In Conversation with Lukas Pauer
BIOGRAPHY
Lukas Pauer is a licensed architect, urbanist, historian, educator, and the Founding Director of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab, an investigative practice and think-tank at the intersections of architecture, geography, politology, and media, dedicated to exposing intangible systems and hidden agendas within the built environment. At the University of Toronto (UofT), Lukas is an Assistant Professor of Architecture, Inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow. There, his contribution at disciplinary intersections is reflected in his engagements as a Faculty Affiliate in Urban Studies at the UofT A&S SofC as well as a Faculty Affiliate in Global Affairs and Public Policy at the UofT Munk CERES.
From the Architectural Association in London, he holds a PhD AD on political imaginaries in architectural and urban design history with a focus on how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history. Pauer holds an MAUD from Harvard University and an MSc Arch from ETH Zürich. Among widespread international recognition, he has been selected as an Ambassadorial Scholar by the Rotary Foundation, a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, and an Emerging Leader by the European Forum Alpbach — leadership programs committed to change-making impact within local communities. In 2024, during his appointment as inaugural Emerging Architect Fellow at the UofT Daniels in recognition of advancing integrated practice, research, and teaching, he concurrently held an AIAS/ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award — the most prestigious teaching award for emerging educators in the field across North America.
Lukas Pauer is a licensed architect, urbanist, historian, educator, and the Founding Director of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab, an investigative practice and think-tank at the intersections of architecture, geography, politology, and media, dedicated to exposing intangible systems and hidden agendas within the built environment. At the University of Toronto (UofT), Lukas is an Assistant Professor of Architecture, Inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow. There, his contribution at disciplinary intersections is reflected in his engagements as a Faculty Affiliate in Urban Studies at the UofT A&S SofC as well as a Faculty Affiliate in Global Affairs and Public Policy at the UofT Munk CERES.
From the Architectural Association in London, he holds a PhD AD on political imaginaries in architectural and urban design history with a focus on how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history. Pauer holds an MAUD from Harvard University and an MSc Arch from ETH Zürich. Among widespread international recognition, he has been selected as an Ambassadorial Scholar by the Rotary Foundation, a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, and an Emerging Leader by the European Forum Alpbach — leadership programs committed to change-making impact within local communities. In 2024, during his appointment as inaugural Emerging Architect Fellow at the UofT Daniels in recognition of advancing integrated practice, research, and teaching, he concurrently held an AIAS/ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award — the most prestigious teaching award for emerging educators in the field across North America.
Facilitated by the Scaffold* Editorial Team in March 2024.
Read the article in PDF form here.
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Figure 1. On the occasion of the opening of his exhibition, entitled ‘How to Steal a Country’, in the context of his appointment as Inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow at the UofT Daniels, and the inaugural issue of the UofT Daniels Scaffold* Journal, Lukas Pauer (VGL) was interviewed by Emma Hwang (Scaffold* Architecture) and Lilly Patrick (Scaffold* Politology) in Mar 2024. Photos by Harry Choi Photography.
Read the article in PDF form here.
Figure 1. On the occasion of the opening of his exhibition, entitled ‘How to Steal a Country’, in the context of his appointment as Inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow at the UofT Daniels, and the inaugural issue of the UofT Daniels Scaffold* Journal, Lukas Pauer (VGL) was interviewed by Emma Hwang (Scaffold* Architecture) and Lilly Patrick (Scaffold* Politology) in Mar 2024. Photos by Harry Choi Photography.
Q: Congratulations on the recent opening of your exhibition! You have advanced quite an interdisciplinary career. To start, we’d like to get a better understanding of your work’s position. Could you briefly introduce yourself and the focus of your work?
Thank you for having me. I am a licensed architect, urbanist, historian, educator, and the Founding Director of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab. I practice, research, and teach at the intersections of architecture, geography, politics, and media. My work has been concerned with the histories of space and power in the built environment and their entanglements with the present.
Q: You just opened your lab’s research-based debut exhibition, ‘How to Steal a Country’. Could you tell us more about its subject matters?
