 Hi everyone. I'm really excited to be with Justin Garrett Moore today and to hear more about his work. He is one of our most well-known alumnus. He is incredibly engaged in New York and beyond. He's the executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission. He has a sort of pioneering practice called Urban Patch in Rwanda. Really focused on sustainable building and issues of housing. He recently launched the Dark Matter University and is incredibly active in supporting the next generation of Black architects and planners and people of color who really need to kind of rethink what we do in the world and how we do it to be more creative, more sustainable, more equitable. And really I think one of the leading figures. So we're very happy to have him also as a member of our faculty teaching for a very long time in the Urban Design Program and now slowly kind of expanding to teach more specifically in the architecture program. So Justin, one of the most exciting conversations I have, I mean we've been talking a lot in recent weeks and months but you know you have a very strong sense of where practice needs to go and how we can transform practice for architects for urban designers and planners and I wanted and you yourself you know have you know you're shaping a new a new form of practice. So I wanted you know I wanted to hear more about that. How do we construct that just alternate modes of practice but bring them to the center and the and the core of how we engage cities and shape them today. Yes, thank you Amal and you know I would say that my understanding of practice really did begin with my time when I was a student at GSAP. I had a kind of a wonderful kind of cross-disciplinary educational environment at GSAP because you have all of the different departments right. So you have in one school architecture, urban design, urban planning, even real estate right. All the sort of the ingredients for how the world gets changed kind of how our built world happens is really happening in GSAP and so you know my kind of inquiry into practice started really young and even including things like teaching and research being integral to practice right that in a way we're always kind of challenging and pushing ideas and questions and and and trying to sort of understand the world and and our role and agency in that. And so you know as you mentioned I have sort of a kind of a multi-pronged practice. I don't know if I'm a juggler or a multi-tasker or just have ADD or what but you know I've really enjoyed being able to work in different types of spaces and something that I found is that design education like at its kind of core at its base allows you to to think and work within a lot of different modes of practice and so I personally professionally have worked for a very long time in city government and a lot of that frankly is motivated by personal social interests and being able to kind of serve and improve places and and society and economy and all of those modes and you know the the idea for how we understand our different skill sets or different tools whether it's great communications right that you learn through drawing and visualization how to process massive amounts of data and and to kind of reconcile it and and process it you know challenges us to to push practice the final kind of piece that I'll I'll say on on practices kind of a mode is that we have to think about agency and purpose and so everything that we're all kind of collectively experiencing right now with the pandemic with social unrest with kind of persistent ecological and climate forces that we have to reconcile and understand we want to be able to to do something right like we don't want to just sort of have the world happen to us we want to to see how we can can get better outcomes and so you know the all the different modes of working have to then kind of come together and and push yourself personally and professionally to to go into other fields you know I'm I'm considered a leader in the urban planning world but my education is in architecture and urban design at GSAP right you know I you know but I was exposed to planning at that time right and so there's this kind of constant learning that we have and that's actually an ethical responsibility that we have as practitioners to learn and to be a part of a learning community so I think it's it's really interesting to hear you speak because I can see you know how you've connected these different forms of practice and engagement and these different scales and it's true I actually think of you often as a planner as well which is amazing because the you know it's one of the few who not few but I think you're a model of what you know what we should aspire to in terms of creating these bridges and and and you're creating other bridges right you're uh you you've kind of uh this this this past fall um you're holding a class that is a partnership between GSAP and Tuskegee University and you shared with me that what's been fascinating is the question of place um that is looked at you know from very different students students who I have a you know who come from China who students and I wanted to talk about the question of place and how it's both different specific and some of the forces are the same that we have to fight against and and then following on that you know just a hint of how you want to use your advanced studio six in the spring in architecture to kind of expand even you know that that idea of how do we how do we in fact open up the school so that its tentacles are more you know plugged in already in the world even as we're still inside the kind of academic uh sphere yeah yeah thank you um uh so I've been teaching a course called difference in design one of my kind of long time at set obsessions is the role that difference has in in shaping places and shaping people right kind of our the sort of combination between built environment and and ecology and then the kind of the social and and economic and that you know unfortunately in most parts of the world this is a global human problem right that we have these inequalities that that we're sort of constantly grappling with and that become present in place right so uh places can be designed for inequality and injustice but places can also be designed for uh you know opportunity and and care right and so how do we navigate that and talk about that directly is is something that I've been personally interested in working in and the difference in the design class is is sort of a venue kind of an opportunity that's been created in the school to to have those conversations and for students to kind of learn together and so um as you mentioned we're able to do something really exciting this year kind of take the the challenges of of the pandemic and and some of these social issues and create sort of a space for learning together uh that brings students from GSAP and students from Tuskegee University which is a historically black college uh based in Alabama so in the south and so in this learning environment we have the opportunity for the students different perspectives about place like their own personal experiences and kind of what they know right to be kind of put together with what other people know right and to equally value and weight that uh as we're exploring these questions as designers or urban designers or architects or or even planners um and so it's been a wonderful experience to see these exchanges so someone from uh you know a black American uh inner city community or rural south uh community to be in conversation with someone for example from uh China or uh uh the sort of the the one is often called the global south