Social Justice Futures imagine design's capacity to support equity, inclusivity, and antiracism as an emboldened, speculative project. This focus is evident in the work of the School’s City Building Lab (CBL), which advances social and environmental justice initiatives in urban settings in collaboration with community partners. Courses such as Humanitarian Design, Hip-Hop Urbanism, and Topical Design Studios provide opportunities for developing further knowledge in this evolving area.
Social justice futures | EXAMPLES
HipHop Architecture
Examining the present and the future of Hip-Hop Architecture, Sekou Cooke's publication "Hip-Hop Architecture." also explores its historical antecedents and its theory, placing it in a wider context both within architecture and within Black and African American movements.
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Close to the Edge
Sekou Cooke is the curator of Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, an exhibition surveying the movement of Hip-Hop Architecture at the AIANY Center for Architecture in October 2018. The exhibition exhibits the work of students, academics, and practitioners at the center of an emerging architectural movement.
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Publication coming soon:
"Margin & Text - Voices on the Verge Intro"
In response to our history there has emerged an insistence among majority architects (which is almost all of us) that difference doesn't matter – that we don't see people in terms of skin color,
ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomics, politics, gender identification, etc. Hence this publication by Betsy West, Kelly Carlson-Reddig, and José Gámez, a collection of the 2020-21 lecture series at the School of Architecture at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
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Tanzania Anti Malaria Project
Assistant Professor of Architecture Liz McCormick and her and co-investigator Brett Tempest, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, have received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to engage students in McCormick's continued research into climate-resilient architecture in tropical regions.
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Community Design Workshops
Nadia M. Anderson, director of the City Building Lab, has been approved for a $25,000 “Grants for Arts Projects” award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support neighborhood visioning workshops.
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One Eleuthera Foundation partnership
UNC Charlotte Students under the lead of José Gámez join students from Florida and the Bahamas to design post-hurricane housing. As North America prepares for another hurricane season, the work of one School of Architecture studio in Fall 2020 is responding to the challenge.
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