Design Justice: Power + Place

Lecture description:

Our values are validated through the spaces and places we design and subsequently build. Power + Place explores the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice in the built environment from America's inception. We will look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create injustice throughout the built environment. 

Like all institutions, Design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. The lasting permanence of our professional decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the injustices that result from our work and to seek Design Justice wherever possible. Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, we as designers, are at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power.

Lecturer bio:

Bryan is an Architect, educator, writer, and Design Justice activist. He is the founder/Design Principal of Colloqate Design a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice, in New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social, and cultural equity. He is a Design Critic at Harvard GSD and has led two award-winning youth community design programs. Bryan is a founding co-organizer of the DAP (Design As Protest) Collective and Dark Matter University. He was most recently honored as one of the 2018 Fast Company Most Creative People in Business, a USC Annenberg MacArthur Civic Media Fellow, and the youngest design firm to win the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices award in 2019.