DESIGNER + SPATIAL JUSTICE ADVOCATE LIZ OGBU NAMED INAUGURAL UNIVERSITY FELLOW
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The University of Virginia announced designer, urbanist and spatial justice advocate Liz Ogbu as one of two inaugural University Fellows this semester. The new program brings expert practitioners to Grounds to engage with the UVA community on today’s most challenging problems and inspiring opportunities.
Hosted by the School of Architecture, Ogbu will host small, focused discussions with A-School students as well as larger community-wide events to broadly share their experience and promote thoughtful discussion. “The academic environment at UVA is part of what makes this place special, and the University Fellows program is another way for students to explore interests and learn from leaders and practitioners at the top of their fields,” President Jim Ryan said. “The fellows program will bring experts from media, business, arts, medicine, politics and science to Grounds, and will ensure students have meaningful opportunities to engage with them. I’m excited to see our fellows inspire new avenues of inquiry and discussion and to welcome them to our community.”
In 2012, Ogbu founded Studio O, a design and innovation consulting firm, and has worked with a range of clients, schools and organizations to shape urban design that catalyzes sustained social impact. She has been a featured lecturer and writer for a wealth of outlets, including TED, The New York Times and the Journal of Urban Design. Ogbu has served as faculty at Stanford University and UC Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. In 2022, she was named one of four winners of the AIANY's Arnold W. Brunner Grant for Architectural Research for her projects, Design as a Tool to Support Community Healing.
Ogbu previously worked with UVA as the Visiting Porter Chair in Urban and Environmental Planning for the School of Architecture for the spring 2017 semester and as an advisory board member of the Design Futures Forum, hosted by the school in summer 2022. Since 2015, with Studio O, she has worked closely with Piedmont Housing Alliance on a resident-driven redevelopment strategy for Friendship Court, an affordable housing complex in Charlottesville. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture from Wellesley College and a Master of Architecture degree from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, and is a public member of the UVA School of Architecture's Dean's Advisory Board.
“We are thrilled to host Liz Ogbu as an inaugural University Fellow this spring and to support the significant partnerships she has already built in the Charlottesville and UVA communities, including with the Equity Center, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and the Piedmont Housing Alliance,” School of Architecture Dean Malo A. Hutson said. “Liz and her practice Studio O are a model for our students and faculty on effective methods toward spatial justice that leverage the power of design to foster environments that support people’s capacity to thrive.”
Ogbu is joined by research scientist and entrepreneur Greg Olsen, hosted by the School of Engineering, as an inaugural University Fellow.
Learn more about Liz Ogbu by listening to her TED Talk, “What if gentrification was about healing communities instead of displacing them?” In it, she asks for designers, government leaders, and real estate developers to stop equating progress with the erasure of culture and to “make a commitment to build people’s capacity to stay in their homes, to stay in their communities, to stay where they feel whole.”
