About
This website was created as part of the first ACSA Fellowship to Advance Equity in Architecture.
The website went online in the Spring of 2024, initiated by Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia / WAI Architecture Think Tank, co-recipients of the fellowship, with the intent that the page is updated with scholarship, resources, and platforms that center questions and initiatives of social and ecological justice in architecture and related fields.
Index
Journal of Architectural Education (JAE)
Technology + Design (TAD)
JAE Fellows
Statements and Letters
ACSA Traveling Lecture Series
Platforms
Bibliographic Resources
Where Are My People? Series
ACSA Social Justice Shift
Read the ACSA Social Justice Shift to find out more about ACSA’s shift to equity and justice.
A Moratorium on New Construction started in 2020 during the global halt. When everything stopped, the extraction of resources for construction went on. The initiative argues for a drastic change to construction protocols toward non-extraction. Until then, new building activities should pause.
stopconstruction.cargo.site/
stopconstruction.cargo.site/
Advancing and protecting academic freedom is the AAUP's core mission. Academic freedom is the indispensable requisite for unfettered teaching and research in institutions of higher education. As the academic community's core policy document states, "institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition" (1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which has been endorsed by more than 250 national scholarly and educational associations).
aaup.org/
aaup.org/
Design Futures is a place to reimagine the role of the designer in addressing and dismantling systemic oppression in the built environment. Dedicated to aligning the field of spatial design with social movements, Design Futures creates critically needed design education spaces by bringing together students, faculty and practitioners together to learn and advance community-based design practice.
designfuturesforum.org/
designfuturesforum.org/
As leaders of Design and Built Environment Schools, we seek to nurture a diverse population of emerging scholars teaching and researching the built environment to advance socio-ecological and spatial justice, equity, and inclusion.
deansequityandinclusioninitiative.com/
deansequityandinclusioninitiative.com/
Dark Matter U is a democratic network with the following principles guiding its actions.
Manifesto
We cannot survive and thrive without immediate change toward an anti-racist model of design education and practice. Exisiting systems have not been able to transform away from centering and advancing whiteness, through their reliance on an implied dominant and racialized subject audience. The impacts of that centering are widespread and can be felt in the inequities that global extraction, racial capitalism, and colonialism have created. The Earth and the majority of its people have suffered tremendous harm as a result. Collective liberation cannot only occur within the confines of individual institutions-Dark Matter U is founded to work inside and outside of existing systems to challenge, inform, and reshape our present world toward a better future.
darkmatteru.org/
Manifesto
We cannot survive and thrive without immediate change toward an anti-racist model of design education and practice. Exisiting systems have not been able to transform away from centering and advancing whiteness, through their reliance on an implied dominant and racialized subject audience. The impacts of that centering are widespread and can be felt in the inequities that global extraction, racial capitalism, and colonialism have created. The Earth and the majority of its people have suffered tremendous harm as a result. Collective liberation cannot only occur within the confines of individual institutions-Dark Matter U is founded to work inside and outside of existing systems to challenge, inform, and reshape our present world toward a better future.
darkmatteru.org/
Design as Protest is a collective of designers mobilizing strategy to dismantle the privilege and power structures that use architecture and design as tools of oppression.
Co-organized by BIPOC designers, we exist to hold our profession accountable in reversing the violence and injustice that architecture, design, and urban planning practices have inflicted upon Black people and communities. Design as Protest champions the radical vision of racial, social, and cultural reparation through the process and outcomes of design.
dapcollective.com/
Co-organized by BIPOC designers, we exist to hold our profession accountable in reversing the violence and injustice that architecture, design, and urban planning practices have inflicted upon Black people and communities. Design as Protest champions the radical vision of racial, social, and cultural reparation through the process and outcomes of design.
dapcollective.com/
Emergent Grounds for Design Education (EGDE) is an interdisciplinary collective of architectural designers, educators, advocates, artists & dreamers living across the colonized North American continent. We organize and educate to advance racial justice among students and emergent practitioners from our positions as recent alums of US architecture and design schools.
eg-de.org/
eg-de.org/
Isaac Kamola started Faculty First Responders to proactively educate and support faculty and administrators about the causes and consequences of right-wing attacks on faculty, while providing advice about how to effectively respond to targeted harassment.
Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Our mandate is to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence. Our team includes architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists, and lawyers.
We are an interdisciplinary agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law; in 2022, the Peabody Awards programme wrote that we had co-created ‘an entire new academic field and emergent media practice’.
Since 2020, FA has supported the growth of agencies worldwide that practice and apply our methods. The Investigative Commons is both a global network of practitioners, and a physical space in Berlin, within the offices of our sister agency Forensis.
forensic-architecture.org/
We are an interdisciplinary agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law; in 2022, the Peabody Awards programme wrote that we had co-created ‘an entire new academic field and emergent media practice’.
