Spotlight on Design: Toni L. Griffin

Since 1997, the National Building Museum’s Spotlight on Design series has presented leading voices across architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and design, offering a window into the creative journeys and cultural influences that shape their work.

On October 7, Spotlight on Design features urban planner and designer Toni L. Griffin, returning to Washington, DC, 25 years after the start of her tenure as DC Deputy Planning Director and Director of Design for the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation.

Today, Griffin is founder of urbanAC and founding director of the Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, bringing together planning, design, and research in work focused on more just cities and communities. The relationship between research and practice across her work connects naturally to this year’s Research & Development theme and its focus on the questions, context, and methods that shape creative work.

Griffin will present the 2026 Edward A. Feiner Public Realm Lecture, followed by a conversation with The New York Times journalist Emily Badger.

Register through the National Building Museum