Free Webinar - Monument Redefined: Expanding the Conversation for Social Justice

When:  Dec 10, 2020 from 01:00 PM to 02:15 PM (ET)
Associated with  Committee on Design

Free webinar - Monument Redefined: Expanding the Conversation for Social Justice


1.H LUS/HSW

Course Description


Across America and overseas, reactions to traditional monuments are changing the way we think about their message as well as their place in the public spaces in our communities. This session seeks to contextualize the role of monuments in our current societal condition and presents four architect-envisioned monuments that highlight the underrepresented histories of African American citizens.

Learning Objectives


  1. Learn how architects collaborate with artists, sculptors, craftsman, cultural groups, and communities to design and execute monumental constructions.
  2. Learn how universal design creatively deployed allows for better inclusiveness in public spaces.
  3. Explore how the built environment can produce variant ways of communicating ideas that promote and advance social justice.
  4. Learn how memorials engage communities through dialogue and remembrance, while raising local consciousness of cultural awareness.


Speakers

William Bates, FAIA, NOMA, AIA Past President (moderator)

Bill is a retired Corporate Architect with global corporate real estate and property management experience. He has served as a partner in an architectural practice, a corporate design manager, a bank vice president, a high tech startup executive, and restaurant chain executive. He is passionate about diversity, the built and natural environment. Bill currently teaches architecture at Carnegie Mellon University.

Bill’s volunteer leadership history includes roles as former board chair of the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation’s for-profit Landmarks Development Board, a founding member of the Allegheny County Parks Foundation, and former Vice President of the Allegheny Land Trust. Board Chair of USGBC’s Green Building Alliance and founding president of the NOMA Pittsburgh Chapter. Bates has been an active member of the American Institute of Architects for the past 38 years and served as the organization’s national 2019 President. Recently he was elected to the Board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Pennsylvania State Architects Licensure Board.




Meejin Yoon, AIA,
Howler, Yoon Architecture LLP

J. Meejin Yoon, AIA FAAR, is an architect, designer, and educator, whose projects and research investigate the intersections between architecture, technology, and the public realm. Yoon is the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean at the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University. Before joining the AAP faculty, Yoon was at MIT for 17 years, where she received the Irwin Sizer Award for the Most Significant Improvement to MIT Education and served as head of the Department of Architecture from 2014–18.

Yoon is cofounding principal of Höweler + Yoon Architecture, a studio recognized for design innovation and excellence. Recent projects include the Memorial for Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia, the Collier Memorial, and the MIT Museum. Yoon and her studio have received numerous professional awards and cultural honors. Yoon's work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, the Vitra Design Museum in Germany, and the National Art Center in Japan.

She received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell AAP and a Master of Architecture in urban design from Harvard GSD.


Dayton Schroeter AIA,
Principal, SmithGroup
Dayton is a Design Principal who has championed Design Justice advocacy throughout his career at SmithGroup. As a leader of the firm’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee, his charge is to lead design projects that address the systemic injustice that architecture and planning have perpetuated for historically disenfranchised communities of color. Leveraging his tenacious passion for design justice with authenticity and creativity, he is currently leading Antiracism efforts in design projects including the National Slavery Museum located at the Lumpkin’s Slave Jail Site / Devil’s Half Acre and a traveling installation called Society’s Cage that sheds national awareness on the intersectional effects of racism on our society’s collective health, safety, and welfare. Dayton is the co-author of a research grant called Hidden Voices for the development of a rubric for architects and planners doing community engagement around Black historical sites of trauma and resilience in the United States.


Michael Arad, AIA,
Handel Architects LLP

Michael Arad’s design for the National September 11 Memorial at the World Trade Center site, titled “Reflecting Absence,” was selected by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation from among more than 5,000 entries submitted in an international competition held in 2003. Mr. Arad joined Handel Architects as a Partner in April 2004 where he worked on realizing the Memorial design as a member of the firm.

A native of Israel, Mr. Arad was raised there, the U.K., the United States, and Mexico. He came to the United States and earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1994 and a Master of Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999. In 2006 Mr. Arad was one of six recipients of the Young Architects Award of the American Institute of Architects. In 2012, he was awarded the AIA Presidential Citation for his work on the National September 11 Memorial. In addition, he was also honored in 2012 by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council with the Liberty Award for Artistic Leadership. His work on the Memorial was recognized with Honor Awards from the AIA and ASLA.

In 2017 Mr. Arad was selected to design a memorial to the victims of the 2015 Charleston church massacre at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

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