Emerging from the 2026 and inaugural edition of the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship Program, join Rayshad Dorsey, Hi’ilei Hobart and Jake Hobart as they discuss their approaches to the complex social and legal processes that determine contemporary conditions of vacancy in St. Louis and Honolulu.

Their conversation will share materials from exploratory fieldwork in both cities, as well as surface engagement with the CCA’s Collection through the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, and others.

Vacancy, through their active design interventions and speculations, becomes an invitational condition that demands listening to community experiences and histories of land, displacement, and belonging.

This event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so registration is required. Admission to the museum is included with your registration.

Rayshad Dorsey is an architectural designer, assistant professor of architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, cofounding director of the design collective Partners of Place — recipient of The 2023 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, which “recognizes exemplary and provocative work by emerging architects and designers” — and founding partner of Studio Rayshad Dorsey. Through his teaching, research, and practice, he explores how architecture can surface collective memory and cultural narratives, positioning spatial design as a lens for responsive and community-centered futures.

Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart (Kanaka Maoli) is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University. An interdisciplinary scholar, she researches and teaches on issues of settler colonialism, environment, and Indigenous sovereignty. Her first book, Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment (Duke University Press, 2022) is the recipient of several awards, including the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) Best First Book Prize. She is at work on her second book, Pleasure Seekers: Land, Power, and Colonial Parkspace, which examines the history of the Hawai’i State Parks system in order to theorize settler colonialism as a pleasure-seeking practice.

Jake Hobart is a creative director with decades of experience across graphic design, art direction, strategy, branding, and interactive design. He was most recently Creative Director at Salt & Stone, and previously Design Director at Air Company. Before that he co-founded XXIX, a New York based design studio. He is a co-founder of Index Space, an independent creative community space with locations around the world. He was also co-founder of @telier, a workspace exchange program for creatives. In addition to work he has taught at Pratt Institute in the Communication Design program and has lectured and given workshops around the world.