We’re so excited that many of you will be joining us in Chicago next weekend.
There are still a few tickets left for Saturday October 25th at the MCA Chicago — if you were waiting for your sign, this is it!
We’ll also be kicking off the weekend on Friday evening with a pre-party and opening program co-hosted by Chicago Architecture Biennial and Rebuild Foundation.
Designing for Dignity 03: A Convening of Possibilities is going to be a very special weekend of hybrid in-person/online programming dedicated to expansive perspectives on liberatory design thinking, and grounded in the shared value of dignity.
We’re thrilled to be joined by these esteemed speakers—Edra Soto, Mabel O. Wilson, Theaster Gates, Duane Powell, Radha Mistry, Ghian Foreman, Andres L. Hernandez, Katherine Darnstadt, Nadia Elokdah, Cate Fox, Sruti Suryanarayanan, Marz Lovejoy, and Nu Goteh.
Gathering IRL means the world to us, and we can’t wait to rekindle the energy of the past two years. See you soon!
It is our great pleasure to invite you to Deem’s third Symposium, coming to Chicago on October 24-25, 2025.
We’ll be kicking off the weekend on the evening of Friday 10/24, with a pre-party hosted by the Chicago Architecture Biennial, followed by our opening program in partnership with Rebuild Foundation and onsite at the newly-renovated Land School.
On Saturday 10/25, the MCA Chicago will host Designing for Dignity 03: A Convening of Possibilities, which will carry forth the thematic discourse of the past two years with a full day of hybrid in-person/online programming dedicated to expansive perspectives on liberatory design thinking, and grounded in the shared value of dignity.
Through presentations, conversations, and a participatory activation, this daylong gathering will consider challenging and topical subjects through the intersecting lenses of design and social practice.
This year’s participants include Edra Soto, Mabel O. Wilson, Theaster Gates, Duane Powell, Radha Mistry, Ghian Foreman, Andres L. Hernandez, Katherine Darnstadt, Nadia Elokdah, Cate Fox, Sruti Suryanarayanan, Marz Lovejoy, and Nu Goteh.
As in the past, our program brings together deeply engaged, experimentally inclined, and intergenerational thinkers and doers across a range of lived experiences and expertise. It is our intention that the time we share will stimulate connectivity and dialogue, energized by our credence in each person's critical potential to help design the world around them.
Tickets for Saturday at the MCA are on sale here. Please note that space is limited and we expect tickets to sell out.
We cherish the opportunity to connect with our community in person and are so looking forward to the third iteration of this very special experience.
Join Us in Celebrating a Multitude of Voices in Design
At Deem, our goal is to create more inclusive discourses and practices around design, and we are looking for the right partners as we scale our reach and impact. For the third year in a row, we are thrilled to expand our mission by hosting Designing for Dignity: a Convening of Possibilities, an event dedicated to bringing together diverse voices and perspectives to shape the future of design.
We need your support to make this vision a reality.
Today we’re excited to announce the launch of “Future Feelings,” a new podcast from Deem Audio hosted by Radha Mistry (@radha_mistry).
The study, the science, and the art of predicting and preparing for the future has long been a preoccupation of humankind, and is of particular concern to designers. The stakes of our global present are especially high. We’re facing the compounding repercussions of climate change and rapidly transforming technologies alongside the catastrophic fallouts of a deeply flawed, centuries-old geopolitical system. It’s difficult even to parse the present, let alone conceive both of what might come next, and how we might exercise agency in shaping it.
In this six-episode series, Radha Mistry, a designer with a background that spans architecture, narrative environments, and strategic foresight, unpacks the purpose and practice of futuring, and introduces us to six venerable practitioners who approach this work in myriad ways.
Radha Mistry is the Americas Region Foresight Leader at Arup, teaches futures studies in the Master of Architecture programs at Southern California Institute of Architecture, and spends most of her time exploring the impact of emerging drivers and how they’ll change the way we design and make things in the future. She is based in Los Angeles.
We’re delighted to share that you can now read our fifth cover interview in full at deemjournal.com.
Issue Five: “Climate Realities and Responses” is anchored by a conversation between Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (@ayanaeliza) and guest editor Mark Chambers (@growacity), which took place at Dr. Johnson’s home in Maine and was photographed by @guarionex_jr.
“Beyond Crisis: Finding Beauty and Purpose in the Climate Future” explores the ways in which our world must, and can, be redesigned; the role that each of us can play in insisting on this; and Dr. Johnson’s new book, “What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futurism,” which is out September 17.
Photo by Guarionex Rodriguez, Jr.
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities. She co-edited the bestselling climate anthology All We Can Save, co-founded The All We Can Save Project, and co-created the Spotify/Gimlet climate solutions podcast How to Save a Planet. Her writing has been published widely, including in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Scientific American. Dr. Johnson’s new book, What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futurism, comes out in September 2024.
Mark Chambers is an environmental policy leader, advocate for social justice, and licensed architect inspired by public service and lessons of collective action. He is Vice President of Partnerships at Elemental Excelerator, a nonprofit investor focused on scaling climate technologies with deep community impact. He recently served the Biden White House as Senior Director for Building Emissions and Community Resilience and was previouslythe Director of Sustainability for both New York City and the District of Columbia, where he led efforts to accelerate climate policy implementation in America’s largest city and the Nation’s capital. Mark lives in Harlem with his wife and two children.
In addition, we’re thrilled to announce that Deem has been chosen by the @grahamfoundation for one of their 33 grants to support projects led by organizations around the world.
These include exhibitions, publications, and other public presentations that foster the development and exchange of ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society, furthering the mission of the Graham Foundation. These projects expand understanding, methods, and platforms of contemporary architecture discourse and feature work by architects, archivists, artists, curators, designers, educators, and other professionals working with organizations worldwide in cities such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Nashville, Athens, New York, and Chicago.
Thank you for continuing to support our publication and for being part of our growing community. As we build off of the excitement of the release of Issue 05, “Climate Realities and Responses,” we are thrilled to announce new opportunities to partner with us and engage with our platform.
This year, we are looking to partner with several organizations and institutions in order to expand the ways in which you can experience Deem. From the launch of two upcoming podcasts to our third in-person symposium, there will be multiple opportunities to build, learn, and reimagine with us.
Sponsor Deem
If you are in one of the following fields, we would love to have a conversation with you:
