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Design Equity in Public Architecture Presentation Oct. 6

Story posted October 02, 2008

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Liz Ogbu.

Architectural design activist Liz Ogbu will give a talk titled "Public Architecture: Design Equity" at 7 p.m. Monday, October 6, 2008, in Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center. The talk is open to the public and admission is free.

An advocate for the non-profit sector for sustainable design and community collaborations, Ogbu blends her passion for design with an eye on working for the public good. Her work involves changing the course of how the architecture profession responds to critical social needs, and showing how we can shape a built environment that supports human dignity and is mindful of the resources used.

Her Bowdoin talk has been planned to coincide with both the opening of the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good and the exhibition of Watson Fellowship recipient Cotton Estes '07, whose work (drawings and photographs of industrial sites in Eastern Europe) will be on display in the Fishbowl Gallery in the Visual Arts Center through October 11.

Liz Ogbu joined Public Architecture, a San Francisco pro bono firm, in August 2006, and is responsible for design campaign selection, execution, and advocacy. Previously, she was a designer at Simon Martin-Vegue Winklestein Morris (SMWM), an architecture and urban design firm in San Francisco.

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Ogbu's design for Day Labor Station identified a critical need for day laborers, then proposed solutions.

She has been the recipient of several traveling fellowships, including the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Through these grants, she has pursued research projects, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, examining the intersections in the socioeconomic and physical spaces of the informal sector. Findings from this work have been presented at several conferences both in the U.S. and abroad.

She has also been involved with many community focused projects and organizations in the U.S., including the launch of the Community Design: Now or Never Web site and its associated symposium; the Mayors' Institute on City Design; a design outreach program for local youth in Cambridge and Boston; and an affordable housing developer in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ogbu recently was selected as "Green Giant" by Steelcase, Inc., for her work in promoting environmentally and socially sustainable design.

She earned her bachelor of arts in architecture at Wellesley College and master of architecture at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

The lecture is sponsored by the Visual Arts division of the Department of Art, the Environmental Studies Program, and the Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good.

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