Massimo Santanicchia is an architect, professor, and Head of the Department in architecture at the Iceland University of the Arts. Massimo’s work focuses on architectural education by posing the questions: What are the politics of your design, and what is the design of your politics? In his research, Massimo draws upon literature on justice, citizenship, feminism, post-humanism, and cosmopolitanism to rethink architectural education and its practice in the Icelandic context and beyond.

Massimo has been developing the concept of Cosmopolitan Citizenship Architecture Education (CCAE), an educational model that will generate renewed understanding of designers’ roles and responsibilities towards our shared social and ecological environment. CCAE aims to use the design process as an instrument for care and the betterment of the world.

Massimo holds an MArch from Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia; an MA in Housing and Urbanism from the Architectural Association, School of Architecture in London; an MSc in Regional Urban Planning Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science; and a PhD in Cultural Studies and Education and Diversity from the University of Iceland.

In this presentation at Portland State University massimo will be presenting the theory of Cosmopolitan Citizenship Architecture Education (CCAE) in the context of the Iceland University of the Arts.

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work. This talk will be held in the in the CPID Office School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217). Following the talk, attendees are invited to participate in a discussion on the work. We hope you'll join us.

CPID Visiting Scholar, Dr. Beng Kiang TAN, will discuss public housing design in Singapore. Singapore is a young nation that became an independent country in 1965. Shortage of housing was a pressing issue in the early nation building stage and the Housing and Development Board (HDB) was formed to address it. HDB as an institution is responsible for the policy, housing grants, design and construction of social housing (known as public housing in Singapore) and towns. Currently, 80% of Singapore’s resident households are in public housing of which 91% are home ownership flats. These flats are located in housing estates, which are self-contained satellite towns with schools, community centers, library, shops, food centers and sports and recreational facilities. The Building and Social Housing Foundation (BSHF) of the United Nations recognized the achievement of HDB with the World Habitat Award in the Developed Country Category for Tampines Town in 1992. Public housing in Singapore is not merely about providing a shelter, it is a spatial planning tool to advance state objectives such as pro-family policies and building communities. This presentation will address Singapore’s public housing origin, policies, transformations in design from low density to high density, and the challenges moving forward.

Associate Professor Beng Kiang TAN is an educator and registered architect in Singapore with rich practice experience in both the public and private sectors prior to joining academia. As a strong advocate of participatory community design, she leads design studios and service learning projects in Singapore and Southeast Asia. The projects have been exhibited in various exhibitions such as Archifest and Design for the Common Good International Exhibition. Her teaching and research interests are in Participatory Community Design, Social Housing and Design for Aging. She is a recipient of numerous teaching and design awards, including the Pacific Rim Award for Excellence in Public Interest Design 2018 for Smile Village project. She is the former Deputy Head of the National University of Singapore, Department of Architecture and former leader of Community and Housing Section. She served as a council member of the Singapore Institute of Architects and currently sits on various technical and advisory committees. She holds a Doctoral degree from Harvard University, MArch from UCLA and BArch (Honours) from National University of Singapore.

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work. This talk will be held in the BUILT Lab in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 201). Following the talk, attendees are invited to participate in a discussion on the work. We hope you'll join us.

Dr. Beng Kiang TAN, a Visiting Fellow with the Center for Public Interest Design, will be sharing her experience embedding a participatory approach in design studio and non-design studio projects toward social impact. The approach is applied to different scale projects ranging from visioning masterplan to micro-scale design and build projects. Projects are often in partnership with agencies or non-profit organisations and address real world issues. Students learn empathy through experiential learning of being involved in real-life projects.

Associate Professor Beng Kiang TAN is an educator and registered architect in Singapore with rich practice experience in both the public and private sectors prior to joining academia. As a strong advocate of participatory community design, she leads design studios and service learning projects in Singapore and Southeast Asia. The projects have been exhibited in various exhibitions such as Archifest and Design for the Common Good International Exhibition. Her teaching and research interests are in Participatory Community Design, Social Housing and Design for Aging. She is a recipient of numerous teaching and design awards, including the Pacific Rim Award for Excellence in Public Interest Design 2018 for Smile Village project. She is the former Deputy Head of the National University of Singapore, Department of Architecture and former leader of Community and Housing Section. She served as a council member of the Singapore Institute of Architects and currently sits on various technical and advisory committees. She holds a Doctoral degree from Harvard University, MArch from UCLA and BArch (Honours) from National University of Singapore.

