Tonight we will engage in solutions-focused discussions to answer important questions about Justice, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the architecture and design industry:
- What does it mean to design restoratively?
- How is your organization elevating BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of color) so they are designing the world around us?
- Does your organization participate in philanthropic giving? Why or why not?
- How are you holding yourself accountable to the process, not just the outcome, of achieving equity in our industry?
- What do justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion actually look like for your organization?
This panel discussion aims to:
- Celebrate imagination and innovation in the space of industry limitations
- Frame ongoing challenges faced by public interest designers building for BIPOC communities
- Ideate concrete steps the design industry — architects, engineers, manufacturers, contractors, planners, landscape architects, real estate developers — can take to embed equity at each phase of the project lifecycle
MODERATOR
Julia Weatherspoon | Designer with SmithGroup and President of San Francisco NOMA Chapter
Julia Weatherspoon is the 2021-2022 President of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects and the 2022-2023 National Recording Secretary on the NOMA National Executive Board. She has experience working on an array of architecture projects of various scales from workplace, aviation, community design, and currently Higher Education projects at SmithGroup in San Francisco. Julia is also an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco Art + Architecture Department and an associate member of the American Institute of Architects, previously volunteering on the AIA California EDI committee. Julia is committed to changing the narrative about diversity, inclusion, and belonging within the design industry and aims to do her part in increasing visibility and representation in design. She has been featured in Architect Magazine and her passion has brought her to moderate and speak at several institutions and events including Smithsonian Affiliate Rockwell Museum, SPUR, and San Francisco Design Week. Her forever goal is to design holistically and authentically through an equitable lens.
PANELISTS
Deanna Van Buren | Co-Founder and Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, TEDWoman Speaker
Deanna Van Buren is an award-winning architect and activist recognized internationally for her leadership in using architecture, design, and real estate innovations to address the social inequities behind the mass incarceration crisis. Van Buren is co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and design firm with the mission of dismantling the punitive infrastructure of the prison system by designing and building new spaces informed by restorative justice: peacemaking centers, mobile re-entry housing, holistic behavioral health hubs, spaces for youth, spaces for diversion/re-entry, and more.
Her work has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects San Francisco, as well as Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Awards honoring pioneering professionals. Van Buren was a 2016 Echoing Green Fellow recipient, 2018 recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Prize and Professorship, and is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. She is also the only architect to have been awarded the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship.
Rosa Sheng | Vice President, National Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion with SmithGroup
Rosa T. Sheng, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C is a Vice President for SmithGroup serving multiple roles as Higher Education Studio Leader in Northern California and national Director of Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion. She is also the founder of Equity by Design [EQxD] and the first Asian-American Woman to serve as AIA San Francisco President (2018) in the organization’s 136-year history. Recognized as a designer, architect, strategist and thought leader, she is known for delivering design solutions with transformational impact in the built environment. When asked “What type of architecture do you do?” Her answer, “The kind that’s never been done before.”
Lisa Cholmondeley | Principal, Co-Director of Gensler Center for Research on Equity and the Built Environment; Gensler Race & Diversity Committee
Gesamtkunstwerk is the German word for total ‘work of art,’ and it’s my favorite word to describe Design. Impactful design is greater than the sum of its parts. As a passionate city dweller, I believe architecture is an elegant composition of processes, the same way a city is a beautiful composition of spaces that make up its neighborhoods and districts. Every sense of place has unique qualities based on the location, the culture that frames it, and the people who inhabit it. I love to explore how people move through these places and create communities that reflect the values they have and the rituals that represent them.
Special thanks to our sponsors:
