Residential Architect magazine, through interviews with an array of leaders in the field, this month published “Blazing Trails: A dedication to social justice propels today’s young professionals.” The piece includes profiles with many of us, including several young-at-heart, but not otherwise “young.” In truth, the field of public interest design is much more intergenerational than the title implies, and that’s a good thing for everyone. Author Cheryl Weber writes, “Public interest design–which focuses on the needs of the community rather than the individual–is not new, but the next generation of designers sees it as integral to practice.”
Among others interviewed or cited in the piece are Enterprise Rose Fellow Theresa Hwang of Skid Row Housing Trust; Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times, Katie Swenson of Enterprise Community Partners; Meg Brown of Perkins+Will; our own John Cary; Sergio Palleroni of the BaSiC Initiative; Michael Murphy and Alan Ricks of MASS Design Group; Bryan Bell of Design Corps; Brent Brown of buildingcommunityWORKSHOP; Beth Miller of the Community Design Collaborative; Enterprise Rose Fellow Peter Aeschbacher of Penn State University‘s Hamer Center for Community Design; and Jonathan Rose of Jonathan Rose Companies. Murphy speaks for many in his closing quote, saying “I don’t think there’s non-humanitarian architecture, just architecture, but some have lost their way. We need to fuse this falsely bifurcated discipline into one movement.”
Click here to read “Blazing Trails: A dedication to social justice propels today’s young professionals,” online at ResidentialArchitect.com.
