Illinois School of Architecture Lecture
On Collaborations: Critical Spatial Practices in the Americas and the Caribbean
Monday, November 18, 2024, at 6:00 p.m.
Plym Auditorium, Temple Hoyne Buell Hall
611 E Lorado Taft Dr, Champaign
This panel brings together architects, urban planners, educators, and community activists Elisa Silva (Venezuela), Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio (Puerto Rico), David J Isern (Peru), Magdalena Novoa (Chile), and Irene Farah Rivadeneyra (Mexico) to discuss critical spatial practices and collaborative engagement in the Americas and the Caribbean. Rooted in epistemologies from the South, these practitioners challenge dominant narratives and seek to redefine design practices that emerge from and respond to the region's distinct histories, knowledges, and identities. This panel exhibits how these leaders reframe spatial design by embedding it within their communities' social, cultural, and environmental dimensions.
Each panelist contributes unique perspectives and methodologies to community-based work, emphasizing collaborative processes prioritizing social equity, resilience, and agency. Their work illustrates how architecture and design can bridge social gaps and create spaces that respond to the lived realities of marginalized communities. The projects represented vary in scale and scope—from Elisa Silva's green spaces in informal settlements in Venezuela to David Isern's participatory architectural practices in Peru. Magdalena Novoa's focus on placemaking in vulnerable space in Chile and Yazmín M. Crespo Claudio's initiatives in Puerto Rican communities offer additional insights into decolonial teaching praxis and community-based design.
This panel seeks to ignite a conversation on the evolving role of architects and designers as agents of social transformation through local and relational epistemologies. The participants will explore how the embedded knowledge of the Americas and Caribbean communities can inform collaborative design, fostering sustainable, inclusive, and context-sensitive spatial solutions. The discussion aims to inspire critical dialogue on how the situated knowledge and ways of thinking/doing of the Americas and the Caribbean can drive impactful, socially engaged practices in architecture and design across the region and beyond.