At a Crossroads: Towards Justice, or Down the Insidious Path of False Solutions?

After decades of climate inaction, the United States has reached a turning point with the passage of multiple federal laws that provide funding for clean energy. However, environmental and climate justice activists are wary, warning that these laws may further subsidize false solutions to addressing the climate crisis. Legislation like the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act is riddled with technological and market-based approaches that further exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in environmental justice communities

[REBLOG] Two Reflections: Thinking About Blackness, Ecology, and Architecture in the United States

The history of building and space is richer than we usually think. So are the visions of a less racist future, motivated in part by many Black voices and gazes. Reconstruction in America worked briefly in the past, ending not in failure but in its active repression. Reconstructions is a beautiful, evocative, and painful call for us all to nurture the racially regenerative possibility of space and building.

Faculty Blog, infrastructureTishman CenterSeptember 14, 2021architecture, ecology, Faculty Highlights, reblogComment

An Interview with Beau Bree Rhee

In an art & design school, we (myself included) are tactile creatures that are interested in being seduced by beautiful and wonderful materials. Materials have been a way for me in Sustainable Systems to tap into that innate curiosity and generate a deep wonder towards our natural world. This is the first step towards generating a real personal connection with the students to the aims of the course Sustainable Systems. That is home base: reverence & wonder for our natural world. There’s so much doom & gloom and information around climate change these days; it’s easy for people to feel overwhelmed and shut down. But I think once you have awe, you’re able to work through the darkness.

Seven years after Rana Plaza

April 24th marked the seventh anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Savar, Bangladesh. At least 1,134 people died in seconds when the building came down on them, while another 2,500 were injured. Most of the lost were garment workers, young women around the same age as the fashion students I teach at Parsons. Since then, each anniversary has been marked by Fashion Revolution, a grassroots campaign initiated by Orsola de Castro and Carry Somers. Numerous other initiatives were founded to support impacted workers and their families.

News, Faculty BlogTishman CenterMay 26, 2020Rana Plaza, Fashion, Garment WorkersComment