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217). Following the talk, attendees are invited to participate in a discussion on the work. We hope you'll join us.

A descendent of the Kaurareg and Meriam, Kevin O'Brien is a Brisbane-based architect. In 2018 he joined BVN as a Principal, becoming part of one of Australia’s leading architectural practices. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Sydney and has held various board positions for community and arts organizations over the past 15 years.

Kevin’s expertise in cultural, educational, health and commercial projects has generated a reputation for achieving meaningful architecture and authentic outcomes for the communities and clients they serve. Numerous projects have been recognized through the Australian Institute of Architects’ awards in regional, state, and national levels. 

Kevin’s current focus is on the development and demonstration of a Designing with Country methodology that seeks to locate people in settings engaging with Country.

From October 3 through 7, 2022, Kevin will be hosted by the PSU School of Architecture and Indigenous Studies program to run a one-week design studio workshop asking students of architecture to rethink their assumptions about architecture’s relationship to the land, how they imagine the city, and how we learn through doing. Five architecture studios will be participating in the workshop, including undergraduate and graduate students.

Alongside this workshop, Kevin will join a number of welcomes, talks, and other events on campus hosted by the Indigenous Studies program. While most of these events are not open
to the public, we invite everyone in the community to join the School of Architecture on Friday, October 7 at 4:00 p.m. for this Fridays@4 lecture, where Kevin will discuss his practice and share the results of the week-long workshop at PSU. 

The Center for Public Interest Design is pleased to welcome Ridhi D’Cruz, Co-Executive Director of City Repair, as speaker at CPID Talks on Friday, February 8th, 2019.  

Ridhi D’Cruz is a placemaking consultant, sociocultural anthropologist, and permaculture educator living in Portland. Ridhi will speak on creative placemaking as a catalyst for empowerment, exploring roles of power and privilege in that process. In her role as Co-Executive Director of The City Repair Project, a grassroots placemaking nonprofit, Ridhi has supported initiatives in the areas of diversity, equity and inclusion, capacity building, houseless advocacy, Native American allyship, and cultural sustainability. She is also a passionate herbalist, urban wildcrafter, natural building and participatory technology enthusiast, animal lover, and urban permaculture homesteader.

Portland State University School of Architecture's Center for Public Interest Design welcome Jeri Stroupe and Drusilla van Hengel, PhD, in a CPID Talk on transportation planning and design for social impact.

Jeri Stroupe is an interdisciplinary project manager, passionate about planning and designing public realm projects and transportation systems that support healthy, connected, and equitable communities. She brings nearly a decade of experience in project development and implementation and takes a collaborative approach to helping clients achieve outcomes that support broader development goals. Jeri has expertise in complete streets, pedestrian and cyclist safety, corridor planning and evaluation, and community outreach and facilitation.

Prior to joining Nelson\Nygaard, Jeri led place-based initiatives at Wayne State University’s Office of Economic Development, leveraging university assets for neighborhood improvements and shifting from a commuter culture to a 24/7 campus. She worked on two of Michigan’s first health impact assessments focused on corridor redevelopment and non-motorized plans, and has served as Chair of the Regional Transportation Authority of Southeast Michigan’s Citizens Advisory Committee in 2017.

Drusilla van Hengel has more than 25 years of transportation planning and operations experience in California. As the national lead of Nelson\Nygaard’s active transportation sector, she is an expert on bicycle and pedestrian planning and design, Vision Zero, and Safe Routes to School. Her unique blend of experience in land development, traffic operations, and community planning, combined with an MBA on sustainable business, positioned her to become renowned for delivering built projects, implementable plans, and innovative practices. Dru helps make walking and bicycling viable options for people from one to one hundred by eliminating the cultural, organizational, and design gaps and barriers institutionalized by 70 years of planning for auto-mobility.

Her recent projects include Safe Mobility Santa Ana, LADOT’s Safe Routes to School Education and Enforcement, LADOT’s Vision Zero Youth Safety Study, and a Honolulu Complete Streets Rehabilitation Project. Dru’s work in South and Los Angeles began in 1993 with in home interviews with people affected by the displacement practices utilized for the construction of the Century Freeway. Today she works with school communities in Central and South Los Angeles regularly, and has used these in-person experiences to inform qualitative and quantitative analyses for project development and prioritization.   She is a co-lead of Nelson\Nygaard’s ongoing equity initiative.

