Archinect - News

New digital guide documents African American cultural landscapes

2024-02-07T15:19:00-05:00

The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) just launched a brand new initiative called the What’s Out There Guide to African American Cultural Landscapes. So far, the digital guide documents over 140 sites associated with African American culture lifeways as well as nearly 30 biographies and is part of the foundation's four-year-old Race and Space program.

The TCLF says the production of the guide required some rethinking of its four existing categorizations of cultural landscapes. Nine themes (Enslavement, Impacts of African Cultures on the American Landscape, The Underground Railroad, Reconstruction, The Civil Rights Movement, Education, Public Accommodations, Commemoration and Healing, and Elevating Designers and Shapers) were created to reconstrue them into their proper contexts.

This will be of value to future research endeavors, the TCLF says, while equally helpful in promoting the stewardship of the sites, both of which are related to its organizational mission to "connect peop...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund: Another $4 million will go toward preserving Black churches

2024-02-02T12:20:00-05:00

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced another round of funding totaling $4 million that will be put towards preserving Black churches in 22 states across the country.

The program’s second round of funding for the two-year-old Preserving Black Churches initiative will help maintain the legacies of 31 churches.

Black churches in the United States are at the center of the country's lifelong fight for democratic reforms and are a key character in the story of African American's survival and resilience in America. As the historian and advisor to the Action Fund, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explained, “Black churches have been at the forefront of meaningful democratic reform since this nation’s founding. They’re a living testament to the resilience of our ancestors in the face of unimaginably daunting challenges.”

“The heart of our spiritual world is the Black church. These places of worship, these sacred cultural ...

LA's Destination Crenshaw pushes Sankofa Park opening to February 2024

2023-10-05T14:47:00-04:00

This fall’s anticipated debut of the Sankofa Park component of the new Destination Crenshaw public space redesign from Perkins&Will and Studio-MLA in Los Angeles has been pushed back to February of next year, according to an announcement made Wednesday by the group managing its construction in the city's Leimert Park neighborhood.

The park had previously received $3.4 million in federal funding, which added to another $2.4 million fundraising drive initiated by actress Issa Rae and star NBA guard DeMar DeRozan. Planners have now set Sankofa Park to open on February 24th. It is part of the larger $100 million project that will transform a 1.3-mile corridor into a new arts-oriented civic space. Perkins&Will says it is “destined to be a space for celebrations, protests, and demonstrations of grief and peaceful healing.”

Once it is completed, Sankofa Park will include art installations f...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announces $3.8 million in 2023 grants to preserve 40 historic sites

2023-06-13T17:43:00-04:00

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has announced $3.8 million in 2023 grant funding to protect and preserve 40 sites representing African American history. Established in 2017, the Action Fund, which has raised more than $95 million, is the largest U.S. fund dedicated to preserving historic African American sites.

Since its inception, the Action Fund has received a total of 5,638 funding proposals requesting $655 million. The program has been able to support 242 grantee projects through its investment of $20 million.

2023 grant site: Morgan State University’s Jenkins Hall in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo: Troy Pumphrey Jr., image courtesy National Trust for Historic Preservation.

“The Action Fund’s investment in and celebration of 40 historic African American places illustrates our belief that historic preservation plays an important role in American society,” said Brent Leggs, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund exe...

Destination Crenshaw's Sankofa Park segment sets an opening date for fall 2023

2023-02-01T17:46:00-05:00

LA's Destination Crenshaw initiative has revealed an updated opening day for its largest component along with news of $3.4 million in federal grant contribution that will help further shepherd the project towards its eventual completion later this year.

The development’s Sankofa Park segment will now open in the early fall of this year, according to CEO Jason W. Foster. The beautifully-metaphored nod to the eponymous bird of Akan folklore is designed by Perkins&Will’s award-winning Principal and Director of Global Diversity Gabrielle Bullock and includes art installations from heavyweights such as Alison Saar and Kehinde Wiley, along with additional murals and greenspaces that will be completed in the months immediately following its inauguration.

