Join AIAS for their 2021 Advocacy Event! This year’s event is a virtual panel discussion about opportunities to practice advocacy in architecture.
Panelists Include
Michael Chen: Chen established MKCA in 2011 with experience in architecture and design offices in San Francisco and New York. He leads a team that is dedicated to producing exceptionally refined and conceptually rich design at a broad range of scales from buildings to interiors to furniture to urbanism and with a commitment to research and experimentation in materials, technology, and manufacturing.
In March of 2020, Michael co-founded Design Advocates, a network of independent architecture and design firms collaborating on pro-bono projects for small businesses, institutions, and organizations that serve disadvantaged communities to help them adapt their spaces and operations to COVID-19 and beyond. Design Advocates has grown to encompass 120 firms and volunteers at work on over 50 projects serving the public good.
Sophie Weston Chien: Chien is a designer-organizer and core member of the Design As Protest Collective, an anti-racist, non-hierarchical, action-based collective dedicated to advancing Design Justice in the built environment. The DAP is a group of BIPOC designers mobilizing strategies to dismantle the privilege and power structures that have co-opted architecture and design as tools of oppression. DAP exists to hold the design professions accountable in reversing the violence and injustice that architecture, landscape architecture, design, and urban planning practices have inflicted upon Black people and communities of color. DAP champions the radical vision of racial, social, and cultural reparation through the process and outcomes of Design Justice.
Chien focuses on solving complex social-spatial issues by building communities and spaces to promote social and ecological justice. Chien is a candidate for a Masters in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design as a Dean's Merit Scholar. Chien holds a BFA and Bachelor of Architecture from Rhode Island School of Design, with a minor in Politics and Policy, and her honors include the AIA Diversity Advancement Scholarship, Warren Family Social Engagement Award, and a Maharam Fellowship. She serves on the Board of Directors at DESIGNXRI and is currently based on unceded Massachusetts and Pawtucket land (Cambridge, MA).
Joyce Hwang: US Architects Declare is a network of architects organizing for radical change in the building sector around climate, social justice, and biodiversity. Architects Declare started in the UK in 2019 by inviting architectural firms to sign on as signatories to a joint declaration and has grown into a global network with declarations from 23 countries. Architects Declare places the responsibility and imperative on the architectural community, on architecture firms, and on architecture schools to state and enact change. Through this collective work, which is locally defined but globally connected, we can amplify both our knowledge and our impact toward change.
Joyce Hwang is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies of Architecture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. She directs Ants of the Prairie, an office of architectural practice and research that focuses on confronting contemporary ecological conditions through creative means. Hwang is a recipient of the Exhibit Columbus University Design Research Fellowship (2020-21), Architectural League Emerging Voices Award (2014), the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship (2013), the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Independent Project Grant (2013, 2008), and the MacDowell Fellowship (2016, 2011). She is a co-organizer of the Hive City Habitat Design Competition and a co-editor of Beyond Patronage: Reconsidering Models of Practice, published by Actar. She is on the Steering Committee for US Architects Declare, and serves as a Core Organizer for Dark Matter University. Hwang is a registered architect in New York State, and has practiced professionally with offices in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Barcelona. She received a post-professional Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Bronze Medal.