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
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
5:30 pm MST | Doors Open at 5:00 pm
Mary Harris Auditorium
Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design
1600 Pierce Street, Denver, CO 80214
Free and open to the public and offered in-person and via livestream.
Free refreshments for in-person attendees.
Pre-event registration is highly encouraged.
PRIVATE RMCAD events
STUDENT-LED Q+A SESSION
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
11:45 am - 12:45 pm
Location TBA
Lunch is provided
Student-Led Q + A Sessions are private, casual, in-person conversations open to RMCAD students, faculty, and staff. Guided by student voices, these discussions generate valuable professional advice for all students.
Students! Apply to be a moderator for this event here. The deadline to apply is Monday, November 4, 2024
The Witness Aerial. Courtesy of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces and Deanna Van Buren.
exclusive student event
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Details to be announced.
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 scholar, Deanna Van Buren’s recommendation list will be available soon.