Making Home with Justice | Deanna Van Buren

The Making Home Lecture Series at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union presents four free public lectures featuring exhibition participants paired with designers, artists, professionals, and Cooper Union faculty discussing the exhibition’s exploration of home and its relation to design, data, justice, history, and building.

For the second event in the series, Making Home with Justice, Deanna Van Buren, architect and founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, will discuss the ecosystem(s) of care required to end mass incarceration, including the installation "Architecture of Reentry" in the exhibition Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial. Designing Justice + Designing Spaces is a design, architecture, and real-estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration and advocating for restorative justice solutions through the built environment. DJDS works collaboratively with restorative justice program providers to design customized spaces at the same time the context of the program is being developed.

The lecture will include a presentation of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces’ recent work and a panel discussion with program providers who have developed innovative programming for peacemaking and restorative justice in the city and state of New York, including Sethu Nair, director of alternative dispute resolution and restorative practices at the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, and Aaron Arnold, chief development officer of All Rise.

The program will be moderated by Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa, Deputy Director and Curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture.

Deanna Van Buren is an award-winning architect and activist recognized internationally for her leadership in using architecture, design, and real estate innovations to address the social inequities behind the mass incarceration crisis. Van Buren is co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and design firm with the mission of dismantling the punitive infrastructure of the Pr*son system by designing and building new spaces informed by restorative justice: peacemaking centers, mobile re-entry housing, holistic behavioral health hubs, spaces for youth, spaces for diversion/re-entry, and more.

Her work has been recognized by the American Institute of Architects San Francisco, as well as Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Awards honoring pioneering professionals. Van Buren is the only architect to have been awarded the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist Fellowship, was the 2018 recipient of the Berkeley-Rupp Prize and Professorship and is an alumna of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Aaron Arnold is chief development officer at All Rise, a national nonprofit organization that works to improve justice system responses to substance use and mental health disorders. Prior to joining All Rise, Arnold spent 15 years at the Center for Court Innovation, overseeing the Center’s national work in the areas of alternatives to incarceration, community justice, and more. While at the Center, Arnold helped to launch the Red Hook Peacemaking Program, the first court-based restorative justice program in the country. He then directed the planning and implementation of the Near Westside Peacemaking Project (Syracuse, New York), a community center dedicated to resolving neighborhood disputes, school disciplinary matters, and criminal cases through restorative justice practices. Arnold has served as a prosecutor with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in Phoenix, Arizona, where he gained first-hand experience working in several problem-solving courts. Arnold is a graduate of Cornell University and the University of Arizona College of Law.

Sethu Laxmi Nair is a mediator, facilitator, coach, and trainer in the fields of alternative dispute resolution and restorative practices. Through her work, Nair seeks to improve interpersonal and social dynamics by enhancing leadership capacity and conflict competence among leaders and groups. Currently, she serves as the Director of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Restorative Practices at the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution, an innovative public service group that offers a blend of conflict resolution, training, and systems design options within and across the New York City government. Through her private practice, Nair consults with nonprofit organizations and businesses, offering a unique blend of leadership coaching, mediation, and group conflict management. She earned her bachelor's at SUNY Purchase College and her Master's in Economic and Political Development at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa works as deputy director and curator at Storefront for Art and Architecture. His research and curatorial interests are at the intersection of space, care, and power. Ruiz de Teresa operates across disciplinary boundaries to interrogate the way in which art, design and politics shape each other. He co-leads the seminar and research project on Public Art as Alimentary Infrastructure at The Cooper Union’s School of Architecture. Trained as an architect and urbanist at the Architectural Association and Universidad Iberoamericana, Ruiz de Teresa graduated from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design with a Masters in Design Studies and was Stavros Niarchos Foundation PhD Scholar, Visiting Lecturer, and Researcher at the Royal College of Art in London.

About Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial:

The exhibition features 25 site-specific, newly commissioned installations exploring design’s role in shaping the physical and emotional realities of home across the United States, US Territories, and Tribal Nations. The exhibition is the seventh offering in Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Triennial series, which was established in 2000 to address the most urgent topics of the time through the lens of design. Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial is presented in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Link to exhibition.

About the Museum:
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is the only museum in the United States devoted exclusively to historical and contemporary design, and is the steward of one of the most diverse and comprehensive design collections in existence—more than 215,000 design objects spanning 30 centuries. From ancient textiles and works on paper to icons of modern design and cutting-edge technologies, Cooper Hewitt’s collection serves as inspiration for creative work of all kinds and tells the story of design’s paramount importance in improving our world. Link to museum.

ACCESSIBILITY & WHAT TO EXPECT:

Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience.

About the space: This program will take place offsite at the at The Frederick P. Rose Auditorium The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003. It is wheelchair accessible (via elevators and ramps).

Accommodations: For any questions about accessibility, please email Mauricio Higuera at [email protected].

Recording: The program will be recorded and posted on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel within three weeks.

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Host or Publisher Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art