Sankofa Park. Image: Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw

Situated along the northern end of the site on the border of the traditionally arts-centric Leimert Park neighborhood, the park is meant as a gathering space for the larger...

Hood Century's solitary quest to preserve Black modernist heritage is spurring social media users to action

2023-01-18T13:20:00-05:00

Jerald Cooper, who lives in Cincinnati, wants to recognize and help preserve modern architecture and interior design that have added to the aesthetic and culture of many Black communities. His aim is to make architecture and design more accessible by using layman’s language to break down barriers typically set up by white academics with advanced degrees, and educate more people who are now empowered through social media to comment on the structural beauty of a modernist tower.

The music industry marketing consultant started the passion project after a treasured local West End church was demolished in order to make room for Populous’ $250 million new Cincinnati F.C. stadium in 2019, an act which he calls “infrastructural trauma.” Since then, he has grown an online audience of more than 83,000 followers with his Instagram account Hood Century, offering analysis that breaks down Black modernism into three categories: made for, handed down, and claimed.

The effort places him in line with others, such as the newly-funded Conserving Black Modernism project from the Getty and National Trust for Historic Preservation. Jerald Cooper represents the potential for social media adept architecture aficionados to combat what he called a “lack of knowing” in their own communities. As the former USC architecture dean Milton Curry says, “the complex story of Modernism cannot be fully revealed without new research on its impacts in and on the Black communities that it has t...

New $3.1 million Conserving Black Modernism grant program announced by the Getty Foundation and National Trust for Historic Preservation

2022-09-19T14:37:00-04:00

The Getty Foundation together with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has announced the commitment of $3.1 million in the form of institutional grants to individuals and organizations that are working to preserve the legacy of historic modern architecture designed by Black architects nationwide.

Under the title Conserving Black Modernism, the two-year grant program, part of a larger $80 million effort overseen by the Action Fund, will support the documentation of 16 overlooked sites across the country while providing useful preservation training and storytelling resources to their future stewards.

The Getty says they are remiss at not including any works by one of America’s many underappreciated Black designers in its otherwise successful Keeping It Modern initiative and will look to address this absence with a new program that helps enshrine their contributions to what became the most defining architectural movement of the ...

Hip Hop Architect Michael Ford on building a foundation for future generations of BIPOC designers

2022-05-10T14:22:00-04:00

“Getting new voices and pulling new people into architecture is important, but also having a portfolio of good work is important as well,” Ford said. “I think my ultimate legacy, though, for me will be measured by the number of people I inspire to become architects. And not just become architects but to not check their culture at the door. When you can bring your total self into the design world, that’s where you can make a true contribution.”

The “Hip Hop Architect” took Madison.com on a site visit to the local Quarra Stone Co., where granite tiles are being made for a forthcoming installation at the National Guardian Life company’s headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin.

For the project, Ford plans to erect a 25-foot-tall lobby installation with the company’s DEI statement engraved across 360 individual tiles using his own self-developed hieroglyphic alphabet. (“It’s architecture that prompts people to do something,” he explained.)

Rendering of the lobby installation Ford designed for National Guardian Life Insurance. Image courtesy BrandNu Design.

“I don’t think it's pushing the limit,” the 39-year-old continued, speaking of the corporate commission and another metaverse project for the non-profit Infamous Mothers. “For me, it’s representing what can happen when you bring more diverse minds to architecture and diverse experiences, backgrounds and culture because architecture has lost its mystique of what it once was. For m...

Chicago Architectural Biennial opens new exhibition space at the Chicago Cultural Center

2022-03-29T17:41:00-04:00

The Chicago Architecture Biennial has announced the opening of the CAB Studio, a new, year-round exhibition space located on the first floor of the Chicago Cultural Center. The studio will be a space to explore design and present innovative ideas. It will host exhibitions, programs, and events, along with youth and family activities.

