2/28/25 HECTOR interviewed in new book Architecture and Social Change: Shaping an Impactful Practice, edited by Brian Holland
2/8/25 HECTOR works with New Jersey Girl Scouts to design new Leadership Center
10/23/24 NextCity.org: “Newark Residents Are Reshaping Who Influences Land Use Decisions”
In New Jersey, a new "development watch" effort is informing residents of future property development in their neighborhoods – and training them to help shape these projects.
9/16/24 HECTOR partner Jae Shin speaks on Surviving & Thriving in Community Design at the Association for Community Design
7/9/24 “Detroit spends lots of money and time on neighborhood plans—in the case of Cody Rouge, it’s paying off” in Outlier Media
“When I go to work or walk down the street and I see something that we worked on during this process, I’m amazed,” said Taylin Hodges, one of several teenagers heavily involved in the plan. “That’s there because we talked about it and we made that happen.”
6/24/24 Kooz Architecture Conversation with the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), HECTOR urban design, and professor Marcelo López-Dinardi on urban pedagogy, commoning practices, and the built environment
“If we understand the design process as legitimising and justifying decisions for how something is or will be, we must see pedagogy as a characteristic of those processes.”
5/20/24 HECTOR contributes to new book Art Education as a Radical Act: Untold Histories of Education at MoMA
Cover of Art Education as a Radical Act: Untold Histories of Education at MoMA
4/1/24 HECTOR joins Cornell University urban design faculty
Shin and Rich began their careers working as designers within municipal governments, including the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and New York City Housing Authority, where democratic ideals meet the details of development. Their spring 2024 studio at AAP NYC engages in debates around democratizing design to study and speculate on design and development around and over New York City's Sunnyside Yards.
3/3/24 Denver Mayor Pledges Support for HECTOR’s GES Coalition Development Plan
From Denverite.com: “This section of Elyria Swansea, tucked in a corner where Brighton Boulevard meets I-70, is known today as "the triangle." It's the last parcel to be redeveloped in the National Western Center's massive revamp project; the place where former Mayor Michael Hancock tried and failed to build an arena during his last term in office. ‘I am committed to there being a structure of some sort of community ownership on this triangle. So I'm committed to that truth going forward,’ he told his hosts. ‘I'm committed to starting that partnership, and working together to figure out what the right structure would be long term.’”
2/28/24 HECTOR lectures at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation: Freedom Schools for Accountable Architecture
12/2/23 HECTOR + GES Coalition at “Land Grab to Landback” at University of Iowa
4/26/23 HECTOR’s Damon Rich appointed as Tatlock Fellow in Multidisciplinary Studies at Vassar College
Over several visits in 2023, Damon will help strengthen and deepen the engagement of faculty within Vassar’s Multidisciplinary Programs.
1/26/23 HECTOR lectures at University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design on Freedom Schools for Accountable Architecture
12/1/22 HECTOR projects included in Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data by Peter A. Hall and Patricio Dávila
Cover of Critical Visualization: Rethinking the Representation of Data by Peter A. Hall and Patricio Dávila
10/4/22 HECTOR’s Fraudacre City on exhibition at Model Behavior in Cooper Union Great Hall
Fraudacre City, also known as Slime City and Dirty Laundry City, was created at the invitation of The Museum of Modern Art as a contribution to the exhibition Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive. It is an interactive and educational version of the Broadacre City model, created by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellows in the 1930s and eventually displayed at Rockefeller Center and Kaufmann’s Department Store in Pittsburgh.
Fraudacre City, 2017. HECTOR urban design: Jae Shin & Damon Rich with Lucia Thomé. In collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art Department of Education: Jess Van Nostrand, Alethea Rockwell, and Sara Torres.
3/23/21 HECTOR Imagines a Monumental Party Ramp for a Disability Activist for Curbed
“HECTOR designed ‘The Curb Cut Fête,’ a scenographic celebratory space that Jones could use for his birthday and to give his stepfather the homegoing he and his family wanted. It’s filled with “monumental party furniture” in the shape of an accessible elevator, which could hold a DJ booth, an elevated ramp that could be used as a stage, and a curb cut that could be used as a chill-out space at the party. The concept highlights the elements that Jones has been fighting for, and frames them as things that we all ought to become more aware of.”
