DEI Event: Power + Place

Monday, April 1, 2024
5:00 – 6:30 pm Pacific
Happy Hour to follow

Bora Architecture & Interiors
1705 SE 3rd Avenue
Portland, OR 97214

Design as Protest was founded in June 2020 as a collective of designers mobilizing to dismantle the power structures that use architecture as tools of oppression. One of the nine demands identified was to cease the implementation of Hostile Architecture, citing standards such as the ubiquitous Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) as tactics that purposefully restrict specific behaviors, and so people, from public spaces. Bryan Lee will speak on the topic of Power + Place, and how to shift our thinking and our designs.

Power + Place: Our values are validated through the spaces and places we design and subsequently build. Power + Place explores the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice in the built environment from America's inception. We will look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create injustice throughout the built environment.

Like all institutions, Design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. The lasting permanence of our professional decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the injustices that result from our work and to seek Design Justice wherever possible. Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, we as designers, are at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power.

Learning Objectives:

• Develop an understanding of the Design Justice movement model, theories of social change.
• Consider strategies for how to work alongside community-led efforts for systemic change.
• Discuss Design Justice opportunities and challenges taking place at the national and local levels.
• Understand how to facilitate a Design Justice framework into current efforts and orient work toward creating justice.

Speaker: Bryan C. Lee Jr.
Bryan is an award-winning architect, nonprofit founder, and leading national voice on anti-racist and socially just design. As Founder and Design Principal of Colloqate Design, Bryan spearheads the organization’s mission to intentionally design spaces advancing racial, social and cultural equity. This encompasses community-centered architecture and planning projects, youth education/mentorship initiatives, and advocacy campaigns confronting systemic exclusion in the built environment. Deeply committed to expanding opportunity in his home city of New Orleans, Bryan previously served as the Inaugural Director of Place + Civic Design for the Arts Council New Orleans from 2015 to 2017. In this capacity, he provided vision and program management for arts-rooted community development efforts citywide.

Nationally recognized as an influential thought leader, Bryan’s recognitions include being named on Fast Company’s 2018 Most Creative People in Business list as well as receiving prestigious fellowship designations such as Emerging Voices from the Architectural League of New York and United States Artists. As a Design Critic at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design since 2020, Bryan has brought his justice-oriented pedagogy to new generations of architects and planners. Bryan holds leadership positions with the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) and the Design As Protest Collective organizing against professional exclusion. Through his career and volunteerism, Bryan embodies his belief in design as instrumental for empowerment, healing historical harms, and expanding liberation across communities.

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm	Event Location Bora Architecture & Interiors 1705 SE 3rd Avenue Portland, OR 97214
Following Event	Happy Hour TBD

Members: Free | Non-Members: $20
Event Sponsor: $250