Season 1, Episode 5: Stephen Gray
For this month’s episode, we talk to urban designer and GSD professor Stephen Gray about bridging between academia and real-world projects, looking at the current moment of racial reckoning as an opportunity for innovation, and recent projects that critically examine the racialized history of the design disciplines. We also get into the parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the longer pandemic of structural racism, as well as how discourse around post-war or post-crisis city-building often falls short of committing to racial justice.
Stephen Gray is an Associate Professor of Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and founder of the Boston-based design firm Grayscale Collaborative . Operating at the intersection of research and practice, Stephen’s interests center on political and cultural justice in cities, socio-ecological urban design approaches to resilience, and the intersectionality of humanitarian aid and design. Among numerous other projects and initiatives, he is currently co-leading an Equitable Impacts Framework  pilot with the Urban Institute  and High Line Network  aimed at advancing racial equity agendas for infrastructure reuse projects across North America.
Show Credits
The Nexus Season 1 is hosted by Tara Oluwafemi and Darien Carr, students in the Master of Architecture program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The show is recorded and edited by Maggie Janik, and the theme music is produced by DJ Eway .