Design For Advocacy: Fostering Conversation About Boston's Future

This event is part of Intersections: Equity, Environment + the City, a multi-day symposium November 6–13, 2021 brought to you by BosNOMA and Women in Design on intersectional and participatory design processes in Boston. View the full symposium schedule here.

About the Session

Boston is at an inflection point. Like many cities across America, it is experiencing unprecedented growth and change while simultaneously confronting the impacts of climate change, systemic racism, and increasing socioeconomic disparity. The months ahead will be pivotal as the city addresses the ongoing pandemic, an influx of federal investment, and a mayoral election this fall.

What is the city we want to be? What role will design play in Boston’s future? Who will be responsible for developing the vision and stewarding its implementation? How can design professionals engage—both individually and collectively—in critical conversations and strategies that influence the city’s future? How do we engage our broader community in the process?

Northeastern University partnered with the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence to explore these questions with Inspiring Design: Creating Beautiful, Just and Inspiring Places in America, a 14-week speaker series that brought together leading voices from across America who shared experiences and stories about innovative urban development initiatives.

Join the organizers Ted Landsmark and Anne-Marie Lubenau and David Gamble, editor of Unconventional Conventions: Transforming Boston’s Future—an upcoming collection of essays by local design practitioners on the challenges the city faces in the 21st century, for a discussion about ways we can leverage lessons learned from other places and our local resources and talent to shape our future.

Together we will consider ways to foster more dialogue about design and tap into our community’s experience and resources to build a better—more beautiful, just, and resilient—Boston.

Speakers

Anne-Marie Lubenau FAIA
Director of the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence at the Bruner Foundation

Increasing public engagement in design and understanding about its role in shaping cities has been central to Anne-Marie’s career as an architect, educator, and advocate. Prior to moving to Boston in 2011 for a Harvard Loeb Fellowship, she practiced in Pittsburgh, designing housing and historic rehabilitation projects in private firms before joining the nonprofit Community Design Center of Pittsburgh. As President & CEO Anne-Marie led the organization’s growth into an internationally recognized model for community-engaged design and a valued resource and voice for planning and design in Southwestern Pennsylvania. She was a founding member of the City of Pittsburgh’s Contextual Design Advisory Panel and chair of the Pittsburgh Civic Design Coalition. Currently, Anne-Marie oversees a national urban design award program that recognizes, documents, and shares the stories of transformative places and their contributions to the economic, environmental and social vitality of American cities. She curated the Inspiring Design: Creating Beautiful, Just, and Resilient Places in America speaker series for Northeastern University’s Spring 2021 Open Classroom and is a frequent contributor to Metropolis Magazine. Anne-Marie is a design critic and instructor at Harvard GSD and a member of the Boston Civic Design Commission and Association of Architectural Organizations board of directors.

Anne-Marie Lubenau FAIA is also one of the recipients of the 2021 Women in Design Award of Excellence. Learn more here.

David Gamble AIA AICP LEED AP
Principal at Gamble Associates

Ted Landsmark
Director of the Kitty and Michael Dukakis Center for Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University