CAB Studio will open with the exhibition, Architecture of Reparations, by New York-based collaborative Riff Studio, including designers Isabel Strauss, Rekha Auguste-Nelson, and Farnoosh Rafaie. It incorporates a study of public policy, architectural history, and reparations to tell the story of the erasure in Bronzeville, a historic Black neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago. This is the focus and outcome of a thesis project by Strauss while studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The exhibition uncovers the history and tells t...

The Black Reconstruction Collective, dedicated to supporting Black creatives, is currently searching for a Collaborative Coordinator

2022-01-25T15:10:00-05:00

In 2019, ten architects, artists, designers, and academics came together to discuss their plans for an upcoming exhibition with MoMA's curatorial team. Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter J. Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, and Amanda Williams gathered to discuss what their involvement and exhibition would be and represent. These conversations and exchanges of thoughts and opinions helped birth the Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC).

Founded in 2020, the BRC has gone on to develop groundbreaking work like the MoMA exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, as well as receiving grants from the Graham Foundation, Open Society, and the Mellon Foundation.

At their core, the group's primary mission "to multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary work" is dedicated to dismantling "systemic white supremacy and hegemonic whiteness within art, design, and academia." The founding members exercised ...

Destination Crenshaw reveals new renderings as LA grants approval for its arts program

2021-10-15T18:52:00-04:00

New renderings have been unveiled following the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission approval of the recently announced first slate of sculptural installations set to line the forthcoming Destination Crenshaw development in Los Angeles.

The $100 million community redevelopment scheme features a streetscape designed by Perkins&Will’s local office in addition to several green community meetings spaces from Studio-MLA.

Overhead view of Destination Crenshaw’s Sankofa Park featuring designs for works by Maren Hassinger, Kehinde Wiley, and Charles Dickson. Rendering by Perkins&Will, courtesy of Destination Crenshaw.

Overhead images reveal the Sankofa Park section of the corridor dotted with artworks by Kehinde Wiley, Maren Hassinger, Artis Lane, and Charles Dickson. The park lies along 46th Street on the northernmost bookend of the 1.3-mile-long site. Its elongated avian shape is derived from the eponymous sankofa bird, a traditional African symbol representing movement that Dickson captures...

'Keeping the culture going': Inside the restoration of a heartfelt mural at the Watts Towers in Los Angeles

2021-10-12T15:24:00-04:00

“The mural had fallen into disrepair, its imagery so faded from the sun that some shapes were barely recognizable. On a trip to L.A. in 2017 to restore one of his murals, Davis visited Watts Towers and noted what terrible shape the work was in. It gnawed at him, how fragile the mural was, slowly and quietly deteriorating in plain sight.”

The mural-lined Watts Towers campus is currently at the end of a three-year conservation effort being overseen by LACMA. The largest is artist Alonzo Davis’ tribute to acclaimed visual artist and former Watts Towers Arts Center director John Outterbridge, who died last year. Davis, who founded Leimert Park’s famed Brockman Gallery, executed the painting in 1980 but has since become unable to do the restoration work himself.

In his place, a team of local artists is working to clean the mural in time for next month and very much in the spirit Outterbridge’s vision of intergenerational artist mentorship and community involvement.

“It represents his spirit and sense of community, symbols that reflected my thinking about him,” Davis told the LA Times. “The mural may have faded, but his memory won’t.”

Mabel O. Wilson to receive National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize

2021-10-05T19:43:00-04:00

Architect, critic, cultural historian, and current Columbia GSAPP faculty member Mabel O. Wilson has been named as this year’s winner of the National Building Museum’s prestigious annual Vincent Scully Prize recognizing “excellence in practice, scholarship, or criticism in architecture, historic preservation, and urban design.”

The award, named after the late architecture historian, has been given out every year since 1999 and will now honor Wilson as its 23rd recipient. Wilson joins a list of past winners that includes fellow writers Jane Jacobs and Paul Goldberger as well as other important voices like the architect Phyliss Lambert and television commentator Charlie Rose.

The author of Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums and the co-curator of a recent well-received MoMA exhibition, Wilson has steadily made a name for herself through her writing, research, and other creative projects including the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virg...

