Work to Do

Anthony J. Piermarini, Archive, Contributors, Cornell Journal of Architecture 12, Densities, Essay, Formats, Hansy Better Barraza, No Density, Politics and economics, Topics, Urban Paradigms.

Activism, Architecture’s role, Architecture&Gender, Boston, City challenge, Community, Construction, COVID-19, Cultural identity, Culture, Decision makers, Designing Strategies, Dialogue, Education, Essay, Identity, Immigration, indigenous, Inequality, Opportunities, Race, USA, User's experience.

This essay is an excerpt from Cornell Journal of Architecture 12: After edited by Val Warke, Hallie Black and Todd Petrie from Cornell AAP.

A dialogue on our responsibility in dismantling anti-Black design curricula and spaces in architectural education. The idea for this dialogue occurred after observing that the responsibility and appeals to respond to the institutional racial inequities and discrimination experienced by Black students in the academy disproportionally fell on one of us, who identifies as a person of color. By sharing our identity and perspective as a person who identifies as Latinx or white cisgender male in the same writing space, we’re establishing a framework for conversations that acknowledge privilege in parallel to those that have been historically marginalized. To have a conversation on curricular changes towards equity, we advocate that it must happen in dialogue with those groups that are in constant threat of erasure.