Designing in Public Space: Contestation & the Politics of Inclusion

How might we transform public urban spaces to better engage communities? How do we design a process that incorporates the interests and values of multiple stakeholders and what are the challenges? Who is being included and excluded in this conversation to ensure equitable outcomes?

We have invited artists and designers Yeju Choi and Chat Travieso to share their work around these issues, from temporary, site-specific installations in Lower Manhattan to a playful reconstruction of a neglected neighborhood street in Cambridge, MA.

This workshop will interrogate the social and political challenges of designing in public spaces, engaging diverse stakeholders in a participatory process, and rethinking design practices in contested built environments.

When: Friday, March 29th, 10AM – 12PM
Where: 12th floor of 16 E 16th St, Transdisciplinary Design Studio
Led by: Yeju Choi and Chat Travieso

Part of a workshop series hosted by Prof. Nitin Sawhney, Faculty Fellow, Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography, and Social Thought (GIDEST)

Biographies:

As multidisciplinary designers/artists and educators with backgrounds in art, architecture, and graphic design, Yeju Choi and Chat Travieso have been creating site-specific, community-based, and socially engaged public art projects since 2010.

Yeju Choi is a designer and educator based in New York City. She runs a multi-disciplinary design practice Nowhere Office focusing on projects in civic, public, and cultural realms across various mediums including printed matter, identities, websites, and site-specific, community-based public art. She has been teaching at Yale School of Art since 2012 and has been a visiting critic, held workshops and lectures at Cornell University, Columbia University, Rutgers University, The New School, and Seoul National University among others, in graphic design and urban design departments. She served as a public design fellow at the Center for Urban Pedagogy and a designer-in-residence for Performa. Her work has been recognized and published internationally by AIGA, Artplace, Type Directors Club, :Output award, Graphic, Étapes, etc. She holds a B.F.A from Seoul National University and an M.F.A from Yale University where she received Norman Joondeph Prize and Phelps Berdan Award. 

Chat Travieso is a Brooklyn-based artist, designer, and educator. He creates community-engaged and research-based projects around issues of social justice and the built environment. His past work has been commissioned by or organized in collaboration with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Architectural League of New York, Design Trust for Public Space, the NYC Department of Transportation, WHEDco, the Elsewhere Museum, and the Cambridge Arts Council. His artist residencies include LMCC Process Space and Smack Mellon Studio Program. His recent honors include a USA YoungArts Fellowship, a Graham Foundation Grant, and a NYSCA Independent Projects Grant. He currently teaches at Queens College CUNY and is a Visiting Critic at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). He holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an M.Arch from the Yale School of Architecture.

The image attached: On the Other Side, by Yeju Choi and Chat Travieso, 2017, Cambridge, MA, Commissioned by the City of Cambridge and Cambridge Arts Council