The Diane Dale Follow-Up at Greenbuild
Diane Dale and I encountered each other on the expo floor at Greenbuild last month. It was a Thursday afternoon, the 20th of November, and the conference was in full swing. We’d initially walked past each other without quite realizing it, but were soon standing together in the middle of one of the paths between the rows of exhibition booths. Scores of conference attendees streamed around us
Dale has worked with the architect William McDonough for several years. Since 2000, she has been the director of community design at William McDonough + Partners. Dale is of medium height, with blonde hair and rectangular glasses. She looks just like her picture. A couple of days earlier, she stood up during the question-and-answer section of the panel I participated in at Greenbuild’s International Forum. She didn’t have questions so much as comments, which I described in a previous post. In a nutshell, neither Dale nor anyone from McDonough + Partners, was especially happy with my FRONTLINE/World story on the Huangbaiyu Cradle to Cradle Village Project in China.
She started by saying she knew I had mentioned her on my blog. When I asked what she thought of what I’d written, she said she hadn’t read it (she later clarified that it was printed out for her). But she did want to follow up on some of the points I made in my blog post, and gave some additional information about the role of William McDonough + Partners in the Huangbaiyu project. She did most of the talking. Our conversation was probably about 20 minutes, maybe a little longer. I spoke briefly with Kira Gould, the director of communications for the firm, soon after, and then once more, briefly with Dale. For those interested in the details, I’ve outlined the points they made, as well as some questions and responses, after the jump.
On translation: During the Q&A and in my earlier post, the problem of translation came up. On stage and on my blog, I said that there were fluent Chinese speakers deeply involved in the project. But Diane Dale, in our later conversation, told me it was more complicated than that: it wasn’t a language problem, it was a problem of cultural translation.
According to Dale, Wang Miansheng—who is currently the managing director of the China-US Center for Sustainable Development, an organization involved in the coordination and execution of the Huangbaiyu Cradle to Cradle model village—took great pride in his translation. In particular, she said that his translation was an almost exact, one-to-one linguistic conversion from Mandarin to English, and vice versa.
To illustrate, Dale told me the story of receiving a compliment from a Chinese woman. Wang translated it into English, and Dale’s response, which was translated back, was a simple thank you. The Chinese woman was offended. Dale later learned, she told me, that she should have replied with a modest, “Oh, no, no, no.” By acknowledging and accepting the compliment, Dale came across as arrogant. She said Wang interceded in no way.
I asked Dale why Wang did not caution her when she might come across as offensive. It seems, I added, that a translator would mention nuances of culture to avoid fundamental misunderstandings like this.
As Dale put it, Wang didn’t “editorialize” by including cultural connotations in his translation. He took great pride in that, she said.
She added that the translations were given with a “spirit of optimism.” There was “lots of optimistic color” to the translation, as well as a “desire to do well.”
On the firm’s role: Dale said that foreign firms have limited control over their projects in China. As she put it, “Do you know foreigners are not allowed to do conceptual design?” She also said that some firms do have control, depending on the relationship.
On studying other models: During the Q&A, one of the first questions came from an American architect who asked if the Huangbaiyu designers had done any research on rural models of development in China. I replied that none of my reporting indicates they did this kind of research.
Dale addressed this point. “It is a recent phenomenon, rural planning,” she said. She described their plans for Huangbiayu as “a pioneering event.”
On previously addressing the shortcomings in Huangbaiyu: Dale said she gave a talk entitled “A Tale of Two Cities” that discussed what went wrong in Huangbaiyu. She said I should have found this talk on my own.
On why the firm chose not to comment for my story: According to Kira Gould, neither she nor Dale had worked on the project, so they needed to study up on the project. They were unable to learn enough in time to respond to my queries. And, she added, “Bill just didn’t want to.”
On Timothy Lesle:
Dale’s “criticism of [my] criticism was that [I] was looking for something to criticize.”
After reviewing my notes and contacting Shannon May (the anthropology doctoral candidate who has now spent years studying the issues, interviewing and shadowing participants on both continents, and living in the village), I am left with more questions than answers as a result of this encounter.
On translation: From Dale’s explanation, my resulting question is not so much about Wang’s choices as a translator, but how it was received. If there was no editorializing of the translation, what does it mean when the translation is delivered with “lots of optimistic color”? Did the optimistic translation cause her or her colleagues any alarm?
As Shannon May wrote to me:
She’s contradicting herself. Was it always straight translation or with “optimistic color”? Having been in the room during many sessions with Miansheng, Bill, Dai Xiaolong [the local developer] and other Chinese officials, I’d say that the translation was always pretty accurate. But that the people were often just talking past each other. Xie [Xie Baoxing, a local official] would say, “the entire village believes in and supports sustainable development”, but no one would ask him how he knows that, or what that means. Dai would say that he “knows everything about sustainable development” but no one asked him how, or what he knew. The list is endless. No one ever asked for evidence, or for numbers. It was always all vision, always all salesmanship and no *work*.
