Design Trust Chicago Featured in Architect Magazine

DTC’s work was highlighted in a recent Architect Magazine article titled “Listen Louder: Rethinking the Role of Today’s Citizen Architect.” In the piece, author Anjulie Rao critiques the American Institute of Architect’s (AIA) Citizen Architect campaign, which was launched in 2008 and updated in 2018 and acts as a framework for architects to bridge the gap between their work and the communities they serve. Rao points out that the campaign centers designers rather than centering community members and elaborates on the inequities this creates.

“Perhaps the Citizen Architect campaign should be structured as a political and social reeducation in which architects see themselves not as uniquely trained to be leaders, but instead as a part of a vital ecosystem of collaboration that redistributes their power, passing the megaphone in order to center communities—those burdened by environmental injustices, histories of segregation and redlining, racialized disinvestment, and systemic poverty—and not design.”

— Anjulie Rao

Rao goes on to spotlight several organizations across the country for their work to advance community design. She explains how DTC acts as a mediator between architects and designers, community members, and larger government agencies to make the community design process more equitable, efficient, and ultimately more secure for neighborhood residents.

“We started working closely with our planning department to support, from a design and technical assistance side, community-design projects such as pop-up spaces to get people outdoors. [The city] was handing out money and asking community organizations to create these spaces, but not giving them some of the technical assistance or support that would make the space successful. It wasn’t setting those communities up for long-term success.”

— Katherine Darnstadt, Co-Founder, Design Trust Chicago

Read the full article here.