Why Black Design Matters

Black design matters. As does design in general in today’s critical discourse on black lives—and black deaths, while in police custody, incarcerated, or in the streets. But the design profession, made up of architects and city planners, seems not to fully understand this yet. A group of black graduate students at Harvard is determined to change that.

The African American Student Union (AASU) of Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) will host The Black in Design Conference on its campus this October. The student group hopes this conference will, as its website states, “serve as a call to action for the GSD to instill within each and every student who passes through its doors the responsibility to build just and equitable spaces at every scale.”