Season 2 Episode 02 Podcast Transcript

Interview with Nina Maritz

Episode Title: Practicing Locally: The Holistic Approach to Architectural Design

Host: Grace Aaraj
Audio Engineer and Editor: Mary Anne Funk

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Grace Aaraj: Welcome to Design For Spatial Justice Podcast Series launched by the University of Oregon’s School of Architecture and Environment. 2020 changed the way we live and how we connect with one another. This season, we recorded episodes from our offices, home offices and living rooms, sometimes surrounded by a baby born mid August 2020. She is mine and her name is Joy.

Through our remote discussions among colleagues and friends, we are bringing you insights from design for spatial justice fellows who taught on campus or remotely from other parts of the world, and from sponsors who made the design for spatial Justice initiative possible.

We are talking to you from and about Beirut, Oregon, California, Michigan, Namibia and Sudan. Our spatial justice realities and concerns could be your own as well. With each episode of the podcast, you are brought a little closer to understanding spatial justice and how it is practiced and taught.

Episodes were prepared with hope, pride, but also frustration by the injustices we are surrounded with. This is Grace Aaraj Design For Spatial Justice Fellow 2020 and 2021 and for the upcoming episodes, I am excited to be your host.

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Grace Aaraj: In this episode of the podcast of Design for Spatial Justice from the University of Oregon, we’re happy to have with us: Nina Maritz. Nina Joined School of Architecture and Environment as a Design for Spatial Justice Fellow during fall 2020 and taught an architectural seminar on experimental building materials focusing on low cost, eco friendly products. Maritz is a fifth generation Namibian architect, started her own practice in 1998 in Windhoek, and has been involved with a variety of projects combining environmental sustainability, alternative building methods, and community development. She is best known for the design of the Habitat Research and Development Centre in Katatura and the Twyfelfontein Visitors’ Centre.

Grace Aaraj: So Nina, we’re happy to have you today.

Nina Maritz: Thank you, Grace. It’s lovely to be here.

Grace Aaraj: Nina, how do you think about spatial justice, and can you tell us a little bit about your experience teaching at the University of Oregon as part of the Design For Spatial Justice Initiative?

Nina Maritz: So when I was dealing with the students, one of the things that I noticed is that, if I mentioned working with impoverished people in Namibia, or elsewhere in Africa, it’s seen as romantic, and exotic. But when one talks to the students about having a project that deals with the homeless that sleep under the bridge near the white stag building in Portland, it was suddenly as if there was a kind of a withdrawal. And some people were very enthusiastic, but other people were not quite sure how we would handle that. I think it’s because people don’t see the social injustice in their own sphere.

Nina Maritz: So much of what we do as architects is to benefit the privileged or the elite. And it’s not paid to benefit the community as a whole. So for example, if you do a building, whatever building it is, whether it’s a house or an office building, and so on, you do have to think of the street and the passers by. How do they get to use the space? So when you start looking at spatial justice, social justice, environmental justice, those are all things that interconnect in a way that has to do with being fair and being in balance and taking a holistic approach about things.

Nina Maritz: I think architecture should contain everything as far as it can, in terms of respect for the environment, respect for people’s cultures. Being an African and living in Africa, what’s very important for us is the concept of ubuntu, which means I am because you are. And it’s that sense of community that you’ve got to evaluate what you do and how you do it in the concept of how will it benefit the community.

Grace Aaraj: Which leads me to this question about if there was specific people or specific events throughout your lifetime throughout your education that inspired you or taught you values, or lessons that you still carry with you.

Nina Maritz: I can mention quite a lot. We can start with my parents, who taught us to be very non prejudiced.

Nina Maritz: I grew up under a Nationalist government in apartheid, South Africa, and I went to a government school. In my class of about 30 people there were only two of us that really had those kind of parents. And we had several arguments with other people in the class, about issues like apartheid and respect for other people, etc. Then that continued at university, seeing the whole influx control thing happening. What happened is that South Africa had the Group Areas Act, which prevented people from moving from rural areas into the cities. They had passed laws, and people weren’t allowed to go to certain places. So the majority of black people were confined to the countryside, and struggled to make a living then. So in 1986, they lifted influx control; they let that law go, and people streamed to the cities in order to find work. And it really made an impact on me, how they managed to try and make a living in the most brutal of circumstances. Rain that wouldn’t stop for three weeks, their shacks that would be underwater, like knee deep in winter, in freezing weather. And because we were involved, our projects, for instance: many of them related to these issues.

