Maya Bird-Murphy on Architecture and Communities

About this episode

Maya Bird-Murphy discusses empowering young people from disinvested communities through architecture and the Mobile Makers program.

How can we empower more people, particularly young people from disinvested communities, to engage with architecture, and to use it as a tool to improve their daily lives and future prospects? Maya Bird-Murphy, the Chicago-based architect and educator, tells Alice Rawsthorn how she is addressing this through the Mobile Makers programme of youth workshops and community engagement projects. . Maya describes how she launched Mobile Makers as a non-profit in 2017 and drove a retrofitted mail truck around Chicago to deliver after-school programmes, summer camps and field trips. Mobile Makers now operates from a permanent space in Humboldt Park, Chicago, and has launched programmes in Boston, Massachusetts and Aspen, Colorado. At a time of growing interest in socially engaged architecture and design, particularly among young designers, Maya describes the pros and cons of running a non-profit, and her plans to create a network of architects and social designers who are committed to developing radically new ways of working. . We hope you’ll enjoy this episode . You can find images of the projects Maya describes on our Instagram @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of…

People in this episode

Host: Alice Rawsthorn

Guest: Maya Bird-Murphy

Topics covered

• architecture
• community engagement
• youth empowerment
• non-profit
• socially engaged design

Keywords

• architecture
• community
• youth workshops
• non-profit
• social design

Sponsors

Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Mobile Makers

Places: Chicago, Humboldt Park, Boston, Aspen

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