Jaqueline Tyrwhitt Urban Design Lecture: Deanna Van Buren, “Designing for Abolition”

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Event Description

Architects and designers play a critical role in addressing whole-systems change, including ending the systemic oppression and punishment of our criminal justice system.  Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is an architecture and real estate nonprofit that aims to ignite radical imagination to build an ecosystem of care that addresses the root causes of mass incarceration. This talk by co-founder and executive director Deanna Van Buren will show completed, current, and future projects by Designing Justice + Designing Spaces that illustrate how and what we need to build instead of prisons, jails, or courthouses. “Designing for Abolition” presents real world examples of how architects can practice differently to develop new prototypes that are driven by the communities we serve. Following the lecture, Andrea James, Executive Director of The National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, will join Deanna on stage for a conversation and Q&A.

Speakers

Deanna Van Buren is the co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. An architecture and real estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions, DJDS builds infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. She is also a socially engaged artist working across media platforms, including public art, film, and video games.

Van Buren has been profiled by The New York Times. She has written op-eds on the intersection of design, architecture, mass incarceration, and video games in outlets such as Politico, Architectural Record, and Gamasutra. Her TEDWomen talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than one million times.

Her other honors include UC Berkeley’s Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Prize and Professorship, awarded 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. Globally, she’s been awarded 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.

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.

Andrea C. James, JD. is the founder and executive director of The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls; founder of Families for Justice as Healing; author of Upper Bunkies Unite: And Other Thoughts on the Politics of Mass Incarceration; a 2015 Soros Justice Fellow and recipient of the 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

As a former criminal defense attorney and a formerly incarcerated woman, Andrea shares her personal and professional experiences to raise awareness of the effects of incarcerating women on themselves, their children, and their communities. Her work is focused on ending the incarceration of women and girls and contributing to the shift from a criminal legal system focused on police and prisons to a system led by directly affected people from within their neighborhoods and based on individual and community accountability.

Harvard University welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. If you would like to request accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact the Public Programs Office at (617) 496-2414 or [email protected] in advance of your participation or visit. Requests for American Sign Language interpreters and/or CART providers should be made at least two weeks in advance. Please note that the University will make every effort to secure services, but that services are subject to availability.

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