Interview with Public Defender

Friday, Nov. 14
11AM
Martinsburg, VA
Interview with Chief Public Defender Deborah Lawson

Perspective:

South African Embassy Query

Dear Mrs. Bayat,I am an independent filmmaker and graduate student in conflicttransformation at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. Mycolleague, Brenda Waugh, a lawyer, and I are working on a documentaryabout architecture and how it affects justice.We are interested in speaking with someone from the South African embassyor a representative from South Africa about the Supreme Court there andits design. We understand that the Supreme Court in South Africa wascreated to promote representation and transparency and feel a discussionabout it would provide very good background in our project.Any suggestions that you might have would be most welcome. Thank you foryour attention to this request. I look forward to your reply.I can be reached on this email or on my cell phone at 703-597-7766.All Best,Paulette Moorewww.paulettefilms.com

Rough Draft of Our Design Outline

PAX 521 –Qualitative Research and Evaluation
Paulette Moore/Brenda Waugh – Design Rough Draft
pmoore2@su.edu
brenda.waugh@emu.edu
703-597-7766
Dr. Terrence Jantzi
jantzit@emu.edu
1-Oct-08

A Look at Architectural Justice; Design Issues and Options

1. The primary purpose of the study.

The purpose of the study is to examine how architecture and built environment process of addressing community conflict as it relates to law and related issues of a community’s feelings of justice.

We feel this study constitutes applied research because the source of the questions is in the problems and concerns experienced by people and could be articulated by policymakers. We not only are trying to understand and explain the nature of a phenomenon, we are also trying to understand how to deal with what is perceived as a significant societal issue.

There could also be an element of action research in this project because researcher Brenda Waugh is a lawyer affected by her built environment and her aim is to illuminate the problems she sees in her community.

2. The focus of the study.

The focus of the study will be the designers, the clients and the observers of both historic and modern day courtrooms. We will also examine the courtrooms which they design an in which they operate.

Interviewees include:

Lawyers

Clerks; both administrative and clerks who keep the history of the courthouse

Probation Officers

Brings the guys from the jail Security and Dignity.

Judges

Security Personnel

Litigants

Architectural historians, architects and designers

Local planning Commission – County Commission

Clarke Co. Commonwealth Atty.

Dr. Howard Zehr

Cleaning people


3. The units of analysis.

The units of analysis will be the people that we interview and the courthouses with which they interact.

4. The sampling strategies

We intend to profile two courthouses and the people who use them in West Virginia and one in Clark County because they seem to represent the potential for an impediment to justice for their bad design, acoustics and representational art.

We also intend to profile the (fairly) new Supreme Court building in South Africa because the stated purpose of its design was to promote justice and fair representation with its beautiful design and its art collection which is deliberate about representing a diverse South African population.

We anticipate this will be a combination of extreme or deviant based sampling because we hope to learn from perceived outstanding successes and failures in architectural justice design. We also feel that because we are treading on fairly fresh, new ground this study could be considered theory-based sampling because we are trying to find theoretical constructs of interest to examine the construct and its variation.

5. The types of data collected.

We will collect videotaped interviews with identified subjects and tour the available courthouses with a camera to document their physical space. Of the courthouses to which we will not have access, we will secure still photos online or videotape from news sources.

Where available, we hope to examine design plans to follow the process of architectural justice design.

We also conduct a literature review of topics related to the use of the built environment.

6. The type and degree of control.

We’ve chosen cases for study because they are information rich and illuminative so it seems we are headed down the path of purposeful sampling. However, because this seems to be a subject that has not been examined in depth we feel an openness to adapt our inquiry as our understanding deepens and anticipate that our original theories about this topic will grow and change so we allow for emergent design flexibility.

7. The analytical approach.

The researchers will conduct their analysis by intermixing interviews with those who create and analyze the built environment to do with architectural justice design and those who are affected by that design with observation of particular courtrooms and analysis of existing documents describing design and analyzing the built environment.

The results will be synthesized into a documentary organized into themes. Initial themes which will drive the inquiry include: History, Design, Function and Vision.

