Lecture Summary:
Architect-activist Pascale Sablan champions women and diverse design professionals by documenting, curating, and elevating their work. The objective: to create a just profession, bring social awareness to the built environment and empower communities through design.
"I Was Asked to Stand" is a unique discussion that empowers the audience to engage in the dismantling of injustice by highlighting the disparity of lack of representation, documentation, and acknowledgment of the great works of diverse (Women and BIPOC) designers and architects.
Speaking to the past: the historical infrastructure of oppression, the present: the programs and initiatives that fight for justice, and the future: aspirations for collaborations to achieve a world and built environment eradicated of racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression.
About the Speaker:
Pascale Sablan, FAIA, NOMA, LEED AP, Associate at Adjaye Associates, has been on the team for a variety of mixed-use, commercial, cultural & residential projects in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, India, & UAE. Pascale is the 315th living African American female architect in the U.S. Pascale has given lectures at Institutions, such as the National Museum of African American History & Culture and the United Nations Visitor Centre. She lectured and engaged students at Universities and Colleges all over the nation.
She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond the Built Environment, (BBE) positioned to uniquely address the inequitable disparities in architecture by providing a holistic platform aimed to support numerous stages of the architecture pipeline.
BBE elevates 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. Pascale curated 24 SAY IT LOUD exhibitions which were all paired with relevant programming speaking to the mission. The SAY IT LOUD - United Nations Visitors Centre, exhibition created a tremendous opportunity for exposure and echoing the call to action to the leaders of our world. The UN generously offered to transform this exhibition into posters, translated into 8 languages, and distributed to their information centers worldwide.
She has been recognized for her contributions to the industry with several awards, including the 2021 AIA Whitney M. Young. Jr Award for her advocacy efforts and ascended to the AIA College of Fellows, the youngest African American to receive that honor. In 2020 Pascale was voted President-Elect of the National Organization of Minority Architects, the 5th woman to hold this position of leadership in the organization's 50-year legacy. Pascale holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute and a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University.