Join Tiara Hughes of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP for an hour-long seminar about FIRST 500, a research endeavor that is primarily focused on highlighting African American women architects (0.3% of all architects) and raising awareness of their distinction. FIRST 500 has already begun as a lecture series (featured in publications, podcasts and conferences) and a network. Eventually this project will become a publication highlighting each of the licensed African American women architects. The publication will serve as a central resource for all their stories to inspire young girls interested in entering the industry and the network to provide a place of mentorship when they do.

Join I-NOMA (Illinois Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects) for an interactive workshop to document minority contributions to Chicago's built environment. We will be actively inputting data to contribute to our existing map infrastructure, which is the central focus of this initiative.

Featured Storyteller: Roberta Washington

Roberta Washington is principal at Roberta Washington Architects, PC, which she founded in 1983. She is the past president of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and an advisory board member of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. She frequently lectures about the history of African Americans in architecture and has researched and written about early black women architects.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial has since its inception been supported by petrochemical dollars. It’s not the only biennial either to have ties to the unsavory people and companies that sit at the commanding heights of the economy; recently artists successfully used a biennial boycott to oust Warren B. Kanders (whose company manufactures tear-gas used on the border) from the board of the Whitney Museum. Join us for a discussion of the politics of biennials with experts and activists where ask ourselves difficult questions about the place of activist practices within biennials, and talk about how architects can best use the opportunity of Biennials to best work toward a more just world.

Featuring Nick Korody and Joanna Klopenburg (Adjustments Agency), Keefer Dunn (The Architecture Lobby), Nick Wylie (The Co-Prosperity Sphere), and more!

Check out the exhibition and hang out in Bridgeport, the community of the future! The party includes an 8pm opening one block away at Night Gallery (https://www.thenight.gallery) for a new art-film installation and more good times. Refreshments will be available.

Could architects work for the state and provide service to the public? What happens when you need to rewrite laws to make a project happen? What even is an architect, legally speaking? All these questions and more a panel discussion about how architects and activists are transforming the institutional structures that dictate the shape and focus of our built environment. Rules and regulations have never been so radical!

Featuring Katherine Darnstadt (Latent Design), Ann Lui (Future Firm), and more!

All are welcome to come join the Chicago Women in Architecture (CWA) for our public Board Meeting and take part in discussions that help make CWA what it is today. 

About CWA: Chicago Women in Architecture is a not-for-profit, volunteer organization that exists as a forum for women in Architecture and related professions. The primary goal of CWA is to advance the status of women in these professions by:

• [increasing] the visibility of women in architecture

• [guiding & encouraging] women to consider a career in architecture

• [establishing liaisons] with other professional organizations

• [networking] for job placement and career advancement

• [advocating] for issues of concern to women within the profession

Chicago has long been a hub for both architecture and progressive action of many kinds. In this event we will bring together women leaders to discuss organizations past and present that have been on the forefront of making architecture a more just and inclusive field.

Featuring: Chicago Women in Architecture, the history of the CARYATIDS, and the Illinois chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects.

Panelists: 

• Susan King (Principal, HED, Past President of CWA, Author of “Only Girl Architect Lonely,” Chicago Architecture: Histories Revisions Alternatives.) 

• Kathryn Anthony (ACSA Distinguished Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

• Smitha Vasan (President, National Organization of Minority Architects-Illinois Chapter)

• Veselka Ivanovic (President, CWA)

Moderator: Sarah Rafson (Board member, ArchiteXX, Now What Co-Curator)

Now What?! curators, Lori Brown, Andrea Merrett, Sarah Rafson, Roberta Washington present the Now What?! exhibition as part of the Discursive Practices, Spring 2019 public programming lecture series at the University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning.

DISCURSIVE PRACTICES presents the work of architects, urban planners, preservationists and historians whose approach to design bridges multiple territories of knowledge to create new work.

Their provocations operate on discourses that simultaneously have long historical traditions and are actively evolving in the present. By acknowledging and engaging with the cultural and institutional basis of inherited knowledge systems, these speakers challenge reductive modes of analysis and reveal openings for expanding the social reach and relevance of contemporary design

This talk, by Dr. Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, Assistant Professor in the Department of Transnational Studies at the University of Buffalo takes up public history of Haudenosaunee people through the lens of roadside historical mark-ers and considers how these markers shape narratives of violence and dispossession, contributing to “replacement” narratives that engender Haudenosaunee erasure and fuel anti-Indian rhetoric.

