Culturally Sensitive Design (CSD)

Definition

Culturally Sensitive Design (CSD) is Tasoulla Hadjiyanni's research programme: "design that is characterized by flexibility and adaptability and that recognizes the multiplicity of ways by which people construct meaning in life." It names both a theory of the culture-design relation in a world of movement and a practice derived from her cross-cultural housing research with Hmong, Somali, Mexican, Ojibwe, and African American communities in Minnesota. CSD is grounded in the constructivist account of culture (cultural-constructivism): designs that "allow room for questioning how a group is defined move away from the paradigm of 'culture' as static and isolated, provide a forum for the sociopolitical context in which 'culture' is constructed to emerge, and allow issues such as colonization, globalization, immigration, and power differentials to come to the surface."

The programme is "closely linked to the Capabilities Approach" (capabilities-approach), Nussbaum's social justice theory, and translates theory into concrete design parameters: "retail interiors that boost wide aisles to accommodate large, extended families with children and elders; affordable housing that uses materials that can withstand mold and moisture in bathrooms and, therefore, are conducive to the washing ritual of devoted Muslim residents who cleanse before their daily prayers; and public libraries that include signs in diverse languages to attract and relate to a diverse population." Its scope is deliberately trans-scalar: "In policymaking, such theorizations can prompt mayors, lawmakers, and advocates to debate around how to develop decision-making processes that include multiple voices and perspectives."

Key Thinkers

• Tasoulla Hadjiyanni — the programme's founder: "I have called this line of work Culturally Sensitive Design (CSD)"; developed through the Culturally Enriched Communities framework and studies of Hmong, Somali, Mexican, Ojibwe, and African American housing experiences in Minnesota.
• Martha Nussbaum — the Capabilities Approach as CSD's social-justice frame: "What is each person able to do and to be?" (Creating Capabilities, 2011); not yet paged (see log).
• Stuart Hall — the representation frame: CSD designs are the "places from which to speak" translated "into conceptual diagrams and programmatic guidelines for residential environments"; not yet paged (see log).

Related Concepts

• Interiors as Global Constructs — the concept CSD operationalizes: interiors whose culture, identity, race, history, gender, and otherness are negotiated and produced.
• Capabilities Approach — the social-justice theory CSD is "closely linked" to: each person as an end; a set of opportunities or substantial freedoms.
• Bounded Choices — the condition CSD answers: choices "bounded by limitations brought forward by the built environment."
• Flexible Interior — the shared virtue with a different ground: CSD's flexibility is cultural-meaning flexibility (the washing ritual, the extended family), not only plan transformability.
• Gender and the Interior — the programme's gender register: values diverging from the mainstream, "such as women socializing separately from men," as the studio's "unanswerable questions."
• Assimilation and Resistance — the two dominant narratives CSD navigates "and everything in between."
• Suitability — the decorator tradition's cognate criterion (fitness of things to people): CSD as suitability's cultural extension across group difference.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Interiors as global constructs (Hadjiyanni 2018) — the founding source: the CSD definition; the three design translations (aisles, washing-ritual materials, multilingual signage); the Capabilities Approach linkage; the studio-teaching origin ("plunged into the murky waters of difference while teaching interior design studios on culturally sensitive housing"); the policymaking register.

Open Questions

• CSD's "flexibility and adaptability" are defined but not specified — what spatial mechanisms (movable elements, durable surfaces, adjustable layouts, signage systems) constitute a CSD toolkit, and how does it differ from the transformable-plan tradition (flexible-interior, schroder-house)?
• Who audits CSD? The programme warns against essentialist culture ("authentic," tangible, identifiable elements) — but its own translations (aisles for extended families, washing rituals, multilingual signs) re-instantiate group categories. Can design recognize "the multiplicity of ways by which people construct meaning" without fixing the group it designs for?
• "Who decides what is good and how could one know that something is virtuous?" (the chapter's own question): when CSD takes a position (e.g., accommodating gender-segregated socializing in secular federally funded housing), is it respecting difference or administering it?
• Is CSD's Capabilities-Approach warrant falsifiable — can a designed environment be measured as expanding or contracting "substantial freedoms," and what evidence base would the claim require?