Noncompliant Bodies: Social Equity and Public Space

The discipline of architecture tends to overlook or actively exclude persons who fall outside white, male, heterosexual, able-bodied norms. This symposium, convened by Joel Sanders and Susan Stryker, will assemble a cross-disciplinary group of designers and scholars to explore the relationship between architecture and the demands for social justice voiced by people who have been marginalized and oppressed on the basis of race, gender and disability. The symposium will examine how designers working in collaboration with experts from related disciplines can critique and transform one of three architectural types: restrooms, museums, and urban streets. Our objective will be to propose alternative futures that rethink the relationship between bodies and built environments in ways that better serve the goals of social equity.