Public Design Corps
Design matters most when it is accountable to people, to place, and to the conditions that shape both. The U-M Public Design Corps (PDC), an initiative of Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, begins from this premise, asking how spatial practice can advance civic life with rigor, care, and creativity.
PDC brings students, faculty, and partners into design processes rooted in equity and reciprocity. The work expands design’s civic and cultural impact, applies spatial intelligence to public questions, and exercises engagement as a form of critical inquiry through research, policy, and reflective practice. The aim is not simply to produce projects, but to build shared knowledge, strengthen partner missions, and test new models of teaching and learning.
Structured by courses and projects but not limited to them, PDC extends learning beyond the classroom. Students gain hands-on experience, ethical tools, and mentorship for socially driven work. Partners gain sustained collaborators attentive to context and lived experience. Faculty are supported in integrating public engagement into pedagogy and sustaining long-term initiatives.
PDC welcomes partners open to experimental collaboration, students drawn to the space between design and public life, and faculty rethinking what design education can and should do.
Our Work
Public Design Corps projects span scales and contexts, shaped by close collaboration with partners and site-specific objectives. Grounded in the belief that rigorous design emerges from sustained engagement, the work avoids one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, participants deploy architectural tools with precision and care—aligning research, representation, and making to the realities of place, culture, and use.
Project Themes
Spatial Agency & Civic Imagination
Expanding who shapes and takes care of the built environment, and by what means. Work that understands civic space not simply as an object of design, but as a medium for collective action, cultural expression, and public participation.
Organizational Ecologies & Public Missions
Examining how schools, nonprofits, and cultural institutions operate spatially and programmatically. Projects that reveal how space structures decisions, programs, and services—and how clearer spatial logics can support accountability and purpose.
Repair & Socioenvironmental Stewardship
Addressing the repair of urban and territorial systems: ecological, social, and infrastructural. Work attentive to resilience, material cycles, labor, care, justice, policy advocacy, and long-term stewardship.
Methods of Engagement & Design Pedagogy
Foregrounding process as practice. Projects that test mapping, prototyping, visualization, and storytelling as iterative, relational, and research-driven modes through which design produces and organizes knowledge.
Design as Culture
Understanding design itself as a cultural practice. Work that examines how meaning is produced, represented, and circulated—and how design actively constructs collective horizons.
Contributors
The University of Michigan’s Public Design Corps (U–M PDC) is supported by faculty mentors from Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning whose work spans local and international contexts of socially engaged design. These mentors guide student teams through complex design questions, bringing disciplinary rigor and practical insight to each project.
Student teams are paired with partner organizations aligned with their academic and professional interests, positioning learning and public benefit as mutually reinforcing. This reciprocal framework cultivates meaningful outcomes for communities while advancing the formation of emerging designers.
2025 Designers
- Shweta Dhansukh Chawda
- Nick Grosh
- Krzysztof Lower
- Xinyu Shi
- Ruixue Yang
- Yufei Zhu
- Leigh House
2024 Designers
- Tabita Aitonean
- Jasmine Paulk
- Natalia Boldt
- Mariam Reyes-Toidze
- Md Ehsan Alam
- Chin-chieh Chen (Jess)
