incidents from emergent grounds 9.29.2020
a decentralized effort organizing students and alumni practitioners for antiracist, anticolonial, feminist education in the built environment design professions.
Hi friends,
Thank you for your continued attention and actions towards anti-racist transformation of design education and practice, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
An election looms. Though our changes within design education institutions are essential, we cannot neglect our civic responsibility of voting and supporting political representatives who will wield their positions to implement the changes we seek to explore. Please vote. If you have the time or resources, volunteer and contribute to critical Senate races across the country like Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Mark Kelly in Arizona.
We’re writing to share a few stories of how students, educators, design schools and design practices are responding to movement demands, at different scales and across the United States.
On behalf of our friends at Dark Matter University, it’s our pleasure to invite you to attend a virtual Open House next Sunday, October 4, 2020. This event will be a virtual introduction to Dark Matter University and outline a few different ways you can get involved depending on your interest and availability. Further details and the meeting link will be sent to registered attendees before the event. This event is open to both BIPOC built environment designers and non-BIPOC co-conspirators in academia and practice; register here. What is an anti-racist model of design education and practice?
Society’s Cage continues a long tradition of architectural ‘pavilions,’ this time in the form of a ‘countermonument’. The project is an interpretive educational experience about racist lynchings, police terrorism, mass incarceration and capital punishment as the primary institutional structures of anti-Black state violence, by a team of architects at the international practice SmithGroup. How can experimental advocacy and activist design work take root in corporate practice? How will it be funded, and why?
The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) in Boston reverses the practice of critiques in brief glances with Curriculum Crits. How can institutions cede authority to the perspectives of people held outside their walls?
At Sci-Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles), Design Students for Action connected with the local organization, Feed the Streets, to provide supplies for unhoused folks in Los Angeles. More information here. How does where we live and who our neighbors are influence the needs of our surrounding communities?
Nancy Levinson of Places Journal reflects on these questions with Billy Fleming, director of the McHarg Center in the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. See the conversation from Georgia Tech’s series: Redesigning Cities with the Green New Deal. What are the limits of design education and disciplines? How can our work interface with policies and practice address faulty existing structures and landscapes?
Reach us at emergentgrounds.edu@gmail.com with other resources to share. To get in touch or collaborate with us, use this form.
Black Lives Matter,
Emergent Grounds
My-Anh Nguyen and Chris Daemmrich