This event will have ASL interpretation.

Chris Downey

Architect • Architecture for the Blind

Chris Downey, AIA ,has over 35 years of experience as an architect—continuing without sight since 2008. Leveraging this altered perspective as a differentiating strength, he now specializes in projects for the blind and low vision along with the broader disability community as well as cultural, transit and technology projects.

Appointed as the inaugural UC Berkeley, Department of Architecture Lifchez Visiting Professor of Practice in Social Justice in Design, Chris was honored to teach a graduate architecture studio in 2022 through which he was the first blind architect known to have taught an architecture studio in the United States. He serves as chair of the California Commission on Disability Access and served on the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind Board of Directors for 11 years, including four years as its chair. Chris and his work have been featured around the world, including: 60 Minutes, England’s Victoria & Albert Museum, and a TED talk: Design with the Blind in Mind with over a million views.

In all that he does, Chris weaves his personal and professional experience through to creatively and respectfully curate a sense of resilience, hope, and delight through the power of design, whether it is seen or not.

William Leddy

Founding Principal • Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects

A founding Principal of LMSA in San Francisco, William Leddy, FAIA, believes that architecture has an important role to play in leading our communities toward a just, carbon-neutral future for all. For over 30 years Leddy has been a national leader in the design of regenerative architecture that celebrates our place in the natural world. His firm has received over 175 regional, national, and international design awards and has been recognized by numerous organizations including the American Institute of Architects, the French Institute of Architects, the Norwegian Association of Architects, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Urban Land Institute. LMSA is one of only two firms in the nation to have received eleven or more AIA COTE Top Ten Green Project awards—the Institute’s highest award for ecological design excellence.

Leddy has lectured widely and served as visiting professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, the California College of the Arts, as the Howard A. Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of California, Berkeley, and as the Pietro Belluschi Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon. Leddy was elected to the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2003 and has served on the National AIA Committee on the Environment Advisory Group (as chair in 2013). He currently serves as AIA California Vice President of Climate Action and Chair of the AIA California Committee on the Environment.

Stuart Shell

Associate Principal • BranchPattern

Stu Shell, AIA, LEED AP, RESET AP, works with an interdisciplinary team at BranchPattern to create building solutions that place people first. As an architect-turned-researcher, he focuses on what occupants need to be healthy and engaged. Stu loves sharing his knowledge of building science and believes that nature enriches our lives and is working to integrate biodiversity into the design process.

Stu is dedicated to transforming design to help people and organizations thrive. He collaborates closely with customers to craft solutions that align with both environmental goals and the evolving needs of the real estate sector. As a licensed architect with broad technical expertise, Stu is a trusted resource in the industry.

Stu specializes in high-performance building design and indoor environmental quality, always keeping occupant well-being at the forefront. Internationally, he has presented on engineering the occupant experience for CIBSE. He has degrees from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Nebraska and has taught systems integration to architecture students at the latter. Stu believes that the design and construction industry should reflect the community, and has mentored in public schools through STEM programs for fifteen years

Alexa Vaughn

Landscape Designer & Accessibility Specialist • Design With Disabled People Now

Alexa Vaughn (ASLA, FAAR) is a Deaf landscape designer and accessibility specialist (DeafScape/Sasaki), and a PhD student in Architecture + Urban Design (UCLA). She seeks to bridge the gap between practice and scholarship and to address ableism, exclusion, and inaccessibility in the built environment through a lens of critical disability studies. She is an expert in design for the Deaf community (DeafSpace/DeafScape) and in facilitating engagement of the disabled community in the design process: she works to center lived experience as expertise and to design beyond minimal compliance.

Alexa holds both a BA and MLA in Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work has been published and featured widely, and she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture (2022-23).