Margaret McCurry Lectureship in the Design Arts: Chelina Odbert, “Situating Justice: Reflections on Mission-Driven Practice”

Event Description

This presentation explores the ways in which design has a critical but often overlooked role in shaping inclusion, justice, and equity across the public realm. Because they engage in the intersections of environmental and urban systems, the design disciplines are well-equipped to address inequity, injustice, and challenges to inclusivity. The practice of design, however, is not. Relying on an outdated framework that pairs a paying client with a licensed design professional, the prevailing business model works within a system that perpetuates injustice by responding to those priorities set forth by those with access to capital.

From her days as a student at the GSD, Chelina’s goal has been to practice differently. Rather than just responding to briefs, she and her classmates started the Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) with the belief that another mode of practice was possible, one in which everyday people could identify challenges where they live—particularly at the intersection of environmental and social justice—and design practitioners could assemble the teams and processes to plan, design, and deliver projects.

Chelina’s talk will include a reflection on an unconventional journey to build a mission-driven practice: from high-end residential design, to the GSD, to the informal settlements of Kenya, and, eventually, to the rural and urban communities of Southern California. Chelina will explore the unique opportunities and challenges of a mission-driven practice. She will also share several flagship projects that, when taken together, begin to define what a just public realm could look like.

Speaker

Chelina Odbert is the co-founder and executive director of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), a non-profit that uses urban planning, landscape architecture, research, and community organizing to build a more just public realm. Straddling different disciplines, scales, and project types, her work is linked by a common purpose: to build community power and ensure that where you live does not determine how you live.

A leader in her field, Chelina has been recognized by the United Nations, the Aspen Institute, the Knight Foundation Fellows, and Ashoka Changemakers. Because of her ground-breaking work addressing the un-public nature of public space, she and her firm won a 2021 Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York. In 2022, KDI received the prestigious National Design Award in Landscape Architecture from the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum.

Chelina has held teaching appointments at Harvard Graduate School of Design, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, and The Claremont Colleges. She lectures extensively about equitable communities and has written about sustainable development in a range of publications, including authoring The World Bank Handbook of Gender-Inclusive Urban Planning and Design and contributing to Just Urban Design, Designing Peace, and Now Urbanism.

Chelina earned a Master of Urban Planning degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts with High Honors from Claremont McKenna College.

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