Diversity and Design: Understanding Hidden Consequences

School of Architecture and Planning professors Beth Tauke and Korydon Smith, and architectural historian and alum, Charles Davis, are co-editors of Diversity and Design, a widely anticipated publication to help students understand and creatively address issues surrounding social diversity in design practice.

The book was released in October 2015 by Routledge, a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences since 1836.

Diversity and Design explores how the design of products, buildings, landscapes, cities, media or systems affects diverse members of society. Fifteen case studies in media, product design, architecture, urban design, landscape and more, illustrate the profound, though often hidden, consequences design decisions and processes have on the total human experience.

With over 140 full-color illustrations, chapter introductions, discussion questions and exercises, the book investigates how gender, race, class, age, disability and other factors influence the ways designers think. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding increasingly diverse cultures, thus, averting design that leads to discrimination, isolation and segregation.

Beth Tauke is associate professor of architecture at the School of Architecture and Planning, as well as an affiliated faculty member with the Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDeA Center), the nation’s leading research center on universal design in the built environment. Her research and teaching works to advance diversity and design courses in general education programs at colleges and universities around the world.

Korydon Smith is associate professor of architecture, associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Architecture and Planning and an affiliated faculty member with the IDeA Center. His research investigates design for social justice. He is a co-lead of UB’s Community of Excellence on Global Health Equity, a major interdisciplinary research program on the complex and interconnected factors behind inequities in health and well-being.

Charles Davis (MArch '02, BPS '99) is assistant professor of architectural history and criticism at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His research examines the historical integrations of race and style theory in modern architectural debates and the general effect of racial discourses on architectural production and professionalization. Davis is also one of the inaugural members of the School of Architecture and Planning Dean’s Council.