Deanna Van Buren

Deanna Van Buren is co-founder of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces, a nonprofit harnessing the power of design and development to transform people and communities. After starting her first company in 2011, she became a national leader in formulating and advocating for restorative justice centers, a radical transformation of justice architecture. Her passion for exploring the intersection of design and culture has been fueled by her work as a design lead on urban design, institutional, and education projects in the Bay Area, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Recent projects with DJDS include the Syracuse Peacemaking Center in New York and Restore, a multi-use hub for restorative justice and workforce development in East Oakland, California. Deanna is currently conducting the first design studios with incarcerated students 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 and her MArch from Columbia University, and is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.