North America

Is the right to housing real? Jonathan Kirschenfeld and Brenda Rosen share their thoughts on the right to housing, and methodologies for doing supportive housing well.

Housing

10-11 | Emily Pilloton and John Peterson Argue for Design as the Great Equalizer, Part 1 & 2

Can design challenge inequality? John Peterson and Emily Pilloton share their practices and discuss how design can subvert structural inequality.

Advocacy
Community Development

100 | Designing Portals to Connect the World

Design at the Intersection of Technology and Humanity Michelle Moghtader is the Director of Global Development & Co-Founder of Shared Studios, as well as a journalist and community organizer.

Community Development

101 | Light is Life

Design at the Intersection of Technology and Humanity Hal Aronson, Ph.D., is the co-founder of WE CARE Solar – an organization that provides light and power to medical facilities across the developing world.

Community Development

103 | Considering Just Transit for a Just City

The Narrative of Design & Activism Alissa Walker is a journalist and design advocate well-known for her work on urbanism and mobility. Her work examines pressing urban issues including mass-transit, accessibility, and climate change in the context of social justice, exclusion, and general livability.

Advocacy

104 | Omitted Narratives in Graphic Design

The Narrative of Design & Activism Jerome Harris is an American graphic designer and educator whose research focuses on omitted narratives of African American designers in the field of graphic design.

Advocacy

105 | Taking a Critical Stance on Design

The Narrative of Design & Activism Aaron Seward is editor of Texas Architect magazine, where he curates, writes and produces an ongoing dialogue about architecture & urbanism.

Advocacy

106 | Making Design a Part of the Conversation

The Narrative of Design & Activism Diana Budds is a design writer & producer based in New York City. She writes, edits and produces stories about design at all scales, with a particular focus on how design affects and reflects culture.

Advocacy

107 | In Defense of Slowness

The Narrative of Design & Activism Spencer Bailey of Phaidon publishing joins us to discuss concepts of ‘slow’ media, and how to be more conscientious about the media we consume.

Advocacy

108 | How to Kick the Building

The Narrative of Design & Activism Asad Syrkett is the Deputy Editor at Curbed, where he directs a portfolio around architecture, decor, urbanism, technology, fashion, art, travel, and issues of race and gender in the design world.

Advocacy

109 | All the Stories Left to Tell

The Narrative of Design & Activism Amanda Baillieu founded Archiboo in 2014 as a new kind of architectural discussion space, building on the changing landscape of design media after the Great Recession.

Advocacy

117 | What a Great Time to Be Alive

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Eric Corey Freed award-winning American architect, author, speaker and green strategist, joins us to talk about the state of the union in green design.

Environment

118 | Design Politics in the Climate Emergency

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Dr. Kian Goh, RA, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She researches the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization.

Urban Strategies

119 | Redesigning Our Relationship with the Earth

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and a prominent voice in modern earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism.

Environment

120 | Beyond Green Design

Crisis in Climate, Crisis in Design Mary Ann Lazarus is an American architect and longtime leader in the field of sustainable design.

Environment

15 | A Homeowner-driven Approach to Rebuilding After Disaster

Can design prevent disaster? Dr. Elizabeth Hausler of Build Change details a homeowner-driven approach to rebuilding after disaster.

Advocacy
Housing

18 | Unifying First and Third World Strategies for Disaster Mitigation

Can design prevent disaster? Geohazards International shares their groundbreaking methods for disaster mitigation.

Advocacy
Conflict and Disaster

19-20 | The Trajectory of Social Design, Part 1 & 2

Can we design community engagement? Sergio Palleroni discusses his thirty year career in Social Impact Design

Community Development
Environment
Housing

23 | How do we make life into art, and vice versa?

Can we design community engagement? Project Row Houses is a neighborhood based nonprofit art and cultural organization working on grassroots development in Houston’s 3rd ward.

Advocacy
Community Development

24-25 | Tools for Urban Action, Part 1 & 2

Can design reclaim public space? Ecosistema Urbano & Interboro share their stories about how they shaped a practice around public space.

Advocacy
Community Development
Urban Strategies

35 | Big Problems, Simple Solutions

How do we design with scarcity? Ashok Gadgil speaks to us about simple, low cost solutions to global public health.

Advocacy

36 | Changing the Way We Make Fire

How do we design with scarcity? Dean Still of Aprovecho talks to us about the history of Aprovecho and their work to improve cookstove technology.

Advocacy
Community Development

40 | Activating Community Voices

What can design do to promote peace? Isella Ramirez of Hester Street discusses their strategies for making communities be heard.

Advocacy
Community Development
Housing

42-43 | A Green Vision for the Future of Cities Part 1 & 2

Can a city work as an ecosystem? Gail Vittori and Pliny Fisk introduce our hosts to their work, thinking at multiple scales about how to live & work ecologically.