- Stephanie Dutan
- Yi-Chien Kuo
- Yesha Madhubhai Malaviya
- Akshita Mandhyan
- Angie Perez
- Chun Wang (Sheila)
- Aaron JohnsonShoaib Alshuja
- Ranya Liu
- Huy Dung Lou
- Ngoc Minh Dang
- Rongyu Shen
- Charlie Tokowitz
- Md Ehsan Alam
2023 Designers
- Yifan Ma
- Liwen Wu
- Mia Flynn
- Garrett Dee
- Margarett Laakso
- Nicole Tooley
- Ting Fong Chen
- Sanjani Jismon
- Shreya Vadrevu
- Caitlyn Eckberg
- Jiabao Zhu
2022 Designers
- Miranda Bibb
- Ivan Gort-Cabeza de Vaca
- Lauren Jenkins
- Quan Li
- Kimberly Lindberg
- Lindsey Lu
- Nathanael Nelson
- Chandana Rao
- Jason Tran
- Elijah Underhill-Miller
- Liwen Wu
- Wenyuan Zhang
2021 Designers
- Aidan Barron
- Autumn Bender
- Ranya Betts-Chen
- Miranda Bibb
- Melissa Bissett
- Serena Brewer
- Tessa Broek
- Max Coolidge
- Ryan Dowdle
- Huiting Du
- Megan Finley
- Demetrius Ford
- Maya Fraser
- Lei Guo
- Andrew Hoover
- Evan Hotary
- Chen Huang
- Alex Hutchinson
- Kilala Ichie-Vincent
- Ling Jin
- Maho Kobayashi
- Aracely Landero
- Lindsay Li
- John Li
- Kimberly Lindberg
- Camilla LizundiaZoë Meinke
- Judith Mendoza
- Iman Messado
- Kristina Miesel
- Fangtian Ni
- Pilar O’Hara
- Celia Olsen
- Anmol Poptani
- Anne Redmond
- Aric Reed
- Noelle Ridley
- Simon Rivers
- McKenna Sabon
- Yikai Su
- Ellen Taube
- Sang Won Kang
- Bangyu Xu
- Deesy Xu
- Siqi Yan
- Danling Yu
- Xuetong Zhai
- Jun Zhou
2020 Designers
- Abirami Nachammai Manivannan
- Anisha Dinesh Naik
- Areeba Bawani
- Charlene Hobbs
- Chunyang Xu
- Daham Marapane
- Dan Shen
- David Siepmann
- Elyssa Bakker
- Emily Ebersol
- Fangtian Ni
- Harsheen Kaur
- Ishan Pal Singh
- Jessica Yelk
- Karina Tirado
- Linda Lee
- Liyah Mariam George
- Lovejeet Gehlot
- Madison Rogers
- Maksim Drapey
- Max Coolidge
- Megan Finley
- Mitch Deans
- Mollie Karasch
- Mytreyi Chandrasekhar Metta
- Serena Brewer
- Shandra Bernath Plaisted
- Talia Moretti
- Thomas McCormick
- Torri Smith
- Vama Garrimella
- Yiying Tang
- Yuxin Lin
Partners
Public Design Corps connects students in architecture, urban design, and planning with partner organizations to address pressing economic, environmental, social, and spatial questions. Past projects have engaged issues ranging from food access and health-informed design to public space activation, civic engagement, and virtual experience. Through structured dialogue, collaborative workshops, and co-design processes, student–faculty teams and partners work together to test how design can generate grounded, context-specific outcomes.
2025 Engagements
- Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development (MDARD)
- Block Island Coastal Resiliency Committee
2024 Engagements
- Michigan Department of Agriculture & Rural Development (MDARD)
- União dos Movimentos de Moradia (UNIÃO)
- Centro Gaspar Garcia de Direitos Humanos
- Defensoria Pública do Estado de São Paulo
- Peabiru Trabalhos Comunitários e Ambientais
- Articulação Vila Andrade
- Comunidade Pantanal
2023 Engagements
- Block Island Chamber of Commerce
- New Shoreham Police Department
- Block Island Conservancy
- Island Free Library
- The Block Island Times
- Old Town Inn
- Block Island Medical Center
- Block Island School
- Queer Block Island
- Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources
2022 Engagements
- Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan
- City of Trenton, MI
- Detroit River Story Lab
2021 Engagements
- Block Island Housing Board
- Carr Center Detroit
- Communities First, Inc.
- Detroit Historical Society & Museum
- Detroit Housing Commission
- Detroit Riverfront Conservancy
- The Great Lakes Way
- Huron Clinton Metroparks / City of Detroit
2020 Engagements
- Ann Arbor Meals on Wheels
- Brilliant Detroit
- Carr Center Detroit
- Sage Metro Detroit
- Shylo Arts
- Zimbabwe Cultural Center
Connect with Us
We welcome collaboration inquiries. Send us an email to tell us a bit about yourself and why your organization is interested in partnering with Public Design Corps.
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