As part of the SA+P Spring 2023 Lecture Series, the School of Architecture + Planning hosts the Baltimore + Rotterdam Designing Cities Webinar Series.  

The Power of Design! Working with Stakeholders to Design Human Spaces (Webinar D)

In order to improve the way we live, we ought to design better cities and smarter buildings. To do so, collaboration is key.

Our world faces challenges that are too great to be tackled by a single discipline. More than ever, inviting users, customers, governance and other stakeholders into the process of design is fundamental.

These “new” stakeholders need to be brought in as active co-designers, to confront the big issues and develop actionable ways to improve experiences and to co-create new solutions.

Collaboration is discovering and using unique perspectives and benefiting from collective exploration. When designing the environment, we ought to include all the parties that hold a stake in its success (from individuals to communities to designers, planners, governance).  Specifically, we ought to make sure we co-design throughout the whole development process to ensure the results meet everyone’s needs and are usable.

This session will raise themes of inclusion, accessibility, equity. When thinking about the difference of affordable housing, for example, we tend to create ghettos in the US.
We also continue to have the residue of redlining with taxes that push “others” out of communities causing gentrification.

How do you meld architecture, policy, and real-estate in capitalistic and past empires/colonizing countries? Politics in the West wants to deny minorities, immigrants, migrants, and refugees, We see them as stakeholders/humans with needs that were often affected by past atrocities from the West.

Do architects ignore the politics and policies or do we have real agency in making change?

Moderated by: coleman jordan

Panelists: 

Jason Neal (Founder, J.Neal Architecture & Design)
Zico Lopes (Founder, Spatial Codes)
Tyler Miller (Associate, Gensler)
Elina Karanastasi (Founder + Architect, ExS Architect)

*Lectures are providing AIA continuing education credits: 1.0 AIA LU|HSW per webinar.*