The Nexus

In this episode, we talk to Isabel Strauss, a Master of Architecture student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in her thesis year. Strauss discusses her thesis project which takes the shape of a Request for Proposals to address paths to reparations for the Black communities of Chicago’s South Side. To submit a proposal or find out more information on Strauss’s project, visit https://architectureofreparations.cargo.site/.

In this episode, we talk to urbanist, architect, and GSD professor Toni L. Griffin about different modes of authorship at the intersection of plan-making, place-making, and publication. Professor Griffin also shares some insights on her career trajectory, from architecture to urban design to working in the public sector, recent research and publications from the Just City Lab, and the necessity for designers to forge interdisciplinary partnerships in order to dismantle injustice.

For this month's episode, we talk to urban designer and GSD professor Stephen Gray about bridging between academia and real-world projects, looking at the current moment of racial reckoning as an opportunity for innovation, and recent projects that critically examine the racialized history of the design disciplines. We also get into the parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the longer pandemic of structural racism, as well as how discourse around post-war or post-crisis city-building often falls short of committing to racial justice.

For this month's episode, we talk to urban designer and GSD professor Stephen Gray about bridging between academia and real-world projects, looking at the current moment of racial reckoning as an opportunity for innovation, and recent projects that critically examine the racialized history of the design disciplines. We also get into the parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the longer pandemic of structural racism, as well as how discourse around post-war or post-crisis city-building often falls short of committing to racial justice.

In this month's episode, we talk to Dr. Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Together, we take a deep dive into Terry Boddie’s Blueprint (2001) as a lens into systems of power embedded in architectural design and the historical ties between visual representation and histories of subjugation. Along the way we discuss Dr. Wilkinson’s earliest encounters with art and art history, her personal experiences documenting diasporic architectural heritage, and the importance of recording and preserving Black oral histories. We also get an exciting behind-the-scenes look at Dr. Wilkinson’s process of curating collections around Black architects and architectural history at the Smithsonian and beyond.

In this episode, we talk to designer and organizer Bryan Lee, Jr., continuing our earlier conversation with De Nichols on the #DesignAsProtest collective and delving more deeply into the history of the broader design justice movement. We also talk about unlearning extractive frameworks in the design process, the work of Dark Matter University to restructure pedagogy toward antiracism and liberation, and the gaps in current sustainability discourse around conditions of economic and aesthetic scarcity in Black communities as they relate to environmental scarcity.