One notable project, Twenty-One Feet, began in 2016 and proposes a spatial training matrix to interrogate de-escalation tactics and discourse within the police force. The project is named for the standard 21-foot buffer maintained by police officers from civilians, allowing – it is thought – an average officer to acknowledge the attack, draw their service weapon, and immobilize the assailant with lethal force. The site, currently slated for construction as a bunker-like police precinct, serves as a testing ground for new standards of police/civilian encounters. A 21-foot structural grid expands and contracts to provide for encounters both comfortable and claustrophobic. Floors tip from flat even ground to extreme inclines.

Another project, focusing on the use of data as a tool is the 2017 “Selfie Wall.” According to AGENCY, selfies are a resource for third-party data-crunchers who use facial and pattern recognition software to extract identity and mood. Metadata is embedded in the photo file, social network post protocols, mobile device settings, and user-generated content, jeopardizing every selfie-taker’s individual data privacy. 

AGENCY’s exhibit provided the perfect selfie stage to explore these issues. Its rigid, multifaceted structure mimics stage lighting and the photo umbrellas used in portrait photography, film, and vanities. AGENCY followed the posts, analyzing metadata from selfies uploaded to Twitter and Instagram that have an event-specific hashtag.

Kripa and Mueller are both current faculty at Texas Tech University College of Architecture – El Paso, TX, USA. Together, they co-direct The Project for Operative Spatial Technologies, which focuses on computational tool sets that uncover environmental and spatial injustice. Moving forward, AGENCY hopes to expand its practice into the realm of activism by using the visualization tools of architecture to positively impact causes of social justice.

Join Kripa and Mueller on Social Design Insights with host Eric Cesal as they discuss the ability of democratized information to fight existing power structures and the ways that designers can contribute to national conversations about the informal spaces that result.

The post 66-67 | Fronts: Security in the Developing World, Part 1 & 2 appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

The Center first gained international attention with its “Million Dollar Blocks” project. The project, in collaboration with the Justice Mapping Center, examined patterns of incarceration in New York City, and found that disproportionate numbers of inmates were from very small, concentrated areas of the city. While this was not a surprise to those who lived there, Kurgan’s work made the data intelligible to a wider audience, and provoked an urgent question: “if we’re spending $1M USD per year to incarcerate just the residents of this one block, could those funds be better spent?”

The Center’s more recent work examines ‘conflict urbanism,’ a broad study of different types of urban conflict, in different stages, and how those conflicts manifest in the creation or destruction of physical space. By presenting new forms of visualization, the Center hopes to encourage new lines of thinking about conflict.

The post 65 | Data, Design and Social Practice appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

Colloqate looks to inspire conversation about the ways in which systems of racial, ethnic, and gendered discrimination can be incorporated into the built environment. If these systems are incorporated into the built environment—stacked in with the bricks, laid into the foundation, drawn out in the blueprints—then designers are at the very least complicit in the use of design that does not challenge them. As a community, it is critical that they understand how their work serves to perpetuate these systems in order to deconstruct them.

In Dallas, Colloqate was enlisted to consult on the Weiss/Manfredi-designed transformation of a former prison building, which will serve as the gateway to a 200-acre park along Trinity River. Lee envisions the one-time site of mass incarceration as a space of urban restoration and restorative justice. 

In Portland, Colloqate is working with local firm Bora on The Portland Community College (PCC) Metro Center, a job-training facility in Portland’s Cully neighborhood, as well as two libraries. As part of the process, the PCC design-team received Critical Race Theory training. Additionally, Colloqate continues to be heavily involved in the Design Justice Platform– an online, open source program to instigate a conversation on topics like immigration, education and racial injustice through Design As Protest (DAP) and Dark Matter University (DMU).

Recently, Colloqate was announced as the 2021 winner of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in the Emerging Designer category. 

The post 63-64 | Design as Protest, Protest by Design, Part 1 & 2 appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

This remains a recurring them in Lacy’s work – drawing public focus on issues which where theretofore on the margins. Lacy has tackled issues of rape, sexual violence, race & inequality. She’s also well known for focusing on issues related to women’s aging, and how society tends to render older women invisible. Several of her projects, like the Whisper, the Waves, the Wind, and its sequel, the Crystal Quilt, featured dramatic public performances involving hundreds of women. In each case, the purpose of the project was to cast deliberate gaze onto older women, their roles, their needs, their issues.

