News

The student work of the SSA Fall 2022 advanced design studio entitled “National Care: Abortion Access, Reproductive Justice on Federal Land” was recently featured by Architect’s Newspaper in an editorial article by Marianela D’Aprile. The studio, instructed by Adjunct Associate Professor Lindsay Harkema, was part of an inter-institutional collaboration with similar studios taught at Syracuse University by Lori Brown and at Columbia GSAPP by Bryony Roberts, with coordination support from Sadie Imae and Natalya Dikhanov of FLUFFFF studio. Students investigated the changing landscape of reproductive healthcare access across the US since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. The studios produced a robust body of research and design work that utilizes the tools of architecture to convey the spatial realities and logistical complexity created by state laws that have severely restricted care access and respond through design proposals for future architectures of care and social justice.

D’aprile writes, “As the abortion access crisis escalates, this is perhaps the studios’ most urgent contribution: In working through solu­tions via abortion’s architectural dimen­sion, they also clarify and elucidate the po­litical dimension of architecture. And, in so doing, they fill a gap in students’ civic education, equipping them with the skills necessary for engagement with political is­sues, not just inside the classroom but out­side of it as well.”

The work of the studios, as well as related student and faculty projects from other academic institutions will be the subject of a traveling exhibition that will open in NYC later this year. The show will feature stu­dent research and design work, as well as exchanges with guest experts from the fields of public health, reproductive jus­tice, healthcare administration, law, po­litical science, architectural history, and creative practice that informed the studio’s work.