Jeremy Spoon is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Portland State University and a Senior Fellow at The Mountain Institute. For more than 20 years he has facilitated partnerships between Indigenous communities and protected areas in western North America, South Asia, and East Africa. These collaborations focus on creating communication pathways for integrating diverse cultures and different ways of knowing into design, governance, and resource stewardship. Jeremy also recently initiated a new project on disaster recovery in rural Nepal following the catastrophic 2015 earthquakes.

For a decade Jeremy has co-facilitated the inter-agency and inter-tribal partnership between seven Nuwuvi or Nuwu (Southern Paiute) tribes and several federal agencies in southern Nevada. This partnership uses a consensus approach and includes collaborative research and design of multiple visitors centers and interpretive landscapes, a bi-annual consultation framework, an annual intergenerational resource stewardship event, and more.

Locally, Jeremy has collaborated with Fort Vancouver National Historic Site and multiple Native American tribes and a Native Hawaiian organization to integrate contemporary Indigenous perspectives into their newly renovated visitors center. He is also co-facilitating the re-indigenization of the landscape through a series of planning meetings and multi-vocal research.

Jeremy will share lessons learned from 20 years of experience of blending culture and collaboration into design, governance, and stewardship of federal lands in the western United States and beyond. His presentation will focus on how to integrate Indigenous relationships with place into design, including equitable frameworks for collaboration that consider power and history.

Portland State University School of Architecture and Center for Public Interest Design are proud to welcome Ipek Türeli, Distinguished Visiting Professor, as speaker at CPID Talks on Wednesday, November 7, 2018.

This talk will problematize ‘small’ architectures in a global context. It will offer a historical framework for the discussion of architectures of spatial justice in both the Global North and the Global South. This talk is based on Dr. Tureli’s article  “‘Small’ Architectures, Walking and Camping in Middle Eastern Cities," International Journal of Islamic Architecture 2, no. 1 (2013): 5. 

Dr. Türeli will also give a lecture at Fridays@4 on November 9.

The CPID talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and thoughts in an informal setting. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217). Following the talk, attendees are invited to participate in a discussion on the work.

Tim Smith is principal and founder of the Urban Design and Planning Studio at SERA Architects, a Portland firm that offers integrated services in architecture, urban design, planning, and sustainability consulting. He is a registered architect and a certified planner with over 40 years of professional experience. His work spans a variety of scales, from the site, block and neighborhood to the community, campus, city and region.  

Currently he is engaged in long-range framework planning and urban design for both Google and Stanford University in Silicon Valley, California. He has served as urban design advisor to the San Francisco Mayor’s Office for the Redevelopment of Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay and to the Portland Development Commission for the Redevelopment of the South Waterfront in Portland. He was the lead urban designer for the Avenue of the Arts, the one-mile long, primary north-south streetscape that anchors Philadelphia’s downtown arts district.

Tim developed Civic Ecology, a citizen-driven, whole systems framework for community design and has helped implement the framework in numerous communities nationally and internationally. He co-authored Making EcoDistricts: Concepts and Methods for Advancing Sustainability in Neighborhoods,authored Civic Ecology: A Citizen-Driven Framework for Transforming Suburban Communities, delivered a TEDx talk on Civic Ecology and lectures widely on the topic. 

Tim has served as Vice President of the Portland Planning Commission, on the Portland Chapter AIA Urban Design Committee, the Portland Mayor’s Central City Roundtable and as a member of the City of Portland EcoDistrict Technical Advisory Committee. Tim holds a B.S. and an M Arch. from the University of Michigan and an M. C. P. and M. Arch. in Urban Design from the University of Pennsylvania where he taught urban design in the School of Design. Currently he is an adjunct instructor in urban design at both the University of Oregon and Portland State University.

Last year, the city announced plans to move the homeless rest area, Right 2 Dream Too to the Lloyd Neighborhood. As part of the board of the Lloyd Community Association, Keith Jones led the effort to welcome R2DToo to the Lloyd. In trying to understand the landscape, he found a labyrinth of services, a wealth of untapped data, and an opportunity for placemaking and technology to play a role in unexpected ways. Keith is using his expertise, experience, and relationships develop solutions that involve community placemaking, solution crowdsourcing, information analysis, strategic partnership alignment and most importantly, city-wide collaboration. Keith’s presentation will focus on 3 homeless initiatives that he is working on and the role that businesses and residents can play in creating solutions for our communities. 

