After teaching for more than 16 years at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture and serving for six years as department chair, Rashida Ng returned to her alma mater as Presidential Associate Professor of Architecture in the spring of 2022. This July, she will become chair of the undergraduate architecture program. A registered architect with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, she is also the principal of RNG Design and has practiced with firms in Georgia and Connecticut as well as Pennsylvania. Ng explores urban housing and new materials, and sees this moment in architecture education as a watershed moment for housing policy, urban design, and urban history.
“When I began my academic career, I initially focused on material performance,” says Ng. “As my work matured, I started to ask more questions about the ethical responsibilities of architects to the environment and then the social conditions of the world. I think that architects have acknowledged that buildings and people cause climate change and that we have an ethical and professional responsibility to address this issue. However, we are still developing an understanding of our moral obligation to support the biodiversity of the natural world and to social equity.”
“The work that I’m doing now is once again focused on housing, specifically housing insecurity through the lens of social equity and environmental justice,” she says. “This includes flood vulnerability, urban heat, gentrification, and the economic and social factors that lead to unhoused populations. It also examines correlations between historical practices of redlining and persistent health disparities in communities of color.”
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