Paul L. Cejas Lecture Series: Featuring James Rojas

About

Bio:

James Rojas is an urban planner, community activist, and artist. He has developed an innovative public-engagement and community-visioning method that uses art-making as its medium. Through this method he has engaged thousands of people by facilitating over four hundred workshops and building over fifty interactive models around the world - from the streets of New York and San Francisco, to Mexico, Canada, Europe, and South America. He has collaborated with municipalities, non-profits, community groups, educational institutions, and museums, to engage, educate, and empower the public on transportation, housing, open space, and health issues.

Rojas is also one of the few nationally recognized urban planners to examine U.S. Latino cultural influences on urban design and sustainability. He has written and lectured extensively on how culture and immigration are transforming the American front yard and landscape. He is the founder of the Latino Urban Forum, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing awareness around planning and design issues facing low-income Latinos.

Rojas has lectured and facilitated workshops at MIT, Berkeley, Harvard, Cornell, and numerous other colleges and universities. His installation work has been shown at the Los Museum of Contemporary Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, the Venice Biennale, the Exploratorium, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Bronx Museum of Art, and the Getty. His research has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Dwell, Places, and in numerous books. Most recently, he and John Kamp have just finished writing a book for Island Press entitled Dream, Play, Build, which explores how you can engage people in urban planning and design through their hands and senses.