Connection
Vol. 17, Issue 04 2019
AIA Honolulu’s commitment to racial justice Kapua Pimentel, Assoc. AIA, NOMA Pimentel is an architectural designer at Ferraro Choi and Associates, Ltd. in Honolulu, Hawaii. Pimentel is also a Native Hawaiian hula practitioner, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. (a public service and social justice organization working with a primary focus on the Black community), and a young designer working toward a decolonial understanding of architecture.
Throughout Hawaii’s stay-at-home order in March and April, our inboxes were flooded with actions taken by companies and organizations during this global pandemic. Shortly after the police killing of George Floyd, the emails focused on the national response to the Black Lives Matter movement, including AIA National’s message making its role and responsibility clear in dismantling systemic racism. I noticed that not many local Hawaii businesses or organizations had taken the time to publish a message on their stance or address the conversation at all. Hawaii is typically considered a “racial haven,” with many of our residents having diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. While there are inherent cultural differences from Hawaii to the U.S. continent, the problems of racial inequity still exist here, though they may come in different, not as obviously discussed ways. This became apparent to me during the AIA Honolulu Equity Diversity Inclusion Committee’s process for writing and issuing the Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Racial Justice. I have interviewed the co-chairs of the EDI Committee, Kapua (Megan) Pimentel and Kim Claucherty, who spearheaded the process of writing the statement and the approval within the committee and the AIA Honolulu Board.
Aki Yoshida (AY): How did the idea of publishing the statement come about? Kim Claucherty (KC): Shortly after George Floyd’s death, the AIA Honolulu president, who is also an EDI Committee
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Kim Suman Claucherty, AIA, LEED AP Claucherty is Senior Project Manager at Ferraro Choi and Associates, Ltd. in Honolulu, Hawaii. She worked in the oil industry in California and Honolulu for 18 years, leaving ConocoPhillips in 2005 to study architecture at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She manages and contributes to the design of technically challenging projects in remote locations. Most recently, she managed a design team for a new $20 million data center facility at McMurdo Station in Antarctica.
member, approached our committee with the idea of putting out a statement. Several of us saw the need, as well as the opportunity, to engage with our chapter on the very critical issue of BLM, and we started having discussions about a statement. Kapua Pimentel (KP): George Floyd’s killing came up in the media right after I heard about Ahmaud Arbery’s murder and Amy Cooper weaponizing her whiteness in Central Park. For weeks, I felt consumed by constant discussions on social media about the lack of accountability of the officers involved in George Floyd’s killing the subsequent protests, and overall systemic racism in America rearing its head yet again in an unavoidable scale in the media. This feeling was not unfamiliar to me as someone who had gone to school in Miami just a few months after Trayvon Martin was murdered and could very clearly see the connection of racial and social injustices in America and how they related to Hawaii and our history with American colonialism. Like many of my peers, topics of social justice and systemic injustices in America were commonplace throughout my education in Miami and then Los Angeles. In an effort to fill the deafening silence from my office and larger design community in Hawaii, I emailed statements of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement from AIA National and NOMA to my co-workers to begin discussions within our (virtual) office. A couple of days later, at one of our EDI Committee meetings, the AIA Honolulu president expressed an interest in getting help from the EDI Committee