Generally speaking, the exhibition is about architecture as an instrument of power projection. More specifically, it details how Russia has instrumentalized architecture to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty from 2014 to its ongoing full-scale invasion. This project seeks to analyze, to decode and deconstruct, various case studies of buildings and infrastructure — innocuous built objects of the everyday — with nevertheless enormous implications for people affected by the invasion. These objects appear to be neither diplomatic nor military in function, which has rendered their use plausibly deniable, often helping them evade detection as potential threats.
Q: Conventionally, research on geopolitics is undertaken from scholars originally trained in law, in geography, in history, in other disciplines part of the social sciences but not necessarily in architecture. In terms of your practice, how does analyzing these conflicts through the lens of design contribute to the broader discourse?
This is an interesting question that I must admit I think about quite often—and I am perpetually frustrated by it. In part, this is because I really hope that the work that I do, as well as the work of others, who are a part of a small but emerging field at the intersections of space and power, can prove that architecture has a valid and valuable contribution to make to this discourse. I really believe that architecture as it pertains to media has a lot to offer through its analytical and projective techniques but is still catching up where other disciplines have already made ground on; for example, in the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities.
Q: We would like to come back to what you said last, to hear more about what you call out on a fundamental level, but for now, can you describe some of these techniques that you employ in your practice and research?
Many of the techniques I employ are part of an effort to develop a vocabulary that allows us to visually, materially, and spatially describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday. At the Vertical Geopolitics Lab, we bring together various techniques from architecture, geography, politics, and media literacy that we build upon and have started to further develop into a kind of ‘built environment literacy’. For now, I will just mention three key sets of analytical techniques that the lab has employed in its research.
For example, we engage in open-source intelligence. We employ text-based discourse analysis and image-based visual analysis, which we jointly refer to as ‘written-visual decoding’. We also employ cartographic (GIS/EOS) drawing-based spatial analysis as well as architectural (CAD/3DM) drawing and digital 3D model-making-based spatial analysis, which we refer to as ‘material-spatial deconstruction’. The idea is for all these analytical techniques to allow us to read — to decode and deconstruct — how power has been written into the built environment using tools across architecture and the social sciences. These techniques have made their way into my teaching. In a series of skills workshops, I have taught a range of techniques I have employed in my practice and research for students.
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Figure 2. Deconstructed scenes of child boarding and care facilities instrumentalized in the Russian invasion of Ukraine on display in ‘How to Steal a Country,’ Toronto, 2024.
Q: Through your integrated practice, research, and teaching you have developed a theoretical framework as well as practical techniques for what you refer to as ‘recognizing facts on the ground.’ Can you elaborate on how this came about?
Exactly ten years ago, actually, in Melbourne, Australia, I remember a key moment being when I taught a design studio course in landscape architecture, which investigated how the discipline has become central to the geopolitics of claiming sovereignty through establishing a territorial footprint in the South China Sea. I had asked students to analytically and projectively explore the performative nature through which various countries have claimed sovereignty over landscape features in the South China Sea with the aid of seemingly banal built objects.
We didn’t know of your background in landscape architecture.
Well, that is because I am not really a landscape architect — by training that is. I was formerly recruited by a landscape architecture program as a substitute for a core faculty member. It was a good place to be in, but peculiar because I had not originally been trained in landscape architecture. I had just freshly graduated with a postprofessional degree in urban design, which I had enrolled in following back-to-back undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture.
I suppose I had been approached due to my existing experience in practice during my studies, as well as for having devised unconventional approaches to studio-based design teaching. For example, during my postprofessional education, I had worked for a practitioner at the intersections of architecture and landscape architecture, working on various design competitions, exhibitions, a major publication, etc. Also during my full-time studies at Harvard, I had already been appointed at a local university in Boston, devising and leading my own design studio courses in architecture. I mention all this because it puts into perspective how my teaching engagement in Melbourne felt both familiar and strangely liberating to me at the same time. With my interdisciplinary background, I was entrusted with devising and leading a series of studio courses to essentially teach what I saw fit. Despite my experiences across a range of disciplines and modes of design at a young age, given that I had only just graduated, this was a special and formative moment that in hindsight I am very glad I did not pass up on.
