Architecture, Law and Policy Colloquia Series

Blueprints of Justice

The COVID pandemic punctuated a moment of accelerated change with broad structural repercussions in change-averse areas such as the justice system. In a rare occurrence, legal practitioners opened up the doors to their discipline and invited non-experts for collaboration.

The essence of this collaboration boils down to the following question: knowing different disciplines each play a role in the access to justice problem, can an interdisciplinary approach lead to better outcomes, and furthermore, point towards desired futures.

Change at such a fundamental level never happens in isolation. Architecture, legal experts, and students worked together to examine the direct relationship between law and space to tackle pressing real time scenarios put forward by experts.

This work, directed by Oana Stănescu at MIT and Nóra Al Haider of the Stanford Legal Design lab, spans between 2020-2023 and looks at this intersection in the themes of social justice, human rights and environmental justice.

This series is generously funded by Chancellor Syverud, Dr. Ruth Chen, the College of Law, the School of Architecture, and the Humanities Center.

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