 Keith is very active in the Portland community and urban planning scene. Keith is a board member of Lloyd Community Association, Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods & Friends of the Green Loop, a volunteer with the Human Access Project, Portland Bridge Swim & Axiom Events, and is a member of the Geological Society of Oregon Country.

 Keith is the Director of Community Design for Amplified, a Portland-based Environmental UX company. Before that, Keith was a serial entrepreneur. He started a music store/coffee house in 1992, one of Detroit’s top internet marketing companies in 1994, and his own consultancy in 2006. 

 Keith’s interest is in urban innovation, specifically around community-led initiatives that bring together businesses, non-profits, and the public. Keith believes in participating in your community with the intention of making it better than you found it. 

 The CPID talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and thoughts in an informal setting. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217). Following the talk, attendees are invited to participate in a discussion on the work.

Portland State University School of Architecture and the Center for Public Interest Design are proud to welcome Michael Willis as speaker at CPID Talks on Thursday, April 26, 2018.

Michael Willis will be speaking on a range of topics related to public interest design in professional practice, offering unique insights gained throughout his distinguished career. Mr. Willis founded MWA Architects Inc. in 1988 and served as a principal until 2016. Since 2017 he has been an independent design consultant, and teaches at his alma mater Washington University (BA 1973/M.Arch 1976/MSW 1976). 

MWA has created master plans and designs for mixed income affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization projects in San Francisco, Oakland, Portland, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, and post-Katrina New Orleans, demonstrating that good design does not have to be expensive to be comprehensive. He has facilitated planning studies in St. Louis’s Downtown, North Central, and JeffVanDerLou neighborhoods.

Mr. Willis has served as principal on large public projects including the New International Terminal at San Francisco Airport and the new Central Subway Yerba Buena/Moscone Station for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. "Making Water Present" via water infrastructure projects has been central to his practice. This work includes planning and design for water and wastewater plants from 8-750 million gallons a day (mgd) in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Stockton, and Richmond, California. 

Mr. Willis served as President of the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIASF) in 1995 and was elevated to Fellowship in 1996. He is a 2013 Distinguished Alumni of the Washington University School of Architecture, Distinguished Alumni of the Washington University Brown School of Social Work, and a holder of a National Black Achievement award of the Black Alumni Council (1996). 

Portland State University School of Architecture welcomes architect Urtzi Grau as Distinguished Visiting Professor for Winter 2018. Urtzi Grau will be in residency February 4 – 10, 2018, where he will work with first-year Master of Architecture students in a graduate design studio course taught by Assistant Professor of Practice Andrew Santa Lucia.

Grau is an architect, director of the Master of Architectural Research at University of Technology Sydney and co-founder of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism, an architecture office that has received the AIA New York New Practices Award, has been shortlisted in the MoMA PS1 and the Miami Design pavilions, was finalist the Guggenheim Helsinki Competition, and represented Australia in the Chicago Architectural Biennial. The office has recently completed the Superphosphates! Masterplan in Cáceres and the OE House in Barcelona. Grau graduated from the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 2000, was awarded Master in Advanced Architectural Design by Columbia University in 2004, and is currently completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University on the 1970s urban renewal of Barcelona. He has previously taught at Cooper Union, Princeton University, Columbia University, Cornell University, and Rice University School of Architecture. His work and writings have been published in various international journals such as AV, Bawelt, Domus, Kerb, Log, Plot, Praxis, Spam, Volume, and White Zinfandel and exhibited in la Bienal de Buenos Aires, P! Gallery, RMIT Design Hub, Shenzhen Biennale, Storefront, the Venice Biennale and 0047.

His CPID Talk will focus on the public processes informing his innovative design work in Medellin, Colombia.

Urtzi Grau is one of three Distinguished Visiting Professors at the School of Architecture during the 2017-2018 academic year, with Leni Schwendinger (Fall 2017) and Ipek Türeli (Spring 2018).

Derv Heaney is a designer and researcher from Northern Ireland and currently works for the UK's leading youth charity, The Prince's Trust. Having experienced homelessness followed by 10 years in rented accommodation, she set up The Holding Project, which seeks to offer a housing solution for Generation Rent and other vulnerable groups in the midst of the housing crisis. She has been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to travel to Finland, Sweden and the USA to research New Approaches to Affordable Housing.

