Within our pivot to remote learning, in the midst of the context of the mass protests in the USA, the symbolic dimension was heightened through the form of globally shared resources and symbolic messaging. Initial symbolic messages from institution leaders, copy/pasted responses in support of #BLM, were seen as empty words from ivory towers. The need to acknowledge and redress racism of the past and present within architectural education and the profession must be prioritized.
We formulated ten inclusive practices as listed in Table:
Symbolic Inclusive Context: Ten Inclusive Practices
In these cultural exchanges, we acknowledged a common need to build a more resilient studio culture and promote a healthy learning culture within the architecture studio, to become more inclusive.
The Start of a Conversation About ‘Recognising Architecture as a Producer of Culture’. Join the conversation at the bottom of this Post in the Comments section.
Based in Brooklyn, New York, I work at the intersection of interior design, social activism and emerging digital technologies. As a design activist and technologist, I work to decolonise the design curricula and facilitate the democratization of technologies, heightened since the global pandemic and pivot online. Designing feminist exhibitions and round table discussions, and collaboratively building an equitable database of resources for the design studio that opens relationships between the Global South and North. Collaboration is central in my practice. I am co-authoring a chapter titled “The Radically Inclusive Studio: an open access conversation on radically inclusive practices in the architectural design studio” with newfound colleagues in South Africa and Australia for The Routledge Companion to Architectural Pedagogies of the Global South, edited by Dean Harriet Harriss, Ashraf Salama, and Ane Gonzalez Lara. Research presented in December 2020 at HELTASA in South Africa: “Inclusive Spatial Practices for Professional Education” and in May 2020 for Teaching Architecture Online: Methods and Outcomes: “Creating the Virtual Commons”.
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