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The common perception of the architecture industry remains dominated by the ideology of "architect as auteur." It is reinforced by ubiquitous, striking visual representations that most often define global practice. Memorialized in glossy photographs and renderings, the heavyweights of our built environment stand out as monuments, as if defying time. While much of the professional and academic institutions of architecture continue the longstanding pursuit of the monument, the tradition of Public Interest Design (PID) celebrates a messier process, namely the embrace of a mosaic. PID elevates not objects in space but people occupying space, the relationships they create, and the way they create them. Public interest stands above the monumental space producing architecture of temporality, event, contingency, chance, and dynamic movement. DesignBuildBLUFF, the University of Utah's graduate Design/Build program, seems to have planted itself squarely in between what we call the mosaic and the monument. It is housed in the School of Architecture, offering the opportunity for first-year Masters in Architecture students to spend a year working with a client to design and build a project. After the first semester designing and developing construction documents, the class moves more than 300 miles south to Bluff, Utah where they spend a second semester building the project as a team. The program was founded in 2000 by Hank Louis as an elective for students to get hands-on experience building their own designs in a place where building codes are much less restrictive (Navajo Nation). Formally integrated into the university's academic structure in 2013, the typical outcome of each program year is a newly built home for a family in need, designed and constructed by the students themselves. The Little Water House (2013) highlights the concept of aging in place. Lone Tree (2017) in partnership with Dennehotso Chapter has become the first recognized sweat equity project in Navajo Nation. Cedar Hall (2016) and Fire Mesa (2018) both serve as community spaces in the town of Bluff, Utah. Together, these projects synthesize a new path forward in the practice of Public Interest Design/Build. As four recent graduates of the program, we reflect on our experiences in two completed projects, consider the conflicting goals and limitations that drove our work, and offer strategies toward a better practice of Public Interest Design/Build. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the experiences of adults conceived following sperm donation, who were registered with a voluntary DNA linking register and considers: how awareness of being donor-conceived affected their identity and family relationships; and the process of searching for their donor and donor-conceived siblings. The views and experiences of donor-conceived adults has, until recently, been a relatively neglected research area. This study is the first, to our knowledge, to consider the experiences of donor-conceived adults using a DNA-based register. This paper presents qualitative data from a questionnaire-based study with 65 adults conceived following sperm donation. It examines how ideas of relatedness, kinship and identity are enacted and how narrative certainties are challenged by opening up new conceptions of what it means to be ‘related’. No single story of being donor-conceived emerged - with competing narratives about the effects and implications for respondents’ kinship relationships and sense of identity. The knowledge of being donor-conceived could be both a powerful disrupter and a consolidator of existing family relationships. This study sheds light on how identity and kinship relationships are negotiated and managed by donor-conceived adults, both with their existing family and donor ‘relations’, and how these can change over the life-course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article considers the disclosure, sharing and exchange of information on being donor conceived within families, drawing on data from a study undertaken with donor‐conceived adults registered with UK Donor Link (a voluntary DNA‐linking register). This paper considers the narratives of how respondents found out they were donor‐conceived and what events triggered disclosure of this information. This paper then goes on to examine the role secrecy played in their family life and uses the concept of ‘display’ to explore how secrecy affected their relationships with their immediate and extended family. Secrets are notoriously ‘leaky’ and we found complex patterns of knowing and uncertainty about whom in the family knew that the person was donor‐conceived. We argue that what is kept secret and from whom provides insights into the multifaceted web of social relationships that can be created by donor‐conception, and how knowledge can be managed and controlled in attempts to display and maintain family narratives of biogenetic connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]