Shaping Change: Architecture, Urbanism, and Social Impact
Part of the Zube Lecture Series
Content
About the Talk
"Shaping Change" will center on the premise that built environmental professionals should expand their influence on culture and society. Using Detroit as a case study, the presentation will illustrate how to include more people, more programs, and more geographies in the design and building processes. "Shaping Change" explores the position that built environment professionals can be advocates for people who are typically left out of design and place-making decisions. Designers can widen the undertaking beyond some people to include all (or more) people. The lecture will also consider the strategic position that people and firms operating in this way are not alternative practices. Instead, they are a part of an ecology that is working to alter how we practice. The talk is grounded in the position that people in the city do not stand in the way; but instead, they are the primary catalysts for urban innovation.
About the Speaker
Dan Pitera, FAIA, NOMA, Hon. FALA, is a social and political activist masquerading as an architect. Dean Pitera has practiced, taught, and researched methods focused on the social, ecological, equitable, and political aspects of designing and realizing thoughtful architecture and urban design for all people. After a twelve-year period of discernment in four different US locations and five universities, in 1999, Dean Pitera settled at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he was Executive Director of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC). Under his direction, DCDC was honored with the National AIA’s 2017 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award. In 2019, Dan Pitera, FAIA was appointed Dean of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture + Community Development and is currently President of AIA Michigan Board of Directors. He was awarded AIA Detroit’s 2023 Gold Medal and was a 2004-2005 Harvard University Loeb Fellow.