Ecological Politics and the Designer-as-Ethnologist: People’s Park Revisited

Photo: Anthony Raynsford  - The original “guerilla gardening” event: the Berkeley community’s creation of People’s Park on vacant University land, 20 April 1969.

On Thursday, November 13 in room 305 Wurster Hall at 6:00 pm, Anthony Raynsford (M.Arch '95) will speak about the attempted closure of People's Park, a major site of conflict between student activists and police in 1969.   Raynsford is an assistant professor of art and design at San Jose State University whose research bridges cultural, intellectual and art history.  His talk will look at CED student and faculty research initiatives that rejected the UC Berkeley Regents war on the park and examine the creation of proposals that attempted to negotiate a truce between stakeholders.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement.  The student protest established UC Berkeley’s reputation for student activism and transformed the College of Environmental Design into a laboratory for experiments in countercultural art and politics. Associate Professor of Architecture, Greg Castillo, is presenting a series of lectures examining the legacy of design activism in the CED and its relationship to the Bay Area Counter Culture.  He invited former faculty and students that are prominent for their dedication to design and creating social change.