Now What?! Advocacy, Activism, and Alliances in American Architecture since 1968

This exhibition writes the overlooked histories of activist architects and organizations who were—and still are—at the forefront of the profession’s participation in larger social and political movements over the last 50 years. This intersectional and interdisciplinary look at the design professions draws historical connections and serves as the only comprehensive narrative of activism in US architecture and design that spans these generations and disparate causes. Now What?! offers an in-depth look at diversity and activism in the design professions since 1968 while crafting a space for public debate and dialogue that looks back as much as it projects forward.

Lori Brown, Professor at the Syracuse University School of Architecture, is the co-founder of ArchiteXX and a licensed architect. Her two books are Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture, an edited collection of international women designers and architects that began as a traveling exhibition and Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals examining the impact of legislation on highly securitized spaces. Her two current book projects include Birthing Centers, Borders and Bodies and co-editing The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture with Dr. Karen Burns. In 2016 she received a Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation Leadership Award for her work increasing recognition of gender inequities in the building industry.

Andrea J. Merrett is a PhD candidate in architecture at Columbia University, writing her dissertation on the history of feminism in American architecture. Her research has received support through a Buell Center Oral History Prize, a Schlesinger Library Oral History Grant, and the Milka Bliznakov Prize from the International Archive of Women in Architecture. Recently she has co-edited an issue on women and architecture for the journal de-arq: Journal of Architecture (2017), Universidad de Los Andes, and presented her dissertation research nationally and internationally in New York, Sweden, and London.

Sarah Rafson is an architectural writer, editor, and curator who founded Point Line Projects, an editorial and curatorial agency for architecture and design. She was the 2017-18 Ann Kalla Visiting Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture, where she continues to teach, and won the Columbia University Buell Center Oral History Prize for her graduate research. Sarah serves on the board of ArchiteXX and has worked on exhibitions with the Centre Pompidou and Museum of Modern Art, and edited two books, Parc de la Villette (Artifice, 2014) and Builders, Housewives, and the Construction of Modern Athens (Artifice, 2017).

As Principal of Roberta Washington Architects, PC since 1983, Roberta has designed and overseen the designs of schools, housing projects and cultural centers including the African Burial Ground Interpretive Center in Lower Manhattan. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Howard University and a Master of Science in Architecture degree from Columbia University. Roberta is a past president of the National Organization of Minority Architects and a past NYC Landmarks Preservation Commissioner. Since 1997 she has researched and written about early black women architects with biographies appearing in The Biographical Dictionary of African-American Architects, 1865-1945 and Le Dictionaries Des Femmes Creatrices.