In the spring of 2022, Tracing Architecture was awarded an Emerging Professionals Component Grant by the AIA College of Fellows. This grant has allowed us to partner with groups in our community that would otherwise not have access to a media platform such as our podcast, and allow those groups to have critical conversations that can engage our profession and local community more broadly. For this special episode, we collaborated with the Arizona chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) to host a live podcast recording event at their monthly chapter meeting.

NOMA Arizona organized and curated a conversation to better understand the concept of decolonizing architecture, inviting panelists of various backgrounds and expertise on the subject from the local community and around the country to explore this topic in depth. The panel included Wanda Dalla Costa, AIA, of Arizona State University, Nicholl Hubbell, Assoc. IIDA, of Shepley Bulfinch, and Luis Cruz-Martinez, AIA, also from Shepley Bulfinch. NOMA Arizona also invited Rubin Quarcoopome and Christopher Locke of Designing in Color, and Shundana Yusaf, Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Utah, to join the panel through video recordings to introduce and elucidate key principles of decolonization.

Please visit NOMA Arizona's website for more information on the panelists and their organization here: https://nomaarizona.org/event/chapter-meeting-august-2022/