In The Heat of Change: Justice, Healing & Design

As the days grow longer and the air thickens with summer heat, we step into a season that has long carried the weight of reckoning and the promise of renewal. June, in particular, holds layers of memory and meaning—Juneteenth, Stonewall, World Environment Day. These are not isolated commemorations, but moments that pulse with shared struggle, resistance, and the demand for justice.
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At Tikun Collective, we believe architecture and design are not just tools of aesthetics or function—they are languages of history, truth, and transformation. As we reflect on these milestones, we ask: How can design help hold the pain of the past while opening paths to healing? What does it mean to create spaces where justice is not only named but lived?

https://yesandlipmanhearne.com/insights/news/the-intersection-of-pride-and-juneteenth/

​Memory as Catalyst: Juneteenth and Stonewall

Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when enslaved Black Americans in Texas were finally informed of their freedom—two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had legally ended slavery. It’s a day of joy, reflection, and mourning. A celebration, yes—but one laced with the painful truth that justice was delayed, not freely given.

Four years after Juneteenth was first celebrated, another transformative moment occurred: the Stonewall uprising in 1969. It began in the early hours of a hot June morning, when queer and trans people—many of them Black and Brown—stood their ground against police brutality and said, “No more.”
These events remind us that liberation is never abstract. It happens in specific places: a plantation, a bar, a city street. These spaces become stages of resistance and, later, of memory. They are not backdrops; they are active participants in our collective story.
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Design has always been part of this story—either as the silent architecture of oppression or the framework for imagining freedom.

https://www.robertharding.com/preview/832-400227/lbgtq-flag-blue-sky-city-rio-de-janeiro/

​During Pride Month, we also honor the brilliance of the LGBTQIA+ community—not just through celebration but through acknowledgment of creative legacy. Queer people have long imagined and created what did not yet exist. This visionary spirit—bold, expansive, boundary-breaking—is alive in Tikun’s design work.
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We are inspired by queerness as a way of seeing: fluid, relational, unbound by binaries. It reminds us to ask better questions, challenge assumptions and biases, and embrace complexity. Whether through spatial arrangements, narrative storytelling, or material choices, queer creativity teaches us to design for multiplicity and joy, not conformity.

In this, we see design as a form of both protest and possibility—a canvas for futures not yet born.
Design is not a neutral act. It’s a choice: to remember or erase, to oppress or uplift, to dominate or heal. At Tikun, we choose to design for liberation. This means designing spaces that tell the truth, honor histories, and create conditions for collective thriving.

https://massdesigngroup.org/index.php/work/design/national-memorial-peace-and-justice

​Designing for Dignity: National Memorial for Peace and Justice

A profound example where design is used as a vessel for justice is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Designed by the MASS Design Group and the Equal Justice Initiative, this memorial honors over 4,400 victims of racial terror lynching. The site does not shy away from grief—it invites it. But it also does something more: it transforms pain into dignity.

Rather than reinforcing despair, the memorial offers space to feel, witness, and transform. It makes visible what America has long tried to forget. And in doing so, it provides a model for how design can foster truth-telling and healing.
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This is the kind of work that shapes our practice at Tikun. We believe architecture must hold more than structure—it must hold memory, responsibility, and the courage to imagine something different. 

https://www.mcknight.org/pt/news-ideas/rebuilding-reimagining-5-years-after-george-floyd/#vc_images-carousel-1-1748970681

​We’re honored to support Pangea World Theater, an organization that carries the torch of liberation through storytelling and performance. Pangea’s work serves as a living archive of culture, resistance, and reimagination—amplifying voices across identities, geographies, and generations. Their performances retell silenced histories, celebrate overlooked cultural wisdoms, and create spaces where all bodies and truths belong.

A client, partner, and friend since the spring of 2020, Pangea is a founding member of Longfellow Rising, a community-led response to the uprising following the murder of George Floyd. For nearly 30 years, this visionary theater company has rented space to bring its work to life. That’s about to change.Efforts are now underway for Pangea to purchase and expand into a permanent home—The Center for Peace and Justice—a space that honors both place and people. Registered under the ILFI Core Green Building Certification, the new center will embody regenerative and restorative practice.

As Pangea prepares to inhabit a space of their own, their capacity for creative freedom expands. A dedicated home means more than just walls—it means sovereignty over how stories are told, how art is shaped, and how community is nurtured.Much more to come about this incredible organization, their story and our work in honoring the efforts to bring their vision to life - stay tuned!

In the meantime learn a little more here.

https://www.nature-museum.org/nature-notes-blog/2020/6/29/our-racial-justice-statement

​Deepening Regeneration: What Change Demands of Us

In a world ever so changing—socially, politically, ecologically—design cannot remain neutral. At Tikun, we ask ourselves regularly: How are these shifts informing our work? And the answer is clear—they require us to deepen our regenerative practice.

To us, regeneration isn’t just a technical framework. It’s a moral and relational one. It asks us to move beyond sustaining the present toward repairing the past and co-creating a just future. It means listening deeply to land and community. It means understanding land not as property but as a relationship. It means designing in dialogue with those most impacted by harm.

We draw strength from the communities we serve, and from the wisdom embedded in the Earth itself. This is especially clear as we approach World Environment Day. The fight for environmental justice is inseparable from social justice. The same communities that carry the burden of historical oppression often bear the brunt of climate change and environmental degradation.
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To be regenerative is to honor these entanglements, these interdependancies. It is to understand that liberation—of people, of land, of ecosystems—must happen together, or not at all.

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This month Tikun has taken action on the following - 
Become a signatory to the Design Justice Network's Principles
And gone beyond our land acknowledgment to donate to the MN Honor Tax 

What does liberation look like in your community? Where do you find spaces of healing, memory, and beauty?
​We would love to hear from you. Send us your thoughts, images, or favorite places of transformation. Together, we are building more than spaces—we are building movements, we’re building a paradigm shift.

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