Join students and faculty at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for an in-gallery Wikipedia edit-a-thon, broadly following the Art + Feminism 2019 Campaign theme on Gender + the Non-Binary. Choices on what is edited/added will be largely based on participating courses, but generally on the subject of artists and cultural producers.
Participants should bring their own laptop. Food will be provided. 

For more information, click here.

Join Now What?! curators, Lori Brown, Andrea Merrett, Sarah Rafson, Roberta Washington in conversation with Annmarie Adams and Alanna Thain of McGill University for a lecture as part of the Democracy, Space, and Technology Lecture Series from the Yan P. Lin Centre.

Free childcare will be provided.

Architects and designers envision new futures while struggling in a present rife with oppression, discrimination, and injustice. How can we transform architecture and design so that how we work and what we design lead to a future of greater peace, justice, and liberation? The strongest force known to challenge systemic oppression is organized collective action -- come join a discussion with leading Bay Area organizations working to transform the architecture and design professions into forces of social progress!

Participants:
Raphael Sperry, moderator - Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility
June Grant - San Francisco National Organization of Minority Architects
Thomas Murdoch - The Architecture Lobby
Innosanta Nagara - Design Action Collective
Deanna van Buren - Designing Justice + Designing Spaces

California College of the Arts
Hubbell Street Galleries, 161 Hubbell St. San Francisco, CA
Now What?! Overcoming Oppression through Architecture and Design: Thurs. Dec. 13, 6:00-8:00PM

#NowWhatSF

Join OWA members from across the years at a reception to entertain the question "Now What?!" surrounded by the context of the history of activist organizations.

Sparked in a context of feminism, the Organization of Women Architects and Design Professionals has annals of actions recorded in 45 years of newsletters and an extensive current and historical website. Although many early members hold the more activist organizing years as dear, the changing members have adapted the activities of the organization to their needs.

Please RSVP, as space is limited.

Hubbell Street Galleries
California College of the Arts
Alive and Adaptive: 45 years of Organization of Women Architects + Design Professionals: Thurs. Dec. 6, 5:00-7:00pm

#NowWhatSF

Now What?! Asks how to put activist values into design practice. Join us in the gallery for a practitioners’ roundtable moderated by our SF liaison, Sandra Vivanco, for a discussion of the challenges and inspiration of aligning work with social and political values.

Participants include:

Marsha Maytum, FAIA, LEED AP,  Principal, LEDDY MAYTUM STACY ARCHITECTS

Sanjeev Malhotra, Senior Designer, MWA Architects

Justin Skoda, Associate, Perkins Eastman

Karina Andreeva, Free School of Architecture, Studio Lead, see arch

Kevin Riley, Jr, LEED AP, Senior Designer, Pyatok Architects, Academic Chair, BAYA 

Moderated by Sandra Vivanco, Principal, A+D Architecture+Design

Please RSVP, as space is limited.

Hubbell Street Galleries
California College of the Arts
Now What?! Practitioners’ Roundtable: Sat. Dec. 1, 3:00-5:00pm

#NowWhatSF

Join us to celebrate the opening of Now What?! San Francisco, and build an archive of activism over the last 50 years!

Hubbell Street Galleries

California College of the Arts

Opening Reception: Thurs. Nov. 29, 5:30-7:30pm

#NowWhatSF

Leading up to the opening of Now What?! in San Francisco at the end of November, curator Lori Brown will present on ArchiteXX and her experiences in the architecture with a particular focus on gender and social justice issues.

Learn more.

Cal Poly Pomona Department of Landscape Architecture presents:

Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton, Visiting Professor, Parsons School of Design

Kate Diamond, FAIA, LEED AP (HDR)

Register

Mapping feminist L.A (MFLA), a collaborative research project at Women’s Center for Creative Work (WCCW) presents:

Leana Scott

Yasmine Batniji

Brittany Arceneaux

A volunteer working group with the goal of building a spatial and digital network that recontextualizes Los Angeles neighborhoods through the filter of intersectional feminism.

