Joel Sanders: Body Politics: Social Equity and Inclusive Public Space

Current Work is a lecture series featuring leading figures in the worlds of architecture, urbanism, design, and art.

Joel Sanders, founder of JSA/MIXdesign, will discuss how his inclusive design think-tank and consultancy is expanding its mission to consider the inevitable impact that the coronavirus pandemic will have on social equity and public space. Addressing the spatial implications of COVID-19 is an extension of MIXdesign’s commitment to the creation of safe and accessible designed environments that meet the needs of “non-compliant bodies,” people of different ages, races, genders, religions, and abilities that the discipline of architecture has traditionally overlooked.

Sanders is Principal of his New York studio JSA/MIXdesign as well as Director of Post-Professional Studies and Professor at Yale School of Architecture. Sanders’ career has explored the complex relationship between culture and social space as a scholar pioneering the exploration of LGBTQ space, a designer of residential, museum and academic buildings, and an activist fighting to address issues of equity and inclusion through design. Sanders’ work with MIXdesign was the subject of a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, “Bodies in Space: How Architecture Could Help Us Adapt to the Pandemic.” Sanders is the editor of STUD: Architectures of Masculinity and (with Diana Balmori) of Groundwork: Between Landscape and Architecture. With transgender theorist Susan Stryker and legal scholar Terry Kogan, he created Stalled!, a project catalyzed by national debates surrounding transgender access to public restrooms and the need to create safe, sustainable and inclusive public restrooms for everyone regardless of age, gender, race, religion and disability.