Citizen Architect: Recent Episodes
Citizen Architect
A student think tank tackling issues in architecture that deal with social justice. Learning from literature, professionals, and one another, we seek to build up a vault of knowledge in an effort to learn how to design thoughtfully, holistically, and equitably.
A+A+A is a woman-led multidisciplinary design collective founded by Andrea Chiney, Arianna Deane, and Ashely Kuo. With the belief that design impacts all people, everywhere (for better or worse), they make the process more collaborative, inclusive, sustainable, transparent and fun. Working at all scales, they take ideas and make them into real objects, experiences, and spaces. Their past work includes feasibility studies, workshops, exhibition design, public installations, and programming. In this episode, they expound more about their unique practice and passion for human-centered design.
Erin Pellegrino is a Cornell Architecture alumna and Visiting Lecturer. She received her Master of Architecture from Harvard GSD and was trained in the offices of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Studio Gang. She is the founder and principal of Make Think Design, a creative agency that has completed projects both in the United States and internationally. In this episode, Erin talks about our value as architects and being in the room where decisions are made.
Quardean Lewis-Allen is the Founder and CEO of the nonprofit youth creative agency and innovation hub, Youth Design Center, which provides a gateway for young people in his native Brownsville community and beyond to access mentorship, to tackle issues such as underrepresentation in STEAM professions and cyclical poverty, and to address the need for place-based community revitalization. He has over a decade of interdisciplinary design experience working across public and private sectors at the intersection of tactical urbanism and social activism through community-led design. In this episode, Quardean talks about getting into social entrepreneurship and starting the Youth Design Center.
Sean Anderson is an alumni of Cornell University’s B. Arch program, got his M. Arch at Princeton, and a PhD in Art History from UCLA. He has done research looking at architectural spaces in Africa and South Asia, focusing on borders, as well as impacts of colonization on places such as Eritrea, Libya, Australasia, and Sri Lanka. He has held a teaching position at University of Sydney in Australia and has also taught in India, Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Italy. Today, Sean is the associate curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. In this episode, Sean talks about architecture and curation and the former’s role in larger institutions.
Bruce Engel is a Cornell Architecture alumnus. He is the founder of BE_ DESIGN, working on projects in Tanzania, Rwanda, and Ghana. Prior to founding his own firm, he worked with Sharon Davis Design for the NGO “Women for Women International,” where he ended up moving to Rwanda from 2010-2015. In Rwanda, Bruce was the designer and project manager of a “Women’s Opportunity Center,” which received the Best Educational Building of the year award in 2015. In 2016, his work for NGO “Partners in Health” to design “Doctors Housing” also won an award for the best Affordable Housing Project of the Year. In this episode, Bruce talks about his thesis project on designing for the homeless, working in Rwanda and ultimately, the importance of end users having agency in the process of design.
Sarosh Anklesaria is an architect and educator. He received his diploma in architecture from CEPT University in Ahmedabad. Upon graduation, he set up his own practice Studio Sarosh Anklesaria and co-founded Anthill Design in India. He went on to receive his post-professional degree from Cornell University. Sarosh has worked as an architect with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in New York, Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, and B.V. Doshi in Ahmedabad. He has taught architecture at Yale University, The School of Architecture at Taliesin, Cornell University, The Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, and CEPT University in India. In this episode, Sarosh talks about the ethics of building and our responsibility as architects in issues involving labor, material consumption, etc.
Lily Chi is a professor of Architecture at Cornell University, whose teachings and studio investigations cover topics in 18th to 21st century theory and criticism, urban temporalities, and questions of location and globalization in the contemporary city. On our first episode, we discuss our origins, our role as architects and topics of pedagogy and activism with Lily.