right and recognizing that there are so many things in common actually that that brings so many of us into the built environment field right our places matter places shape us and we shape places right at a fundamental level and so as we're doing that work to understand how do we get better outcomes for both people and planet you know it's important that we create these spaces of learning uh to do that and so um I'm really excited that um able to take this sort of groundwork that we've created in this the seminar and taking on big issues like uh large-scale urban redevelopment and displacement uh like kind of uh kind of climate-based uh disaster and and all these issues that that have radically changed form places and bringing that into uh kind of the studio project framework uh with with the advanced studios so I'm really looking forward to that conversation that we can bring this global conversation about uh the power of place and the way that that we as designers uh enter that question and hopefully uh toward more justice and an environmental uh sort of positive outcomes for people so Justin I'm very excited about the studio as well and I I do want you because you you you practice what you what you speak about and I wanted to hear more a little bit about uh urban patch and your work in Ronda and you know because you're you're so I think of you as so anchored in New York City but actually you you also are working uh globally so I you know I mean you are making those bridges as well and so I wanted to hear about that and how you maintain the notion of place even as you're working um at a distance sure yeah the the first thing I would say is that you know Columbia is is kind of rooted and grounded in in New York City obviously and I've I've kind of uh grown my career here but the great thing about New York is that it is it is global it's national and global right and so you're able to always make great connections with the the great network that's here of people that do design and built environment work and because you're in New York frankly people that are interested in what you're doing and and so I've had the the opportunity through my own practice urban patch to work nationally in the U.S. but also internationally working in in Kigali which is the capital city of Rwanda and my my work there has really used like every tool I have in my toolbox I always say I'm I'm kind of a little bit of a Swiss army knife of a of a person but uh you know conversations that it had initially as an exchange between New York City government and the the city of Kigali government was how the the interaction began with conversations around planning rezoning redevelopment and and sharing kind of policies that we've done in the city as they were developing their plan so the work there started really in kind of an advisory capacity looking at the very big picture questions but of course is you know a designer and architect like you're always interested in you know building and so while we were navigating what were considered to be policy questions around affordable housing development for example we actually needed to get to design right to how do you put the buildings together what what's the relationship between labor and material production for example in order to produce buildings in ways that are affordable for people but also that meet some of the kind of sustainability and economic objectives and so urban patch we were able to to begin work there where we're designing and building housing affordable housing in in the city and and finding ways to do that that has really a lot of the lessons learned from the US and other cities in mind for how to address things like economic inequality that is designed and built into housing pretty much everywhere right and so we're we're doing the work of architecture and design building design to figure out how do we get an equality of quality right for people when we're doing things like affordable housing and so we've completed our first building there it's a eight unit development where i'm the urban planner the urban designer the architect the developer the secretary everything right but really understanding the systems right that produce everything and we're able to accomplish things like making sure that we're procuring materials from women owned businesses right that that we're looking at kind of a long term sort of kind of environment of of increasing density balanced with things like providing for planting in open space and so there are a lot of different equations that go into it that are all these kind of wonderful design questions that across many scales so it's very interesting you know architecture takes time right and and often students are very anxious they think that you know two years and it's done they should they should know everything over three years and and and in fact what you just described is not a linear path at very sort of a kind of a network of lines of inquiry where you're design thinking and and your kind of commitment as you said and sense of agency it's sort of and suddenly now it's you know there it comes into focus and and you know because you kind of let yourself explore and not just decide as an architect here's my little box but rather how do i how do i learn yeah and and and so that i'm empowered and i just think it's really fantastic to hear you describe what in fact we hope our students aspire to is is to keep keep opening and at the end your total design right right i don't have to come complain all the developers not doing let me do this like i am the developer so i control it but it's it's a really important point that you're raising and it's something that i actually learned when i was a student at GSAP through the different courses so i did a joint degree so i did both a master of architecture and a master of urban design which not a lot of people do but i really do encourage it the dual degree programs because you know when you get out in the professional world you you frankly want to be nimble and and kind of multiple learning backgrounds is is valuable but i would say uh uh rinhold martins studios um uh he would introduce his term called a pattern scene right like when you're looking for agency it's it's like what's the kind of the points of constellation where where there can be impact and the work that it it takes to do that and the time that it takes to to really be able to do that in a way that that is uh not only empowering but that uh you can enjoy right because built environment fields have a lot of different things that people do i joke of people like i would would like bang my head against the wall if i had to detail a curtain wall um that's not the kind of designer that i am there are some people that that is their thing um and so it takes time to understand all of those kind of pieces and components that it takes to to hopefully create a better world right it's it's so many different ways that you can do that and so it it is kind of this process of you know kind of putting together the points and seeing the one that's that you connect to and that's what grad school is great for doing to get you know kind of a lot of exposure to a lot of different ways of of doing that amazing justin what it's very inspiring to hear you and speak and i'm excited about having you at the school but also just kind of hearing how things seem to be coming into focus as you're collecting all these parts and designing practice and so i think for our students you're really a model in terms of what's possible so thank you so much i appreciate it and hopefully the students will enjoy you soon as well great great and thank you justin yeah thank you