Community-Centered Design: Engagement That Creates Belonging

​​In alignment with AIANY’s Belonging and Beyond initiative, AIA New York is proud to partner with 3×3 for a two-day seminar focused on community-centered design. This program equips architects and allied professionals with tools, skills, and frameworks to lead inclusive engagement processes that build trust and drive transformation.

Through a series of interactive modules and group work sessions, attendees will learn reflexive, co-creative practices that prioritize access, authenticity, and shared decision-making. Participants will walk away with confidence to foster inclusion, belonging, and care in the built environment. 

Schedule:
Wednesday, June 3
9:00–9:30 AM – Welcome, Breakfast, Course Overview
9:30–10:30 AM – Module 1: What Lenses Do I Bring? [1 LU | HSW]
Positionality & Reflexivity
10:45–12:00 PM – Modules 2 & 3: Who decides and is involved?  [2 LU | HSW]
Power & Equity & Representation
12:00–12:30 PM – Group Reflection, Q&A, and Day 2 Preview

Thursday, June 4
9:00–9:15 AM – Day 1 Recap, Day 2 Overview, Ice-breaker
9:15–10:15 PM – Module 4: How is trust earned? [2 LU | HSWs]
Authenticity, Transparency, & Accountability
10:15–11:45 AM – Module 5: How do we remove barriers? [2 LU|HSWs]
Access, Belonging & Care
11:45 AM –12:30 PM – Workshop
Final Reflections, Commitments to Practice, and Course Close-Out

Speakers:
Thomas Bond, Engagement and Communications Designer, 3x3
Megan Marini, LEED AP, Principal, 3×3
Rajesh Sankat, Program Strategist, 3×3 

About the Speakers:
Thomas Bond is an Engagement and Communications Designer at 3×3. He is a designer and advocate for social change, holding a Master’s degree in Transdisciplinary Design from Parsons School of Design. Driven by a belief in the power of radical imagination, Bond envisions more just and liberating worlds, challenging the status quo and reimagining possibilities for human flourishing. Bond believes that all people are designers in their own right, capable of shaping new realities through creativity, collaboration, and collective action. With a deep commitment to community engagement, Bond prioritizes working alongside communities to foster mutual aid, shared knowledge, and empowerment. Through their interdisciplinary work, Bond seeks to cultivate spaces where diverse voices can co-create solutions to complex social challenges. Whether through design, activism, or education, Bond is dedicated to building a future rooted in equity, solidarity, and the belief that together, we can shape more inclusive and sustainable worlds..

Rajesh Sankat is a Program Strategist at 3x3, where he works within civic systems to design infrastructures for relation and repair. Through projects centered in climate adaptation and placemaking, his practice explores how participation becomes infrastructure - how relationships, data, and lived experience form systems capable of long-term transformation. Prior to 3x3, Rajesh was a founding member of the Ontario Government’s Policy Innovation Hub, where he helped define a strategic, design-thinking led approach to build internal capacity for civil servants and society. He has collaborated with organizations including the CUNY School of Public Health, City of West Hollywood, and the City of Toronto’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation Department. Rajesh holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Toronto, and is an alum of the Urban Design Forum’s Forefront Fellowship and the Toronto Urban Fellows program. His work and writing has been featured in AZURE and Afternoon Magazine.

Megan Marini oversees 3×3’s creative planning work, focusing on practical applications of systems thinking to develop inclusive design strategies. For over 15 years, she has supported the delivery of built environment initiatives that center community voice to drive transformation. Prior to 3×3, Megan specialized in design research for development programs internationally at organizations such as Reboot, the Earth Institute’s Center for Sustainable Urban Development, and ARCHIVE for clients including the World Bank, UNEPS, UNOPS, and Internews. Her work and writing have been featured in GOOD, Public Interest Design, and DWELL magazine. Megan holds an MS in urban planning from Columbia University, where she received an award for her thesis on technological innovation in post-disaster Haiti; she also holds a BS in architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Please Note:
By registering, you are committing to attend the full two-day program, which includes all five modules from Wednesday, June 3 through Thursday, June 4. [This program is approved for 7 LU | HSWs total]