Truth Telling as Place Making

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Truth telling is not always comfortable, but it is essential to honest design and to imagining a way forward. Both of our panelists will address the realities of how institutions have failed their communities — not to impart blame, but to illuminate opportunities for design and the possibilities of place making. In the face of hard truths, design can open space for dialogue and a way forward. Whether that is admitting the failings of infrastructure in the American South or prompting a conversation about housing evictions in rural India, this lecture offers truth telling as a practice: to ourselves, and through our work.

The lecture brings together Swati Janu, founder of the Social Design Collaborative in Delhi, and Monique Verdin, a storyteller and environmental advocate from New Orleans who directs the Land Memory Bank and Seed Exchange. Both work at the intersection of architecture, culture, landscape, and social justice, exploring “place” not as a fixed site but a continuous creative process brought together by those around us.

The lecture will be recorded and made available on the School of Architecture's YouTube Channel.

Student Workshop
Tue, Jan 27, 5:15–6:15 PM
Campbell Van Lengen Lobby

Janu and Verdin will lead a collaborative mapping workshop that will explore how memories and stories shape our relationship to water and riverine landscapes. The workshop is free and open to any UVA students. (Limited to 25 participants)

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left: Bigha Zameen was a year long socially engaged art practice with women farmers along the Yamuna River in Delhi towards rights based advocacy. © Social Design Collaborative; right: Artist Monique Verdin weaves palmettos during a 2017–18 residency at A Studio in the Woods, New Orleans. © A Studio in the Woods

About the Panelists:

Founder of Social Design Collaborative, Swati Janu is an architect, activist and artist who works on issues of social justice from housing rights to participatory planning. Her inter-disciplinary practice combines community engagement with policy advocacy across Indian cities. For her critical spatial practice, Swati was recently awarded the Moira Gemmill prize in Emerging Architecture 2022 which is aimed at creating gender inclusion in architecture and urban design.

Through interdisciplinary collaborations, Social Design Collaborative works with under-represented communities who have been left out of development processes, by making planning and public policy accessible to them. The studio also supports self-organized communities through community driven building of schools, libraries, daycare centers, and community halls. Some recent recognitions of the studio include the Practice Lab grant 2023 by Re:Arc Institute, W Awards 2022 by the Architectural Review, the Beazley Design of the Year Award 2021 by the Design Museum London, and the Shelter Award 2018 by the Shelter Promotion Council India.
 

Monique Verdin is an art maker, wild gardener, story keeper, and a citizen of the Houma Nation. She supports the Okla Hina Ikhish Holo, network of Indigenous gardeners, as the Women's Earth and Climate Action Networks Gulf South food sovereignty coordinator. Verdin is the primary steward of the Land Memory Bank & Seed Exchange, facilitating community-built record-making, experiential education, research, and site activations celebrating the diversity of coastal communities and native ecologies present in south Louisiana.  

She co-stewards Bvlbancha Liberation Radio and is a SwampNet collaborator, experimenting with autonomous and alternative communications that operate as archives and emergency channels for community connections. Verdin is a Gulf South Open School collaborator in residence at the Neighborhood Story Project. She is the subject, co-writer and co-producer of the award-winning documentary My Louisiana Love. Her recent (2025) article in the Journal of Architectural Education titled “Marooned Between Land and Water” includes her field notes that reflect on interconnected sites in the Mississippi / Atchafalaya River Basin and the significance of nature’s intelligence, lived experiences, and ancestral knowledge.

2026 MOJ STUDENT COMMITTEE:


Roshni Ahuja (BSArch '27)
Olivia Haas (BSArch '26)
Ruth Player (MArch '27)
Michael John Minutoli (MLA '27)

This event is supported by the Michael Owen Jones Endowment honoring former student, Michael Owen Jones (BSArch '85).