As a Canadian who is ethnically Chinese and was born in the Philippines, I am very familiar and feel rather comfortable with the tension of being in the in-between. In-between cultures, in-between countries, and in-between places. In fact, I see the value in the in-betweens as I resonate with their (in)significance while making their significance as the occupier of the space. These are spaces that make up intersections and cross sections, which are neither north nor south, neither right nor left, but rather at the threshold.


Critical theorist Homi Bhabha calls the interstitial space we occupy the "third space." Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "interstitial" as "occurring in or being an interval or intervening space." It is mostly used in the medical field to refer to the fluid surrounding the cells of a tissue and in architecture as the space located between the floors. It is in the interstitial spaces where we hear from both sides of the "room" and can make connections. It is in the in-between where there is an allowance for something not yet defined. In such spaces, there is comfort and freedom to be and for curiosities to become.

I discover new opportunities by focusing on the spaces that occupy the in-between, the spaces that are undervalued and, therefore, mostly unseen. As a designer, I can see both sides of the in-between, which allows me the room to imagine new possibilities without the pressure of seeing what's necessarily presented. I believe this is what sets good designers apart: the ability to see the nuances that others may miss. I see this as being a design rethinker, someone who doesn't simply use design thinking, but rather rethinks and considers the issue at hand from a new perspective. Sometimes it is also in the in-betweens where answers lie and where opportunities abound


The in-between is also the place where the DESIGNwith incubator lab for social and environmental sustainability lives.

I began DESIGNwith as a way to imagine how we might approach design for social innovation differently to achieve different results in the community, perhaps toward a more equitable one. The idea emerged in 2015 when I read the City of Toronto's Poverty Reduction Strategy and wondered who was included when it talked about the grand idea of prosperity for all. I saw both a problem and an opportunity to create an alternative economy as a way for others to share in this prosperity and use design to elevate marginalized communities with specific skills to make and produce marketable goods.

With my design students, I began co-designing with mid-career women who were skilled seamstresses in their home countries using design as a tool to create soft goods products as part of a livelihood program. Co-designing eventually became a participatory design experience when I brought my design students into the community as part of true experiential leaming, using a design studio classroom as a living lab. This was the start of the iterative design process that eventually led to the creation of what DESIGNwith is today. Seeing the students' learnings outside the four walls of a university and eventually understanding how the lines of teaching and learning are blurred when the students are directly designing with the women in the sewing collective gave rise to the idea of a design-driven community space positioned between marginalized communities and academia.

A Literal Intersection

It takes a village. DESIGNwith lies at the center of the intersection between corporation, academia, and community If you take a pin to the map of downtown Torento, DESIGNwith is literally in the middle of the Ontario College of Art and Design University and the Regent Park community, where most of the women from the sewing collective live.

Regent Park is home to many immigrants. It sits on a former large block of social housing, which through a recent revitalization program has been turned into a mixed-use community with mixed-income residents. However, the average income for families in Regent Park is still much less than the average in Toronto, leaving many living under the poverty line. One mile away from Regent Park where the Toronto streetcar runs along Dundas Street is the east-west thread that connects the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, where DESIGNwith is located. It is here that DESIGNwith occupies the interstitial space where it is neutral -neither the community nor academia-which is important to note when working with marginalized communities.

DESIGNwith brings together a creative collective and the sewists, the women of Regent Park, into the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, which is Canada's busiest mall attracting over 50 million visitors annually, making it the most accessible space in Canada. If we truly want to reach the community through design for social innovation programming, accessibility to the most diverse group of people matters.

However, what makes the CF Toronto Eaton Centre the ideal location for DESIGNwith is not just its proximity to where the women live in Regent Park. Our workshop also reflects our vision of this democratization by reserving seats for Regent Park community members along with designers and design students, corporate executives, and the public alike.

DESIGNwith is not a lab like a traditional business incubator, but rather a lab to incubate skills and ideas. People bring with them many skills gained through their lived experiences, and Toronto, being one of the most diverse cities in the world, is home to many undervalued skills and ideas. By disseminating our programming, exhibitions, and design research output in a mall setting, we hope alternative economies will be launched out of people gaining new knowledge and seeing value in their lived experiences along with the new skills they've gained through DESIGNwith.

