Bryan Lee to Present 'Design for Justice' Honors Workshop, Public Lecture on Feb. 18-19

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Bryan Lee, a designer and design justice advocate, is the founder/director of Colloqate Design, based in New Orleans.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. ­– Bryan C. Lee Jr. will present a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 19, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design lecture series.

Lee is a designer and design justice advocate. He is the founder/director of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social and cultural equity.

During his visit to campus, Lee also will conduct a "Design for Justice" weekend workshop for Fay Jones School honors students. The Feb. 18 workshop will focus on the intersection of issues facing Fayetteville, such as homelessness and affordable housing. Students will collaborate with Lee, Fay Jones School faculty and outside experts, using design to address community justice and advocacy. This workshop is supported in part by the Honors College, which is funding initiatives across campus that spark interdisciplinary learning for honors students.

In his Feb. 19 lecture, titled "Design Justice: Building Power," Lee will discuss how the professions of architecture and urban planning have established a process of design that creates tremendous environments for those of means and wealth, while having a neglectful eye toward the potential oppressive consequences for those without.

He will explore the privilege and power structures that have defined the built environment since America's inception. He will look at how organizing, advocacy and design justice work bind to racial, social and cultural equity around the world. He'll also examine how the theory of design justice can continually advocate for the dismantling of privilege and power structures that use architecture and planning to create systems of injustice throughout the built environment.

Like all institutions, design imposes its power through policies, procedures and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. The lasting permanence of their professional decisions requires designers to pay particular attention to the injustices that result from their work and to seek design justice wherever possible. "Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves; we as designers are at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power," Lee said.

Lee most recently served as the Place and Civic Design director for the Arts Council of New Orleans. Prior to that, he was an architectural designer at Eskew Dumez Ripple in New Orleans, which was selected for the 2014 AIA Architecture Firm Award.

Lee is the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized Design As Protest, a nationwide day of action in January 2017. Additionally, he has led two award-winning architecture and design programs for high school students through the Arts Council of New Orleans and the National Organization of Minority Architects, respectively. He serves on several boards, most notably as the Design Education Chair of the national NOMA board and on the National AIA Equity and the Future of Architecture Committee. He was selected as the 2014 NOMA member of the year, a 2015 Next City Vanguard Fellow, and a 2015 International British American Project Fellow. In 2016, Bryan was selected to give a TEDx Talk at Tulane University and to participate in a keynote conversation about design justice at SXSW Eco in Austin, Texas.

Lee received a Master of Architecture from New Jersey Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from The Ohio State University.

This is the Fay Jones School Honors Program Lecture.

The public is invited to attend. Admission is free, with limited seating.

For more information, contact 479-575-4704 or fayjones.uark.edu.