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As part of the Design Agendas Symposium, join Toni L. Griffin, professor in practice of urban planning at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, for a keynote conversation with Kelly McGowan, Founder and Executive Director of Transform 314.  The conversation will explore how transdisciplinary design projects can address spatial and social injustices embedded within US cities.

Doors open at 5 pm, and the talk starts at 5:30 pm. A reception will follow.

Free and open to the public. Space is limited; registration is required.

Watch the video recording.

Read the press release

Read the Symposium Brochure

Panel Discussions

Learn more about the discussion panels on Saturday, October 26.

ASL Interpretation

American Sign Language interpretation can be arranged for public events upon request. This service is free, but we ask for two weeks’ notice. Requests can be made by contacting kempereducation@wustl.edu

Parking

Free parking is available in the East End Garage after 5 pm and on the weekends. Enter at the intersection of Forsyth Blvd and Wrighton Way. View a map and complete parking information here.

About the Speaker

Toni L. Griffin is founder of urbanAC LLC, based in New York, a planning and design management practice that works with public, private, and nonprofit partnerships to reimage, reshape, and rebuild just cities and communities. The practice designs and leads complex and transformative social and spatial urban revitalization projects rooted in addressing historic and current disparities involving race, class, and generation. Over the past ten years, they have successfully collaborated with several major US cities on the cusp of just social and economic recovery. Recent cities include Chicago, Indianapolis, Rochester, and St. Louis. Griffin is also a professor in practice of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she teaches design studios and seminars also rooted in issues of social and spatial justice.  She is founder and director of the Just City Lab, an applied research platform that investigates the ways design can have a positive impact on addressing the conditions of injustice in cities.

Griffin is the author of multiple articles on design justice, and co-editor of The Just City Essays (2015) and the upcoming publication The Just City Dialogues: Disruptive Design. She has lectured extensively in the US, Netherlands, South Africa, and South America, and between 2016 and 2020 served as an Obama Presidential appointee to the US Commission on Fine Arts. 

Support

Generous support provided by WashU’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Equity and WashU’s ten-year strategic vision, Here and Next, designed to mobilize research, education, and patient care to establish WashU and St. Louis as a global hub for transformative solutions to the deepest societal challenges.

Additional funds are provided by the William T. Kemper Foundation and individual members of the Kemper Art Museum.