Derv is the founder of The Holding Project, a social enterprise which will build 20 micro houses for young people on vacant land within Belfast City Centre. The project will focus on young people who are struggling to make ends meet within the social housing or private rent sector, and will offer them the chance to live on lower rent within the project for two to three years. While living within The Holding Project, 20% of the rent paid is put into a savings account for the young person, giving them a lump sum at the end which could be used to enter the housing market, to start a business or to achieve a major life goal. The community rotates every two to three years, allowing us to help as many people as possible. Derv and her two partners have recently been awarded £20,000 by social enterprise funders towards building their first prototype. At this talk, she’ll be discussing her research interests and work on the Holding Project.

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and thoughts in an informal setting. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217).

Free and open to the public.

For nearly two decades Brian Squillace has encouraged discourse on community empowerment and activism though architecture.  His work focuses on creating a unique design process to best support each community he serves.  Crafting the approach is critical to creating a safe space that allows participants to look beyond their day-to-day activities, acknowledge challenges, seek opportunities and strategize the implementation to enact change.

Through work that includes citizen-led development, sweat-equity design-build and asset based community planning, Brian knows the importance in bringing diverse voices together and helping to build new partnerships.  He advocates for the community to have ownership of and pride in the design intent if a designer’s best laid plans for sustainability, change-making and resiliency are to be effective.  To understand, and best benefit those that we serve, the architectural process must start long before conceptual design and look beyond the confines of the built environment.

Brian will share strategies and reflections from working closely with diverse clients in architectural and master planning efforts that range from cohousing, mission-based development, affordable housing, higher education, K-12 and child care.

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and thoughts in an informal setting. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217).

Free and open to the public.

Michael Heyn spent over 40 years working in international development for the United Nations, living across 15 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.  Following undergraduate and graduate degrees at Stanford University, he entered the Peace Corps in 1964 and lived in a small village in the high Altiplano of Peru assisting in the founding of a chicken raising cooperative for income generation.   The experience in facing the harsh realities of the villagers lives and the difficulties and disappointments in achieving their long-term goals was seminal in grounding and shaping his entire future career.  He dedicated himself along with many other UN colleagues to placing and keeping the poor at the center of development no matter what type of project they were pursuing to find more effective ways of addressing and alleviating the underlying root causes of their chronic poverty.

Over his journey, he discovered that development was about much more than economic pursuits.  It was mainly about human development specially for realizing peoples’ rights and gaining opportunities and power to take charge and advance their lives.  He learned that such basic empowerment along with a commitment to good governance was essential to realizing sustainable results, whether to increase their agricultural production, or better their health and educational status, or improve their urban neighborhoods and public space.   

Michael will share with us his long and often challenging learning curve and the inevitable mistakes and missteps that eventually brought insights as to how and what change must take place if there is to be a fundamental transformation in the lives of the poor.

Michael has held UN leadership positions including as UN Special Delegate (Kosovo), UNDP Regional Representative (Asia, Bangkok), UN Special Coordinator of the Secretary General for Emergency Relief Operations (Liberia), UNFPA Country Director (South Pacific, Nepal, Kenya), UNDP Director of Indigenous Peoples’ Development (Bangladesh), and UNDP Senior Adviser for Conflict Prevention (Yemen).  Throughout all these roles and responsibilities, he has maintained a sharp focus on improving the lives and dignity of the poor, and will share the opportunities for others, whatever their field of interest, to do the same.

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and thoughts in an informal setting. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217).

Free and open to the public.

Mark Lakeman will speak in an upcoming edition of CPID Talks on Friday, May 5th. Mark is a national leader in the development of sustainable public places. In the last decade he has directed, facilitated, or inspired designs for more than three hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone. He is a Principal and Designer at Communitecture Inc., a full service design firm that aims to create beautiful and sustainable places that bring people together in community. Through his leadership in Communitecture and it’s various affiliates such as the The City Repair Project (501(c)3), The Village Building Convergence, and the Planet Repair Institute, he has also been instrumental in the development of dozens of participatory organizations and urban permaculture design projects across the United States and Canada. Mark works with governmental leaders, community organizations, and educational institutions in many diverse communities. He is also a partner with the CPID on efforts to address homelessness in Portland through the POD Initiative.  

Mark’s life-long dedication to building community through design began at his roots.  Both of his parents are activist architects and planners, and from the start they infused him with a sense of creative civic possibility. From his father’s work to create Portland’s Pioneer Square, to his mother’s investigations of the public spaces in Medieval and Neolithic villages, they both taught him to see constructive possibilities that can emerge when place is a reflection of the people who live there. Design can destroy the world, or it can save it, help us savor it, and make the human world worthy of our people.  

