News & Events

Wednesday, November 18 at 4:00 p.m.
LeRoy Neiman Center, 37 S. Wabash Ave. 

To Design In Nepantla
A speculative design exploration of middleness as a condition of design: caught between identity and modernity, the practical and the existential, substance and accident. It moves across competing design value systems, where fact and counterfactual fiction unsettle what design is—and what it might become.
 
José de la O is an industrial designer, director of delaO design studio, and Associate Professor at Pratt Institute. He holds a Master’s in Conceptual Design from Design Academy Eindhoven and is a PhD candidate at RMIT University. His work uses speculative design and an epistemological approach to investigate design’s social role and technological possibilities. Through delaO, he has led human-centred design research for Spotify, Google, SPACE10, Wellcome Trust, Dubai Future Foundation, What Design Can Do, and TU Delft. A member of Reach, a network of design research agencies, he has worked with multicultural teams internationally. His product-design collaborations include Philips Design, Mater Design, and Mirai Innovation Lab. Previously, de la O spent eight years as a design researcher and regional director of Design at Tecnológico de Monterrey. His work has been exhibited at Dutch Design Week, Milan Design Fair, and museums across the United States, Europe, Asia, and Mexico.  

Wednesday, September 23 at 4:00 p.m.
LeRoy Neiman Center, 37 S. Wabash Ave.

We are delighted to welcome Danyson Tavares to kick off the 2026-27 Mitchell Lecture series, What Can(’t) Design Do? Danyson is a trained architect, educator, and civic leader whose work explores the intersection of design, community development, education, and institutional change. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Boston Society for Architecture and Architecture in Common, where he is leading a significant transformation of the organizations and advancing a vision for architecture as a public good.

Taking a cross-section through his career trajectory, Danyson will explore who architecture is for and who has the power to shape the built environment. Moving across architecture, community development, building, education, and institutional leadership, he will consider where design ends and power begins, what architecture cannot do alone, and why the profession’s future may depend on our willingness to redesign practice itself.