New Center for Architecture exhibition features students and designers responding to the call for reproductive justice nationwide

The Center for Architecture in New York City has announced the opening date for Spatializing Reproductive Justice. The immersive exhibition of recent student-led research and the works of contemporary designers showcases the best practices in healthcare design in the years after the controversial decision to overturn Roe v. Wade spurred architecture’s progressive call to action.

“Spatializing Reproductive Justice illustrates how architects and architecture have a role in the collective pursuit of reproductive freedom, healthcare access, and sustainable environments in which people of all ages can thrive,” co-curator Lindsay Harkema says of the staging. “Highlighting the reproductive justice framework that was created by Black women three decades ago, the exhibition aims to raise awareness about the lived, spatial realities of restricted access to reproductive health and wellbeing as well as the critical importance of community-led networks of care.”

Harkema and colleagues Bryony Roberts and Lori A. Brown are leading the curation of the exhibition, which is drawn from three related studios they taught in the Fall 2022 semester at The City College of New York, Syracuse University, and Columbia University, respectively. 

Examples of professional work from around the country, including Fougeron Architecture's 2004 clinic project for Planned Parenthood in Oakland, California, and another recently completed design for the organization in Queens, New York, from Stephen Yablon Architects, are used as comparisons to the student projects, which are bolstered by additional independent research from other academic institutions across the country. 

Brown adds, “The exhibition also works to normalize reproductive healthcare into mainstream design discourse and build connections across medicine, law, and policy — spaces where architects have much to contribute.”

Jesse Lazar, the new Executive Director of the AIANY and the Center for Architecture, says it “showcases messages of hope as well as urgent calls to action, underscoring the architect’s role and responsibility in designing spaces that enhance equitable access to healthcare.”

Jordan Kravitz of Stantec will also have her research on abortion facility regulations in various states included as part of the exhibition, which will later travel to different American university campuses for two years in order to expand and include even more student work and professional designs in support of the curators and their goal of fostering dialogue between academia and the outside world.

The exhibition itself is being designed by FLUFFFF Studio, a Washington, D.C. and New York-based research practice formed by Natalya Dikhanov and Sadie Imae. It is being supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation. 

Spatializing Reproductive Justice will be on view from May 2nd to September 3rd.