The CPID Talks are aimed at fostering a dialogue about interesting work being done that is relevant to the public interest design field by inviting speakers from a wide variety of disciplines to share their work and thoughts in an informal setting. These talks are open to the public and held in the CPID office in the School of Architecture at PSU (Shattuck Hall 217).

Killian Doherty is an architect from Northern Ireland and runs Architectural Field Office, a small collaborative practice. His research interests lie within the exploration of fragmented sites, settlements, and cities at specific thresholds of racial, ethnic, or religious conflict. He has worked on a number of post-conflict reconstruction projects in Sierra Leone and Rwanda. He is registered for a PhD by Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) where he is working with an indigenous community in Rwanda and trying to work through the architect as social spatial practitioner, as opposed to designer of buildings. He is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Public Interest Design through June 2017.

Doherty will be discussing a film that he is working on that documents a settlement built in northern Liberia in the early 1960s by a Swedish mining company to accommodate workers at a nearby iron ore mine. Within only a few years this housing program had transformed into a fully functioning town called Yekepa. Built along Scandinavian lines but located in the remote highlands of Liberia, Yekepa soon became a symbol of the utopian promises attached to the West’s investment in the natural resources of a developing nation.

But as the iron-ore reserves became depleted, Yekepa fell into disrepair, a ghost town haunted by the memories of past prosperity. Now partly repopulated by workers of another mining firm, Yekepa has returned to life, but its fortunes are starkly dependent on the price of iron-ore on the world market.

Doherty and filmmaker Edward Lawrenson visited Yekepa to chronicle its unusual history and uncertain future. Having spoken to past and present residents of Yekepa – both in Liberia and in Sweden – they are making a documentary about the town. Doherty will be discussing the film as a vehicle to explore themes of political ecologies and development at the heart of his design work.

CPID Talks
Center for Public Interest Design
Shattuck Hall Room 217
SW Broadway & Hall Streets
Portland, Oregon

Free and open to the public.

Kai Wood Mah is a registered architect with the Ordre des architects du Québec and Patrick Lynn Rivers is a political scientist. Together, they co-direct Afield (www.afield.ca), a design research practice based in Cape Town, Chicago, and Montréal. Afield projects range from studies of progressive refugee housing solutions in South Africa to repurposing solutions for a postindustrial Chicago community of color after the shuttering of a public school.

Afield’s current major project is Democratic Early Childhood Development. Funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) grant, Mah and Rivers use the project to design, construct, and study a prototype early childhood development (i.e., a crèche, or daycare) centre in poor rural and urban South African communities.

Beyond highlighting the challenges of the DECD project, Mah and Rivers will discuss their work through the lens of research-creation. They specifically promote research-creation as method enhancing assessment and innovation within international development programs.

CPID Talks
Center for Public Interest Design
Shattuck Hall Room 217
SW Broadway & Hall Streets
Portland, Oregon

Free and open to the public.

Eric J. Cesal is a designer, writer, and noted post-disaster expert, having led on-the-ground reconstruction programs after the Haiti earthquake, the Great East Japan Tsunami, and Superstorm Sandy.  Cesal’s formal training is as an architect, with international development, economics and foreign policy among his areas of expertise.  He currently serves as the Special Projects Director for the Curry Stone Design Prize.

He will be discussing the role of the design community amidst changing and contradictory patterns in disaster and resilience. Specifically, how present methods of socio-economic organization continually multiply the risks already shouldered by vulnerable communities.  How we organize a city, a neighborhood, a street and a building enhances either resilience or vulnerability.  The commodification of the built environment during the neoliberal era largely enhanced vulnerability while paying lip service to resilience, which is why we face ever-escalating costs for disaster.  

 As designers, our choices frequently and unwittingly capitulate to this ongoing agenda.  Our design decisions, while perfectly legal, effectively bury risk within the walls of our buildings and the layouts of our neighborhoods.  Cesal is currently working on a new book which seeks to unravel how and why our built environment has become unresponsive to disaster.

Peg Bowden, RN, MS, a retired public health nurse, lives in the Arizona borderlands (a sort of third country, as she puts it) with one foot in Mexico and the other in the U.S.A.  She volunteers at a migrant shelter in Mexico attempting to understand why thousands of people are willing to risk their lives crossing the Sonoran Desert into the U.S., where they are despised by so many.  She has written a book, A Land of Hard Edges, which reflects on the complexities of human migration.  Peg lives in a rammed earth home with her husband, Lester Weil, 2 dogs, a feral cat, and a lot of open range cattle.