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Figure 3. Overview of ‘How to Steal a Country’ in the Larry Richards Gallery at the UofT Daniels, Toronto, 2024.
Q: In terms of your workflow and process, your research spans many scales, from continental and regional scales to the scale of buildings and handheld objects. When do you operationalize different scales and what does this multiscalar approach afford?
Preceding scholarly analysis of the causes and consequences of sovereignty’s conceptual evolution is very sparse and has focused on either micro or macro levels. At the micro level, built objects are often studied too specifically without considering their wider social contexts, while at the macro level, wider aspects are often studied too broadly without considering their specific physical manifestations. Instead, a crossscalar analysis offers greater meso level insights into the movement, siting, form, function, and scale of communicative acts and sovereignty markers within wider communo-spatial imaginaries of sovereignty, examining how multiple interacting scales are constructed and experienced through built interventions on the ground.
Q: We’d like to revisit your earlier mention that architecture is still catching up with other disciplines in the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities. What does your work aim to call out on a fundamental level?
There is a lack of general understanding of imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world. To not recognize the workings of this violence around us is a risk. Many people still lack the vocabulary to describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday. Built objects of the everyday can be instrumentalized to convey subversive messages of power. Still, the prevailing conception is that power dynamics are shaped by and conducted through written policy documents and cartographic drawings. This actually connects to what you said earlier about how research on geopolitics is conventionally associated with scholars originally trained in law, in geography, in history, etc. Visual, material, and spatial practices of power projection require visual, material, and spatial techniques of analysis. This is where the work of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab comes in. We seek to recentre the study of how sovereignty is acquired and disputed as a practice-based matter of space and power in the built environment.
Q: You have studied a number of discrete geopolitical conflicts from different regions. How do your tools and analyses change across different cultural contexts, if at all?
It is true that the lab has worked on projects across many different cultural contexts. Here it has of course been incredibly important for us to be specific and sensitive to each context. A way of approaching this has been for us to be staffed with team members that have particular ethno-linguistic skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to each project context. We have also reached out to and actively worked with local communities. At the same time, I would like to point out here that, contrary to what may be expected, this work does not necessarily require on-site field-based research but can be conducted remotely, so to say. You can plant a flag or construct a building as a marker of sovereignty, to make a claim in a very specific place, but if you do not document this flag or building in various media such as taking a photo or making a drawing of it, it may as well have never happened. In other words, for a claim to appear as legitimate, it needs to be captured through media to be seen. That is because a claim to sovereignty always depends on its recognition by others. By extension, the analysis of a claim entails the analysis of supporting media disseminated by the claimant in their effort to project power. Now each different cultural context has its own media outlets, etc. This is where our aforementioned analytical techniques come in. Part of open-source intelligence is the understanding that different social media platforms as well as news agencies, scholarly, and journalistic media outlets are different and have different uses in different cultural contexts.
Q: Earlier, you spoke about various analytical techniques to interrogate materials in your research. We know that representation and visualization are key to your practice. Can you speak on how you have projectively leveraged various media to communicate your findings in your exhibition?
The lab’s research-based debut exhibition transformed the display space in the Larry Richards Gallery of the UofT Daniels Building into scenes from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In four niches we displayed case types of buildings and infrastructure that Russia has instrumentalized to legitimize its claims to sovereignty; humanitarian aid operations, bank branches, internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities, respectively. Scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes, and tableaus created an immersive experience, revealing the key role that architecture plays in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. There was a conceptual reason for displaying case types as theatrical prop-like objects. These techniques from theatrical set model-making in the design of the exhibition were a nod to the theatricality of claims to sovereignty. In a way sovereignty, which has been a key term for my work, has been the driver for the design concept of the exhibition. If we untangle the very definition of this concept, it is a theatrical, performative one. It depends on being seen by a domestic or foreign audience.
![]()
Figure 4. Deconstructed scenes of internet and telephone facilities instrumentalized in the Russian invasion of Ukraine on display in ‘How to Steal a Country,’ Toronto, 2024.
