As a School of architecture and the built environment, it is imperative that we acknowledge the role our disciplines and practices have played in constructing and upholding racial inequities in the built environment. GSAPP is engaging every aspect of the School with a collective commitment to changing these approaches, and through shared efforts is intensifying its focus on the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion as a community and across our disciplines and practices.
In the context of GSAPP’s Anti-Racism Action Plan and commitment to fostering environments that bring the School community together across programs to become an actively anti-racist institution, GSAPP has launched the Anti-Racism Curriculum Development Award. GSAPP is making a three-year commitment to provide up to three $10,000 grants each academic year for the development of new School-wide courses, or the revision of existing courses of this type, that address questions and material related to race, equity, and society in the built environment. The grants focus on School-wide teaching in recognition of the shared project of further developing a robustly anti-racist curriculum in the built environment, which draws on specific expertise in each program and shares that expertise with students across the School.
From seminars to lecture courses to joint studios, such courses may be offered to all GSAPP students across programs, or, in cases where this is impracticable, across at least two programs. Topics addressed may include but are not limited to: race and space in the built environment, histories of racial inequity or exclusion, race and colonialism/neocolonialism, design for racial equity, racial exclusion in the professions of the built environment, detailed study of work by Black, Latinx, or other under-represented professionals in the built environment, strategies for enhancing equity across policy domains, technologies of racial exclusion and inclusion, and related subjects.
Read about the 2021-2022 Award Recipients on the GSAPP News.