Archinect - Features

Architecture Gave Me a Black Eye: A Note to Architectural Educators

2021-11-19T08:32:00-05:00

I was eight years old when I entered my first slave quarter—that was the first time architecture hit me. It was the first time that I can recall thinking about spaces that dictated where my race belonged. But, more than anything, the hit was mostly a surprise, and I questioned if something so much older and so much larger than me was allowed to hit me. Was I, in turn, supposed to fight back?

While I do not blame the building, I do, in fact, blame the education responsible for curating that experience. I can only imagine the difference felt if this field trip was anchored by discussions about inequality and self-worth, rations and resourcefulness, or degradation and fortitude. Instead, I spent my time on the plantation that day trying to figure out if I would have been a field slave or a house slave. In that moment, what everyone failed to realize was that whether they recognized it or not, the slave quarters were also telling my white classmates where they belonged. And just like ...

Othering Blackness in Design: Reflections with Walter Hood

2021-07-02T14:24:00-04:00

Mr. Hood wouldn’t let his son go to art school, so he had to find the next best thing. Going through the rest of the list of college majors—accounting, advertising, agriculture, etc.—nothing else called out to him in the same way nor made the vision of the future he wanted any clearer or any more desirable. But then, an accidental discovery halfway through high school helped to make this vision a little less murky. One day, while walking through the hallways, Walter happened to stumble upon a very strange collection of people in a classroom. They were all standing at boards, in all-white cloaks, meticulously drafting away with T-squares in one hand and graphite in the other.

"Discovering a Black Aesthetic in Architecture" — An Investigation by Woodbury Grad Demar Matthews

2020-06-09T13:29:00-04:00

Demar Matthews is a recent M.Arch graduate of Woodbury University. We first met Demar with the publication of his article A Black Architecture Education Experience, a piece that propelled the young designer into a rigorous investigation of Black architectural aesthetics in America. Due to COVID-19, Demar was forced to rework his approach to his project and decided to curate all of his research on a website, offtopdesign.com, which is a work in progress. Demar's academic exploration of Black aesthetics is something he says he's only just begun.

He says this thesis is a first step to what he hopes will be a much longer and deeper path. I connected with Demar, to talk a bit more about his project and thoughts for his future.

Archinect's Spotlight on 2020 Thesis Projects: 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year for architecture graduates. Students were displaced as schools shut down, academic communities had to adapt to a new virtual format, end-of-year celebrations were can...