Sunra Thompson

As a profession, we don?t all talk about our role in redlining. We don?t talk about equitable resource allocation. We have been complicit in warehousing people. Architecture is about more than buildings. As a field, it plays a key role in the health, safety, and welfare of the public ? or at least it should. Craig L. Wilkins ? one of the most prolific writers about spatial justice and winner of the National Design Award for his scholarship on Black architects and spaces ? believes architects have neglected these societal responsibilities. At a moment when people are taking to the streets to protest structural racism, he questions why the field doesn?t have a moral imperative akin to medicine?s Hippocratic oath and argues that the lack of one has contributed to the violence and harm against Black and brown communities. He resists and rejects prescribing a course of action for the industry but calls for an urgent reckoning from individuals and organizations. ?We can figure all of this out, but we can?t figure it out until we own our responsibility,? says Wilkins, who is a faculty member at the University of Michigan?s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and just completed a position at the University of Oregon College of Design as a visiting professor of practice in design for spatial justice. ?There has to be some statement that architects don?t just work for the highest bidder, that we?re not just selling ourselves.?

I see today?s mome...