Advocacy
Environment

45 | Finding Nature Beneath our Feet

Can a city work as an ecosystem? Nance Klehm shares her experiences as a ‘radical ecologist’ and her strategies for helping cities connect with nature.

Environment

54 | Designing a Post-Industrial Future

How do we democratize design? John Fetterman of Braddock, PA, shares his thoughts on how to imagine a new future in a post-industrial landscape.

Advocacy
Community Development
Urban Strategies

57 | Social Design Insights 2017 Year in Review

How do we design resistance? Cliff Curry and Delight Stone join Eric and Emiliano to discuss the first year of Social Design Insights and look to what’s ahead.

Advocacy

58 | Public Interest Design, Past & Future

How do we design resistance? John Cary is an American connector, writer, speaker and curator focused on social change.

Advocacy

60-61 | Justice, Incarceration & Design, Part 1 & 2

How do we design resistance? Deanna Van Buren and Raphael Sperry join us to discuss the architecture of incarceration, and how their respective work campaigns for reform

Advocacy

62 | Finding Empathy, Making Art

How do we design resistance? Suzanne Lacy talks to us about the role of art in the pursuit of social justice, and how to navigate the lines between art, activism, design and space.

Advocacy

63-64 | Design as Protest, Protest by Design, Part 1 & 2

How do we design resistance? Bryan C. Lee Jr. and Sue Mobley of Colloqate Design join us to discuss how design can support or deconstruct systems of institutional oppression.

Advocacy

65 | Data, Design and Social Practice

How do we design resistance? Laura Kurgan of the Center for Spatial Research joins us to talk about how data and the design of data systems can be applied to social justice.

Advocacy

66-67 | Fronts: Security in the Developing World, Part 1 & 2

How do we design resistance? Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller of Agency Architecture reveal their global projects on urbanism and resistance.

Advocacy

79-80 | Inciting Radical Communities, Part 1 & 2

How can cities be reimagined by their citizens? Two central figures in public art and community building unveil how they help communities take control of their own futures.

Advocacy
Community Development
Urban Strategies

81 | The Resiliency of Right Now

Is Resilience Still Relevant? Zander Rose of the Long Now Foundation speaks with us about how designers can design better by thinking differently about time.

Advocacy
Environment
Resilience

87 | Experiments in Resilience Amid the Backloop

Is Resilience Still Relevant? Wakefield is an Urban Studies Foundation Research Fellow at Florida International University in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies. Her work, developed over the past decade of teaching and research in New York City, explores the diverse practices and technologies of resilient urbanism as both technical phenomenon and catalysts of new kinds of life in the Anthropocene.

Conflict and Disaster
Resilience
Urban Strategies

89 | How to Make More Integrated Humans

Is Resilience Still Relevant? We had a chance to speak with Marcin Jakubowski on Social Design Insights, where he and our host Eric Cesal spoke about the future of agriculture, industry, and how to make more evolved humans.

Community Development
Urban Strategies

Adbusters

Does Design Create Politics or Vice Versa? Adbusters Media Foundation has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing Day, TV Turnoff Week, and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements. Additionally, it publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine devoted to challenging consumerism.

Advocacy

Alliance of Community Trainers

Can design increase civic engagement? The Alliance of Community Trainers works with communities to create a shared vision and to empower communities with tools for problem solving, conflict resolution, alternative technology, environmental sustainability and more.

Advocacy
Community Development
Conflict and Disaster
Environment
Resilience
Urban Strategies

Aprovecho Research Center

Are open source, global standards for clean, efficient cook stoves possible? Aprovecho Research Center (ARC) is dedicated to researching, developing, and disseminating appropriate technological solutions for meeting the basic human needs of refugees and impoverished people.

Advocacy
Community Development

Architecture for Humanity

2013 Prize Winner

Vision Award Recipient

What is the role of architects in communities in need? Cameron Sinclair and Kate Stohr, recipients of the first Curry Stone Design Prize Vision Award, have been committed to social impact design since co-founding Architecture for Humanity in 1999.

Community Development
Conflict and Disaster

Ashok Gadgil

Can low cost, simple designs be implemented at scale? For over twenty years, US engineer Dr. Ashok Gadgil’s work has focused on designing low-cost technologies that help the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.

Advocacy

bcWORKSHOP

Can architects build community as well as buildings? bcWORKSHOP works in neighborhoods lacking access to designers. Its programs are committed to building community and begin by acknowledging that social structure is the best guide to designing physical structures.

Community Development
Housing

Bethlehem Inn

How can designers address poverty in American cities? Bethlehem Inn provides shelter to individuals and families experiencing homelessness in Central Oregon.

