Erasing Gainesville’s spirit of place

With architect, educator, artist, and activist Kim Tanzer
November 9th from 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Kim Tanzer served as Dean and Edward E. Elson Professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture from 2009-2014, and retired as Professor Emerita in 2016. Prior to her service at U Va. she taught architecture at the University of Florida for 22 years. Her scholarship and activism focuses on embodied knowledge and transformation, particularly through shared spaces.

As dean at Virginia, with her faculty she launched and funded the School’s first PhD. program, and created several research centers to support the Ph.D. and strengthen the School’s research culture. She developed the first University-wide interdisciplinary undergraduate minor, in Global Sustainability, and an undergraduate major in design thinking.

While at Florida, Tanzer worked extensively on community design projects, especially in Gainesville’s historic, African American Fifth Avenue/Pleasant Street neighborhood. She was active for a decade in creating a culture of shared governance through the University’s Faculty Senate, and served as Chair of the Faculty Senate and member of the University’s Board of Trustees.

She co-founded Gainesville’s Florida Community Design Center and Alice’s Friends, dedicated to preserving green space on the UF campus, and served as national president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

She is our speaker for November 9th. She will speak on “Erasing Gainesville’s spirit of place”. She has an editorial in the Gaiinesville Sun this past Sunday with the same title. She was hoping that that editorial could be available to people who would be hearing her talk.

Note that FFSF events are now online, hosted through Zoom. If you are a Florida Free Speech Forum member, you will automatically be sent an invitation to this event. Otherwise, to receive an invitation, please apply for membership.