Bryan C. Lee | Colloqate Design

POWER + PLACE MEMORY IS MOMENTUM

Our values are validated through the spaces and places we design and subsequently build. Power + Place explores the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice in the built environment from America's inception. We will look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create injustice throughout the built environment. Like all institutions, Design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. The lasting permanence of our professional decisions requires us to pay particular attention to the injustices that result from our work and to seek Design Justice wherever possible. Architecture has the power to speak to the language of the people it serves, we as designers, are at our best when we are willing to serve the people without power.

ABOUT BRYAN C. LEE

Bryan C. Lee Jr. NOMA, FAIA is a New Orleans-based architect and leading design justice advocate. As the Founder and Director of Colloqate Design, he leads a nonprofit design practice dedicated to expanding community access to, and building power through, the design of social, civic, and cultural spaces. Bryan is widely recognized as a founding organizer of the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University, which work to uplift the voices and perspectives of marginalized communities in the built environment. 

Currently serving as a Design Critic at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2020- present) and the 2025-26 National NOMA President, Bryan's influence spans academia and professional practice. His work at Harvard includes leading The Black New Deal Studio and seminars on Typologies of Liberation and Spatial Reparations and Memory. Bryan's contributions to architecture and social justice have earned him numerous prestigious accolades, most recently Bryan was awarded the 2025 AIA Whitney M. Young Jr. Award and elevated to the AIA college of Fellows. He was acknowledged as a Rome Prize Finalist in 2023 and awarded the 2023 United States Artist Fellowship, the 2021 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, the 2019 Architectural League's Emerging Voices award, and named among Fast Company's Most Creative People in Business in 2018.