Nuestro Lugar, a park designed by Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) in the North Shore community of the Eastern Coachella Valley, incorporates community programs, small businesses, and environmental features. Image courtesy of Kounkuey Design Initiative.
Chelina Odbert is founding principal and CEO of Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI), with offices in Los Angeles, Coachella Valley, Nairobi and Stockholm. She was named an Emerging Voice by The Architectural League of New York in 2021 and a Knight Foundation Public Space Fellow in 2019.
Odbert will present a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 10, in Ken and Linda Sue Shollmier Hall, Room 250 of Vol Walker Hall, on the University of Arkansas campus, as part of the spring lecture series in the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.
In her lecture, “Design and the Just Public Realm,” Odbert will discuss how “the public realm” is often defined as publicly owned places and spaces that belong to and are accessible to everyone, yet reality finds that these ostensibly inclusive environments tend to be open and accessible only to a privileged few.
Odbert will present strategies for making the public realm more public, demonstrating ways that designers, planners and communities can ensure that these shared spaces are as inclusive and accessible as their name suggests they should be.
Odbert believes in the power of community-engaged design to advance racial, environmental and economic equity in neighborhoods and cities. She aims to bring good design to places where it is not often found and connect localized design interventions to large-scale policy change.
Odbert has been recognized widely for her work to build a more just public realm, including by The Architectural League of New York, the Knight Foundation, and the Aspen Institute. In 2022, KDI received the National Design Award for Landscape Architecture from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and in 2023, Odbert received an Honorary Membership to the American Society of Landscape Architects.
Odbert has held teaching appointments at Harvard Graduate School of Design and UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. She holds a bachelor’s degree with high honors from Claremont McKenna College and a Master of Urban Planning from Harvard Graduate School of Design.
This is the Fay Jones School Honors Program Lecture.
The school is pursuing continuing education credits for this lecture through the American Institute of Architects.
This lecture is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
