Exhibition Opening + Gallery Talk: Deanna Van Buren | Designing Justice + Designing Spaces – UC Berkeley Architecture Spring Lecture Series

THIS EVENT WILL BE LIVESTREAMED AT https://vimeo.com/500117557

To submit questions for the Q&A: Go to slido.com, enter event code #ARCHlecture, and type or upvote questions. Questions may also be entered in the Vimeo chat. 

ABOUT ARTIFACTS OF DECARCERATION

The exhibit in the Virtual Bauer Wurster First Floor Lobby will present full-scale models of several mobile responses that Designing Justice + Designing Spaces has created and deployed as part of their work to address the root causes of mass incarceration. These include a mobile refuge room for formerly-incarcerated people; mobile vending units for micro-entrepreneurs; and the Hit/Hug Punching Bag, which was created for youth to interact with in preparation for peacemaking. Visitors will be able to enter into and engage with 3D models of the artifacts of decarceration, and in doing so they’ll be exposed to a range of design responses at a small scale. The exhibit will also include imagery, videos, and descriptions of DJDS’s work in action in the world.

ABOUT RESTORE BERKELEY (THE PEACE ROOM)

Spaces for peacemaking are essential to amplifying and fomenting the cultural practices of peacemaking and restorative justice, an ancient alternative to punitive and adversarial processes. However, practitioners often lack dedicated spaces for these sensitive and private practices and meetings, and such is the case for the practitioners at the Restorative Justice Center on the UC Berkeley Campus. This temporary installation in Room 108 of Virtual Bauer Wurster Hall will demonstrate an idealized space for peacemaking. During the course of the installation, the Restorative Justice Center will host virtual events while also providing opportunities for open drop-ins and trainings for the entire university community. 

ABOUT DEANNA VAN BUREN

Deanna Van Buren is the Executive Director, Design Director, and Co-Founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS). A pioneering activist and one of fewer than 500 Black female architects in the U.S., Van Buren has been recognized internationally for her leadership in using architecture, design, and real estate innovations to address the social inequities behind the mass incarceration crisis. Van Buren was profiled by The New York Times in March 2020, and her 2017 TEDWomen talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than one million times, and she is the only architect to have been awarded the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship.

Van Buren is also the recipient of UC Berkeley’s prestigious 2018 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Prize and Professorship, which awards $100,000 biannually to a design practitioner who has made a significant contribution to advancing gender equity in architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and community. Her other honors include the 2018 Bicentenary Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, for her efforts in transforming justice through design, and Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Award. In 2018, Architect Magazine recognized DJDS as one of its seven “champions of social change.”

Her teaching experience includes Chester Prison’s Inside Out Program, where classes included incarcerated men and students from Haverford College, Eastern Mennonite University, where she taught global peacemakers, and UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design. She currently sits on the national board of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility.

Van Buren is also the co-founder of BIG Oakland (Building Industry Gathering), a co-working space supporting small minority- and women-owned firms in the architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate industry.

Van Buren received her BS in architecture from the University of Virginia and her MArch from Columbia University. She is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

ABOUT DESIGNING JUSTICE + DESIGNING SPACES (DJDS)

Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) is an Oakland-based architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration by building infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. Its work counters the traditional adversarial and punitive architecture of justice—courthouses, prisons, and jails—by creating spaces and buildings for restorative justice, community building, and housing for people coming out of incarceration.

DJDS also operates the Concept Development Fund, a program which helps nonprofits and advocates transform their ideas for community infrastructure reinvestment into fully realized designs complete with budgetary outlines, imagery, and other concrete details. The Fund receives charitable contributions that are used to support the financial costs of the concept development process.

THIS EXHIBITION IS PART OF THE SPRING 2021 BERKELEY ARCHITECTURE EVENTS SERIES, AND IT IS SPONSORED BY THE BERKELEY-RUPP PROFESSORSHIP AND PRIZE FUND. FUNDING FOR THIS PROJECT IS ALSO PROVIDED BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM SHAWN X. TSAO (B.A. ARCHITECTURE '11). OPEN TO ALL!