As part of an ongoing interview series about the future of practice, RECORD is speaking to small firm-owners who are representative of the younger cohort of architects who are, both consciously and instinctively, trying to practice the business of architecture differently.

Imani Day, Megan Dobstaff, IIDA, and Tiara Hughes share their experiences in being a woman in the design industry.

Many assume that building wealth alone will create greater contentment—but social science shows that how we use our money is the key to lasting joy and satisfaction.

Until we embed inclusion and equity into our code, our policies, and the built environment, our industry will continue to fall short of reaching racial and economic prosperity.

Conditions across Detroit public school buildings have been called “deplorable,” and they have been so for some time.2 For too many years, too many students in Detroit have had to spend seven hours a day, five days a week, in buildings with visible mold, broken mechanical systems, leaky ceilings, freezing classrooms, and vermin. Passing through metal detectors has become a normal start and end to each day—an argument for security that operates in lieu of truly safe environments and that masks the underlying processes making these schools so unsafe and so inhospitable in the first place. Students deserve to be and feel secure, but as we are seeing in Detroit, far too many schools risk the health, safety, and welfare of the individuals in them.