With partial support from the UB Offices of Sustainability and Inclusive Excellence, the School’s delegation included: Alissa Ujie Diamond, Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning; Albert Chao, former adjunct instructor in the Department of Architecture; Jillian Daniels (MArch ’28); and Zachary Rouhana (MUP ’28).

For Diamond, the experience carried special significance. Eight years ago, she attended her first Design Futures Forum as a PhD student and has been involved ever since, participating as a workshop facilitator in 2022 and serving as a board member since 2024.

“I was looking for alternative models for practice after having spent years in fields that have been patron-based for a very long time,” she shared. “I was blown away, both by the content of the workshops and by what felt like an alternate universe of design practitioners, scholars, and educators who were trying out all sorts of approaches to design as a lever for systems and social change. It was a space I wished I had experienced as a younger person, and I was grateful to join as a mid-career practitioner and scholar. I hope that more students from UB will be able to experience the convening in the future because I’ve found it to be transformative of what I saw ‘design,’ when it is ethically and community driven, can do in the world.”

Following the forum, the attendees reflected on how the ideas, strategies, and relationships cultivated during the event could help advance equity, inclusion, belonging, and climate justice work at UB. 

The Design Futures Forum reimagined the role of designers in centering community power in the built environment. More than 70 student leaders from across the nation, faculty, and leading practitioners in the field of community-based design joined together to consider integrating climate justice into their work.

Jillian Daniels: “Practitioners and students from all over the country traversed downtown Detroit, Michigan to learn how to be better stewards of such spaces at Design Futures Forum. Over the course of five days, we were invited to ask how we utilize the skill sets honed within a design education to ensure that the spaces we build are representative and responsive to the environment and people already there. We all collectively asked at the beginning of the conference, ‘what would the future look like if we used design as a toolkit for a restorative approach to the problems that our current society faces?’ We left DFF considering different ways our answers connected to create a design ethos that was wide in scope and deep in experience and evidence to bring back home.”

Albert Chao: “The forum was first and foremost a space to build community—a network of students and educators from institutions across the country, all wrestling with similar questions about the role of design within academia, practice, and community. I was struck by the level of care and intentionality that went into building a practice and vocabulary for engaging social, political, economic, and racial issues—and questions of positionality—without flattening them. What I’m taking away most is a stronger sense of community: the knowledge that there’s an active network of educators and practitioners already doing this work, and that I don’t have to build these frameworks from scratch. I’m also leaving with stronger connections—and I heard the same from students. Looking forward, I imagine this experience shaping how I teach and how I practice in tandem. It’s pushed me to think less about design as a discrete deliverable and more as an ongoing relationship between an institution and the community it sits within.”  

Their focus on social justice brings students and practitioners together to build a community of designers who share ethical commitments. This event helps students build a sense of belonging in their chosen fields of study which translates to their home institutions and beyond. And it prioritizes leadership from groups underrepresented in the design fields through workshops that highlight the leadership of women and people of color in community-based design.

Jillian Daniels: “In the pursuit of equitable spaces, events like the Design Futures Forum will serve as a precedent for how everyday spaces can be transformed through action. A college campus transformed into a site of imagination for designers and non-designers alike. There’s a role for everyone in designing the future, how you see yourself as a designer will show how you can contribute. One of the courses, Make People FEEL! led by Harmonie Coleman and Alexis Harrison asked participants to identify themselves within the design team. I identified with “Weaver” someone tasked with connecting the dots and drawing throughlines between ideas. However, that is one of many roles: Visionaries, Builders, Experimenters, Frontline Responders, Caregivers, Healers, Disruptors, Storytellers, and Guides. How do we all discover our role in change?”

Zachary Rouhana: “The forum allowed me to believe in design for design’s sake. It made me yearn to learn the functional methods like architecture, communication, and mapping. These disciplines often provide the canvas which we live within. I reach for these attributes because I cannot envision myself doing my best work without being able to understand and sympathize with the professions I will work with in my future.” 

The forum encourages all participants to share grounded and applied strategies for social justice within their everyday lives, and both faculty and students return equipped with more tools and approaches to build inclusive environments.

Zachary Rouhana: “Design Futures helped me realize that the consequences of governments that don’t work directly with all parties they govern. We heard local advocates speak about the harms inflicted on communities when decisions were made without their input. This engineered governance aimed to solve problems. And in ways it did, but with sharp trade-offs—flock cameras throughout the city help reduce response time for police and protect businesses, yet they also alienate demographics and create an invasive precedent for citizens’ privacy. Debriefing with my professors and colleagues urged me to make goals that I can work toward with those skills […] weren’t finding the problems that could be resolved, but instead sharing ideas that could strengthen UB’s assets and then act upon those ideas. To bond, not break through design.”

Albert Chao: “One of the most valuable parts of the experience was seeing theory meet practice. The forum was hosted at the School of Architecture at the University of Detroit Mercy, alongside the Detroit Community Design Center, and we could concretely see how pedagogy and practice shape each other. It wasn’t an abstract case study—I was inspired by how the students, educators, and practitioners within the institution worked alongside the community to develop projects, and I could see how that collaboration fed back into how courses were taught. It reframed for me what ‘learning by doing’ actually looks like when the doing is embedded in a real neighborhood with real stakes. I also valued watching educators convene specifically to advocate for community-engaged design pedagogy. Participants included both academics and practitioners, who offered tangible models of contemporary practice. It was a chance to keep learning from others and to talk openly about how to sustain this work, even when it’s difficult.”