On the firm’s role: Who better to tell me what kinds of constraints William McDonough + Partners had to work under than William McDonough + Partners? But they did not comment. No one from the China-US Center, which Gould offered up as an alternative source in their stead, ever mentioned this constraint. And, as Dale pointed out, some firms do have control over projects they work on in China.
No American ever mentioned this. No Chinese ever mentioned this. So how would one know? Dai Xiaolong, the developer, described the American involvement thusly: “All the American side did was to point here and to point there without actual investment. It is not my own project.”
Shannon May:
I’m confused by what she means by conceptual design here. It is accurate that there must be a locally certified architect who is the signatory on the final construction drawings. But that is not conceptual design, but construction. There are dozens and dozens of foreign architecture firms in China, building in China, and they have control over the buildings they were hired to build. Yes, there must be a Chinese certified architect signing the construction plans, but that has nothing to do with what the design is. Firms often draw up the construction drawings themselves, give them to their Chinese partner, have them reprint and sign. There’s no lack of control just because of the signatory.
When May points out that these restrictions don’t apply to the act of designing, this is significant because it has been established that the design is fundamentally unacceptable to the farmers in Huangbaiyu.
I asked Dale why, if they knew they had no power over the project, they stayed with it; why they kept both McDonough and his firm’s name closely associated with it; and why McDonough himself had taken credit for the project in high-profile venues (e.g., Newsweek, the TED Conference) before it fell apart. She paused then answered: “I am very comfortable and very proud of the work that Bill McDonough has done”
On studying other models: In response to Dale’s point that there were few existing rural models available to them during the design, May notes that any project needs in-depth research into how the affected community lives, its history, future projections, and other issues. “This is the same if a new neighborhood is being developed in Beijing or Huangbaiyu.” She adds that it’s the data that differs, not the process.
May admires the premise of bringing principles of urban planning to rural development in China. But in regard to this particular project, May wrote, William McDonough + Partners simply tried to apply existing urban planning principles to this new rural context without collecting any data or asking questions.
May continued:
When [Dale] says that it was a pioneering event, she is right, but that it was a pioneering event for her firm, and so they made mistakes. I don’t think that everyone would have. Or made the same ones. This situation was not fated, which is what she seems to keep implying. As if they can’t be held responsible because there is no way it could have been different. The gods have spoken. It’s a classic way of deflecting responsibility.
A couple of hours before I left Boston, I ran into the architect who originally asked the question about whether William McDonough + Partners had looked at other models of rural planning in China. I relayed Dale’s response that there were few or no models when they started.
He looked at me and asked, “What about those five thousand years of Chinese history?”
On previously addressing the shortcomings in Huangbaiyu: May told me she was unaware of a speech by Dale with the title “A Tale of Two Cities.” Neither of us have found it, which is not to say that it does not exist. We have simply been unable to find it.
On why the firm chose not to comment to me: That, as Gould said, she and Dale had to get caught up on what happened in Huangbaiyu is puzzling. After all, Dale earlier told me she had delivered a talk on what went wrong. That suggests that she did, perhaps, have some sense of what happened in Huangbaiyu. Why would she need to study more? Or, why didn’t she simply send me the text of the speech?
McDonough’s not wanting to talk to me will have to speak for itself.
On Timothy Lesle: William McDonough + Partners had ample opportunity to comment. I volunteered to go to the San Francisco office. I offered to fly to their headquarters in Virginia. I tracked Kira Gould down at a conference last year to ask, in person, for their participation. When I first had the notion of doing the story, almost two years ago, a colleague approached William McDonough at the World Economic Forum on my behalf (the funding and reporting wouldn’t actually start until about six months later). If they had given me any information appropriate to telling the story, I would have included it. As it stands, every point that Dale has mentioned to me after the story was published has been exculpatory, shifting responsibility away from William McDonough + Partners. Fair enough.
But to come up to me nine months after publication and say I should have included point X or point Y is a little disingenuous. As I said to Dale, I respect your perspectives as participants and experts, and I was seeking that expert perspective for my story. It was not my decision for them to decline to comment.
Still, they can make their voices heard, especially in regard to Green Dreams. If Diane Dale or her colleagues have anything to add to the story, I invite them to submit a comment to the FRONTLINE/World page where the story lives.
In fact, I extended that invitation to Dale toward the end of our encounter at Greenbuild.
Her response?
“I would rather not.”
Filed under: Architecture, China, journalism, language
Tags: Diane Dale, GreenBuild, huangbaiyu, Kira Gould, Shannon May, William McDonough