In addition to her work as an artist, Lacy has also inspired generations through educational positions, including serving as the Dean of Fine Arts at California College of the Arts from 1987 to 1997, and previously as the Arts Commissioner of Oakland, CA. She currently teaches at the University of Southern California.

The post 62 | Finding Empathy, Making Art appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

Through DJDS and with the help and ideas from people who have been incarcerated, Deanna Van Buren is creating dynamic spaces that provide safe venues for dialogue, reconciliation, employment, job training, and social services to help keep people from entering the justice system in the first place. 

DJDS is inspired by the idea of ‘restorative justice’ – the philosophy that when a crime has been committed, our priorities should center on making amends and healing, rather than punishment. It works to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions that address its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. 

Raphael Sperry, now an Associate Principal at Arup in San Francisco, is the past President of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, a U.S.-based non-profit founded in 1981 dedicated to peace, environmental protection, and socially responsible development and design. ADPSR was first established to promote nuclear disarmament and correct the imbalances caused by military excesses overshadowing domestic needs. It now counts hundreds of members from across all design professions and remains a constant agitator for a more humane practice of design.  

In 2020, after years of petitioning by ADPSR, AIA (American Institute of Architects) added specific language to its code of ethics that would prohibit the design of torture chambers in U.S. prisons and around the world.

The post 60-61 | Justice, Incarceration & Design, Part 1 & 2 appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

His book, Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary, advocates for a reconsideration of the existing barrier dividing the U.S. and Mexico through design proposals that are hyperboles of actual scenarios that have occurred as a consequence of the Wall. Rael’s work looks at cross-border exchange, examining the flows of culture, people, economy and ecology across the border. His investigations into border architecture stretch back ten years, and concern ‘the spaces between walls.’

The recent escalation of border rhetoric and ideological conflict worldwide has renewed public attention to this particular border, although none of the issues there are new issues. The landscape, the ecology, and the politics remain a shifting mosaic that is best understood by those that live and work in this bi-national community. Political rhetoric turns a regional issue into a national one, and moreover, into an ideological one.

In addition to his work as an author, Rael co-founded Emerging Objects, an independent, creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing architecture, building components, environments and products. A monograph of the work of Emerging Objects entitled “Printing Architecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing” was published in 2018. He was also the co-founder of the start-up wood technology company, FORUST, where he maintains a position as design and technology consultant.

Currently, Ronald Rael is the Eva Li Memorial Chair in Architecture in the Department of Architecture in the College of Environmental Design, and is also a member of the art faculty in the Department of Art Practice at the University of California Berkeley. 

The post 59 | Architecture at the Border of Design and Politics appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

Most recently, John is a co-founder of FRESH Speakers, Inc., a next generation speakers bureau, focused on diversifying thought leadership. FRESH Speakers was founded as a reaction against the tendency for conferences and discussion panels within the design world to lean overwhelmingly white, and male. The four co-founders curate, support and promote a diverse group of voices, seeking the next generation of world thought leadership.

Cary is the author of two books: The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories About Design for the Public Good by Architects and Their Clients by Metropolis Books and Design for Good: A New Era of Architecture for Everyone by Island Press. Both books are discerned surveys which highlight stories of public interest design endeavors, notably from the perspectives of clients and users.

Cary’s diverse initiatives remain unified by an idea that design can be mobilized as a force for public good. We were able to speak with Cary about the future of public interest design and get his insights into how to make moves in an uncertain time.

The post 58 | Public Interest Design, Past & Future appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.

Delight Stone is a philanthropist, historical archaeologist, and community activist. Her activism has been local, national, and international with a particular focus on community vitality. It includes work in archaeology, cultural resource management, architectural preservation and design, public health, and environmental and social justice. Activism work includes participation with the Reclaiming group Living River, North Santiam Watershed Council in opposition to the Kinross Copper Mine, and the creation of the Guadalupe Medical Clinic.

Through the foundation, the pair have supported a variety causes, bound by the belief that public health requires that all people have access to shelter, healthcare, education, and clean air, food and water. We also believe that true public health requires people to live in a time of peace.

The post 57 | Social Design Insights 2017 Year in Review appeared first on Curry Stone Foundation.