The Mall as the Third Space

As a designer, I see connections every single day. This is what makes designing an entrepreneurial act, because in designing, we are both future-facing while problem-solving.

We are seeing connections that take us into the future while creating something that is still unknown and unimagined. it was in the depths of the pandemic as the world around us changed in an instant that I started to imagine a brick-and-mortar space for DESIGNwith. When most people were hoping to get back to normal, some of us started to question what normal was while also imagining what a new normal would and could look like.

I saw an opportunity and presented a design proposal to a group of thoughtful individuals from Cadillac Fairview, the owner and manager of the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, to imagine together what a design incubator for community engagement could look like and to further Cadillac Fairview's mandate of transforming communities. On June 24, 2022, we opened the doors to DESIGNwith. Within its 635-square-foot space, the modular furniture collection is designed to easily transform a small space into multiple functions for public workshops, lunch-and-learn seminars, participatory design, and gallery exhibitions.

We designed the space to be mostly windows, which will function as a literal window into design so people can gain knowledge without even stepping foot inside. A looping video on the wall showcases process work illustrating design as an iterative process. Through the windows, DESIGNwith is letting the public in on what we often do not see in design, the mess we call the design process.

DESIGNwith democratizes the learnings of design through both observation and participation to produce an alternative economy that others can participate in where they can prosper and come together from diverse backgrounds to share and make while learning and contributing their skills.

From DESIGNwith's branding to its space design to its programming, it's a unique intersection that shares knowledge about design for social innovation and circular design practices. The space itself is an example of a circular economy as the large windows and lighting were all reused from former storefronts in the mall. The fumiture collection was designed using dimensional lumber and for disassembly, adaptability, standardization, repair, and remanufacturing — all circular design principles.

We aim to democratize the learnings of design not just through our programming but also through the space itself.
The exploded view of a stoal design on the wall visible from the outside conveys this mission. Through aur thoughtfully designed space and programming, we are making design accessible to the average person, instead of keeping it within the four walls of a design school.

It's Time to Democratize the Learnings of Design 

Design is entrepreneurial when it innovatively serves a need and, therefore, is naturally good for business. When DESIGNwith opened its doors, it attracted more than 13 million media impressions, which is a measurable outcome showing its resonance with the public. The public now sees through corporate greenwashing and demands authenticity from corporations. Through participatory design, accessi-bility, and values-based programming, DESIGNwith builds authenticity by informing the public about and involving them in social and circular design. This democratizes the learnings of design through making and doing using circular principles, which then translates into circular ways of living.

A partnership like DESIGNwith is a mutually beneficial collaboration between the three pillars of academia, corporation, and community, with every pillar doing its part to push the communal agenda forward for the betterment of the community.

"It is only by approaching community differently that we can expect to achieve different results."

The corporation's role needs to be a commitment to depth and authenticity, which may include both time and money. Cadillac Fairview's partnership comprises the space build-out to ensure DESIGNwith's needs were met and donating the monthly lease payment in kind. This partnership is a great example of how large corporations can positively impact communities. DESIGNwith is academia's outlet for democratizing design learnings while inviting the community's involvement through participatory design.

Together, our collective sum is what makes DESIGNwith a unique community space to tackle some of society's most complex problems at a local level. The DESIGNwith approach is a framework that can also be replicated in other cities with similar needs using a similar partnership triad with shared values. Societal needs can also be translated as market forces, such as advanced technology, the gig economy, post-materialism, and our most pressing case, the climate crisis.
DESIGNwith as a design lab serves the need for a circular economy, experiential retail, purposeful innovation, and retail incubators. When tackling important issues such as the circular economy and social innovation, marginalized communities benefit the most because they are often most affected due to being the most vulnerable.

DESIGNwith is a caring design practice by rethinking our design practices and thoughtfully considering and including those in our communities who are not otherwise invited to the design table. In this way, we uplift communities in the margins and those in the in-betweens while we co-create our futures together. At DESIGNwith, we value what is unseen because unforeseen entrepreneurial opportunities exist in the interstitial spaces.