Memory is a Verb: An Architect's Dedication to Justice

Engaging with the question of how historical memory can be inscribed into public spaces and our built environment raises a whole host of questions. How can we create innovative proposals to work through and shed light over difficult memories and past and present injustices? How can we create justice-centered works, programs and organizations aimed at eliciting new forms of memory and ethical consciousness -new forms of visibility- in our democratic public spaces? How do we position ourselves and how do we envision our roles as architects, artists, designers and cultural agents when working on such projects understood as spaces for reflection, engagement, and action?

Julián Bonder brings his perspective as an Argentine Jew whose family escaped Nazi Germany, to his projects around the world. These are dedicated to connecting past and present, inviting visitors to engage in dialogues, reckoning, and action. Bonder’s work, as an educator and a practitioner, along with his scholarship and advocacy, is based on an understanding of architecture as a life-affirming endeavor deeply linked to history and memory, and to our social, political, and cultural existence.

Julián Bonder was born in New York and raised in Buenos Aires. He is principal of Julian Bonder & Associates and partner at Wodiczko + Bonder (Cambridge Massachusetts). He is Professor of Architecture at Roger Williams University, and has held teaching appointments at Syracuse, Nebraska, Harvard and in Buenos Aires. Bonder’s work on Argentina’s Desaparecidos, civil rights, the Holocaust, September 11, and slavery include the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University and with Wodiczko the Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France, and proposals for the Canadian National Holocaust Monument and the Martin Luther King, Jr. & Coretta Scott King Memorial in Boston. Bonder is active in EUROM (European Observatory of Memories) and is a member of the Symbolic Reparations Research Project. His work has received numerous honors and he has been published in a variety of journals. He received degrees from Universidad de Buenos Aires and Harvard, and is recipient of a 2025 Distinguished Professor Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.