8. How the validity of the findings will be addressed.

We feel a confidence of the validity of findings because we begin with the expertise of project researcher Brenda Waugh, a lawyer with rich experience in the justice system in Virginia and West Virginia and in the particular structures around which our analysis revolves.

Project researcher Paulette Moore, a documentary television producer and journalist with 25 years of experience in national and international production, joins Waugh with a track record for well-researched, responsible and illuminating projects which have often been focused on processes and the experience of those who operate within those processes.

We feel the combination of the researchers’ experiences lends itself to validity in our findings.

9. Timeline, sequencing, phases.

Oct. 2 – 20: Preproduction, research, interview design and interview set up.

Oct. 20 – Nov. 15: Interviews carried out, transcripts created and digital load completed.

Nov. 15 – Dec. 1: Edit presentable rough cut of documentary.

***Literature review will be conducted throughout the entire project so there can be linkages without predetermining a point of view about the built environment.


10. Logistics and practicalities.

Brenda Waugh:
-West Virginia research, preproduction, scheduling of interviews.

-Contacts Howard Zehr for possible suggestions of Architectural Justice experts

-Conducts interviews.

-Sorts through material, decides on story structure and sound bites.

Paulette Moore:
-Secures camera equipment from Shenandoah University.

-Researches and schedules Clark County interviews.

-Researches and schedules American Institute of Architecture interviews if appropriate.

-Researches, schedules interview with South African embassy official about S. Africa’s new Supreme Court.

-Videotapes interviews.

-Sorts through material, decides on story structure and sound bites.

-Edits material.

11. Ethical issues and matters of confidentiality.

Ethical matters and matters of confidentiality will be dealt with as they arise. Each person interviewed will sign a standard release form which will allow use of the material gathered in all media, all productions, and in perpetuity.


12. Resources available. Cost of study.
Resources include:

Brenda Waugh – Researcher, observer

Paulette Moore – Producer, editor

Camera equipment

Lighting equipment

Audio equipment

Video tapes

Editing equipment

The cost of the study will be minimal as all equipment and personnel time is donated.

A Brief Review of the Decade's Architectural Literature

http://www.jstor.org/pss/988278

A Brief Review of the Decade's Architectural Literature
Adolf K. Placzek
The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1965), pp. 34-35 (article consists of 2 pages)
Published by: Society of Architectural Historians

Society of Architectural Historians
Website: http://www.sah.org
Publisher DescriptionThe Society of Architectural Historians was founded in 1940 to advance the history and preservation of architecture, urbanism, landscape and applied design world wide. The Society serves scholars, architects, preservationists, planners, professionals in allied fields, and the interested public. Membership to SAH is open to everyone, regardless of profession or expertise. Benefits of membership in SAH include a quarterly scholarly journal, JSAH; a bi-monthly Newsletter; reduced registration for the Society's scholarly annual meeting; opportunities to apply for research, publication, and travel grants; opportunities to participate in domestic and foreign study tours; access to an electronic Listserv; access to AIA/CES credits; and admission to the historic Charnley-Persky House.

This publisher offers individual subscriptions to specific journals.See a list of journals available through individual access
Contact Information
Society of Architectural HistoriansPauline Saliga, Executive DirectorNancy Stieber, JSAH Editor1365 N. Astor StreetChicago, IL 60610-2144Tel. 312.573.1365Fax 312.573.1141Email of Director: psaliga@sah.org Email of Editor: Nancy.Stieber@umb.edu

The Architecture of Happiness - Literature Review

http://www.alaindebotton.com/pages/about/contact.asp?PageID=106

One of the great, but often unmentioned, causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kind of walls, chairs, buildings and streets we’re surrounded by.And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be - and argues that it is architecture’s task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, the book has at its centre the large and naïve question: ‘What is a beautiful building?’ It amounts to a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture, which aims to change the way we think about our homes, streets and ourselves.

Alain de Botton was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1969 and now lives in London.

He is a writer of essayistic books, which refer both to his own experiences and ideas- and those of artists, philosophers and thinkers. It's a style of writing that has been termed a 'philosophy of everyday life.' His first book, Essays in Love [titled On Love in the US], minutely analysed the process of falling in and out of love. The style of the book was unusual, because it mixed elements of a novel together with reflections and analyses normally found in a piece of non-fiction. It's a book of which many readers are still fondest.