Community Development
Housing
Resilience

Blue Star Integrative Studio

How can design support community development? Blue Star Integrative Studio (BSIS) is a Tribally Owned, Indigenous American professional services firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma offering feasibility studies, planning, and design services. It illuminates opportunities through collaboration to support the sustainability of people, places, and the planet.

Advocacy
Environment
Housing

Breaking Ground

What is supportive housing? Breaking Ground innovated “supportive housing. It includes, but goes beyond, shelter. BG repurposes and builds dignified living environments that support residents via services including counseling, job services and more.

Housing
Urban Strategies

Build Change

What is needed to rebuild resiliently after a disaster? Denver-based non-profit Build Change designs disaster-resistant houses and schools for emerging nations, then trains builders, homeowners, engineers and government officials to build them using simple, culturally appropriate, and cost-effective techniques.

Community Development
Conflict and Disaster

Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems

How is consideration of the full life cycle of products a means to achieve sustainability? The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems designs systems that identify and utilize the full life cycle of products, buildings and regions, resulting in smarter and more sustainable practices.

Advocacy
Environment

Center for Spatial Research

Can big data be used in the service of social justice? The Center for Spatial Research links design, architecture, urbanism and humanities with data science. Data is used in the service of justice; creating visualizations to understand cities, conflict and inequality.

Urban Strategies

Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)

2012 Prize Winner

Can design increase civic participation? The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) collaborates with designers, educators, advocates, students, and communities to make educational tools that demystify complex policy and planning issues.

Advocacy
Community Development

Chautauqua Poets & Writers

Can community engagement be cultivated using artistic expression? The Chautauqua Poets & Writers features award-winning writers who bring the community together with their insights.

Community Development

City Repair Project

How can public space be reclaimed to forge stronger communities? Portland, Oregon-based City Repair Project (CRP) seeks to address America’s lack of community gathering spaces by empowering neighborhoods to reclaim public spaces and creatively repurpose them to bring people together.

Community Development
Environment

CLUSTER Cairo

How do we democratize design? Founded in Egypt in response to the Arab Spring, Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research (CLUSTER) is an interdisciplinary platform for urban design and research working to establish a critical space for urban discourse by engaging questions of public space and specifically, urban informality.

Urban Strategies

Communitere

Should disaster victims be empowered to create their own recovery? Communitere is an international disaster nonprofit operating that creates dynamic, collaborative hubs in communities affected by disaster, empowering residents to take an active role in their own recovery.

Community Development
Conflict and Disaster

David Baker Architects

Can affordable housing be more than just housing that is affordable? David Baker Architects is a Bay Area and Atlanta-based firm specializing in affordable housing, green building, and transit-oriented development. With its focus on integrating elegant, contemporary aesthetics with energy conservation and humanity, its work sets the standard for public housing.

Housing

Design for Extreme Affordability

Can social change be taught? Design for Extreme Affordability is a graduate course offered by Stanford University where students are asked to design products and services which will change the lives of the world’s poorest citizens.

Advocacy
Healthcare

Detroit Collaborative Design Center

Can Design Challenge Inequality? The Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC), formerly the School of Architecture + Community Design, is a multidisciplinary nonprofit design center bringing high-quality, community-based design to all neighborhoods in Detroit.

Community Development
Urban Strategies

Earth Activist Training

Can we design education for environmental sustainability? Author, activist and founder Starhawk offers Earth Activist Training in permaculture, nature awareness, earth based spirituality and more for individuals, teachers and community groups.

Community Development
Environment
Resilience
Urban Strategies

Equalize Health (Formerly D-Rev)

Can high quality, low cost medical equipment be broadly available to the world’s poorest? Equalize Health (formerly D-Rev) is a not-for-profit medical technology company working to prevent people lacking access to treatment from suffering treatable conditions.

Advocacy
Healthcare

Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman

How can borders be places of innovation, creativity and exchange? Central to Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman’s work is the idea that “borders” are not places to be defended, but can promote innovation and exchange.

Community Development
Urban Strategies

Fallen Fruit

What if our cities become places that grow natural resources for anyone to share? The art collective Fallen Fruit plants fruit trees in public spaces for everyone to share. They invite citizens to re-imagine public participation, urban space and the meaning of community.

Community Development
Environment

GeoHazards International

Can best practices in seismic safety be employed in the developing world? GeoHazards International (GHI) is a California based non-profit which works to bring the best practices in seismic safety from the developed world to the developing world.

Advocacy
Conflict and Disaster

Girls Garage (formerly Project H Design)

Can design challenge inequality? Girls Garage (formerly Project H Design) is a construction and design school for girls and gender-expansive youth ages 9-18. Located in Berkeley, California, its programs range from carpentry and activist art classes to design-build programs where high school students construct full-scale architectural projects for community-based clients.

