Revisiting Whitney Young: Diversity Today

The AIANY Diversity and Inclusion Committee and the Bryn Mawr Club of NYC are proud to present “Revisiting Whitney Young: Diversity Today” at the Center for Architecture. The panel discussion will explore the legacy of Whitney M. Young Jr.’s challenge to pursue progressive values in architecture in his 1968 keynote address to the AIA. “Revisiting Whitney Young: Diversity Today” will be a cross-disciplinary dialogue with Marcia Cantarella, PhD, Whitney M. Young Jr’s daughter; Phil Freelon, FAIA, NOMA; R. Steven Lewis, FAIA, NOMA, and 2016 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award winner; and Constance Rosenblum, former editor of The New York Times city section. The event will be moderated by Dr. Mindy T. Fullilove, Professor of Urban Policy and Health, The New School.

The event will begin with a contextual introduction to Whitney M. Young Jr.’s speech and challenge, followed by presentations on the successes and failures of the present architectural community to meet the ongoing challenge. A moderated discussion and Q&A with the public will follow. 

Speakers: 
Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD, President, Cantarella Consulting
Phil Freelon, FAIA, NOMA, Managing and Design Director, Perkin+Will North Carolina; Founder and President, Freelon Group
R. Steven Lewis, FAIA, NOMA, Urban Design Director, Detroit Central Region
Constance Rosenblum, Former Editor, City Section, The New York Times; Author, Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope Along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City.

Moderator: 
Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, Hon. AIA, Professor of Urban Policy and Health, The New School

Marcia Y. Cantarella, PhD, daughter of Whitney M. Young Jr. and Bryn Mawr College class of 1968, has a track record of leadership from corporate to a diverse array of educational institutions, having been an executive at Avon Products in marketing and a senior administrator and Dean at NYU, Princeton, MCNY, and Hunter College. As the daughter of Civil Rights leader Whitney M. Young Jr, she comes from a long legacy of leaders and educators. She is a frequent blogger for Huffington Post and other sites and serves on many education-related boards and committees including Eagle Academy Schools for Boys and The READ Alliance. Her consulting has ranged from continued leadership of the Hunter College Black Male Initiative, to collaboration on the film and materials for the PBS/POV documentary All the Difference.

Phil Freelon, FAIA, NOMA, is the founder and President of The Freelon Group, Inc., which joined forces with Perkins+Will in 2014. Freelon guides the firm’s museum and cultural center work wile managing its North Carolina practice. Freelon has led multi-faceted design teams on museum projects in Washington, DC; Baltimore, MD; San Francisco, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Atlanta and Augusta, GA; and Greensboro and Charlotte, NC. Freelon’s work has been published in national professional journals including Architecture, Progressive Architecture, Architectural Record, and Contract magazine, where he was named Designer of the Year for 2008. Metropolis, Metropolitan Home, and theNew York Times have also featured Freelon and the firm. A native of Philadelphia, PA, Freelon earned his Bachelor of Environmental Design degree in Architecture from North Carolina State University and his Master of Architecture degree from MIT. Phil also received a Loeb Fellowship and spent a year of independent study at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He has served as an adjunct faculty member at North Carolina State University’s College of Design and has been a visiting critic/lecturer at Harvard, MIT, the University of Maryland, Syracuse University, Auburn University, the University of Utah, the California College of the Arts, Kent State University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, among others. Freelon is currently on the faculty at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning. He is a Peer Professional for the GSA’s Design Excellence Program and has served on numerous design award juries including the AIA Institute Honor Awards jury and the National Endowment for the Arts Design Stewardship Panel. Freelonis a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a LEED Accredited Professional, and the 2009 recipient of the AIA Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture.

R. Steven Lewis, FAIA, NOMA, is an architect and a tireless advocate for social justice and diversity within the field of architecture. Recently appointed by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Steven currently serves as Urban Design Director for the City’s Central Region, helping to shape the vision of present and future development. Lewis is the AIA 2016 Whitney M. Young, Jr. Award recipient and was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in December of 2015. In January of 2008, he returned to Southern California to join Parsons as a Design Manager after serving four years with the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of the Chief Architect in Washington, DC. Lewis was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for the 2006-07 academic year. He was a founding partner of the Los Angeles-based firm RAW International in 1984, and for the next twenty years, was an essential part of the firm’s growth and success. In December of 2010, he concluded a two-year term as President of the National Organization of Minority Architects, traveling around the country advocating for architects of color, while cultivating the next generation of diverse architects and designers. Lewis recently launched a consulting practice – “Thinking Leadership – What we Do…Who we Are” – aimed at assisting clients attain superior outcomes through his engagement. More than anything, Lewis is a facilitator of partnerships and alliances between groups and individuals who seek to use architecture and design to effect positive change to our world.

Constance Rosenblum, who graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1965, is a longtime journalist and author. During a 30-year career at The New York Times, she was editor of the paper’s Arts and Leisure section; editor of the Sunday City section, which focused on New York City, and author of the Habitats column in the Real Estate section. Before joining The Times, she was culture editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and a reporter and editor at the New York Daily News. She also worked as a writer for the NYC Department of City Planning, where she helped write the city’s first master plan. Ms. Rosenblum is the author of three books: Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope Along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, a history of an iconic New York street;  Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City, a collection of her columns from The Times; and Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce, a biography of a Jazz Age celebrity. Her book on the Grand Concourse received the New York City Book Award for social history, awarded by the New York Society Library. Rosenblum currently works as a freelance book editor, with a focus on books about urban affairs, and teaches a seminar on immigration at the Macaulay Honors College of the City College of New York. 

Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, Hon. AIA, who graduated Bryn Mawr College in 1971, is a professor of urban policy and health at The New School, having moved there in 2016 after 26 years at New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University. Trained at Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University, she has conducted research on AIDS and other epidemics of poor communities and is interested in the links between the environment and mental health. Her research examines the mental health effects of environmental processes such as violence, segregation, and urban renewal. In 2004, she worked with colleagues in Upper Manhattan to start the CLIMB project, which has advocated for re-investment in the area’s cliffside parks. This has spurred millions in new investment, including a 2016 $30 million investment to update Highbridge Park.  In 2007, along with other community activists, she helped found the University of Orange in her hometown of Orange, NJ. The UofO is a collective offering free courses in urban culture so that students can become more active in determining the future of their city. In 2016, Fullilove was named an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects for “advancing architecture and urban planning through her expansive knowledge of cities and the relationship between the built environment and the wellness of society.” Her work is the subject of feature articles, including the 2015 New York Times “The Town Shrink,” and she herself has published more than a hundred articles and six books.