Q: Finally, we’re interested in how your practice and research has informed your students’ works, in which you have asked them to projectively intervene in the built environment—first with a thorough analysis, and then a design.
I am glad you asked. This question about what we can refer to as the relationship between an analytical and a projective mode of design is an incredibly important one and key to my teaching. In my studio courses, I ask my students to work towards a project that serves the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable communities, such as Indigenous, diasporic, and exiled people, as well as other victims of imperial-colonial violence. My teaching comprises a series of teaching aids in various formats that allows students to better understand imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world—not just a historic event. This takes the form of lectures, which present my theoretical framework, as well as a number of key case studies. I then run a series of skills workshops in which I teach a range of techniques I have employed in practice and research.
I want to emphasize that I teach my students not to merely work in an analytical and descriptive mode of design in these political contexts but in a projective and prescriptive one. I think that it is not enough for students to merely raise awareness by presenting individual cases of how built objects have been instrumentalized for the projection of power and the legitimization of sovereignty claims. Rather, I ask my students to respond in the form of a design project of advocacy that can actually empower their communities of study. empower marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities. I really think that hegemonic architecture and infrastructure of power projection requires more than just maps but architecture and infrastructure to respond to. Our original training is in architectural design, after all, and it is important not to lose sight of but to return to this core expertise. Overlooked and understudied, many politically organized communities around the world have successfully constructed buildings and infrastructure for anti-imperial-colonial ends. These counterhegemonic design practices have been absent from introductory surveys of architectural education, but through this teaching and research, I’m working to turn the tides.
Thank you for having me. I am a licensed architect, urbanist, historian, educator, and the Founding Director of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab. I practice, research, and teach at the intersections of architecture, geography, politics, and media. My work has been concerned with the histories of space and power in the built environment and their entanglements with the present.
Q: You just opened your lab’s research-based debut exhibition, ‘How to Steal a Country’. Could you tell us more about its subject matters?
Generally speaking, the exhibition is about architecture as an instrument of power projection. More specifically, it details how Russia has instrumentalized architecture to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty from 2014 to its ongoing full-scale invasion. This project seeks to analyze, to decode and deconstruct, various case studies of buildings and infrastructure — innocuous built objects of the everyday — with nevertheless enormous implications for people affected by the invasion. These objects appear to be neither diplomatic nor military in function, which has rendered their use plausibly deniable, often helping them evade detection as potential threats.
Q: Conventionally, research on geopolitics is undertaken from scholars originally trained in law, in geography, in history, in other disciplines part of the social sciences but not necessarily in architecture. In terms of your practice, how does analyzing these conflicts through the lens of design contribute to the broader discourse?
This is an interesting question that I must admit I think about quite often—and I am perpetually frustrated by it. In part, this is because I really hope that the work that I do, as well as the work of others, who are a part of a small but emerging field at the intersections of space and power, can prove that architecture has a valid and valuable contribution to make to this discourse. I really believe that architecture as it pertains to media has a lot to offer through its analytical and projective techniques but is still catching up where other disciplines have already made ground on; for example, in the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities.
Q: We would like to come back to what you said last, to hear more about what you call out on a fundamental level, but for now, can you describe some of these techniques that you employ in your practice and research?
Many of the techniques I employ are part of an effort to develop a vocabulary that allows us to visually, materially, and spatially describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday. At the Vertical Geopolitics Lab, we bring together various techniques from architecture, geography, politics, and media literacy that we build upon and have started to further develop into a kind of ‘built environment literacy’. For now, I will just mention three key sets of analytical techniques that the lab has employed in its research.
“At the Vertical Geopolitics Lab, we bring together various techniques from architecture, geography, politics, and media literacy that we build upon and have started to further develop into a kind of ‘built environment literacy’.”
