Student Organization Lecture | Pascale Sablan

This lecture was co-hosted by the Georgia Tech School of Architecture, and the Georgia Tech chapters of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS), and Equity in Architecture

About Pascale Sablan

With over twelve years of experience, Sablan has been on the design team at S9ARCHITECTURE for a variety of mixed-use, commercial, cultural & residential projects in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, India, Azerbaijan, Japan, & UAE. Their most notable project is the Bronx Point Project, with 540 residential units, community facility, 10 theatre cinema, and the first brick and mortar Universal Hip Hop Museum. Sablan is the 315th living African American female architect in the United States to attain her architectural license.

To engage the culture, Sablan has given lectures at institutions such as the National Museum of African American Heritage & Culture and the United Nations Visitor Centre. She engages students through her lectures at Universities and Colleges all over the US; Columbia University, Georgia Technical College, Tuskegee University, Pratt Institute, Parsons | The New School, Madison Area Technical College and California Polytechnic State University.

She is the Founder and Executive Director of Beyond the Built Environment, LLC, positioned to uniquely address the inequitable disparities in architecture by providing a holistic platform aimed to support numerous stages of the architecture pipeline. To impact the culture, Beyond the Built Environment, elevates the identities and contributions of minority architects and designers through exhibitions, curated lectures, and documentaries that testify to the provided value of their built work and its spatial impact.

Sablan curated SAY IT LOUD exhibitions at the AIA New York, in Center for Architecture gallery, SXSW Conference 2019, A'19, and NOMA 2018 Unbounded conference which were all paired with relevant programming speaking to the mission. The SAY IT LOUD - United Nations Visitors Centre, exhibition created a tremendous opportunity of exposure and echoing the call to action to the leaders of our world. After her speech at the opening of our exhibition, the United Nations generously offered to transform this exhibition into posters, translated them into 8 languages (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and Kiswahili), and distributed to their information centers worldwide. SAY IT LOUD - United Nations exhibit has been displayed in Bujumbura, Geneva, Harare, Lagos, Lome, Nairobi, New Delhi, Minsk, and Yaounde.

She has been recognized for her contributions to the industry with several awards, including the 2018 Pratt Alumni Achievement Award, Emerging New York Architect Merit Award, and the NOMA Prize for Excellence in Design. Sablan was selected as one of the 2018 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Young Architects Award Recipient and was featured in the Council of Tall Building & Urban Habitat Research Paper, in the same company as Jeanne Gang and Zaha Hadid. She was named Building Design + Construction 40 Under 40 and was featured on the cover of the September 2017 issue of their magazine.

About "I Was Asked to Stand"

This lecture will educate and empower participants to understand the cause and possible solutions to the disparity in the lack of representation, documentation, and acknowledgment of the great works of women and minority architects. Divided into five sections, we will focus on the history of the problems, how we can proactively change our profession, and future aspirations to continue the fight for equality. First, we will address the lack of knowledge amongst the general population of the existence of women and diverse designers and the forces of erasure. Secondly, we will highlight the flaws within the education system, enrollment, graduation rates, and teaching of diverse architects. Thirdly, we will explore why the rate of African-American architects in the profession has remained stagnant at 5%  for nearly a decade. Fourth, we will show examples of how architects can serve as advocates. And lastly with architects as advocates, we discuss how collaboration can make an impactful difference.