GGN and Paul Bauknight launch new Spatial Justice and Social Equity Residency

Seattle, WA (September 20, 2022) – GGN is sponsoring a yearlong Spatial Justice and Social Equity (SJSE) Residency with Paul Bauknight, founder of the Center for Transformative Urban Design. 

“My goal for the GGN SJSE Residency,” said Paul Bauknight, “is to amplify opportunities to transform cities, neighborhoods, and the public realm by empowering communities to rethink urban design systems and policies so that we can create genuinely equitable community development. I am excited to partner with GGN because of their commitment to moving this change forward.”

Rikerrious Geter, Community Partnerships Lead at GGN added, “We see our partnership with Paul Bauknight as a catalyst for more fully integrating our Spatial Justice and Social Equity initiatives into all aspects of our firm. Our work with Paul will allow us to test important ideas, connect with more communities, and share our progress and process with the field.”

The SJSE Residency builds upon GGN’s SJSE Action Plan. This work plan focuses on racially equitable, socially inclusive, and impactful practices with the goal of creating ever more healthy and accessible landscapes. View GGN’s Spatial Justice and Social Equity Action Plan at www.ggnltd.com/sjse-action 

About GGN

GGN is a landscape architecture firm based in Seattle, Washington with a workspace in Washington, DC. The firm’s 55 employees have backgrounds in landscape design, restoration ecology, architecture, engineering, and art. GGN’s work is highly varied in scale and type, from furniture to campuses. Prominent projects include the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus, and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. GGN received the 2017 ASLA National Landscape Architecture Firm Award and the 2011 Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Landscape Architecture. The firm’s project awards include ASLA National Awards of Excellence, ASLA and AIA Honor Awards for Design, Tucker Design Awards, Society for Campus and University Planning Awards, and Great Places Awards from the Environmental Design Research Association.

About the Center for Transformative Urban Design The Center for Transformative Urban Design is an innovative nonprofit inter-disciplinary Design Justice Studio dedicated to the inclusive and equitable development of cities, neighborhoods, and the public realm. A creative platform for change, the Center engages community using design and design thinking to challenge and transform the inequitable systems and policies that continue to dominate current urban/community development process, strategy, and execution.

About Paul Bauknight

Paul Bauknight is the founding GGN Spatial Justice and Social Equity Fellow in Residence. Working in community-based design and development for over 30 years, Paul D. Bauknight, Jr. is passionately committed to exploring the intersection of social, cultural, economic, and spatial systems to create solutions that are equitable, steeped in place, and benefit each community. In his role as Founder and President of the Center for Transformative Urban Design, Paul provides a creative, national platform for the equitable development of cities, neighborhoods, and the public realm.  The former Project Implementation Director for the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, Paul advanced the Foundation’s programming through his facilitation of the social, cultural, environmental, institutional, and physical systems that contribute to the development, stewardship, and advocacy of parks and the public realm. Paul is the co-chair for the Equity in Place committee of Reimagining the Civic Commons, a national learning network of cities using civic assets as platforms for social and economic change. He is also the inaugural Civic Scholar in Residence at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for the 2021-23 school years, where he will focus on the intersection of physical and social/political systems. Paul founded the Urban Design Lab, which at one time was the largest minority-owned design firm in the state, with 16 employees. Paul has held leadership positions at Urban Homeworks, A MN Without Poverty, and The African American Men Project. A senior affiliate at the Minnesota Design Center, he also serves on the Friends of the Mississippi River and The Givens Foundation boards.

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Media Contact
Cheryl dos Remedios
GGN: cheryld@ggnltd.com 
T: +1 206.747.7204

Images
High resolution files available upon request.
Paul Bauknight photo credit: Minneapolis Parks Foundation