ve had with landlords to whom you’ve given the Section 8 vouchers?”

I had a core group of about ten individuals I worked with throughout the six months; they would sit and tell me everything that they know. The last piece was showing them the book. It was quite scary; you’re designing things you think are pretty and helpful, and then you give it to the community you’re hoping to help.

One of the biggest pieces of feedback I got was that the book was all black and white. That was accessible, and I showed it to my group of ten confidantes, and they said, “No, we don’t like this, it’s very cold. We need color; why is there no color in here?” It was a decision I made as a designer that I thought would be meaningful and inclusive, but it was quite the opposite.

It was the most humbling experience, honestly. It was amazing to be able to go back to the board and rethink the design of the book. They liked having all the information in one place and thought it was so helpful, but they didn’t like the design. I took all of this into consideration, and a lot of it made it into the book, in terms of graphics. I had a launch event, and I invited all those individuals who helped me with the book. When they saw the final copy – which they hadn’t seen – they were like, “Yes! You did it! This is exactly what we want!”

The book was so well received; so many people wanted copies of them that I had to order triple the amount I had initially anticipated. They are all gone now.

How did you get started teaching?

I have always wanted to teach. I figured it’d be much later [in my life], but in the School of Architecture and Interior Design, they hire one or more of the graduates to teach in the first-year foundations program. It ended up working out, and it changed the trajectory of my life and where I thought I’d be going.

This August, I’m going to pursue my Ph.D. in New York. It was supposed to be just one year of teaching; three years later with no semesters off from teaching, it has completely changed my life and how I think about design and education and what I want to do with my life.

Have you thought about what kind of in-depth work you want to do in the PH.D.?

Yes and no – I find myself in between wanting to do very abstract, theoretical things, and also very practical research. I think there’s a way to hybridize those two things, but I’m not exactly sure how to do that.

I did my master’s thesis here on choreography and dance and space, which was pretty amazing because I was a ballet dancer for many years. As an architect, I’m one of the designers for the new Center for Dance that’s going up.

Exterior and interior, a lot of what we talk about is how we make inclusive spaces: How do we celebrate memory and history? How do we acknowledge what’s happened in the past and try to change the future?

Cincinnati has been the connector for me in so many different ways. If you had told me even five years ago that I’d work on the Cincinnati Ballet project, I would have thought you were crazy. Somehow, stars aligned enough for that to happen.

It was an alignment that made me want to do the Ph.D. I thought: How many more things can connect in those five years? What will I look back on for the past seven years in Cincinnati? I’ll see how they were a springboard for where I’ll land next.

It’s a little strange to talk about the next five years given all that has changed in the past months, but that’s where all of that ended up landing.

Were there times in the process of designing the ballet where you felt like a participatory design person?

Every day! It was crazy, in an interesting sort of way. I was new to G.B.B.N. when I started the project. They knew me; the woman who interviewed me was super interested in my thesis project. She wanted to know all these weird abstract things I’d been thinking about two years prior.

They hired me and said I’d be working on the Cincinnati Ballet project. Every day, they’d ask, “How do we do this?” The designers had to learn to trust me to know what I was talking about. It may not look pretty in the rendering, but it needs to be a functioning dance space.

The building is well underway, and it’s bittersweet not to be here to watch it be built. I’m definitely coming back for the opening next year. I was experiencing so many pieces of my life driving by the site, seeing ballet bars drawn on my rendering. I told my parents when I got the new job, and they said, “No! You’re working on a ballet? How is that even possible?” and I said, “I don’t know, but here we are!” It’s a dream come true.

It’s interesting to reflect again. It’s a good thing to do before your life changes in a meaningful way. Cincinnati, for me, has been a moment when all these things are launching, and they feel like they’re part of a deep foundation of me as a person and a designer. There’s no way I can walk away from this city and not have it completely imprinted on how I think. There are so many magnificent people I’ve met, who have changed my life and changed how I think about everything. That’s all you can ask for in this kind of situation.

What’s your favorite building in Cincinnati?

I gotta go with Zaha Hadid, the Contemporary Arts Center. It’s just – there’s no way not to walk into that space. I know every inch of that space, or I feel like I do. Every time I look at it or go into it, I see something different. That’s kind of what I love about architecture and design. You get to go back to a place and see something different. You see the detail, the use of materiality, the curves. It’s definitely my favorite. It was her first building in the States. Our city has put so much effort into the urban fabric, especially for a smaller city (it’s not New York or Chicago), so it’s amazing.

Who is an important or influential woman in your life?

My mom. My parents are immigrants to America, and I appreciate both my parents more every year I get older. I appreciate my mom more and more because she was new to the country and had a lot of unknowns, went to graduate school, had a family, and was a great mom who took me to ballet class every single day. I know that was really hard for her at the time, working a job and making sure I had every opportunity I wanted: from shoes to leotards, everything my heart desired. She’s still so excited about things I get excited about, like working on the ballet project. It’s so fresh and new to her, and even when I don’t want to talk about it, she wants to know about it. It’s a nice reminder and a memory that we did come this far. That connection has been very meaningful.

I will say a newer person has been the woman I’ve been working for at G.B.B.N., Marcene Kinney, the principal architect who interviewed me. She’s been part of why I wanted to do a Ph.D. Even though she’s a principal and she works every day in a firm, she knows I have this weird abstract brain and how I think about design. She’s been such an important supporter. She encouraged me not to be afraid to say things even if it’s strange and no one understands it.

When I said that I was leaving G.B.B.N. and Cincinnati, she said, “This is so bittersweet, but I’m so excited for you because this is what you wanted. You’ve been searching for this even in the year and a half I’ve known you. I’m still so sad you’re leaving, and you won’t be here.” Every time I talk to her, she says she’s so excited for me and that I’m going to do the things we all dream about doing, creating weird abstract ideas and making a building from them. She’s also pretty phenomenal; she’s one of three (I believe) female principals at our firm. It’s pretty rare in architecture, as the field is still pretty white and male dominant. So to have a female partner there be invested in young designers who are three years out of school is great. She hasn’t been in my life as long, but she’s left a lasting impact on how I think about a lot of things.

Do you know an awesome woman of Cincy? Nominate her here! New features launch on Mondays.

Connecting the Dots: Architectural Designer and Affordable Housing Advocate Priyanka Sen