LA's Destination Crenshaw announces first cohort of artists to create permanent outdoor monuments for cultural corridor

2021-09-01T17:13:00-04:00

Destination Crenshaw, a $100 million initiative that will transform a 1.3-mile stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard in South Los Angeles into a business, art, and cultural corridor in celebration of Black LA, has announced the artists commissioned to create permanent outdoor artworks. The initiative is featuring artists at every career stage who are closely connected to the Black community of South LA.

The cohort includes Charles Dickson, Melvin Edwards, Maren Hassinger, Artis Lane, Alison Saar, Kehinde Wiley, and Brenna Youngblood. This is the inaugural group out of the 100 artists who will create works for the public-private initiative—the largest commissioned project ever undertaken for Black artists. This initial group will create sculptures, including a monument by Wiley, for Sankofa Park, a public gathering space being created for the project, and for other sites within the Destination Crenshaw route.

Previously on Archinect: Destination Crenshaw breaks ground on 1.3-mile-long outdo...

African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund receives $20 million grant from MacKenzie Scott as part of a $2.7 billion overall gift

2021-06-21T17:25:00-04:00

The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has been awarded a $20 million grant from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in an unprecedented move that will nearly double the amount of funding the organization has received since its inception in 2017.

Scott’s grant was announced in a Medium post she authored, which outlines some of her motivations for supporting causes with a progressive social agenda.

The donation is part of a larger $2.7 billion gift Scott and husband Dan Jewett gave to a variety of arts organizations with a focus on African diasporic cultural concerns, including the Souls Grow Deep Foundation and the Studio Museum in Harlem, which is currently undergoing a radical transformation at the hands of Adjaye Associates.

Holmes Hall at Morgan State University. Image courtesy Baltimore Heritage.

The money will allow the fund to pursue its stated goals of promoting a “national identity that reflects the nation’s true diversity...

Architect, preservationist, and advocate of D.C. statehood, Charles Cassell, dies at 96

2021-05-26T17:42:00-04:00

Charles I. Cassell, a distinguished architect who helped shape the campus of the University of the District of Columbia and fierce advocate of Washington D.C. statehood, passed away on May 17th, the Washington Post reports. He was 96. According to his wife, Linda Wernick-Cassell, the cause of death was congestive heart failure.

Born on August 5, 1924, Cassell grew up in Washington, D.C., the son of one of the country’s most prominent Black architects, Albert I. Cassell, who was the head of Howard University’s architecture department and designed eleven buildings on the campus, along with many other academic communities across the United States. Albert I. Cassell’s Founders Library at Howard University was named a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2016.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Charles I. Cassell spent several years as an architect for the Navy Department, designin...

Germane Barnes is Harvard GSD's 2021 Wheelwright Prize winner

2021-05-10T15:26:00-04:00

Harvard's Graduate School of Design announced the winner of the 2021 Wheelwright Prize: architect and Assistant Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture Germane Barnes will receive the coveted $100,000 fellowship fund to support his two-year research project Anatomical Transformations in Classical Architecture. Barnes proposes to examine Roman and Italian architecture through the lens of non-white constructors, studying "how spaces have been transformed through the material contributions of the African Diaspora while creating new architectural possibilities that emerge within investigations of Blackness."

Germane Barnes' research proposal was selected from a field of finalists that also included Iulia Statica, Luis Berríos-Negrón, and Catty Dan Zhang.

Dark Mode. Photo: Blair Reid Jr.

"The past year has shown the world that marginalized communities offer more than a cursory look but a thorough excavation of their contributions and legacies," Barnes said. "As a Black...

Donald P. Ryder, New York architect and professor, has passed away

2021-04-26T15:11:00-04:00

Donald P. Ryder, whose firm designed important repositories of Black culture and social history in becoming one of the nation’s most prominent partnerships of Black architects, died on Feb. 17 at his home in New Rochelle, N.Y. He was 94. [...] Mr. Ryder joined with J. Max Bond Jr., widely regarded as the most influential African-American architect in New York, to form Bond Ryder & Associates in the late 1960s.

