Jeff Hou, Stephanie Bailey, D.K. O-Assere, Nisha Botchwey, and Malo Andre Hutson served as panelist at the "Unspoken Borders" conference. (photos courtesy of PennDesign)

The University of Pennsylvania School of Design sought to bring social equity back into architectural discourse last weekend with a conference called “Unspoken Borders: The Ecologies of Inequality,” hosted by the Black Student Alliance. Architects have been skittish about addressing large-scale social issues ever since the profession’s notorious Pruitt-Igoe-style failures in the 1960’s, said presenter Craig Wilkins. Since then, he added, the predominant attitude among architects has been, “‘We’re not doing that again. They got mad at us the last time we did that!’” Read More