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K-State Today

March 26, 2021

Award-winning design activist and architect to present 'Design Justice: Power + Place'

Submitted by Thom Jackson

Bryan LeeThe College of Architecture, Planning and Design, or APDesign, Intercultural Collaborative Committee will present "Design Justice: Power + Place," by Bryan Lee Jr. at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 31. The interactive talk will be presented via YouTube live streaming. The event is free and open to all members of the K-State community and the public.

According to Lee our values are validated through the spaces and places we design and subsequently build. "Power + Place" will explore the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice in the built environment from America's inception. The lasting permanence of our decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the result of our work and to seek design justice wherever possible. Lee suggests that architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, such that as designers, we are all at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power.

Lee is an architect, educator, writer and activist. He is the founder/design principal of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit multidisciplinary design practice, in New Orleans, Louisiana, dedicated to expanding community access to design and creating spaces of racial, social and cultural equity.

A design critic at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Lee has led two award-winning youth community design programs. He is a founding co-organizer of the DAP — Design As Protest — Collective and Dark Matter University. Most recently Lee was honored as one of the 2018 Fast Company Most Creative People in Business, a USC Annenberg MacArthur Civic Media Fellow, and the youngest design firm to win the Architectural League's Emerging Voices award in 2019.

The APDesign Intercultural Collaborative encourages the continued development of a diverse intellectual learning community in the college recognizing the enriching potency of diversity and equity in designing and planning a more inclusive environment in service to society. Funding for this program comes from the Kansas State University Student Governing Association.