During his partnership with J. Max Bond Jr., Donald P. Ryder left his mark as architect of several noteworthy residential and civic buildings, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. After leaving the firm which had merged with Davis, Brody & Associates in 1990, Ryder was a professor and later chairman of the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York.

The author of 'Architecture in Black' delivers an exhibition that depicts Blackness as a 'process of unraveling and becoming'

2021-04-12T14:59:00-04:00

In 2000, distinguished scholar, designer, inventor, and teacher Darell Wayne Fields, Ph.D. published "Architecture in Black." His book is a theoretical treatise that expands on the historical, philosophical, and semiotic texts regarding race in architectural discourse. It argues "architecture, as an aesthetic practice, and blackness, as a linguistic practice, operate within the same semiotic paradigm." Through this extensive examination, Fields curated On Solitude which is described as a "contemporaneous anthology" that shadows Architecture in Black.

Image © Michael Vahrenwald. Courtesy of Princeton University School of Architecture.

I thought Blackness’s intersection with architecture represented epic struggle and conflict. The conflict remains true in what the exhibition has to say (to me), but there’s a critical difference. The artifacts, interacting together, signify and witness architecture’s subtle, yet persistent, unraveling. - Darell Wayne Fields

'Architecture as a vehicle for liberation and joy:' Michael Kimmelman in conversation with the Black Reconstruction Collective

2021-03-11T19:02:00-05:00

What’s below is a conversation with members of the Black Reconstruction Collective, which came together during the past year and a half, in tandem with an exhibition now at the Museum of Modern Art called “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.” The collective’s members are the 10 architects, artists and designers in the exhibition.

NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman has published a condensed version of his conversation with Amanda Williams, Emanuel Admassu, J. Yolande Daniels, and V. Mitch McEwen — four of the ten architects, designers, and artists of the Black Reconstruction Collective whose work is currently featured in the MoMA exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.

Related on Archinect:

MoMA agrees to temporarily cover Philip Johnson's name with Black Reconstruction Collective artwork

2021-03-02T13:59:00-05:00

The debate over Philip Johnson's past and ongoing legacy continues: after The ---- Johnson Study Group published an open letter calling for all institutions to remove the name of Philip Johnson from "every leadership title, public space, and honorific of any form" in response to the architect's documented Fascist past and support of white supremacy, the Museum of Modern Art, where he was the Director at the Department of Architecture, has now agreed to temporarily cover up Johnson’s name during the run of its current exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America.

A 10-by-10 foot denim textile piece created collaboratively by the nonprofit Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) and printed with the group's "Manifesting Statement" will greet visitors at the exhibition entrance, blocking the museum's permanent gallery signage.

Previously on Archinect: Creative community issues a call to remove Philip Johnson's name because of his fascist past

"We accepted their exhib...

New MoMA exhibition investigates architecture, Blackness, and anti-Black racism in America

2021-02-12T12:57:00-05:00

Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America is the fourth installment of the Issues in Contemporary Architecture series at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The exhibition investigates the intersections of architecture, Blackness, and anti-Black racism in the United States.

Olalekan Jeyifous. …other seasonal occupancy neighborhoods. 2020. Courtesy of Olalekan Jeyifous. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Moreover, the featured projects will look at contemporary architecture and its role in the systemic racism that has facilitated discrimination and injustice in the U.S. A system that has informed and continues to inform the design of American cities through public policies, municipal planning, and architecture that has specifically impacted the Black community.

J. Yolande Daniels, principal, studioSUMO | Los Angeles. Race Plate. 2020. Digital rendering, 24 x 36″ (61 x 91.4 cm). Image courtesy of the artist. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Reconstructions will feature 10 n...

