Archinect - Features

Thoughts on Black Tokenism in Architectural Practice

2020-10-22T11:48:00-04:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent outcry for social and racial justice. As a Black man, I’ve lived my own experience in this country — one filled with many blessings, but also many challenges. I want to reflect on some of those challenges, and explore some of the subtleties of being Black in a predominantly white setting — architecture. I don’t have the answers, but I do believe there is a power in story and truth to be found in narrative. This is a story, a picture into a narrative common to many in the profession, followed by some reflections. But at the same time, we know, every person has their own story to tell.

Soapbox: Race

2018-02-14T09:00:00-05:00

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.

Rethinking Frank Lloyd Wright: Thoughts from a trip through the Rustbelt

2017-09-07T12:00:00-04:00

While in New York this July I visited MoMA’s retrospective of Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘Unpacking the Archive’, an extensive collection of Wright’s production to celebrate his 150 year anniversary. Despite his revered position as America’s protégé architect and seminal figure—and having studied his work in the past—a number of surprising and unexpected thoughts from the show stuck with me during my subsequent month-long journey through the American Midwest. Both a pioneer of radical experimentation and a deep-rooted member of the status quo, Wright’s projects draw from many cultural histories and are, at times, divisive. But is it time the architecture press retires from reinventing Frank Lloyd Wright, the tireless self-publicist, and instead focuses the spotlight elsewhere? I discuss my thoughts with architect, cultural historian and Wright scholar Mabel O. Wilson, who currently teaches architectural history and theory at Columbia GSAAP.

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Screen/Print #45: Orhan Ayyüce interviews "The Wire" actor Bob Wisdom for LA Forum's summer issue

2016-09-22T12:09:00-04:00

For locals and beyond, the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design has a simple aim—highlight what makes L.A.'s architecture and urbanism discourse special, and what it can teach the rest of the world. Seasonally, LA Forum draws on its own board members and reaches into the community to publish a newsletter under a single theme or proposition.

CONTOURS: Urban Justice

2011-09-26T16:45:11-04:00

The Census Bureau just released its latest statistics from 2008 on, amongst other things, poverty. In an article on making housing more accessible to the poor, I cited some older statistics to highlight the much-neglected need. Too often, people focus on the “other” poor, those living in developing nations because it is easier than examining those who are impoverished in our own urban centers.