5/6/21 HECTOR at Regional Plan Association Assembly
11/10/20 Loeb50: Design and Activism Now with HECTOR, Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Inga Saffron
Featuring HECTOR co-founder Damon Rich Loeb Fellow 2007 and Designing Justice + Designing Spaces co-founder Deanna Van Buren Loeb Fellow 2013, and moderated by Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron Loeb Fellow 2012, this conversation—Loeb50: Design and Activism Now—explores how practitioners in the built environment can pursue activism in and through their work, while also balancing the realities of being part of a service profession. This discussion also touches upon issues of memory, representation, and communication in social and political action.
2/22/19 HECTOR lectures at Harvard Graduate School of Design
11/19/18 HECTOR’s Jae Shin contributes to Architects as Activists Primer at AIA Center for Architecture on Architects
10/24/18 HECTOR contributes to IN PUBLIC discussion held at London’s Hackney Town Hall
6/12/18 HECTOR’s Damon Rich speaks with CUP colleagues Rosten Woo and Althea Wasow at University of California Davis for 2018 Alberini Speaker Series
5/17/18 HECTOR speaks at Pittsburgh’s People, Planet, Place, Performance Conference
4/13/18 HECTOR speaks on The Future of Public Space at Strand Bookstore with Olalekan Jeyifous, Oana Stanescu, and Claire Weisz
10/27/17 HECTOR at Municipal Art Society’s 2017 Summit for New York City
10/11/17 HECTOR partner Damon Rich awarded 2017 MacArthur Fellowship
Today the MacArthur Foundation named Damon Rich as a 2017 MacArthur Fellow, describing him as "a designer and urban planner creating vivid and witty strategies to help residents exercise power within the public and private processes that shape our cities. Trained as an architect, he is committed to enlivening bureaucratic systems and applies a democratic approach to a wide range of projects, including designs for public spaces and exhibitions, civics curricula, and regulatory systems."
At HECTOR, we are extremely honored and floored by this recognition and support of our work. We are lucky to be part of a long tradition and deep field committed to exploring the democratic potentials of design, thankful for so many life-changing teachers, collaborators, and partners over the years, and eager for the challenges of making spaces, neighborhoods, and cities more accountable and spirited.
11/16/17 HECTOR’s Space Brainz—Yerba Buena 3000 declared a SF Travel Holiday Treat
10/23/17 HECTOR speaks on Creative Placemaking from the Community Up Webinar with Arts & Democracy, Kentucky Cultural Organizing Alliance, PolicyLink, and LA Commons
6/30/17 HECTOR’s work profiled in Next City
Emma Jacobs writes, "A long-time area for refugee settlement, the densely packed blocks of rowhomes around Mifflin Square are shared by Cambodians and Bhutanese immigrants, African Americans, Latinos, as well as Italian and Irish-descended families who came to the city in earlier waves of immigration. In recent years, the area has also drawn young families seeking homes close to jobs in Center City and within walking distance of East Passyunk, a thriving corridor of shops and restaurants. With the changes have come new concerns about retaining the neighborhood’s diverse fabric and ensuring that longtime residents continue to have a voice in the planning process. 'Urban planning,' says Thoai Nguyen, director of SEAMAAC, 'is steeped in certain methodologies that are opaque. We have staff on hand speak majority of languages in the neighborhood,” says Nguyen, who grew up a block and a half from the square. SEAMAAC has important cultural knowledge, “but for us that was just not enough. You bring people to the table but then how do you have them engage in the process for a meaningful way?'"
6/19/17 Broadacre 2017 on display at the Museum of Modern Art
5/5/17 HECTOR featuring in American Society of Landscape Architecture’s The Dirt
Jared Green writes in THE DIRT:
"Cities Are Rebuilding Connections to Nature: The old model in which cities were totally cut off from their waterfronts — either by highways or industrial facilities — seems to be ending in the developed world at least. Damon Rich, head of Hector Urban Design, walked us through one prime example of how communities are reconnecting to their waterfront in Newark, New Jersey, which transformed some of the edges of the Passaic River from 'toxic nastiness' into the site of the 20-acre, $35 million Newark Riverfront Park that uses a 'symbolic system' of bright orange to 'reflect this is an anti-racist space.' To accomplish something like this, Rich said you need to 'bring together the conservation, organizing, and design communities together and invite them to the same party.'"
