Recite and Rewrite

Since 2017, the Womxn in Design and Architecture (WDA) group at the Princeton University School of Architecture (SoA) has convened conferences about the work of individual practitioners, some well-known (Zaha Hadid, Lina Bo Bardi), others less so (Norma Merrick Sklarek, Anne Tyng). But in a twist, organizers planned their sixth conference around a nonpractitioner: the poet June Jordan.

The choice was generative and engaged with an ongoing conversation at the SoA about the relationship between pedagogy and practice. By centering Jordan, who built a practice through words that often took the form of pedagogies (such as the Poetry for the People program she founded at UC Berkeley in 1991), and recognizing her as an architect, organizers challenged bedrock assumptions of the discipline. Given the academic venue, this presented some obvious questions—namely, What would an education that produces architects along the lines of June Jordan look like?

The conference kicked off on February 24, in a crowded Betts Auditorium. WDA played a recording of Jordan reciting her “…