Chandra Laborde
California history: radical environmental communes in Northern California, genealogies of spiritual environmentalism.
Gender and women's studies: ecofeminism, decolonizing queer aesthetics, queer and trans ecologies, lesbian lands.
Environmental studies: posthuman ecologies, degrowth, climate collapse and the built environment.
I am an architect, architectural theorist, and historian. My research focuses on the intersection of gender, ecology, justice, and the built environment. My dissertation investigates the ways in which feminist, queer, and trans ecology can help build a cross-movement coalition to liberate the historic building of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District since the building is currently owned by a transnational private prison corporation called GEO Group. I am concerned about the role of architects during climate catastrophe, leading my research towards a new understanding of the agency of nature. I hold a Master of Science in Architecture from UC Berkeley with a thesis called “Spiritual Environmentalism in Druid Heights: Between Preservation and Composting;” a Master in Advanced Architectural Design from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, with the thesis called “Other Ways of Viewing Contemporary Religious Architecture;” and a Bachelor in Architecture from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City, with the thesis “Contributions to a Construction of an Ecological Thought for Dwelling.” I have professional design experience with ecological architecture in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.
GSI, ARCH 170b An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism: Prehistory to the Renaissance, with Prof. Andrew Shanken, Fall 2024.
GSI, ARCH 170b An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism: 1500 to the Present, with Prof. Matthew Lasner, Spring 2024.
Adjunct Professor: Architectural Theory, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, Fall 2023.
GSI, ARCH 112 The Social Life of Buildings, with Prof. Catherine Covey, Fall 2022.
GSI, ARCH 170B An Historical Survey of Architecture and Urbanism: 1500 to the Present, Prof. Margaret Crawford, Spring 2022.
GSI, ARCH 130 Introduction to Architectural Design Theory and Criticism, with Prof. Greig Crysler, Fall 2021.
GSR, Pilot pedagogical assessment in architecture syllabus, with Prof. Renee Chow, Summer 2021
Reader, ARCH 130 Introduction to Architectural Design Theory and Criticism, with Prof. Greig Crysler, Spring 2021.
Chancellor's Awards for Public Service, Graduate Student - Civic Engagement, University of California, Berkeley, 2024.
Exhibition: “Transition Times Part II: Re-configuring Structures of Power at Turk and Taylor,” CounterPulse, Tenderloin, San Francisco, (co-curated with X Vazquez), 2024.
Exhibition: “Transition Times: Re-membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin,” Tenderloin Museum, San Francisco, (co-curated with Stathis G. Yeros), 2024.
Graham Foundation Grants to Individuals: “Transecological (Re)Imaginations in the Tenderloin,” 2023
American Society for Environmental History ASEH-FHS Graduate Student Essay Prize: Environmental History Fellow for the article: “Building a Country Women's Commune: Spatializing Ecological Feminism in Northern California during the 1970s,” 2023.
Draper Architectural History Research Fund for the project “Architecture after the Anthropocene: Unearthing Trans History in the Tenderloin,” 2022-present.
Working group “Transecological Imaginations: Spatial Theory and Transformative Practices” funded by the Townsend Center for the Humanities and the Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley, 2022-present.
Exhibition: “Queer Sites: Bay Area and Beyond,” Library at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, (co-curated with Stathis G. Yeros), 2022.
Draper Architectural History Research Fund for the project “Architectures of Queer Ecologies: Handmade Aesthetics in Lesbian Lands,” 2021.
Diversity Platform Award, College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley, with the project “Shelter Garden Networks.” (convened with Molly O’Brien), 2020.
Laborde, Chandra, and LeBel Sabine, eds. Lesbian Earth. Journal of Lesbian Studies. Taylor & Francis, (forthcoming) 2025.
Laborde, Chandra. “A Transecological Poetics of Reterritorialization of San Francisco’s Tenderloin.” Transgender Studies Quarterly TSQ, Trans* Ecologies (forthcoming) 2024.
Crysler, Greig C., Yanin Kramsky, Chandra M. Laborde, and Stathis G. Yeros. “Spatializing Queer Ecologies.” In The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, edited by Farzaneh Haghighi and Nikolina Bobic, Routledge. Vol. Volume II. London, (forthcoming)
Laborde, Chandra, and Stathis G. Yeros, eds. Exhibition Catalog for Transition Times: Re-Membering Anticarceral Resistance in the Tenderloin. TurkxTaylor Initiative, 2024.
Laborde, Chandra, and X Vazquez, eds. Exhibition Catalog for Transition Times II: Reconfiguring Structures of Power. TurkxTaylor Initiative, 2024.
Laborde, Chandra. “Transecological Time in the Tenderloin.” Arkisnak, no. Issue I: delay of the maximum (2024).
Laborde, Chandra M., and Santi, Ettore. “Queer Lands: Gendered Experiments in Two Green Heterotopias.” You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography, University of Arizona XXIII, no. queer ecologies (2022): 30–37.
Laborde, Chandra M., and Stathis G. Yeros. “Queer Ecological Imaginations.” Ground Up Journal, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, 10, no. Breathe (2021): 126–33.
