This course unpacks racist ideologies and practices found in the architecture profession and re-contextualizes the power structures in place to create equitable environments.

Typically, architects approach a problem via parameters of design needs without including parameters of injustice and oppression – what if we reversed that practice? DCo will walk your company through our design justice process using our 3 C’s [Challenge, Collaborate, Create] to develop an understanding of how to create safe and sacred space.

Workshop 1: Racialized Architecture Competency

OVERVIEW: Design professionals and support team members will participate in a workshop that develops their understanding of how existing power structures inhibit the ways marginalized identities experience design. Through dialogue and surveys, participants will collaborate to develop a deeper understanding of the racial prejudice impacting daily architectural and personal decisions. They will also discover methods to create safe spaces to combat this prejudice.

Learning Outcomes:

• How systemic racism in marginalized communities is sustained by urban design, architecture, and public policy
• A deeper understanding of how imperialism constructs racialized spaces and architecture
• How to identify and abolish racist abuse in design practice & office culture
• How to collaboratively hold each other accountable for creating design justice in the office, through project delivery, and with clients and consultants
• The tools necessary to develop and design safe space for dialogue

Workshop 2: Design & Spatial Justice Practices

OVERVIEW: Through the examination of design justice principles, the staff will collaboratively generate interventions that prioritize anti-racism policy in the design process. Through the examination of design justice principles, the staff will collaboratively generate intervention strategies that sustain and prioritize anti-racism policy in the design process. Advocating in the role of an anti-racist, team members will reevaluate the existing structures of current and past projects to understand how they achieve or fail in development of regenerative communities and safe spaces. This workshop, a speculative design task, will create a framework for how the firm engages in evolving outcomes for new radical design processes that are inclusive and seek justice in marginalized communities.

Learning Outcomes:

• How to use and implement design justice principles and concepts into practical and speculative works
• Building capacity to understanding how existing design processes create racialized spaces that inhibit the liberation of marginalized identities
• Developing critical analysis of potential spaces of cultural sacredness
• Case studies of spatial justice interventions in marginalized communities

Workshop 3: Creating Sustainable Futures

OVERVIEW: The final workshop of the series will combine the best efforts of leadership and staff to develop key metrics to achieve design justice principles in the practice. In completing the speculative design task, participants will develop the necessary skills to examine what structural qualities within the firm need to change or evolve. This may include the reexamination of how to pursue projects, the identification of key community partners, hiring and retention policies for BIPOC identities, development of regenerative design practices, and the investment in anti-racist initiatives in architecture. By the end of the this workshop the firm will have created a road-map, tracking the progress of how the firm will achieve sustainable change that is rooted in the accountability of leadership.

Learning Outcomes:

• Development of key strategies to complete by the end of the year
• How to create a framework for anti-racist design policy in firm culture
• Strategies of how to include support staff in anti-racist design policy
• An understanding of the key metrics to determine the impact of design justice and creation of safe space in the firm’s work and culture

This course is the foundation of a three part series called Designing With Action which prepares organizations to build their practices to prioritize justice & liberation in their work.

This recorded video/audio course will equip your organization with the tools and vocabulary necessary to begin dismantling systems of oppression within your practice & work. The course is centered on the concept of Racialized Space and how it manifests itself throughout history in the architectural profession. See the video below for a sample from the course.

Topics covered in this presentation include:

• Imperialism
• Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• White Supremacy
• White Idealism in Architectural History
• Racism within our Institutions
• Gentrification
• Segregation
• Anti-Racist Policies
• Decolonizing Space
• Spatial Justice
• Design Justice