When we imagine mentorship in the design fields, we might think of networking in a conference room where people in button-down shirts nervously thumb at their CVs and portfolios, hoping for the right eyes to notice and guide them. Or maybe we think of the slow churn of a young professional apprenticing for a more established one, waiting for the senior to fall so the junior can rise. Esther Choi has a different vision.

Choi, an artist with a PhD in the history and theory of architecture from Princeton and a practice that straddles design, photography, and the culinary arts, is creating a new mentorship model that ties together minds around the world. Since the summer of 2020, she has been organizing sessions connecting young BIPOC students and practitioners in informal online conversations with more established design professionals of color.

She calls the events Office Hours, with each session starting off with a different speaker. Choi sees the conversations as akin to an open-ended, socially engaged art project that may raise more questions than it answers. In these Zoom rooms, all topics are on the table, from money to identity to professional licensure. Together, new designers create a form of solidarity with leading professionals by asking the question, “What challenges have you had to overcome, and how will we overcome ours?”

This year, the program features creative professionals like Tammy Eagle Bull, the first Native American woman to gain an architecture license in the United States, and Sumayya Vally, the youngest designer of London’s prestigious annual Serpentine Pavilion. (Vally was profiled in Dwell’s July/August issue.) We spoke with Choi about her experience facilitating the program and what she hears from young designers.

Dwell: How did you come up with Office Hours?

Choi: It began in July of 2020 as a practical response to all the questions people were asking me about applying to PhD programs. Basically, I couldn’t have 22 separate hour-long conversations, so Office Hours seemed like a practical solution to group people together. Most of the folks who had inquired were people of color younger than myself. I think for those who are first-generation college graduates, it’s difficult sometimes to understand how to navigate academic channels. I certainly identify with that because I’m the first in my family to get a college education. I advertised the first Office Hours sessions online—and, shockingly, people from more than five countries attended them.

How did you think about tailoring these conversations to be relevant to an audience of young people of color?

The format is that speakers present for only the first 15 to 20 minutes and the rest of the 75 minutes are for Q&A. Attendees do a lot to shape the space. They bring their own perspectives and subjectivity through their questions. We try to be really inclusive and intersectional. Some of the things that come up a lot are questions around money and generational wealth—questions of how one builds a career when you don’t have a honeypot that your parents or your ancestors have set aside for you. There are also questions about gender, ability and disability, immigration status, and language.

We have a real space of multiethnic and multiracial solidarity that to me is where the political potential of listening starts to develop. Listening to the experience of another, not only do you start to realize that you can identify with people who may not look exactly like you, but you also understand that white supremacy has affected you in some similar ways. And also that one’s own uplifting is inherently connected to the liberation of another.

When architect Mark Gardner and designer Jacqueline Shaw gave a session on becoming a licensed architect, we received feedback on something that Jacqueline said about why one should bother getting licensed when it’s such an ordeal. Jacqueline’s response was related to the political potential of licensure. She said it’s related to her ability to help uplift and level the playing field for others. That resonated with a lot of people. Office Hours is not about competition and getting ahead—but what one does when one has access to increased resources or power or visibility.

I want to get into the concept of mentorship in architecture. There’s always a fetishization of the idea that this architect begat that architect. But how do you see mentorship differently?

Yeah, there are definitely sorts of lineages or royalties that exist within the design field. It’s a narrative that some individuals and schools really try to promote. I’m obviously less interested in that because it’s a very aristocratic model. Actually, the idea of mentorship is really about dismantling the tenets of singularity and competition that white supremacy engenders. What if, instead, we were to generate a culture of generosity and sharing? We might develop a different set of ethics around labor and a different set of ethics around shared responsibility.

Put even more simply, I’ve mentored because if I can share how I navigated certain situations to help alleviate the frustrations of someone else, then why not?

What have you found that young people of color are pushing for or asking for?

About a year ago, students were asking for accountability and feedback measures within institutions. Yet very few of those in positions of authority have implemented measures of accountability for themselves. Those things are not difficult to do. It’s not difficult to demonstrate incredibly good leadership that actually builds in those measures.

I think this is a time when people’s dishonesty is coming out. There’s a lot of virtue signaling, and yet very little structural change has taken place. And students seem incredibly frustrated. So I think young people want to see actual implemented change and have real dialogues that don’t just end up with young people doing all the work and unnecessarily having a burden put on their shoulders to transform cultures of work and learning. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request.

Information about how to join future sessions is available at office-hours.design.