DEANNA VAN BUREN

Restore Oakland. Courtesy of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces and Deanna Van Buren.

RMCAD + PUBLIC EVENTS

ABOUT THE DESIGNER

Deanna Van Buren is the co-founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. An architecture and real estate nonprofit working to end mass incarceration through place-based solutions, DJDS builds the infrastructure that addresses its root causes: poverty, racism, unequal access to resources, and the criminal justice system itself. She is also a socially engaged artist working across media platforms including public art, film, and video games.

Van Buren has been profiled by The New York Times and has written op-eds on the intersection of design, architecture, mass incarceration, and video games in outlets such as Politico, Architectural Record, and Gamasutra. Her TEDWomen talk on what a world without prisons could look like has been viewed more than one million times.

Her other honors include UC Berkeley’s Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Prize and Professorship, awarded to a design practitioner who significantly contributed to advancing gender equity in architecture, and whose work emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and community. Globally she has received the 2018 Bicentenary Medal of the Royal Society of Arts, for her efforts in transforming justice through design, and the Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Award.

Van Buren is also the co-founder of BIG Oakland (Building Industry Gathering), a co-working space supporting small minority- and women-owned firms in the architecture, engineering, construction, and real estate industries.

Van Buren received her BS in architecture from the University of Virginia and her MArch from Columbia University. She is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

DESIGNER TALK

Making Space for Peace

Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Deanna Van Buren spoke about the role interdisciplinary approaches to design with social workers, game designers, artists, and more have in healing and repair that supports inner and outer peace. Her talk covered several projects from research-based spatial applications for survivors of violence to artistic practices that support personal and interpersonal healing and transformation.

RMCAD EXCLUSIVE events

STUDENT-LED Q+A SESSION

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
RMCAD Interior Design Student Nathan Simon moderated the Student-Led Q + A Session with Deanna. These RMCAD exclusive events are casual, in-person conversations guided by student voices. These discussions generate valuable professional advice for all students. 

The Witness Aerial. Courtesy of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces and Deanna Van Buren.

Peacemaking PaLETTE Workshop

Wednesday, November 13, 2024
How do we create peaceful, nourishing, and calming spaces for a diverse and unique community? In this workshop with Deanna Van Buren, RMCAD students shared their personal experiences with peaceful spaces and criminal justice system spaces. From there, Deanna led students through a conversation about the opportunities for designers to create spaces for restorative justice rather than punitive harm. Activities included sharing, listening, storytelling, and role-play, engaging students in the practice of designing spaces for peacemaking.

Five Keys Mobile Classroom. Courtesy of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces.

Recommendation List

VASD Program visiting artists and designers provide a recommendation list that gives insight into their work, practice, and research. Artist and designer, Deanna Van Buren recommends:

  • Listen:

    • Making Friends with Your Mind, Pema Chodron  

    • DJ Sunny D’s “Freedom and Sunshine” Playlist [listen here] 

    • DJ Sunny D’s “DJDS Abundance” Playlist [listen here] 

    • DJ Black Coffee [listen here] 

  • Read and Explore: 

    • Caste by Isabel Wilkerson 

    • A New Paradigm for Healing Collective Trauma: A Process Based on the Mystical Principles of Healing (Dissertation) - Thomas Huebl 

    • Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds, by Thomas Hübl and Julie Jordan Avritt 

    • Trauma by Dr. Gabor Maté

    • Collaborative Law Review Peace in Place

    • Reimaging Justice

    • “Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?” Article by Paul Tullis, January 4, 2013, New York Times.  

  • Play:

  • Get Inspired:

    • The Hokisai Sketchbooks: Selections from the Manga by James A. Michener.