This work has been explored in multiple ways...
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Literature Review + Traditional Research Methods​
The genesis of this project started with traditional research and writing. We learned about the history and foundation of architecture education, well-being, and even documenting our own experiences. This stage was crucial for us to further our research experimentally.
Interviews
We interviewed several individuals who each shared a unique story of their path through architecture school and into their current roles. We chose these individuals because their careers all exemplify an indirect path through architecture, compared to the nebulous but powerful myth of the best path.
see our interviewees below
Presentation
The final method of this project is one of sharing. This work is important and sharing it with other architecture students, faculty, and even those unfamiliar with architecture and its education is a vital step towards improving well-being for everyone.
Thank you for being here!
Survey
To broaden our understanding of the larger, collective cohort of architecture students' experience, we conducted a large-format survey. We inquired students of all higher education levels and faculty members about their well-being, aspirations, and also to relate their experience to a form of artwork.
Our Interviewees​
Todd Levon Brown
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Dr. Todd Brown is the 2021-23 Race and Gender in the Built Environment Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Architecture (UTSOA). Trained as an architect, Dr. Brown is an Environmental Psychologist whose research lies primarily at the intersection of critical [race] theory and the built environment. Working theoretically, empirically, and visually, his research explores how architecture and other physical spaces and places are produced, perceived, and evaluated as racialized and embodying other social constructs. He has published several scholarly works at the intersections of psychosocial perception, race, social justice, architecture, and urban design. At the UTSOA he teaches studio workshops and seminars on inclusion and socioracial sustainability in design. Currently, Brown is on a design team, with Architects Karen Kubey, Ignacio Galan and Neeraj Bhatia, that has been selected to present at Reset: Towards a New Commons, a 2022 exhibition at the Center for Architecture in New York City which explores new dynamics for living in the context of senior-centered housing and community planning. Dr. Brown received his BA, MPH and MArch from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his MA, MPhil, and PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center.
Lynne Dearborn
Professor Lynne Dearborn joined the faculty at the University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign’s School of Architecture in 2001. She is a licensed architect and NCARB certificate holder. She received her BARCH from RPI and later earned a post-professional MARCH from the U of Oregon and PhD from the UW-Milwaukee. As the founding member of the Health and Wellbeing program at the Illinois School of Architecture, she has served as program chair for much of the program’s 9-year history. As chair, Dearborn developed a set of courses and studios delivered to students in the ISoA from the BSAS first year through the MARCH, MS, Ph.D., and certificate programs, exposing students to principles of human-centric design and health and well-being research. She values active learning and student-centered pedagogical approaches. Her undergraduate and graduate architecture studios focus on the creation of healthy and socially sustainable communities through the application of evidence-based and participatory processes. She teaches graduate courses that explore research and research methods that increase understanding of the links between environmental design and human health. Her Ph.D. advisees undertake innovative research studying environmental determinants of health. She is a co-author of the recently released AIA Framework for Design Excellence - Design for Well-being. Her current study, Assessing Healthier Housing, examines health equity and inclusion and their links to housing policy and the physical design of neighborhoods and housing.
Andres Lemus-Spont
Andrés Lemus-Spont is a designer, educator, fabricator, and proud child of Mexican immigrants. He teaches art and architecture to youth from kindergarten through high school in various in-school and afterschool programs. He studied architecture at the College of DuPage and Illinois Institute of Technology. Andrés believes strongly in the value of mentoring and does so formally through Big Brothers Big Sisters and informally through apprenticeships for college and early-career designers.
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Andrés founded and currently directs the Building Brown Workshop, a design and fabrication studio serving artists, architects, and communities. With Marya Spont-Lemus, Andrés co-founded ¡Anímate! Studio, a shared community arts practice that is a vehicle for playful, intergenerational creative workshops centered around joy and criticality in public space. From 2015-2019 that work took the form of the FrankenToyMobile, a pedal-powered maker space that encourages imagination and curiosity by providing free, hands-on workshops in which youth and adults reuse toys as raw materials to make new creations. Andrés is a founding member of the Mobilize Creative Collaborative.
Katherine Darnstadt
Katherine is an architect, educator and founder of Latent Design, a practice at the intersection of architecture and community development creating social, economic and environmental impact beyond the building. Leveraging design as a tool to make the invisible forces impacting a project visible through architecture, the firm’s collaborations range from small-scale tactical interventions, new construction community buildings, adaptive reuse, neighborhood master plans and design speculations. She is winner of the 2013 American Institute of Architects Young Architects Honor Award, 2014 Crain's Chicago 40 Under 40, teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University.