BRYAN C. LEE, JR. Lecture for Columbia GSAPP

Bryan C. Lee, Jr. is the Design Principal of Colloqate, a New Orleans–based multidisciplinary architecture and design justice practice focused on expanding community access to, and building power through the design of social, civic, and cultural spaces. Their mission is to intentionally organize, advocate, and design spaces of racial, social, and cultural equity.

Lee earned his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Ohio State University and a Master of Architecture from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He received a 2013 AIA Diversity Recognition Award, was a 2015 Next City Vanguard Fellow, and has a decade of experience in the field of architecture. He is the founding organizer of the Design Justice Platform and organized the Design As Protest National Day of Action which has grown into the Design As Protest Collective. He has led two award-winning architecture and design programs for high school students through the Arts Council of New Orleans and the National Organization of Minority Architects. He partnered with the American Institute of Architects to hold the first Design Justice Summit in 2018.

His work has been featured in Common Edge, and he published the Op-Ed Design Justice for an Unjust World in Next City in December of 2019 and America’s Cities Were Designed to Oppress in City Lab in June of 2020. Colloqate’s Paper Monuments project was featured in Fast Company in 2017 and Bryan Lee was named one of their Most Creative People in 2018. In 2019, Colloqate was named an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York.