For example, we engage in open-source intelligence. We employ text-based discourse analysis and image-based visual analysis, which we jointly refer to as ‘written-visual decoding’. We also employ cartographic (GIS/EOS) drawing-based spatial analysis as well as architectural (CAD/3DM) drawing and digital 3D model-making-based spatial analysis, which we refer to as ‘material-spatial deconstruction’. The idea is for all these analytical techniques to allow us to read — to decode and deconstruct — how power has been written into the built environment using tools across architecture and the social sciences. These techniques have made their way into my teaching. In a series of skills workshops, I have taught a range of techniques I have employed in my practice and research for students.
Figure 2. Deconstructed scenes of child boarding and care facilities instrumentalized in the Russian invasion of Ukraine on display in ‘How to Steal a Country,’ Toronto, 2024.
Q: Through your integrated practice, research, and teaching you have developed a theoretical framework as well as practical techniques for what you refer to as ‘recognizing facts on the ground.’ Can you elaborate on how this came about?
Exactly ten years ago, actually, in Melbourne, Australia, I remember a key moment being when I taught a design studio course in landscape architecture, which investigated how the discipline has become central to the geopolitics of claiming sovereignty through establishing a territorial footprint in the South China Sea. I had asked students to analytically and projectively explore the performative nature through which various countries have claimed sovereignty over landscape features in the South China Sea with the aid of seemingly banal built objects.
We didn’t know of your background in landscape architecture.
Well, that is because I am not really a landscape architect — by training that is. I was formerly recruited by a landscape architecture program as a substitute for a core faculty member. It was a good place to be in, but peculiar because I had not originally been trained in landscape architecture. I had just freshly graduated with a postprofessional degree in urban design, which I had enrolled in following back-to-back undergraduate and graduate degrees in architecture.
I suppose I had been approached due to my existing experience in practice during my studies, as well as for having devised unconventional approaches to studio-based design teaching. For example, during my postprofessional education, I had worked for a practitioner at the intersections of architecture and landscape architecture, working on various design competitions, exhibitions, a major publication, etc. Also during my full-time studies at Harvard, I had already been appointed at a local university in Boston, devising and leading my own design studio courses in architecture. I mention all this because it puts into perspective how my teaching engagement in Melbourne felt both familiar and strangely liberating to me at the same time. With my interdisciplinary background, I was entrusted with devising and leading a series of studio courses to essentially teach what I saw fit. Despite my experiences across a range of disciplines and modes of design at a young age, given that I had only just graduated, this was a special and formative moment that in hindsight I am very glad I did not pass up on.
Figure 3. Overview of ‘How to Steal a Country’ in the Larry Richards Gallery at the UofT Daniels, Toronto, 2024.
Q: In terms of your workflow and process, your research spans many scales, from continental and regional scales to the scale of buildings and handheld objects. When do you operationalize different scales and what does this multiscalar approach afford?
Preceding scholarly analysis of the causes and consequences of sovereignty’s conceptual evolution is very sparse and has focused on either micro or macro levels. At the micro level, built objects are often studied too specifically without considering their wider social contexts, while at the macro level, wider aspects are often studied too broadly without considering their specific physical manifestations. Instead, a crossscalar analysis offers greater meso level insights into the movement, siting, form, function, and scale of communicative acts and sovereignty markers within wider communo-spatial imaginaries of sovereignty, examining how multiple interacting scales are constructed and experienced through built interventions on the ground.
“Many people still lack the vocabulary to describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday. Built objects of the everyday can be instrumentalized to convey subversive messages of power.”
Q: We’d like to revisit your earlier mention that architecture is still catching up with other disciplines in the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities. What does your work aim to call out on a fundamental level?
There is a lack of general understanding of imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world. To not recognize the workings of this violence around us is a risk. Many people still lack the vocabulary to describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday. Built objects of the everyday can be instrumentalized to convey subversive messages of power. Still, the prevailing conception is that power dynamics are shaped by and conducted through written policy documents and cartographic drawings. This actually connects to what you said earlier about how research on geopolitics is conventionally associated with scholars originally trained in law, in geography, in history, etc. Visual, material, and spatial practices of power projection require visual, material, and spatial techniques of analysis. This is where the work of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab comes in. We seek to recentre the study of how sovereignty is acquired and disputed as a practice-based matter of space and power in the built environment.