Cal Poly Pomona Department of Landscape Architecture presents:

Laura Solano, principal, Michael Van Valkenberg Associates Boston

Register

The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design (LAF) discussion featuring:

Geoffrey von Oeyen, President

Katrin Terstegen, Vice President

Association for Women in Architecture + Design (AWA+D) discussion featuring:

Audrey Sato (Sato Architects, Cal Poly Pomona, XX|LA Architects Podcast)

Barbara Bestor (Bestor Architecture)

Kate Diamond (HDR) Lise Bornstein (KFA)

Marisa Kurtzman (Frederick Fisher and Partners)

Nina Briggs (Woodbury University, Cal Poly Pomona, The Fabric)

Wena Dows (Wena Dows Designs)

Brenda Levin (Levin and Associates Architects)

Cal Poly Pomona Department of Landscape Architecture presents:

Nikole Bouchard (University of Milwaukee, Yale University)

Noemie Despland-Lichert Roundhouse, Sussman/Prejza & Co)

Southern California Chapter, The National Organization of Minority Architects (SoCalNOMA) will be reviewing their Los Angeles activism history in architecture and contributing to Now What?! exhibition. Join us as we shine some light on the progress of African American architects post 1968

Cal Poly Pomona Department of Landscape Architecture (CPPLA) presents:

Rennie Tang (Cal Poly Pomona, RENspace)

Claire Lattante (Cal Poly Pomona)

Samantha Harris (Cal Poly Pomona)

Nina Briggs (Woodbury University, Cal Poly Pomona, The Fabric)

Free School of Architecture (FSA) meeting featuring:

Tessa Forde

Lili Carr

Elisha Cohen

Karina Andrea

Betsy Medvedovsky

Kate Zirulnik

Los Angeles Landscape Architecture Salon (LALA) panel discussion on landscape and politics featuring:

Chriss Torres (Superjacent)

Stephanie Landregan (UCLA Extension)

Emily Gabel-Luddy, Mayor (City of Burbank, CA)

Event registration includes a $10 donation to WUHO Gallery

Join us for the opening of the exhibition in Los Angeles!

WUHO Gallery, Woodbury University, 6518 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA.

RSVP here

Moderated by Jeffrey Hogrefe and Scott Ruff

If the African American experience emerges from the structure of slavery, what does architecture have to say to that experience, and what can the formerly enslaved say to an architecture whose primary purpose is to fortify the state? This is a question that we are asking again in response to the escalation of state violence toward people of color, which is taking place at the same time as the emergence of a Black aesthetic that has resulted in the Museum of African American History in Washington, DC.

The “In Search of African American Space” anthology centers on the work of architects Yolande Daniels, Rodney Leon, and Scott Ruff, whose practices have led them to search for African American space in many different forms, and on the work of visual theorists Radiclani Clytus and Ann Holder and performance artist Marisa Williamson, who have mined the topic for new ways of viewing the emerging post slavery subject. The contributions in the anthology were taken from a symposium that was held at Pratt Institute to coincide with a studio taught by Frederick Biehle on the Underground Railroad. The anthology highlights the importance of the Underground Railroad in defining a conceptual space that still has resonances in the ongoingness of the African American experience of surveillance, enclosure, fugitivity, and stasis that has been inherited from slavery and abolition and mapped into the present in horrific new forms of criminalization of blackness.

The colloquium will address the process of turning a symposium into an anthology within the specific requirements of the important and sensitive topic.

Participants:

• Jeffrey Hogrefe is Associate Professor, Humanities and Media Studies/Architecture at Pratt Institute.

• Scott Ruff is Visiting Associate Professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute.

• Jason Compere is a Pratt Undergraduate Architecture student.

• Joe Mendoza is a Pratt Undergraduate Architecture alumnus.

• Massi Surratt is a Pratt Undergraduate Architecture student.

MiXX is a monthly networking and socializing opportunity, in conjunction with our Women in Architecture and Planning MeetUp Group, where everyone is welcome! We welcome members of allied organizations from around the city to join us and raise a glass. Please visit MeetUp or Eventbrite to sign up.