DEANNA VAN BUREN

Doors open at 5:00 pm | Talk begins at 5:30 pm

Deanna Van Buren is the co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. An architecture and real estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions, DJDS builds the infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. She is also a socially engaged artist working across media platforms including public art, film, and video games.

Van Buren has been profiled by The New York Times and has written op-eds on the intersection of design, architecture, mass incarceration, and video games in outlets such as Politico, Architectural Record, and Gamasutra. Her TEDWomen talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than one million times.

Her other honors include UC Berkeley’s Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Prize and Professorship, awarded to a design practitioner who significantly contributed to advancing gender equity in architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and community. Globally she has received the 2018 Bicentenary Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, for her efforts in transforming justice through design, and the Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Award.

Van Buren is also the co-founder of BIG Oakland (Building Industry Gathering), a co-working space supporting small minority- and women-owned firms in the architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate industries.

Van Buren received her BS in architecture from the University of Virginia and her MArch from Columbia University. She is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Deanna Van Buren's Designer Talk is part of the 2024/2025 VASD Program Series. Go here to learn more about this year's artists and events.

Host or Publisher The VASD Program at RMCAD