TEDxSB - Kim Yasuda & Seetha Raghupathy - The Place of the University in a Shrinking World

Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara and co-director of the system wide University of California Institute for Research in the Arts (UCIRA). For the past 5 years, Yasuda has activated university teaching with her public arts research, developing initiatives that forge partnerships between academic environs and the local/regional communities in which they are situated, exploring potential intersections between a creative practice and community development. Yasuda has collaborated with her students on off-site projects, including a public art plan for an affordable farm-worker housing complex in Oxnard, CA, the repurposing of shipping containers into mobile art studios and the recent public art project initiatives in the college community of Isla Vista, California.

Seetha Raghupathy received her Bachelors in Architecture from Anna University, India and a Masters in Urban Design from Harvard University. She has worked for multinational firms including Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP and RTKL Associates Inc., in the United States and also has research and work experience in India and South Africa. Her interests include affordable housing, planning and design for low-income settlements and the dynamics of transformation of Asian cities to Global cities. She is deeply committed to local/regional community design and a socially conscious practice. Raghupathy is currently a designer-in-residence at UCSB and is developing a planning road map and community network through a participatory planning process in order to address the multiple challenges facing the University adjacent community of Isla Vista.

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