Barbara Toews, PhD `15 participating in a Cooper Hewitt Show, “By the People: Designing a Better America"

Barbara Toews, PhD `15 has contributed work to a the upcoming Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum exhibit, “By the People: Designing a Better America,” the third exhibition in its series on socially responsible design, from Sept. 30 through Feb. 26, 2017. The first exhibition in the series to focus on conditions in the U.S. and its bordering countries, “By the People” will explore the challenges faced by urban, suburban and rural communities. Organized by Cynthia E. Smith, Cooper Hewitt’s curator of socially responsible design, the exhibition features 60 design projects from every region across the U.S.

Toews says, "This is some design work that an architect colleague and I have been facilitating since 2012.  A bit more background - my dissertation and current research agenda focus on the intersection of restorative justice and the design/architecture of correctional facilities and other justice buildings. The last two Inside Out Prison Exchange classes that I taught through Haverford focused on this intersection as well. These classes were co-designed and facilitated with an  architect friend and included a design lab in which students created design concepts for different types of justice spaces, using restorative justice as a theoretical design guide. Since that time, my friend and I have run numerous RJ/design workshops inside correctional facilities, got an award from the Fetzer Institute, created a organization with a web presence for the work (Designing Justice+Designing Spaces, designingjustice.com), developed a toolkit, and just generally started to create a practice and research agenda related to justice architecture."
 
For more information about the Cooper Hewitt Exhibition, click here.