Making Home with JUSTICE Lecture WITH DEANNA VAN BUREN OF DESIGNING JUSTICE + DESIGNING SPACES

The Making Home lecture series at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union presents four free public lectures featuring Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial exhibition participants paired with designers, artists, professionals, and Cooper Union faculty discussing the exhibition’s exploration of home and its relation to design, data, justice, history, and building.

For the second event in the series, Making Home with Justice, Deanna Van Buren, architect and founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, will discuss the ecosystem(s) of care required to end mass incarceration, including the installation “Architecture of Reentry” in the exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is a design, architecture, and real-estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration and advocating for restorative justice solutions through the built environment. DJDS works collaboratively with restorative justice program providers to design customized spaces at the same time the context of the program is being developed.

The lecture will include a presentation of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces’ recent work and a panel discussion with program providers who have developed innovative programming for peacemaking and restorative justice in the city and state of New York, including Sethu Nair, director of alternative dispute resolution and restorative practices at the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, and Aaron Arnold, chief development officer of All Rise.

The program will be moderated by Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, deputy director and curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Please note: This program is located offsite at the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union. See address and location information below.

SPEAKERS 

Deanna Van Buren is an award-winning architect and activist recognized internationally for her leadership in using architecture, design, and real estate innovations to address the social inequities behind the mass incarceration crisis. Van Buren is co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and design firm with the mission of dismantling the punitive infrastructure of the prison system by designing and building new spaces informed by restorative justice: peacemaking centers, mobile re-entry housing, holistic behavioral health hubs, spaces for youth, spaces for diversion/re-entry, and more.

Her work has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects San Francisco, as well as Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Awards honoring pioneering professionals. Van Buren is the only architect to have been awarded the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, was the 2018 recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Prize and Professorship and is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Aaron Arnold is chief development officer at All Rise, a national nonprofit organization that works to improve justice system responses to substance use and mental health disorders. Prior to joining All Rise, Arnold spent 15 years at the Center for Court Innovation, overseeing the Center’s national work in the areas of alternatives to incarceration, community justice, and more. While at the Center, Arnold helped to launch the Red Hook Peacemaking Program, the first court-based restorative justice program in the country. He then directed the planning and implementation of the Near Westside Peacemaking Project (Syracuse, New York), a community center dedicated to resolving neighborhood disputes, school disciplinary matters, and criminal cases through restorative justice practices. Arnold has served as a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, Arizona, where he gained first-hand experience working in several problem-solving courts. Arnold is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Arizona College of Law.

Sethu Laxmi Nair is a mediator, facilitator, coach, and trainer in the fields of alternative dispute resolution and restorative practices. Through her work, Nair seeks to improve interpersonal and social dynamics by enhancing leadership capacity and conflict competence among leaders and groups. Currently, she serves as the Director of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Restorative Practices at the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, an innovative public service group that offers a blend of conflict resolution, training, and systems design options within and across the New York City government. Through her private practice, Nair consults with nonprofit organizations and businesses, offering a unique blend of leadership coaching, mediation, and group conflict management. She earned her bachelor’s at SUNY Purchase College and her Master’s in Economic and Political Development at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa (moderator) works as deputy director and curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture. His research and curatorial interests are at the intersection of space, care, and power. Ruiz de Teresa operates across disciplinary boundaries to interrogate the way in which art, design and politics shape each other. He co-leads the seminar and research project on Public Art as Alimentary Infrastructure at The Cooper Union’s School of Architecture. Trained as an architect and urbanist at the Architectural Association and Universidad Iberoamericana, Ruiz de Teresa graduated from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design with a Masters in Design Studies and was Stavros Niarchos Foundation PhD Scholar, Visiting Lecturer, and Researcher at the Royal College of Art in London.

AccessibiliTy & What to Expect

• Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience. 
• About the space: This program will take place offsite at the at The Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003. It is wheelchair accessible (via elevators and ramps).
• Accommodations: For any questions about accessibility, please email Mauricio Higuera at mauricio.higuera@cooper.edu.
• Recording: The program will be recorded and posted on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel within three weeks.

Support 

Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial is presented in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This project received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum; the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino; the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Generous support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Support is also provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; Edward and Helen Hintz; re:arc institute; the Keith Haring Foundation; the Lemberg Foundation; Maharam; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.