Designing Beyond Buildings
Christopher Locke, M.Arch ’16, advances spatial justice through architecture
After graduating from Taubman College, Christopher Locke, M.Arch ’16, sold his car, packed his things, and bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. There, he hosted a workshop, “Designing in Color: Disrupting Proceedings,” at the National Organization of Minority Architects’ (NOMA) annual conference, which challenged how architecture is taught and practiced and explored how design could confront racism, exclusion, and power in the built environment.
That experience led him to co-found Designing in Color (DCo), a collective of designers working in L.A. and other U.S. cities to build community, amplify marginalized voices, and challenge systems that have excluded Black and Brown communities from architectural education and practice. At the same time, Locke was launching his own architecture career, which, over the next eight years, included work with ZGF Architects, Egan Simon Architecture, and Steinberg Hart.
In 2024, Locke left his day job to work full-time as CEO of DCo after securing multiple projects through community organizing, architecture, and advocacy. A year later, he launched Collective UNBound, a new group of designers and organizers equally rooted in community activism and racial justice with an extended reach into planning and development.
“For us, it’s not enough just to design buildings,” he says. “I like to think of it also as visioning and organizing to support communities in the civic and equity infrastructure needed to build justice in the environment.”
Last fall, Locke was awarded Taubman College’s Outstanding Recent Graduate Award.
Early Vision
Locke first discovered architecture through CAD classes and the ACE Mentor Program of America while attending high school in Bloomfield, Connecticut, just outside his hometown of Hartford. Between his junior and senior years, he completed an unpaid internship, making models and “playing around” with an early version of Revit.
While earning his B.F.A., Locke became only the second student from the University of Massachusetts Amherst to study abroad in Dubai, an early example of his drive to find new challenges and blaze new trails.
“If I’m not going to have to go above and beyond, it might not interest me,” he says. “I’m a person who’s very much about visioning things and trying challenging things, but also doing things that other people haven’t done before.”
Locke continued to push himself and seek out new experiences, cultures, and architecture as a student at Taubman College. He was involved in the ARC and NOMAS student organizations, served as a Venice Biennale fellow in Italy, and studied with Robert Adams in China and Mitch McEwen in Brazil. He fondly recalls his relationship with Adams, who oversaw the pre-thesis work that encouraged him to explore his identity and put him on the trajectory he’s on now.
After a difficult thesis experience — one he later connected to broader questions of race, pedagogy, and exclusion in a 2020 Portico essay — another professor, Sean Vance, encouraged him to attend the NOMA conference in L.A. and speak about his experiences.
A Mission to Change Architecture
At ZGF Architects, Locke contributed to design concepts and construction plans for a 150,000-square-foot services building at Cal State Los Angeles, as well as the firm’s own office improvement project. He also led workplace diversity programming and an initiative to introduce students of color to architecture through job shadowing.
At the same time, DCo began to grow from a series of conversations into a platform for impact. The group hosted workshops at conferences and universities and engaged with communities through partnerships with organizations like CicLAvia. By 2019, DCo was recognized as an honoree of the AIA Diversity Recognition Program.
“It wasn’t meant to be a business,” Locke says. “It was about a mission of changing the way architecture is taught and changing the way we produce things, especially for students in academia.”
When George Floyd was murdered in 2020, DCo created a new program exploring racial justice, racialized space, and design justice. Designing with Action partnered with AIA National and smaller firms around the country. The organization also began partnering with larger firms in L.A. to launch projects in underrepresented communities, including the Watts Community Center, a new strategic plan for West Hollywood, and design justice criteria for new community development in Expo Park.
Boundless Opportunities
Those projects gave Locke the experience needed for his latest venture, Collective UNBound SPC (Social Purpose Corporation), a new group of collaborators focused on creating space for Black and Brown people to thrive. The group provides services including design and architecture, pre-development, planning and visioning, design justice education, and design equity consulting.
UNB brings both a for-profit social purpose and a nonprofit approach to its work, with a wise council of industry and community experts to “forge new paths and learn from our ancestors on how to build a just society for everyone.”
“Collective UNBound designs boundless opportunities for communities to flourish, free from the legacies of exclusion and colonial harm,” Locke says. “We envision a future where extractive models of architecture and design are replaced by a liberated, justice-driven practice that transforms environments and empowers communities.”
The group’s current projects include leading the formation of a Black Cultural District in West Altadena, California, and reparative community organizing and design for a visitor center in Allensworth, one of California’s most prominent and historic Black townships. The team is also designing a community workplace for the Arming Minorities Against Addiction & Disease Institute, a Black and queer-led organization providing social services in Watts.
Last year, the team was one of 38 firms selected from 353 submissions for UCLA’s Small Lots Big Impact competition, and is actively pursuing opportunities to build their housing model alongside community-centered developers in L.A. Most recently, the team was selected as lead consultant for the African American Historic Places initiative, developing neighborhood preservation strategies in three of L.A.’s most prominent Black communities.
Building Sustainable Systems
UNB is also launching Root Ready Rise Collaboratory, a program centered on design equity and building a solidarity economy for community organizers and design professionals, and the Futures UNBound Network (FUN), a nonprofit that incubates and supports community-led efforts in neighborhoods facing displacement, disaster, and erasure, and looking to celebrate their cultural heritage.
“We have to find ways to not only do our work in a self-determined approach, in which we’re working with communities from the ground up, but also build systems that are sustainable to make long-lasting change,” Locke says.
In a world of expanding AI tools and growing community needs, Locke believes a people-centered, justice-centered approach will keep design and architecture professionals essential, and that a pipeline of emerging practitioners must be nurtured to keep the industry viable, diverse, and ready to support communities.
— Eric Gallippo
