Craig Wilkins

Architect, author, academic, and activist, Dr. Craig L. Wilkins currently serves on the faculty at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. A 2020 American Landscape Association Bradford Williams Medal recipient and 2017 Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum National Design Award winner, he is the author of The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture, and Music and Diversity Among Architects: From Margin to Center. His creative practice specializes in engaging communities in collaborative and participatory design processes. The former director of the Taubman College Detroit Community Design Center and founder of the award-winning Studio:DetroitHS – an initiative created to introduce under-represented high school students to careers in design – he is particularly interested in the production of various forms of space and understanding how publicly accessible and responsive design can radically transform the trajectory of lives and environments, particularly for those on the margins of society. His award-winning design work has been featured in such publications as The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Houston Chronicle, The Atlantic, and Fast Company. His critical essays and commentary have been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, International Review of African American Art, Art South Africa, Volume, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Detroit News, among others. Recipient of the 2008 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture's Collaborative Practice Award and the 2010 Kresge Fellowship, he is currently creative director of the WILKINS project (tWp), a social justice, strategic design alliance that provides architectural, urban design and planning services, public interest design solutions, and expertise in engaged public discourse.