Deanna Van Buren

Deanna Van Buren Speaker Biography

Deanna Van Buren is one of the national leaders researching, formulating, and advocating for restorative justice centers, a radical transformation of the criminal justice system. She currently sits on the national board of Architects Designs and Planners for Social Responsibility and is the founding partner of the FOURM design studio and Designing Justice Designing Spaces, an architecture, and development firm seeking to use the profession to address structural inequity and to end mass incarceration.

Deanna’s professional career spans16 years as a design lead and project manager in the offices of Eric R. Kuhne & Associates London, The Buchan Group Sydney, Michelle Kauffman Designs and Perkins + Will on urban design, domestic, institutional and education projects in the bay area, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Recent work with her practice includes the Syracuse Peacemaking Center in New York, the first of its kind in the United States and Restore, a multi-use hub for restorative justice and workforce development in east Oakland. Deanna is currently conducting the first design studios with incarcerated men and women and is a recent awardee of the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist grant to develop a prototype mobile resource village. Deanna received her BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia, M. Arch from Columbia University and is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.