J. Max Bond Jr. Lecture | IMPATIENCE!

*This event is occurring as a live webinar. Please register to receive Continuing Education Credits and be able to pose questions throughout the program. This event will also be livestreamed through Facebook here.*

Confronting Erasure by Going Beyond Hope and Goodwill

Join the New York Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (nycoba | NOMA) and the AIANY Diversity & Inclusion Committee in celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the founding of the J. Max Bond Jr. Lecture. Established in 2010 as a joint collaboration, this annual design talk honors the memory of J. Max Bond, Jr., FAIA, NOMA, an architect, advocate, teacher, and trailblazer of his time. The Bond Lecture addresses issues that were important to Bond: equity, inclusive design, communities, and global cultures, in particular Africa (Ghana).

This year’s speaker is June A. Grant, RA, NOMA, Founder and Design Principal at blink!LAB architecture, a boutique research-based architecture and urban design practice. Disturbed by the current trend of light-touch paint urbanism, with no investment in community amenities such as libraries, homes, bus stops, street lights, and beautiful spaces for our bodies in celebration, Grant has been exploring self-directed projects as a method to initiate catalytic change that celebrates local culture through form. Grant invents design strategies aimed at the sustainable regeneration and conservation of African American communities. Her multi-disciplinary design approach is a desire to give shape to the impact of migration and its resultant layered social patterns as fundamental to understanding local context. Grant will present realized and envisioned projects from the domestic to the building and urban scale that examine the interrelatedness of the human experience. For this 10th-anniversary lecture, attendees are invited to consider how they can participate in leading the transformation of environments and urban systems by embracing their own impatience as agents of social change.

Speaker:
June A. Grant, RA, NOMA, Founder and Design Principal, blink!LAB architecture

Moderator:
Ted Russell, Associate Director, Arts Strategy & Ventures for the Kenneth Rainin Foundation

About the speakers:

June A. Grant, RA, NOMA, is Founder and Design Principal at blink!LAB architecture. Launched in 2014, Blink!LAB was created based on Grant’s 20 years of experience in architecture, design, and urban regeneration of cities and communities.

 Her design approach rests on an avid belief in cultural empathy, data research, and new technologies as integral to design futures and design solutions. Grant is also the current President of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (SFNOMA), a twelve-year-old organization whose members include architects, interior designers, urban planners, landscape architects, policy advocates, and activists all working to implement the SFNOMA mission: Design to empower, educate, and foster economic growth in underserved communities. 

Ted Russell is the Kenneth Rainin Foundation’s Associate Director of Arts Strategy & Ventures. He works developing and implementing new initiatives to help artists create and thrive, with an emphasis on exploring new models for supporting artists and organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Russell manages elements of the Arts Program’s portfolio and develops and contributes to learning and evaluation processes, including documenting and disseminating knowledge about promising practices. Prior to joining the Foundation, Russell worked as an organizational consultant specializing in working with diverse arts and cultural organizations and funders. He served as an arts senior program officer at the James Irvine Foundation from 2005-2016 and previously worked at several California arts organizations in various management, marketing and fundraising roles. Russell holds a BA in mechanical engineering from Yale University and an M.B.A. in arts management from UCLA’s Anderson School. He serves as the board chair of Grantmakers in the Arts.

Venue: This event will stream live from Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA (San Francisco, CA)

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This program is organized in conjunction with Archtober, New York City’s month-long architecture and design festival.