Dan Pitera, FAIA
Dan Pitera, FAIA is a political and social activist masquerading as an architect. Before being appointed Dean of the Detroit Mercy School of Architecture in August 2019, he was the Executive Director for 20 years at the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC), which just received the National AIA’s 2017 Whitney M. Young Jr. Award and was included in the 2017 Curry Stone Design Award’s Social Design Circle. Dan co-led the Civic Engagement process for the Detroit Works Project Long Term Planning in 2010. On January 9, 2013, the Long Term Planning team released its decision-making framework titled: Detroit Future City. DCDC’s engagement process was included in the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum’s exhibition: By The People and the DCDC’s Roaming Table has been added to the Smithsonian Institute’s permanent collection.