Since 2020, FA has supported the growth of agencies worldwide that practice and apply our methods. The Investigative Commons is both a global network of practitioners, and a physical space in Berlin, within the offices of our sister agency Forensis.
forensic-architecture.org/
Nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous land. Approximately 250 tribes, bands and communities. Over 160 violence-backed treaties and land seizures. Fifty-two universities. With the information provided below, you can untangle the powerful and painful strains of myth and money behind the land-grant university system, which broadened access to higher education in the United States.
Land-grant universities were built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land. It’s a common misconception that the Morrill Act grants were used only for campuses. In fact, the grants were as big or bigger than major cities, and were often located hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their beneficiaries.
High Country News has located more than 99% of all Morrill Act acres, identified their original Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers, and researched the principal raised from their sale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. HCN reconstructed approximately 10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land cessions, a legal term for the giving up of territory.
Land-grant universities were built not just on Indigenous land, but with Indigenous land. It’s a common misconception that the Morrill Act grants were used only for campuses. In fact, the grants were as big or bigger than major cities, and were often located hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their beneficiaries.
High Country News has located more than 99% of all Morrill Act acres, identified their original Indigenous inhabitants and caretakers, and researched the principal raised from their sale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. HCN reconstructed approximately 10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land cessions, a legal term for the giving up of territory.
LOUDREADERS is a platform of public vocational education of architecture, urbanism, and related fields. Loudreaders produces, designs, and supports a public literacy of the built and destroyed environment by means of online and physical exhibitions, publications, lectures, symposia, workshops, events, installations, and spaces.
Since its foundation in 2020, LOUDREADERS has provided over 100 lectures and workshops and has produced several publications and exhibitions both digital and physical (available on the main page).
Publications include the free edition of ‘A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education’ and ‘Un Manual de Educacion Antirracista en Arquitectura’, and the forthcoming ‘Love & Anarchy: The Writings of Luisa Capetillo.’
loudreaders.com/
Since its foundation in 2020, LOUDREADERS has provided over 100 lectures and workshops and has produced several publications and exhibitions both digital and physical (available on the main page).
Publications include the free edition of ‘A Manual of Anti-Racist Architecture Education’ and ‘Un Manual de Educacion Antirracista en Arquitectura’, and the forthcoming ‘Love & Anarchy: The Writings of Luisa Capetillo.’
loudreaders.com/
The Architecture Lobby (TAL) is a grassroots organization of architectural workers — architects, landscape architects, planners, designers, students, and others — advocating for just labor practices and an equitable (built) environment. We believe that building solidarity between architectural workers and fostering capacity for organizing labor is a critical tool in confronting the white supremacist and heteropatriarchal systems woven through the architecture and design fields.
architecture-lobby.org/
architecture-lobby.org/
The Society of Architectural Historians promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide for the benefit of all.
sah.org/
sah.org/
JE-L researches policy and design for the creation of just environments.
We are acquainted with the major academic-led theories in this space (from political ecology to environmental justice), but always test and contrast these theories against the lived experiences of the communities we serve. We are currently working with underrepresented communities across: Puerto Rico, the Río Grande Valley of South Texas, and California. Their community-led theories and community science form the basis for all of our work. The Just Environments Lab (JE-L) was founded in 2018 first as Comunidad. The lab changed names in the summer of 2020 to expand its focus.
just-environments.org/
We are acquainted with the major academic-led theories in this space (from political ecology to environmental justice), but always test and contrast these theories against the lived experiences of the communities we serve. We are currently working with underrepresented communities across: Puerto Rico, the Río Grande Valley of South Texas, and California. Their community-led theories and community science form the basis for all of our work. The Just Environments Lab (JE-L) was founded in 2018 first as Comunidad. The lab changed names in the summer of 2020 to expand its focus.
just-environments.org/
Office Hours shares professional and experiential knowledge by and for BIPOC artists, architects, designers, storytellers and cultural workers in an online setting, free of charge.
office-hours.design
office-hours.design
At the heart of Women Writing Architecture is an ever-growing annotated bibliography, an open-access list of texts written by women about architecture that challenges the boundaries of each of these three terms
Created collectively through conversations, invitations and spontaneous suggestions, it is offered as a resource
womenwritingarchitecture.org/
Created collectively through conversations, invitations and spontaneous suggestions, it is offered as a resource
- for gathering, publishing and sharing annotated lists of texts
- for encouragement, for finding and promoting new writers
- and for insight into what is happening in the vivid realm where women speak up for themselves
womenwritingarchitecture.org/