Archinect - Features

Architect Deanna Van Buren on Designing Beautiful Spaces That "Amplify Self-Care, Love, Restoration, and Respect"

2019-10-08T07:00:00-04:00

Designing Justice + Designing Spaces (DJDS) is an Oakland, California-based architecture and real estate development non-profit that is working to end mass incarceration by "building infrastructure that attacks its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself," according to the firm's website.

DJDS is led by Deanna Van Buren, an architect who "designs spaces for peacemaking, inside and out" that is working to envision a world without prisons, and Kyle Rawlins, a real estate developer. The firm's necessary work involves upending America's blatantly unequal and inherently violent criminal justice system by proposing spaces that strive to instead achieve justice, healing, and reconciliation through alternative, human-centered means. The firm's work takes place both within correctional facilities through educational and self-care initiatives that help incarcerated people retain their humanity, as well as outside prisons, by helping re...

Co-founders of a Small Oakland-Based Firm Talk About Starting a Practice While Becoming Moms

2018-03-05T12:25:00-05:00

Tierney Conner, based in Oakland, CA, is a full-service firm integrating the fields of architecture, landscape and interiors. The two co-founders, Anne Tierney and Erin Conner, decided to create their own practice after the two each became mothers. For this weeks Small Studio Snapshot, we talk with the team about their journey.

Screen/Print #62: A Year After Ghost Ship Fire, Writer and Activist Jaime Omar Yassin Reflects on City's Response

2017-09-22T09:00:00-04:00

In December of 2016, a fire broke out during a show at Oakland's Ghost Ship, a DIY-venue located in a two-story warehouse. The incident tragically took the lives of 36 young concert-goers and prompted national discussions (including one on our podcast) of the safety and vitality of DIY venues and the long-term effects of such building code violations for gentrification and zoning.

Invasion: A First-Hand View of Gentrification in San Francisco

2014-11-24T10:13:00-05:00

A recent Bay Area transplant sees old and new duke it out over the Bay Area's shifting public-private fault line.