Date: Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Location: 112 Wurster Auditorium

Lecture: 6:30pm

Mind the Gap: Practice at the Intersection of Design, Technology, and Human Rights

This talk will present SITU Research's work at the intersection of design, technology and human rights. Highlighting a range of recent projects in Ukraine, Mali, Nicaragua, the U.S. and elsewhere, this lecture will unpack the expanded agency of the designer within a highly interdisciplinary model of practice. From spatial analysis of citizen captured video to 3d reconstructions of urban sites of protest, the tools and methods of the designer will be explored through applications in both legal and advocacy contexts. The work will also provide a launching point for a reflection on the spatial and societal implications that emerging technologies are having on how we think about and practice design.

Brad Samuels is Founding Partner at SITU. Trained as an architect, he leads a team of designers, computer scientists, researchers and planners to develop new tools and methods for human rights fact finding and reporting. Recent work includes an immersive 3D evidentiary platform for the International Criminal Court; an event reconstruction commissioned by the Organization of American States (OAS) that examines police violence against protesters in Nicaragua; and an interactive report for the Ukrainian National Court that analyzes civilian fatalities during the Euromaidan protests. Current work includes projects on visualizing climate data for litigation in the United States as well as mapping and analyzing of the effects of natural resource extraction on local populations in Peru.