Archinect - Features

A Conversation with Curtis Moody, FAIA on What It Means to Help Shape a Future for Black Architects

2020-02-29T07:00:00-05:00

Within the realm of architectural practice, the need to write and re-frame the narratives and contributions of women in architecture, Black architects, and other minority-identifying designers has gained increasing urgency in recent years. And while architects like Paul Revere Williams, Phillip Freelon, Norma Merrick Sklarek, Zena Howard, Gabrielle Bullock, and Kimberly Dowdell are nearly household names in design, these architects constitute but a few of Black architects who have impacted the profession.

Curtis Moody, a renowned architect based in Columbus, Ohio who has been practicing for over 38 years, is another such architect. When he first started his practice back in 1982, his goal was not only to establish a thriving architecture practice but also build a firm that would be a representation of a group that is often overlooked and misrepresented. Since then, he has expanded Moody Nolan into a practice consisting of 230 employees with 12 offices across the U.S.

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A Black Architecture Education Experience

2019-04-23T10:52:00-04:00

Recently I experienced a changing incident with a professor who was reviewing my work alongside that of my classmates after a pin-up. He was excited about all the work and decided to issue individual comparisons to architects in the field. He went down the line commenting to my [white] classmates: "You could be like Eisenman,” "You could be like Frank Gehry," etc. When he got to me, he failed to think of an architect who looked like me, and instead said that I could "be like Obama," because there aren’t many black architects.

Soapbox: Black in Design

2018-02-07T12:00:00-05:00

Soapbox is a weekly series delivering a curated set of lectures, talks and symposia concerning contemporary themes but explored through the archives of lectures past and present. With the plethora of lectures, talks, symposia and panels occurring world wide on a daily basis, how can we begin to keep up and if not, find them once they are gone? Soapbox looks to assemble a selection of recent, archived and outlier lectures surrounding a given theme. Soapbox looks to curate this never-ending library of ideas into an engaging and diverse list of thoughts and provocations. Soapbox is just that, a collection aimed at discovering the occasional needle in a haystack.