The Chair of Spatial Planning and Strategy has had the honour to invite Dana McKinney to visit TU Delft and talk about race relations, spatial justice, equity and fairness in urban design and planning at the Urbanism and Landscape Week and to talk to students of the European Master of Urbanism @TU Delft.
Dana McKinney is a fourth year Master student in Architecture and Master in Urban Planning student at the HARVARD Graduate School of Design (GSD). Dana serves as the President of the Harvard GSD African American Student Union and also sits on the council for the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance, the GSD’s Dean’s Diversity Committee, and the Urban Planning Diversity Committee.
This past summer she worked for Pei Cobb Freed & Partners where she participated in an international design competition for a skyscraper in Mumbai, India. Previously she worked for William Rawn Associates and Goody Clancy Associates, in which she contributed to the design and construction of university dormitories, affordable housing, and institutional facilities. Upon graduation, she intends to pursue both architecture and urban planning licenses to design and construct mixed-income housing and public institutional spaces to engage an equitable design practice.
Dana holds a Bachelor of Art in Architecture with a Certificate in Urban Studies and Spanish from Princeton University.
She also makes ceramics and she dances in her spare time (contemporary and classical jazz)!
ONE OF DANA’S ACHIEVEMENTS WAS TO HELP ORGANISE THE BLACK IN DESIGN CONFERENCE at HARVARD.
The Black in Design Conference sought to recognize the contribution of African Descendants to the design fields and to broaden the definition of what it means to be a designer. The organizers believe initial steps towards addressing social injustice through design are to reclaim the histories of underrepresented groups in design pedagogy and to implicate designers as having a role in repairing our broken build environment. The aim is to pursue just and equitable spaces across all scales.
