August 3, 2020

On July 25 and 26, CED Architecture faculty member and alum Jason Campbell (M.Arch), and alumni Kevin Bernard Moultrie Daye (M.Arch ‘18), Brenda (Bz) Zhang (M. Arch ‘19), and Celeste Martore (B.A. Sustainable Environmental Design ‘17) participated in UTOPIAA— a virtual global festival for radical architectural visions to rework our world. 

The online festival takes inspiration from the pandemic-induced merger of professional and play spaces as kitchen tables have become classrooms and offices have slowly warped into children’s art studios. As a result, Gray Area centered the weekend around the question: At this critical moment when the personal and professional have become blurred, how can designers reimagine our spaces for both work and play?

The festival included 12 virtual events— such as live meditation, collaborative workshops, and archive digs— held across San Francisco and London. 

Campbell, Daye, Zhang, and Martore sat on various panels organized throughout the weekend’s stream of programming. Campbell and Zhang spoke as a part of the panel discussion “Tools for Utopia” while Martore and Daye were featured in Sunday’s “Utopia Modes” panel. Both events look at the tools, strategies, and thoughts behind creating new worlds, especially through the modulation of the  physical realities we already exist in. 

Daye, Zhang, and Martore also make up one fourth of the participants for the 2019 Experiential Space Research Lab at SF’s Gray Area. The Experiential Space Research is a six-month field research conducted by Gray Area to engage the world in experiential art centered around social and civic action.