Shawhin Roudbari is an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Program in Environmental Design. He is interested in better understanding activism and political engagement in the design professions, domestically and transnationally. In his dissertation, for example, he studied ways Iranian architects connected with foreign professional institutions to shape political power at home.

Shawhin is working on two projects: the first is an extension of his dissertation to study ways activism is absorbed from the fringe into the mainstream of design professions. The second project, and the subject of his discussion with CPID, is a study of cultures of ethical community engagement in university programs that send architecture and engineering students to work in developing communities. This second project was recently awarded a National Science Foundation grant toward a three-year study of mechanisms of culture formation in “engineering for development” programs. 

By studying engineering and design programs side by side, Shawhin seeks to understand ways public interest design work by architects, planners, and civil engineers—as professionals engaged in the design and construction of the built environment—compare. He is looking forward to using this discussion to share his analytical framework and to engage the CPID community in brainstorming ways that framework can be extended from engineering to design programs. 

Pamela Harwood is a Professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University and a registered architect and principal in the award-winning firm Harwood + Tabberson Architects. Professor Harwood’s primary research is in the area of educational environments, and a recent outdoor classroom project called Nature Play: Into the Woods with Design Thinking will be the focus of her talk. 

Nature Play is a multi-year project that involved the research, design, and construction of a nature-based outdoor learning environment for Head Start conducted through coursework with students. Framing community engagement through project-based teaching was paramount to the education process. Professor Harwood believes that this commitment to engaging a multiplicity of voices empowers students and ennobles scholarship. Putting research into action guided work in the design-build outdoor learning classroom with the primary goal of re-connecting children with the natural world by making developmentally appropriate nature-based education an enriching and sustainable part of their daily lives. In this interdisciplinary, team-taught, community-centered course designed around a real world need, the team sought to bridge a disconnect in academia that has been found between disciplines, students, faculty, and community. 

Dave Otte is a principal with Holst Architecture with over 20 years of experience in the design and construction industry. Skilled in conceptual visioning, he pursues elegant solutions to his clients’ complex programmatic needs, remaining dedicated to architecture that is modern, appropriate, and sustainable.  

Dave’s focus at Holst is social impact by design, helping to create affordable housing and services for Oregon’s most vulnerable citizens. In 2013, he was honored with a BetterBricks Award in the Building Design category, which recognizes outstanding career achievements of building professionals who implement high-performance design and sustainable solutions. In 2012, the Daily Journal of Commerce profiled Dave and his work on Bud Clark Commons, a LEED Platinum resource center for the homeless with permanent supportive housing. He is also an active member of the architecture community. After helping design the LEED Platinum Portland Center for Architecture and serving as an AIA Portland board member and volunteer, he was elected AIA Portland President in 2015 and currently serves as the 2016 Vice President of the Center for Architecture. 

Dave will discuss how great design and architecture has been proven to enhance the quality of life, dignity, health, and safety for our most vulnerable populations. As a firm, Holst has seen the benefits that better design can have on the lives of others. Through doggedness and determination, Holst has become deft at creating high-quality designs for public and nonprofit projects, refusing to compromise quality while always meeting the schedule and budget. Dave will show how great design can truly impact vulnerable populations in meaningful ways, from at-risk youth to families in recovery to citizens experiencing homelessness. Quality design doesn’t need to be sacrificed in order to make public and nonprofit projects pencil. Holst’s focus on sustainability (saving energy costs for the lifetime of the building), durability (saving clients and users money for the long haul), high-quality local materials, and design for the safety and health of residents makes for compelling design solutions.

The School of Architecture is proud to welcome Antonie Jetter, who joins us for CPID Talks on Friday, May 20, 10am to 11am, to discuss her work on Fuzzy Cognitive Map Modeling. Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) Modeling is a novel method for collaborative modeling and planning that is gaining popularity in (among others) ecosystem management, participatory technology assessment, and scenario workshops. FCM modeling helps individuals and groups express their perspectives on complex issues and present their knowledge in a dynamic, computationally accessible format that can be used to simulate decision impacts. FCM models are well suited for collaborative planning on the community level: they are easy to create, are well understood by audiences with limited modeling expertise, and are easy to update to reflect the insights of additional model contributors. The talk will introduce fundamentals and illustrate the use of FCM with several examples from ongoing research projects, including community inputs into a transmission line project and community-based planning of wildfire management approaches.

