Can architecture change how we define and seek justice?
Can buildings help build community? We believe it can.
Impact Justice is hosting an Impact/Ideas discussion of Space for Restorative Justice, a book about a ground-breaking studio at the Yale University School of Architecture conducted in partnership with Impact Justice. The studio focused on the design of community justice centers as an antidote to mass incarceration and the erosion of community that results from overly punitive and racially disproportionate responses to crime.
Yale instructor Emily Abruzzo will present select designs from Space for Restorative Justice. She will then join Ashlee George, who leads our restorative justice work with youth nationally, and Bay Area architect Deanna Van Buren, a pioneer in creating spaces for restorative justice, rehabilitation, and community building, for a discussion moderated by Impact Justice President Alex Busansky.
We invite you to join us in this conversation on Thursday, September 12 from 6:00 – 7:15 pm at Impact Justice’s Oakland office: 2633 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA 94612. Admission is free, but space is limited so please RSVP.
Presenters:
Emily Abruzzo is a Critic at the Yale University School of Architecture and partner in Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, a New York-based practice with experience ranging from civic and cultural projects to homes, exhibitions and research-based initiatives. The firm’s work has been recognized with several awards, including the 2010 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers and Architectural Record’s 2016 Design Vanguard and is included in the New York City Department of Design & Construction’s Design Excellence Program. She is a founding editor and publisher of the book series 306090, a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a Fellow of the Forum and Institute for Urban Design. She received a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.Arch from Princeton University, where she also received a Certificate in Media and Modernity and was named a Fellow at the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.
Ashlee George is Associate Director of Impact Justice’s Restorative Justice Project and in that role leads the implementation of restorative justice diversion programs for youth across the county. She is a thought leader in restorative justice pedagogy and practices and was instrumental in piloting one of the first school-based restorative justice programs in Oakland, as well as one of the first survivor-oriented pre-charge restorative justice diversion programs outside of California. Before joining Impact Justice, she spent 13 years facilitating restorative justice dialogues between youth who caused harm and the people impacted to create spaces of transformation and healing through accountability. Ashlee holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and is a Board Member of OneLife Institute for Spirituality & Social Transformation.
Deanna Van Buren is Executive Director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, an architecture and real estate development non-profit working to end mass incarceration, where she brings her design leadership to creating places for restorative justice, rehabilitation and community building. Her professional career spans 20 years as a global design lead on mixed-use, institutional, higher education and social impact projects. She is a recent awardee of the Berkeley-Rupp Professorship Prize, The Royal Society of Arts Bicentenary Medal and the Women in Architecture Awards Honoring Pioneering Professionals. She received her B.S. in Architecture from the University of Virginia, M.Arch from Columbia University and is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Alex Busansky is President and Founder of Impact Justice. Alex began his career 1987 as a prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in. He then worked for the US Department of Justice where he investigated and prosecuted cases across the nation involving excessive use of force by federal, state, and local law enforcement and corrections officers, as well as racial and religious hate crimes. He has also served as Counsel to Senator Russ Feingold on the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Executive Director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, founding Director of the Washington, DC office of the Vera Institute of Justice, and President of the National Council on Crime & Delinquency. Alex earned his J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center and a B.A. in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