For all questions regarding rights & permissions in the UK and Commonwealth, contact literary agent Caroline Dawnay on ohunt@unitedagents.co.uk or write to her at United Agents, 12-26 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE, telephone: 44 (0) 20 3214 0800, fax 44 (0) 20 7166 5282, www.unitedagents.co.uk

For all questions regarding rights & permissions in the US, contact literary agent Nicole Aragi, 143 West 27th Street, #4F, New York NY, 10001, tel: 212 675 8353, email: queries@aragi.net, fax: 1800 854 7759 (domestic), fax: 206 374 6460 (international)
For all questions regarding representation outside the UK and US, contact Nicki Kennedy at nicki.kennedy@ila-agency.co.uk or write to her at ILA, Centric House, 390 - 391 Strand, London WC2R 0LT, United Kingdom, telephone 44 (0) 207 379 6611, fax 44 (0) 207 240 4724
For all questions regarding film and TV rights, contact St John Donald on sdonald@unitedagents.co.uk or write to him at United Agents, 12-26 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE, telephone: 44 (0) 20 3214 0800, fax 44 (0) 20 7166 5282, www.unitedagents.co.uk

Brenda writes from Austin

We decided to come out to Austin a little early and having never seen the Alamo-included a trip to San Antonio on our tour. We were walking along the "river walk" and came up to look around. There it was-the courthouse. The huge courthouse, built out of some red stone, was surrounded by construction stuff-it being in the process of renovation. However, the thing that struck me was the open "court yard" or "square" in front of the courthouse. The square was filled with a fountain, tables, and benches.

People (who didn't look like tourists) were sitting at the tables, playing cards or chess, reading, eating, talking...spending a Sunday afternoon. The "square" in front theyof the courthouse has been a fixture in many small towns in the US for centuries. I remember when I first graduated from law school, the square in front of the courthouse was filled with benches, and bordered by shops, like the Murphy's, where townspeople would gather in the morning for coffee and breakfast.

When I think about most of the historic courthouses I've been to, the square is as much a fixture as the courtroom.However, when I think about the newer courthouses, the square is gone. I've compared one of the courthouses where I practice to airport-in the way it looks. But after thinking about these courtyards, I start to think that the analogy is deeper. Have courthouses just become a place we stop off on our way to someplace else?

When the courtyard was a place where the community gathered, did that make the community a greater part of the judicial process? I did research on jury selection in law school. And in the old days, the bailiff would get a jury by going out to the courtyard and finding 12 men. While that method does not do enough to protect a defendant's right to a jury trial, it seems like it goes much further in including the community in the activity in the courthouse. Today, a courthouse has become another locale where the state exercises it's power over individuals, not a place where the community works to find solutions.

Does the disappearance of the square contribute to this?We've talked some about folks to interview and the county clerk in Berkeley County has been in that position for something like 40 or 50 years. His office is still in the old courthouse. I'm sure he could address some of the issues about what has been lost in the "new courthouse" so far as community involvement-so remind me to include Mr. Small in our list of interviewees.

South African Embassy Contacts - Possible

Public Diplomacy
Purpose: The effective presentation and promotion of South Africa's values, policies and image in the United States through the Ambassador, the Embassy, partnerships and events that promote, protect and enhance South Africa's national interest.

This is achieved through facilitating improved understanding of South Africa's foreign policy objectives and ensured through proactive media and public relations to maintain a prominent position in the US.

Mrs. Nadira Bayat Counselor:Public Diplomacy-Press Secretary Tel: 202-745-6605Fax: 202-232-5370Email:bayatn@foreign.gov.za

Mrs. Cecile Heppes (Away from the office until November 2008).First SecretaryTel: 202-745-6615Fax: 202-232-5370Email: heppesc@foreign.gov.za

Mr. Tebogo Kola First SecretaryTel: 202-745-6648Fax: 202-232-5370Email:kolat@foreign.gov.za