At its heart, SAY IT LOUD serves to recognize and celebrate women and BIPOC design professionals in the built environment. Estimates have women accounting for just 22% of licensed architects in the US in 2022. In 2019, racial or ethnic minorities made up just 11% of the profession. Their achievements are often overlooked, miscredited, or erased from history.

SAY IT LOUD amplifies the identities and contributions of women and BIPOC designers through locally-organized and community-oriented exhibits, curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their built work and its spatial impact. It provides a spotlight for their work, while keeping history of their contributions. We have hosted 36 exhibitions so far and represent 70% of the United States and 10% of the global world, in the material we displayed.

The SAY IT LOUD web portal gathers all necessary documents, ensures quality, and completes submissions for review. The submissions include headshots, bios, a featured project, and supporting images. Additionally, we also capture video testimonials to communicate their unique experience and journeys as diverse designers in this profession. Yielding a physical and digital exhibition whose reach is expediential through our global community.

An invitation by the local community evokes our participation and engagement. Together we work to identify how the SAY IT LOUD exhibition can be an activator in engaging the community in solving some of society's challenges.

With this incredible material in hand, we engage diverse audiences through programming that promotes intellectual discourse and exchange. We elevate the identities and contributions of diverse designers through exhibitions, curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their work and its spatial impact. We educate the masses through formal and informal learning opportunities that introduce architecture as a bridge to fill the gaps of inequity.

BEYOND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT – Mission of the Organization

The role of architects in community life has been rendered largely irrelevant as the profession has historically been, and continues to be, an exclusive resource serving primarily wealthy patrons. Such exclusivity fosters and perpetuates significant inequity in the built environment - inequities most often impacting communities of color. In 1968, activist Whitney Young sharply rebuked the profession by stating "You are not a profession that has distinguished itself by your social and civic contributions to the cause of civil rights… You are most distinguished by your thunderous silence and your complete irrelevance." My belief is that strong and healthy communities, rich in diversity, make strong nations. As architects, we have the power to represent more than ourselves and diverse representation is quintessential to achieving equitable societies.

FRAMING THE ISSUE

After hosting an architecture camp where we inspired elementary students to become architects, I realized the internet would be a powerful tool for them to continue to learn about architecture. The Google search "great architect" yielded 50 architects, one was a woman and none were black. I met with the BGN team at Google's headquarters, demonstrated the search, and discussed results. They explained it stemmed from a lack of content identifying diverse designers as "great." In response, I launched the GREAT Diverse Designers Library and began each profile with "the great" to combat the SEO and algorithm issues. Unfortunately, to date, the Google search has similar results.

BEYOND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT - Initiatives

Beyond the Built Environment uniquely addresses the inequitable disparities in architecture by providing a holistic platform aimed at supporting numerous stages of the architecture pipeline. We promote agency among diverse audiences and advocate for equity in the built environment through an approach which utilizes a method I termed "the triple E, C." The triple E, C method is a strategy to: Elevate, Engage, Educate, and Collaborate.

We ELEVATE the identities and contributions of women and BIPOC designers through exhibitions, curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their built work and its spatial impact. We amplified the immense cultural value of local diverse designers through hosting 36 SAY IT LOUD (SIL) exhibitions globally. SIL is a traveling activation that cultivates talent in the exhibit's host locations.

We ENGAGE diverse audiences through programming that promotes intellectual discourse and exchange. Each showcase is an immersive visual apparatus, with the mission permeating society. Through pairing the exhibitions with local events, we've hosted over 20 lectures/panel discussions, 10 youth programs where little ones directly engage with the content, and more than 36 virtual/in-person networking events to cultivate a strong local professional network.

We EDUCATE the masses through formal and informal learning opportunities that introduce architecture as a bridge to fill the gaps of inequity. The GREAT Diverse Designers Library is a digital repository for every featured designer, totaling 886 profiles. The ever-growing content has representatives heralding from 70% of the U.S. and 10% of the world. The act of keeping history is vital in educating society and future generations. This self-submitting process encourages designers to elevate themselves and own their narratives.

We COLLABORATE with community stakeholders and organizations to crowdsource information and amplify opportunities to advocate for equitable and reflectively-diverse environments. An invitation by the local community evokes our participation and engagement. Together we work to identify how the SIL exhibition can be an activator in engaging the community in solving some of society's challenges.

