.jpg)
Elgin Cleckley, assistant professor of architecture and design at the University of Virginia, will present a lecture on Feb. 1 at 5 p.m. in Stackhouse Theater as part of W&L’s Mudd Center for Ethics’ series on the “Ethics of Design.”
Cleckley’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “mpathic design: Perspectives on Creating Inclusive Spaces.”
At UVA, Cleckley holds appointments in the School of Education and Human Development and the School of Nursing. He is also the director of design justice at UVA’s Equity Center (Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity Through Community-Engaged Scholarship), where he leads the school’s National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Project Pipeline: Architecture Mentorship Program.
Cleckley is also the principal of _mpathic design. This awardwinning firm uses evidencebased methods grounded in cultural competency, empathy and human-centered design to address projects in academic, community and professional contexts. mpathic design has presented at over 80 national and international conferences in architecture, design and education, and has collaborated with Albemarle County Public Schools, city of Lynchburg, and the Albemarle Office of Equity and Diversity.
Cleckley’s work operates at the intersections of identity, culture, history, memory and place. His research follows a self-formulated empathic design thinking methodology, a hybrid approach to deep empathy that uncovers the layers of a site, cultural landscape, and the built environment. The method is an empathic approach to discovering untold narratives and unheard voices, allowing Cleckley to find design responses and meet the design activism needed in non-inclusive architectures. It also provides tangible toolkits and frameworks for developing belonging in public spaces.