Advocacy
Community Development

Gulf Coast Community Design Studio

How can the community be integrated into the rebuilding process? A professional service and outreach program of Mississippi State University’s College of Architecture, Art + Design, Gulf Coast Community Design Studio (GCCDS) was established in Biloxi, Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to provide design services to devastated communities throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Over time, it has evolved to address long-term issues of equitable community resilience.

Community Development
Urban Strategies

Hester Street Collaborative

How can neighborhoods be shaped by the people who live in them? Hester Street works to ensure neighborhoods are shaped by the people who live in them. They offer planning, design and community development assistance to community-based organizations, government and other agencies.

Advocacy
Community Development
Housing

Interboro

How can designers create a more inclusive space? Interboro is an architecture, urban design, and planning firm working across scales, from buildings to communities. They are known for a participatory, place-specific approach that helps build consensus around complex projects.

Advocacy
Community Development
Urban Strategies

Isla Urbana

Can DIY harvesting of rainwater solve a water crisis? Isla Urbana is a project dedicated to contributing to water sustainability in Mexico through rainwater harvesting.

Community Development
Urban Strategies

John Fetterman

How can a town decimated by globalization be revitalized? John Fetterman is an American politician who, as Mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, led the urban rejuvenation of a post-industrial city.

Advocacy
Community Development
Urban Strategies

Jonathan Kirschenfeld

Can excellent design be for everyone? Jonathan Kirschenfeld is a New York architect recognized for design excellence over a wide range of environmentally and socially sustainable projects including supportive housing, childcare centers, recreation, and performance facilities.

Housing

Kounkuey Design Initiative

How can conversation with residents and deep engagement lead to community empowerment? The non-profit Kounkuey Design Initiative is based in Los Angeles, CA and Nairobi, Kenya. Using extensive community engagement, it reveals systemic needs and enlists the community in constructing solutions.

Community Development
Environment

MASS Design Group

2012 Prize Winner

Why invest in architecture in resource-limited settings? Model of Architecture Serving Society (MASS Design) is a Boston-based architectural practice focusing on advocacy, the education of the next generation of architects, and the impacts of architecture on human lives.

Conflict and Disaster
Healthcare

Nance Klehm

Can a city work as an ecosystem? “Radical ecologist” Nance Klehm fosters awareness of how plants and animals coexist. She is an ecological systems designer, landscaper, horticultural consultant and permacultural grower focused on soil, ecology and community.

Environment

Open Architecture Collaborative

Can design increase civic engagement? The Open Architecture Collaborative (OAC), formerly known as the Architecture for Humanity Network, is a global community mobilizing architects, designers, and a diverse range of professionals who shape the built environment with the skills to work with communities experiencing systemic racism and marginalization.

Advocacy
Community Development

Open Source Ecology

What are the fifty machines essential to modern life—and can their designs be open-sourced? Open Source Ecology is dedicated to an open-source economy. At their core are plans for fifty fundamental machines; what is required to create a small, modern civilization.

Environment

Project Row Houses

Can artists create solutions instead of just social commentary? Located in Houston’s Northern Third Ward, Project Row Houses believes artists can catalyze social change and that art community are integrally linked– neither is viable without the other.

Advocacy
Community Development
Housing

Public Architecture

How can standard design firms be supported in pro-bono work? San Francisco based Public Architecture formalizes pro bono service within architecture, interiors and landscape design. Their flagship program, 1+, supports firms in donating 1% of their time to pro-bono work.

Community Development

Qigong Sensory Training Institute

What is the role of parent education in the healthcare of autistic children? Qigong Sensory Therapy is a revolutionary approach to treating autism developed by integrating Western and Chinese medicine.

Advocacy
Healthcare

RootStudio

How do we design with scarcity? RootStudio is a multidisciplinary design studio originating in Oaxaca City, Mexico that develops structures and housing for communities in need.

Community Development
Housing

Rural Studio

Can we design community engagement? The Rural Studio is a groundbreaking off-campus designbuild program of Auburn University. Founded in 1993 by D.K. Ruth and Samuel Mockbee, the program established a new breed of community-based design education.

Community Development
Housing

Sergio Palleroni

Can social impact design be taught? Sergio Palleroni is a leader, practitioner and educator in social impact design. In 1995, Palleroni founded the BASIC Initiative, a program that moved students from the design studio into communities.

Community Development
Environment

Suzanne Lacy

What is the role of art in engaging the public in social justice issues? American artist and activist Suzanne Lacy tackles gender violence, segregation and other social justice issues. Her work evokes discussion and debate and often engages audiences directly, outside of institutional structures.

Advocacy

Theaster Gates

Can we design community engagement? Based in the South Side of Chicago, Theaster Gates is an artist, professor, social innovator, and founder of Rebuild Foundation, which reimagines the potential of vacancy and abandonment through the power of arts, culture, and creative empowerment by building a constellation of spaces that unearth the value and beauty in Black space.

Advocacy
Community Development

Wes Janz

2008 Prize Winner