-By AnnMarie Marano

"Do we have to design for the highest bidder? Or can we be social and cultural agents?" A student organizing committee at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) set out to answer these questions this past April 4–6, as it hosted the eighth annual Design Corps Structures for Inclusion (SFI) conference series.

Design Corps—a nonprofit founded in 1991—chooses a different school or nonprofit organization as the site for SFI each year. The conference always promotes social activism and community-based design, but a more specified focus and list of speakers is always developed by the host locale.

When a few Harvard GSD students approached Design Corps founder Bryan Bell about hosting the 2008 SFI, he presented them with a challenge: get support from your administration and bring 10 students to SFI '07 to see what it's all about. They obliged, and 13 students took a van from Boston to the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, N.C. "I don't know any graduate student who can take days off, and here were 13 from Harvard. Their commitment was clear," Bell says.

"We all had school and reviews, yet Harvard supported us in this," GSD student Ryan Bollom says of the trip. Bollom was a key organizer for SFI who says the school was primed for such an event as many students had already been trying to shift the GSD's focus from theoretical and traditional studies to that of social responsibility as it relates to design. "We wanted to create a dialogue of questioning," says Bollom. "We wanted to look at design as an integrative process that could bring about change. We wanted it to be about bringing people together and talking about all parts that make architecture a successful social and political act."

The first order of business for the student organizing committee was to change the conference name from "Structures for Inclusion" to "Systems for Inclusion." The name change "let us as designers open up a dialogue about the systems that circumscribe design and affect it," says DK Osseo-Assare, GSD student and member of the SFI organizing committee. It also sent the message that if you want to look beyond the specific "structures" you design as an architect, you need to understand the "systems" surrounding the project—such as ecological and economical—in order for design to act as a stimulus for social change.

"They didn't want to focus just on design and the built object. They wanted to focus on the process and how to make this stuff happen," says Bell. "Many architects can't detach the building from the world, but you have to understand the bigger picture or your work will fail. The GSD students understand the big picture so whatever they design is going to be lively and meaningful and will be accomplished. Sometimes design can look great but be detached from its surroundings and the people within."

The committee also wanted to explore the idea of "design agency"—a term with multiple meanings, as the word "agency" usually is associated with government-related organizations, but it can also refer to the ability to do things for yourself.

"Essentially, [it implies] how much power does design have?" says Osseo-Assare. "Does it have to be secondary to the law? If you are an agent, you are someone acting on behalf of others. With community-based design, if you are representing someone or a community who doesn't have a voice, how do you balance the fact that they are experts because they live there with your own design expertise?"

Three goals were set for the conference: to build a strong network of young design professionals who could use the interaction as a basis for bigger and better things; to present as many case studies as possible from international speakers in order to find new models for living and working; and to build the number of design opportunities moving forward through aggressive fundraising.

Design Corps and the host split the SFI costs. The GSD was so successful in accruing funds for the conference that an excess of $10,000 will allow four $2,500 grants to be awarded to students with ideas for design projects in their communities. In January, Design Corp will begin accepting grant applications.