Race & Inclusion
PEDAGOGIES 2020
The Race & Inclusion pedagogy seeks to address the role architecture can play in creating more equitable, inclusive, and just communities at every scale: in our School, at CMU, in Pittsburgh neighborhoods, the region, and the world.
Our internal focus is on improving our school culture, refining our curriculum, and expanding our research projects to greater inclusion. Our external focus is to strengthen our relationships within Pittsburgh and in society at large as we collectively face intense ethical, social, economic, and ecological challenges.
Global Challenges & Opportunities
Although many of the world’s great challenges have been defined in ways that technology, engineering, and even architecture appear to offer solutions, these challenges inevitably present us with difficult ethical decisions that often pit values of innovation and profit for an elite few, against those of equity and justice for the public interest. Environmental injustice, racial discrimination, debilitating segregation, and economic inequality are all too often the byproducts of our quest for “progress” and “development,” whether in our neighborhoods, or on a global scale. Existing power structures often promote top-down private industry or government solutions. But we are realizing that smaller, nimble, and flexible ideas that foreground ethical and social concerns can be both more equitable and resilient in the face of the dynamic unknowns of the future.
Our specific Race & Inclusion challenges include:
Environment & Climate Change
Climate change and our long-standing dependence on fossil fuels threaten to devastate our built and natural environments, make much of the earth uninhabitable, create millions of climate refugees, and in the process increase inequality and discrimination around the world.
Economy & Capitalism
The quest for wealth and capital drive much of the built environment. This has led to to vastly uneven investment in neighborhoods of different social classes and races, and has been a significant cause of racial and economic segregation and wealth disparities around the world. We struggle with the intertwined nature of architecture and capitalism.
Technology & Industry
Architecture continues to expand its use of technology as a tool while often ignoring the human impact of its work. Access to technology has become yet another chasm between educated and uneducated people, limiting the access to resources for the latter group. In addition, we often fail to hold our technology providers accountable for their ethical, human, and climatic impact.
Community & Government
Urban renewal and the destruction of communities of Color is a legacy of urban planning. The continuing funding priorities by the federal government to invest in car-serving roads over public transportation harms not only people who depend on public transportation, but also has a negative impact on climate.
Ethics, Aesthetics & Equity
Beauty, the preservation of historic buildings, and investment in greenery and public spaces are often unevenly distributed based on the socioeconomic status of each community.
DISCIPLINARY MATTERS OF CONCERN
The discipline and profession of architecture are uniquely positioned to address issues of “Race & Inclusion” at many scales. Existing patterns of architectural education and professional practice are ill-suited to adequately confront the race and inclusion challenges that lie ahead.
Over time, the domain of the architect and designer has changed. It must become our responsibility to advocate for race, inclusion, and equity in all our architectural work: at school, in the profession, and as citizens. Architects are interacting with an ever greater variety of specialists within the building industry and society at large, and we must do more to advocate for ethical decision making in those collaborations.
We ask ourselves these questions about Race & Inclusion:
How are matters of Race & Inclusion woven into the world’s great challenges, and how can we best respond to them?
What is the argument for diversity, collective action, radical inclusiveness, and community-building in today’s increasingly fragmented world?
What is the agency of the architect in shaping the built environment to serve everyone, including those without a voice?
How can ethics, justice, equity, and values play a more dominant role in shaping architectural education in order to better prepare our students for the increasingly agonistic future?
What are unique strengths and challenges that are specific to CMU SoA with regard to race and inclusion?
How can we increase the representation and support of BIPOC and URM in our school and in the profession?
Coordinators
The following faculty members are the coordinators for the Race & Inclusion pedagogy.