Q: You have studied a number of discrete geopolitical conflicts from different regions. How do your tools and analyses change across different cultural contexts, if at all?
It is true that the lab has worked on projects across many different cultural contexts. Here it has of course been incredibly important for us to be specific and sensitive to each context. A way of approaching this has been for us to be staffed with team members that have particular ethno-linguistic skills, knowledge, and experience relevant to each project context. We have also reached out to and actively worked with local communities. At the same time, I would like to point out here that, contrary to what may be expected, this work does not necessarily require on-site field-based research but can be conducted remotely, so to say. You can plant a flag or construct a building as a marker of sovereignty, to make a claim in a very specific place, but if you do not document this flag or building in various media such as taking a photo or making a drawing of it, it may as well have never happened. In other words, for a claim to appear as legitimate, it needs to be captured through media to be seen. That is because a claim to sovereignty always depends on its recognition by others. By extension, the analysis of a claim entails the analysis of supporting media disseminated by the claimant in their effort to project power. Now each different cultural context has its own media outlets, etc. This is where our aforementioned analytical techniques come in. Part of open-source intelligence is the understanding that different social media platforms as well as news agencies, scholarly, and journalistic media outlets are different and have different uses in different cultural contexts.
“...for a claim to appear as legitimate, it needs to be captured through media to be seen.”
Q: Earlier, you spoke about various analytical techniques to interrogate materials in your research. We know that representation and visualization are key to your practice. Can you speak on how you have projectively leveraged various media to communicate your findings in your exhibition?
The lab’s research-based debut exhibition transformed the display space in the Larry Richards Gallery of the UofT Daniels Building into scenes from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In four niches we displayed case types of buildings and infrastructure that Russia has instrumentalized to legitimize its claims to sovereignty; humanitarian aid operations, bank branches, internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities, respectively. Scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes, and tableaus created an immersive experience, revealing the key role that architecture plays in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. There was a conceptual reason for displaying case types as theatrical prop-like objects. These techniques from theatrical set model-making in the design of the exhibition were a nod to the theatricality of claims to sovereignty. In a way sovereignty, which has been a key term for my work, has been the driver for the design concept of the exhibition. If we untangle the very definition of this concept, it is a theatrical, performative one. It depends on being seen by a domestic or foreign audience.
Figure 4. Deconstructed scenes of internet and telephone facilities instrumentalized in the Russian invasion of Ukraine on display in ‘How to Steal a Country,’ Toronto, 2024.
Q: Finally, we’re interested in how your practice and research has informed your students’ works, in which you have asked them to projectively intervene in the built environment—first with a thorough analysis, and then a design.
I am glad you asked. This question about what we can refer to as the relationship between an analytical and a projective mode of design is an incredibly important one and key to my teaching. In my studio courses, I ask my students to work towards a project that serves the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable communities, such as Indigenous, diasporic, and exiled people, as well as other victims of imperial-colonial violence. My teaching comprises a series of teaching aids in various formats that allows students to better understand imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world—not just a historic event. This takes the form of lectures, which present my theoretical framework, as well as a number of key case studies. I then run a series of skills workshops in which I teach a range of techniques I have employed in practice and research.
I want to emphasize that I teach my students not to merely work in an analytical and descriptive mode of design in these political contexts but in a projective and prescriptive one. I think that it is not enough for students to merely raise awareness by presenting individual cases of how built objects have been instrumentalized for the projection of power and the legitimization of sovereignty claims. Rather, I ask my students to respond in the form of a design project of advocacy that can actually empower their communities of study. empower marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities. I really think that hegemonic architecture and infrastructure of power projection requires more than just maps but architecture and infrastructure to respond to. Our original training is in architectural design, after all, and it is important not to lose sight of but to return to this core expertise. Overlooked and understudied, many politically organized communities around the world have successfully constructed buildings and infrastructure for anti-imperial-colonial ends. These counterhegemonic design practices have been absent from introductory surveys of architectural education, but through this teaching and research, I’m working to turn the tides.