“I’m starting to create this opportunity to empower people to see and imagine and to design how they think structures around them should be in context.”
An accomplished activist and architect Pascale Sablan is a Senior Associate at Adjaye Associates. In addition, Pascale was the 2021 AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. award recipient. In 2020 Pascale was voted President-Elect of the National Organization of Minority Architecture, the 5th woman to hold this leadership position in the organization’s 50-year legacy.
SAY IT LOUD exhibition in collaboration with AIAMN | MSP NOMA University of Minnesota
In 2018, Pascale founded the Beyond the Built Environment organization to involve everyone, specifically those marginalized in the architecture field, in the design process. Pascale employs an engage, elevate, educate, and collaborate strategy to her advocacy work with Beyond the Built Environment. The organization’s mission is to diversify the architecture field for the betterment of society. Pascale’s belief that representation is essential to achieving equitable diversity in design has fueled Beyond the Built Environment’s initiatives, including programming that engages diverse audiences with conversations about equity in the architecture field. Further, Beyond the Built Environment drives awareness with programs such as SAY IT LOUD, a collaborative community series of exhibitions that have profiled diverse designers from around the world. These exhibitions elevate the identities and contributions of diverse architects and designers. Pascale took the exhibits further by creating the Great Diverse Designers Library. This online database serves as a platform to elevate the stories of designers who identify as either female (of any ethnicity) or Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). The database is a repository of the 30 SAY IT LOUD Exhibitions and all those featured. It employs a self-submitting process, empowering each designer to control and curate their own narrative. SAY IT LOUD, and the Great Diverse Designers Library are platforms to dismantle the injustice embedded in the design field while inspiring future designers. Today, 770 diverse designers are featured in SAY IT LOUD exhibitions and the Great Diverse Designers Library.
Pascale on the Responsibility of Architecture
Design is Everywhere Podcast
Episode 085 • 50 min
In this week’s episode, we chat about the social impact of architecture that creates social awareness in the built environment. Sam is joined by David Silverman, Principal at Silverman Trykowski Associates, an imaginative architecture and design studio that designs for wellbeing. David shares examples of this work and the importance of including the community in the conversation. Later on in the show, they are joined by Pascale Sablan, Founder & Executive Director of Beyond the Built Environment, activist, mentor, and 2021 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award Recipient, an award that distinguishes an architect or architectural organization that embodies social responsibility and actively addresses a relevant issue, such as affordable housing, inclusiveness, or universal access. Together, they talk about what social impact architecture is, what it looks like, and how it can impact a community.
In addition, Beyond the Built Environment works to bridge the gaps of inequity in architecture and design by providing educational opportunities for future designers. The SEE IT LOUD camp connects students with mentors and introduces them to architectural projects by diverse designers in their city.
Beyond the Built Environment has several significant calls to action to dismantle the injustices in the architecture and design fields. First, there is the SAY IT WITH – MEDIA program where Beyond the Built Environment works with digital, print, and broadcast outlets asking them to commit to reporting the percentage of diverse designers featured in their publications annually. Beyond the Built Environment enters into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with each platform where they pledge to increase the representation of diverse designers by 5% annually until 15% is achieved. The MOU also pushes media platforms to create more content that highlights explicitly diverse designers, to further research and development of historical content based on the contributions of diverse designers in the field, and to commit to uplifting Black experiences in the field to educate the masses on how architecture has been historically used as a tool of oppression. She has secured eight publications to pledge with combined monthly impressions of 353,000.
Pascale is a force in the architecture community and Beyond the Built Environment is at the forefront of elevating the voices of female and BIPOC designers while holding media outlets accountable for building an inclusive and diverse future for architects and designers.
Pascale is the 315th Black woman architect to attain licensure in the United States. Photo by Eva Woolridge.