In Service of the Public Interest, The Public Design Corps

During the summer of 2020, the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests spurred architecture schools across the nation into sites of sociopolitical action. The students’ capacity to self-organize, articulate the urgent need for changes and demand institutional responses was bold and unapologetic. At stake was a perceived numbness in the curricular structures, classrooms, and syllabi that made universities complicit with the status quo and the ethos guiding academic excellence, inappropriate. At the University of Michigan, student organizing took on a bold stance calling the college to take a position and go beyond words to implement meaningful changes. Design Justice Actions (DJA) brought together students from across degrees in the college to give shape to a manifesto that would turn their many discontents into actionable components. Students used persuasion and imagination, found allies, and built coalitions in and out of the school. Convening not one, but many conversations, students instigated curriculum rethinking, access and representation, the profession, institutional co-governance, and more.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.110.79

Volume Editors
Robert Gonzalez, Milton Curry & Monica Ponce de Leon

ISBN
978-1-944214-40-1