Ridhi Chopra of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) architecture studio “Reproductive Justice Network,” taught by Bryony Roberts, “Journey of Care,” A proposal to convert train cars into clinics in India, 2022. Composite Drawing, 10 x 5 1/2 in. Courtesy Columbia GSAPP studio, New York
Addressing a post-Roe v. Wade landscape, this traveling exhibition explores the spatial, legal, and social logistics of reproductive healthcare access within hostile political contexts. Building on the work of design studios across three institutions, the exhibition presents analysis of reproductive healthcare networks as well as architectural strategies for countering threats to bodily autonomy. Expanding the discourse across institutions, the exhibition travels to both safe and restrictive states, fostering dialogue between designers, students, healthcare providers, and advocates, and gathering more research and design work as it travels. Looking beyond the design of clinics, the architectural proposals explore themes of care, site, affect, malleability, and programmatic hybridization—concepts also conveyed through the installation’s flexible design. Amidst increasingly restrictive contexts, these speculations slip between judicial boundaries and nestle within spaces of exception. This work makes visible social justice issues that are often private, unseen, and under-acknowledged within the architectural discipline.
Through design, research, writing, and advocacy, Lori A. Brown is transforming architecture into a more diverse discipline, responding to contemporary social and political conditions while raising awareness of women’s contributions to the built environment. She is a distinguished professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture and she cofounded and leads ArchiteXX—a gender equity in architecture organization in New York. Through ArchiteXX she developed the traveling exhibition Now What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances in American Architecture since 1968 which was supported by the Graham Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Known for Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals (Ashgate, 2013) and other writing, Brown’s current projects include the book Birthing Centers, Borders and Bodies (TBD) and coediting The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2015 (Bloomsbury, 2024) with Dr. Karen Burns. She is a 2021 Architectural League of New York Emerging Voices recipient and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA). Brown completed her MArch at Princeton University and her undergraduate degree in architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology. She is cocurator for Spatializing Reproductive Justice.
Lindsay Harkema is an architect, educator, founder of WIP: Work In Progress | Women In Practice, and founding member of WIP Collaborative. She is Thomas J. Baird Visiting Critic in architecture at Cornell University for Fall 2023. She also teaches at City College of New York and Barnard College, and previously at Syracuse University and The New School. Her practice engages urban architecture and the public realm to transform existing conditions and create opportunities for positive change. Harkema’s work has been published by Metropolis, The Architect’s Newspaper, Madame Architect, Cultured, Curbed, Fast Company, Citygroup, Design Philadelphia, Blank Space, Bracket Magazine, and Project Journal. Her collaborative projects are supported by the New York State Council of the Arts, The Design Trust for Public Space, and the Urban Design Forum. Harkema completed her MArch at Rice University and her undergraduate degree in architecture at Washington University in St. Louis. She is cocurator for Spatializing Reproductive Justice.
Bryony Roberts leads the design and research practice Bryony Roberts Studio and is a founding member of WIP Collaborative. Roberts approaches design as a social practice, working with local community groups and advocates to respond to the lived experiences and cultural histories of a place. Bryony Roberts Studio has been awarded the Architectural League Prize as well as support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the American Academy in Rome, where she was a Rome Prize Fellow from 2015–16. She guest-edited the volume Log 48: Expanding Modes of Practice (Anyone Corporation, 2020); edited the book Tabula Plena: Forms of Urban Preservation (Lars Müller Publishers, 2016), and co-guest-edited Log 31: New Ancients (Anyone Corporation, 2014). Roberts teaches architecture at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and is a protagonist for Log Journal. Roberts completed her MArch at Princeton University and her undergraduate degree in architecture at Yale University. She is cocurator for Spatializing Reproductive Justice.
Natalya Dikhanov, cofounder of FLUFFFF studio, applies architectural strategies and mapping in environmental, social, and reproductive justice issues. Her background includes work in making and tending, from salvaged object design and urban farming to design-build projects. She appreciates the intersection of real and speculative, applying living principles from our nonhuman counterparts to inform design. Dikhanov values collaborating with and mobilizing students and experts from various fields and institutions. She worked on University of Maryland’s 2011 Solar Decathlon winner WaterShed and organized an interdisciplinary maker session with REFUNC (den Haag/Berlin) and Salvaging Creativity (York, PA). She conducted critical investigative work, e.g., revitalizing mined indigenous land and addressing water injustice in California's Central Valley. Her work with FLUFFFF garnered awards from AA Visiting School and LA+ Journal (publication), and participation in the ARCH+ Cohabitation exhibition at silent green, Berlin. Dikhanov completed her master’s degree in architecture at TU-Berlin and her undergraduate degree in architecture at University of Maryland, College Park. She is codesigner and cocurator for Spatializing Reproductive Justice.
As cofounder of FLUFFFF studio, Sadie Imae utilizes storytelling and design to change society's view of undesirable or buried topics such as women’s health, waste, and cross-species interdependencies. Coming from a background rooted in making, her work and research emphasize the material expression of architecture. Imae entwines physical making with the digital, illustrating distant and not-so-distant futures as feasible realities that question the role of architecture while advocating for others. Her advocacy work includes design, research, and fabrication for the traveling exhibition Early Women of Architecture in Maryland supported by the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, and Maternal Health Infrastructure, a prototype for Unite for Health’s Maternal Care micro-clinic in Cameroon. Imae has instructed architecture students at Morgan State and University of Maryland. She completed her MArch at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and her undergraduate degree in architecture at University of Maryland, College Park. Imae is codesigner and cocurator for Spatializing Reproductive Justice.
ArchiteXX is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization—founded in 2012 and granted 501(c)(3) status in 2015—for gender equity in architecture, transforming the profession by bridging the academy and practice. We are a cross-generational group of academics and practitioners, and our organization is dedicated to the advancement of all women-identified, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and allied individuals. We encourage and promote the leadership and retention of women in the discipline. We are redefining what contemporary success is, how value is understood and compensated. We work to increase diversity. and facilitate and support open dialogue, content, and conversations, that inspire a new generation of design professionals to see themselves as agents of change by looking at the past to see new ways forward.