The HBCU Africa Architecture Lecture series brings the voices of Black architects and the African Continent together for representation and discourse

2021-02-04T17:52:00-05:00

Here at Archinect, we highlight academic events and lectures that provide insight and access to public programming created by architecture schools. Year after year, these events welcome various leaders and innovators within architecture, design, and its adjacent fields of study. While in-person events are put on hold, the ability to engage and invite a global audience is possible thanks to virtual events outlets. 2021 welcomes an exciting series of talks, panels, and lectures that we've featured in our 2021 Get Lectured series and Archinect's Virtual Event Guide. However, an upcoming lecture series creates an opportunity for a much-needed platform for Black design professionals to share their work, expertise, and initiatives for change.

Archinect Feature by Sean Joyner: "Discovering a Black Aesthetic in Architecture" — An Investigation by Woodbury Grad Demar Matthews. Image courtesy of Demar Matthews

February is Black History month, and the rise in promoting and highlighting Black ex...

Why the National Register of Historic Places lacks a diverse history

2021-01-08T14:04:00-05:00

Less than 8% of sites on the National Register are associated with women, Latinos, African Americans or other minorities. [...] The reason for this underrepresentation is an overly technical, legalistic approach to determining what merits designation.

Sara Bronin, a University of Connecticut Law School professor specializing in historic preservation law, penned an LA Times op-ed about the technical hurdles that have hindered many non-white historic sites to be designated for the National Register of Historic Places.

"Preservationists have started to see past the formalities that have too long prevented us from recognizing diverse histories," writes Bronin. "But we must go further to tackle the legal structures that devalue the stories we all need to hear."

Read also V. Mitch McEwen's latest op-ed on Archinect: Form Follows Fascism Redux.

South African CEO partners with NOMA and AIAS to offer architecture students a masterclass in community-led design

2020-09-24T11:50:00-04:00

You might remember Wandile Mthiyane from Archinect's recent profile on him, Undoing Apartheid Architecture. In that profile, Wandile talked about a pioneering new program his organization, Ubuntu Design Group, has developed. Called the Ubuntu Architecture Summer Abroad Program (UASA), the new initiative will teach college students a community-centered approach to architecture through a design-build studio course that will be led by Wandile.

Students will experience a unique educational experience to design & build dignified and culturally-influenced homes for resilient families in South Africa. “Students will be designing and building a home for a family that has been affected by apartheid architecture,” Wandile explained. “They will come to South Africa and learn first-hand the role of architecture in systemic racism, it’s history, and what its impacts are today. And they will get to be a part of the solution we are pursuing.”

According to Wandile, partnerships have already been se...

NMAAHC launches initiative to celebrate the work of Black architects

2020-06-08T11:38:00-04:00

The National Museum of African American History and Culture has launched Rendering Visible, a digital collecting initiative intended to celebrate the "creative production" of Black architects. Through a call for submissions, the initiative will allow the museum to to select architectural illustrations to be considered for inclusion in the Museum's digital collection.

According to the museum website, the goal of Rendering Visible is to document the creativity of Black architects and designers. Submissions should include sketches, renderings, and artistic illustrations that convey the intent and concept of a design project.

Submit your work here.

Destination Crenshaw breaks ground on 1.3-mile-long outdoor "cultural experience"

2020-03-03T15:14:00-05:00

On Saturday February 29th, over 2,000 community residents, business owners, and artists came together to attend Destination Crenshaw's groundbreaking for the 1.3-mile-long "cultural experience" to celebrate Black Los Angeles along Crenshaw Blvd. The project will transform sidewalks, storefronts, and various other structures with permanent and rotating art installations. 10 pocket parks will also be introduced as part of the project in addition to culturally-themes street and landscaping interventions.

Design and architecture firm , Perkins and Will , celebrates groundbreaking on future site of Sankofa Park with LA County Supervisor, Mark Ridley - Thomas. Courtesy of Jun Tang Photography

“Destination Crenshaw has been entirely driven by the community itself, and honors not just the neighborhood as a creative hub, but also Black L.A.’s impact on popular culture and social change. Our role as architects is to translate, through design, the very real, very significant voices and energy o...