Grace Aaraj: You mentioned the holistic approach, which actually leads me to this next question, which is very casual: how do you usually spend your days? And I’m asking that, so you tell us about how you spend your time in terms of staying up to date or reading topics that interest you, about favorite food, your favorite music? Which actually leads you to forming all of these ideas and knowledge about other cultures and other countries while being based in Namibia to form your holistic way of looking at things.

Nina Maritz: How I spend my day depends on whether it’s a work day or not. But since the last few weeks have been mostly workdays, it consists of getting up, making tea. I drink ribose tea, which you probably know as red bush. Ribose grows in South Africa so it’s kind of a traditional tea for many people in the southern part of Africa. And then I wash. I don’t shower more than once or twice a week because we have had a water crisis for a few years. So I use about, I would say, two liters of water in a little basin, and I wash myself from top to toe with that. But in terms of the water issue, what also struck me with washing in two liters of water is that most of the people in the informal settlements don’t even have two liters to wash in a day. They might have one liter. So it makes you aware of that kind of daily struggles that people have who are less privileged.

Grace Aaraj: I think your example, specifically the intimate ones, the examples that show your daily life small actions, as a concerned citizen, are very impressive, specifically in sustainability. Sometimes we rely on technology more than human behavior, whether this human is informed or uninformed of their actions. I think that’s a very fascinating example about commitment towards the environment.

Nina Maritz: Well, I’m a naturally frugal person. I don’t like waste. And one of the reasons I do such a lot of recycled materials in my buildings is because I have the kind of scavenger mentality. I love finding things, and thinking of what you can do with it, you know: it’s like a puzzle that you work out.

Nina Maritz: My office is in an old art building at my house, which I, of course, enjoy very much to have my house and my office in the same place but separated so that I can go home in the evening. It was originally a single story building. We took the roof of one half of it and put on another floor, and then reuse the old timbers and the old roof sheets for the new roof. We reuse the old windows and we added some more windows and doors, kind of like restruction rearrangement of space and it’s in a big garden. It creates a very restful environment. So it’s very similar to a lot of the projects that we do.

Grace Aaraj: Nina, who is frugal and conscious about the environment, were you secretly happy that you are teaching as part of the fellowship remotely rather than in person, because of the effect that a lot of travel and air travel specifically from Namibia to Eugene would have?

Nina Maritz: I must say, I was quite relieved, about the travel but also partly because it allowed me to ease into it a little bit more easily rather than having to completely change my place where I live because it’s very unsettling to go to the other side of the world and have to stay there for a long time.

Nina Maritz: But what was quite interesting about the online situation is, I think a lot of the students revealed more and were more open online than they would in a class situation.

Grace Aaraj: Yes, perfect. Books or articles? Anything you read?

Nina Maritz: I like books about places and people living in places. You know when people write about their daily life and what they do and what they cook. And then I like books about plants. Not scientific books, but storybooks about plants, you know, people who write kind of popular science about plants. I like anthropology. I like certain kinds of romance novels. I really like detective stories.

Grace Aaraj: So, favorite food with the recipe. So, careful what you select.

Nina Maritz: So what is my favorite food? I’m gluten intolerance but I love pasta. So we now have chickpea and lentil pasta: that’s delicious. And then also, I love risotto. There’s just something about it, which is so tasty and comforting.

Grace Aaraj: One last fun exercise if you’re ready for it.

Nina Maritz: Yes.

Grace Aaraj: Okay. So this is where I mention a concept or an idea and I ask you to describe it twice, one time by saying what this idea is to you, and another time by saying what this idea is not to you.

Nina Maritz: Okay, let’s try.

Grace Aaraj: Practicing locally, is and isn’t?

Nina Maritz: Practicing locally is very important because one has to get under the skin of a place and its culture and its environment. I don’t approve of this kind of global jetsetting architects who do the same building in five different cities or 20 different cities in the world. Practicing locally can be very rewarding but it is not necessarily a route to fame and fortune.

Grace Aaraj: Spatial justice is and isn’t?

Nina Maritz: Spatial justice is the necessity for every person to have equal access to the physical and the non physical things that make up the world around us. I think spatial justice is not something that is going to be achieved for everyone. It is going to be an ongoing struggle towards achieving spatial justice. And people mustn’t get impatient about it, but they must carry on, people mustn’t give up.

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Grace Aaraj: Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Design For Spatial Justice Podcast Series. This is Grace Aaraj, your host signing off from Beirut, Lebanon, and Mary Anne Funk, our editor from Portland, Oregon. The music you hear in every episode is by Chicoco Radio—all the way from the waterfront settlements of Port Harcourt Nigeria.

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