Antonie is an Associate Professor of Engineering & Technology Management at Portland State University.  She teaches courses on new product development, entrepreneurship, and technology marketing to graduate students in engineering. Her research is focused on new product development, managerial cognition, and decision making and leads to insights and methods for managing the early stages of product innovation. In her dissertation, Antonie has pioneered the use of Fuzzy Cognitive Map as a product planning tool. Ongoing research uses Fuzzy Cognitive Maps to model community risk perceptions, drivers of technology acceptance among elderly patients and their caregivers, and differences in the mental models of product development engineers and product users. Antonie holds an MBA (1998) and a Ph.D. in Technology and Innovation Management (2006) from RWTH Aachen University, Germany and has seven years of industry experience in a large technology firm and a high-tech startup.

Mark Lakeman joins us for CPID Talks on Friday, May 13. Mark is a national leader in the development of sustainable public places. In the last decade he has directed, facilitated, or inspired designs for more than three hundred new community-generated public places in Portland, Oregon alone. He is a Principal and Designer at Communitecture Inc., a full service design firm that aims to create beautiful and sustainable places that bring people together in community. Through his leadership in Communitecture and its various affiliates such as The City Repair Project (501(c)3), The Village Building Convergence, and Planet Repair Institute, he has also been instrumental in the development of dozens of participatory organizations and urban permaculture design projects across the United States and Canada. Mark works with governmental leaders, community organizations, and educational institutions in many diverse communities.

Mark’s lifelong dedication to building community through design began at his roots.  Both of his parents are activist architects and planners, and from the start they infused him with a sense of creative civic possibility. From his father’s work to create Portland’s Pioneer Square, to his mother’s investigations of the public spaces in Medieval and Neolithic villages, they both taught him to see constructive possibilities that can emerge when place is a reflection of the people who live there. Design can destroy the world, or it can save it, help us savor it, and make the human world worthy of our people.  

Stuart Emmons will speak in an upcoming edition of CPID Talks on Friday, April 29. Stuart is an architect, urban designer, planner, craftsman, writer, advocate, manager, and activist. He is also a candidate in the race to become the next City Commissioner of Portland.

Stuart attended the School for American Craftsman at Rochester Institute of Technology, the London College of Furniture, and holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Pratt Institute and a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University. Before attending Pratt, Stuart studied architecture and political science at Portland State University from 1979-1981. He leads Emmons Design, an architecture and planning firm which strives to bring fresh thinking and design to every project after research and listening. After decades of hands-on planning and design projects, Emmons' priorities now are focused on schools and affordable housing. These issues, as well as homelessness, are also among the key issues of his campaign. 

In addition to work in design, Stuart has been active in several large preservation campaigns.

He co-chairs the Friends of Memorial Coliseum with Brian Libby, leading a successful campaign in 2009 to convince the City of Portland to abandon their plans to demolish Memorial Coliseum and replace it with a minor league baseball stadium. He has also worked with Nathaniel Kahn, the son of the architect Louis Kahn, as co-chairs of Save the Salk, the massive international campaign they launched in 1993 to try to stop the building of an addition in the eucalyptus grove at the entry to the Salk Institute, a masterpiece of modern architecture designed by Louis Kahn in 1967.

The focus of Stuart’s talk will be "Portland Potential." He will discuss Oregon values, Portland values, our place in time related to other large cities in the US, and how these values can guide us through our challenges; get ourpriorities repositioned for maximum positive impact; get our reputation for excellence in planning, design and sustainability reestablished; raise up people left behind (so many more can enjoy the Portland phenomenon); and work to a city that is better than any of us think even possible, with a major improvement of social issues. 

Emily Fitzgerald is a photographer, artist and storyteller. Her work explores the nuance and complexity of personal identity and its relationship to family, community and culture. In her practice, she consciously engenders direct participation and allows individual response to shape the process and outcome. Fitzgerald utilizes video and photography and applies socially engaged form and theory to create visual art where collaboration, co-authorship and ethical-representation is primary. As a social practice artist, she seeks to build empathy and inspire curiosity, introspection and reflection. Her creative collaborations have included the Portland Art Museum, Hollywood Senior Center, Zenger Farm, King Public School, Multnomah County Health Clinics, the City of Portland, and she is now beginning work on an intergenerational photo-based project in partnership with TriMet.