How one architect is fighting for diversity in the field

2017-08-22T14:47:00-04:00

The project, called Paper Monuments, will entail a series of posters plastered all over the city that detail the people, places, events, and movements of the city’s 300-year history. “When we make decisions that do embody hatred, whether we mean to or not, it allows for society to grow along those frameworks. Our job should be to acknowledge them and counteract them and produce things that elevate the welfare of the constituents that we serve.”

“It’s not simply about the ways individuals hold onto ideology, but it is more so about the way individuals embed their ideology into the spaces and places we all frequent. For us the Paper Monuments project is still rooted in the fact that these symbols of oppression need to be countered by symbols of those people who’ve fought against that oppression.”

Bryan C. Lee Jr., a New Orleans-based architect, has been working on increasing representation in the field and fighting the inequalities that architecture perpetuates because of that lack of diversity. Formerly the director of place and civic design at the Art Council of New Orleans, Lee formed his own design-firm-cum-nonprofit Colloqate Design to coalesce his efforts to fight the racism embedded in the built environment. In addition to that, Lee started a local chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects in NO and another one at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he received his masters degree in archite...

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How one architect is fighting for diversity in the field