Beyond the Built Environment serves to represent marginalized people - both within the profession and within the communities most under-served by the profession. We aim to involve everyone (from preschoolers to practitioners and pundits) as critical stakeholders and advocates for just, diverse environments. Knowledgeable practitioners and members of the National Organization of Minority Architects are enthusiastically involved helping to identify, recommend, and provide programming content. Expert curators at the National Museum of African-American Heritage and Culture are involved in expanded research and artifact-collecting with the shared goal of curating a permanent exhibit; the Smithsonian Institute is currently providing archival space for preservation.

SAY IT LOUD

The SAY IT LOUD exhibitions feature projects by women and BIPOC design professionals, as well as quotes and video interviews on their lived experiences in the architecture and design professions. The concept of this exhibit is "To see our faces, hear our voices, feel our impact within the colorful tapestry of our heritage." SAY IT LOUD is a traveling activation of a global movement of sharing, protecting, and celebrating the journey of the underrepresented to inspire the next generation. SAY IT LOUD engages diverse audiences through programming organized to elevate the identities and contributions of minority architects and designers with curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their built work and its spatial impact. To date, the 36 SAY IT LOUD exhibitions have been viewed by an estimated 48,000 visitors since January 2017. Online publications with large subscription bases (House Beautiful, Curbed, The Architects Newspaper, amongst others) have helped promote the exhibitions in their pages, further expanding the viewership and impact. Featured firms reported an increase in business following their participation in an exhibit, which they attributed to the exhibition and the subsequent media coverage and reporting on the SAY IT LOUD exhibit.

SAY IT LOUD was exhibited at the AIA New York, in the Center for Architecture gallery, AIA Nationals A'22 Convention, and SXSW Conference, which were all paired with programming that was relevant to the mission. The SAY IT LOUD - United Nations Visitors Centre exhibition created an immense opportunity for exposure and.called to action leaders of our world. Following my speech at the exhibition, the United Nations generously offered to transform this exhibition into posters, translated them into 8 languages, and distributed them to United Nations Information Centres worldwide. With the success of the past exhibitions, we are planning on expanding our mission internationally and have engaged with numerous organizations from around the world.

THE SCOPE OF WORK

We begin exhibits by partnering with community members to identify diverse design professionals in their state and various platforms to reach them. Although we often reach out to individuals to encourage participation, we think it is important this process is done entirely via self-submission. This self-submitting process encourages designers to elevate themselves and take charge of their own narratives. Individuals submit their narratives in the form of a bio, and choose the work they want to elevate. Following this, we interview exhibitors on camera to capture testimonials of their lived experiences in their own voices. I curate the exhibition, hire designers to design the exhibition based on the venue layout, and a motion graphic designer to edit the interviews. In coalition with our community partners, we plan lectures and activities to promote the exhibit.

THE CHALLENGE

Prior to collaborating with community centers, SAY IT LOUD was exhibited only at industry-specific venues. One attendee critiqued the venue, pointing out the irony of industry-exclusive locations for an exhibition advocating equity and diversity. This critique challenged me to fully embody the role of architect as advocate and more critically consider strategies to effectively engage and collaborate with the under-served communities we were looking to reach. We now almost exclusively work with community groups to host exhibitions in more accessible venues, such as community centers, shipping containers parked in public plazas, and university galleries. Unfortunately the downside to this is the fact that smaller, local community groups may not have the funding and support that professional organizations are privy to. At times, community centers and organizations have reached out to host a SIL and we struggle to find the funding to realize these exhibitions. Unfortunately, without either monetary support from the community or sponsorship, we lack the financial resources to make it happen. Our goal is to bring SIL exhibits to communities that would otherwise be unable to afford them.

GREAT DIVERSE DESIGNERS: LIBERATING THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE

One of the ultimate goals of the Beyond the Built Environment initiatives is to develop a textbook that expounds on the exhibition research of our SAY IT LOUD programming. This is currently in the works, but in the interim we have created the Great Diverse Architects Digital Library to be a home for the content gathered through these various exhibitions. This repository is a wealth of information that is a free resource and accessible to anyone online.

http://greatdiversedesigners.com

I am grateful for this opportunity to share my passion, my mission and my story and I hope with your aid we are able to SAY IT LOUD together. –

This link provides tailored information for our submission.

https://indd.adobe.com/view/2f05fcfc-956c-46bd-a522-94fb34634b2b