Design With Love: At Home in America
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The question of the architect's role within the community has continued to grow and change in recent years. How do we look beyond not only designing projects, but delivering on a mission to research, build, and advocate for architecture that promotes justice and human dignity? This presentation explores the notion that the best results for all stakeholders occur when a project is conceived and built with purpose. A purpose built approach begins with immersion, a deep engagement with all partners and project stakeholders that allows us to collectively identify the specific mission of a project and its intended outcomes, and ends with impact.
Learning Objectives:
- At the end of this program, participants will be able to identify the impact of community centered design and purpose built approaches in architecture.
- At the end of this program, participants will be able to integrate strategies of immersion and interpersonal engagement in the project planning and design stages.
- At the end of this program, participants will be able to assess project outcomes by their impact on the health and well-being of their respective communities, beyond strictly financial results.
- At the end of this program, participants will be able to implement methodology and thinking to inspire future generations of designers and architects.
Katie Swenson
Senior Principal, MASS Design Group
Harvard University GSD, Loeb Fellow | University of Virginia, M. Arch | U.C. Berkeley, B.A.
A nationally recognized design leader, researcher, writer, and educator, Katie Swenson has served as a Senior Principal of MASS Design Group since 2020. Katie’s work explores how critical design practice can, and should, promote economic and social equity, environmental sustainability, and healthy communities. Katie has over 20 years of experience in the theoretical and practical application of design thinking and is a talented global public speaker and thought leader. A prolific writer, she authored Design with Love: At Home in America, and In Bohemia: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Kindness, both published in August 2020. She co-authored Growing Urban Habitats: Seeking a Housing Development Model with William Morrish and Susanne Schindler. She is a contributing author to Activist Architecture: Philosophy and Practice of Community Design and Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism. Katie was awarded the AIA Award for Excellence in Public Architecture in 2021.
Prior to joining MASS, Katie was the vice president of Design & Sustainability at Enterprise Community Partners. An alumni of the Enterprise Rose Fellowship’s second class, Swenson was tapped to lead and grow the program in 2007. Katie also helped found the Charlottesville Community Design Center in 2004.