This TED Talk features designer, urbanist, and social change agent Liz Ogbu, recorded live at TED Women 2017.

I grew up in a family of social scientists, but I was a weird child who drew.

From making sketches of the models in my mom's Sears catalog,

to a bedroom so full of my craft projects

that was like my own personal art gallery,

I lived to make.

I don't think anyone in my family was surprised

when I became an architect.

But to be honest with you,

the real foundation of the architect I became

was not laid in that bedroom art gallery,

but by the conversations around my family's dinner table.

There were stories of how people lived and connected to one another,

from the impact of urban migration on a village in Zambia

to the complex healthcare needs of the homeless in the streets of San Francisco.

Now it would be fair if you're looking over your seatmate and wondering,

what the hell does that have to do with architecture?

Well, all of these stories involved space

and how it did or didn't accommodate us.

The fact is, we share some of our deepest connections in physical space,

and our stories play out even in this crazy age of texting and tweeting

in physical space.

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