And even in Poughkeepsie, my hometown, we thought about old industrial infrastructure.We wondered: Could we use arts and culture and design to revitalize this city and other Rust Belt cities across our nation,and turn them into centers for innovation and growth?In each of these projects, we asked a simple question: What more can architecture do?And by asking that question, we were forced to consider how we could create jobs,how we could source regionally and how we could invest in the dignity of the communities in which we serve.I have learned that architecture can be a transformative engine for change.About a year ago, I read an article about a tireless and intrepid civil rights leader named Bryan Stevenson.And Bryan had a bold architectural vision.He and his team had been documenting the over 4,000 lynchings of African-Americans that have happened in the American South.And they had a plan to mark every county where these lynchings occurred,and build a national memorial to the victims of lynching in Montgomery, Alabama.
