Archinect - News

Four design teams shortlisted for former KKK site reclamation project in Texas

2023-10-11T17:51:00-04:00

A four-finalist shortlist for Transform 1012 N. Main Street’s adaptive reuse and racial equity project has been announced as part of a multiphase selection process that will eventually deliver the new Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing to Fort Worth, Texas.

The chance at redesigning what was once the Ku Klux Klan Klavern No. 101 Auditorium will fall on a proposal that best expresses and reflects the group’s reclamatory mission while “[prioritizing] community, equity, and collective healing in the design of the space” above all other considerations of site and material.

“The exceptional quality of the submissions prompted us to expand the initially envisioned shortlist from three to four teams and to extend our selection deadline for a few days,” Ben Crawford, the Chair of Transform 1012’s Design Architect Selection Committee, added. “We are thrilled to welcome these architects to Fort Worth to see how they could be a partner in reimagining the processes for enacting th...

Selection process detailed for historic reuse of former KKK site as a cultural arts center in Fort Worth

2023-06-29T19:56:00-04:00

Transform 1012 N. Main Street, the non-profit coalition responsible for a new reclamation project targeting a former Ku Klux Klan auditorium in Fort Worth, Texas, has just announced the next phases of the selection process for an architect who will eventually deliver The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing in what is being pitched as an "act of reparative justice" for the community.

Eight months after the process began, work will now continue towards the ultimate goal of creating a unifying cultural hub replete with state-of-the-art performance spaces, arts educational offerings, room for social service organizations that work with LGBTQ+ youth, a maker space, and exhibition areas dedicated toward social justice programming.

The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing Exterior. Concept rendering by MASS Design Group. Courtesy of Transform 1012 N. Main Street.

The space is named in honor of Fred Rouse, a local Black man who was lynched by a white mob in 1921, t...

Davidson College unveils plans for a new memorial to enslaved and exploited people, led by Hank Willis Thomas and Perkins&Will

2023-06-01T12:17:00-04:00

Davidson College has unveiled its plans for a new memorial to the enslaved and exploited people whose hands built the 186-year-old liberal arts institution. The design effort of the sculpture titled “With These Hands: A Memorial to the Enslaved and Exploited” will be led by Perkins&Will in collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas.

The artist of Boston's new commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King will deliver a similar monumental bronze sculpture that emerges prominently from a refuge-like space nearby the campus’s original Oak and Elm buildings.

Thomas was selected for the commission following a two-year search process led by alumni that reflects similar reconciliation efforts at Brown University, The College of William & Mary, UNC Chapel Hill, and perhaps most notably, the Höweler+Yoon project at the University of Virginia spearheaded by alumna Mabel O. Wilson.

MASS Design Group's touching Hank Willis Thomas MLK memorial commission debuts in Boston

2023-01-17T15:57:00-05:00

The wait for artist Hank Willis Thomas and MASS Design Group’s public memorial to Martin Luther King on the Boston Common finally ended over the weekend with a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included the sculpture's design team and a host of local political dignitaries.

They were on hand to witness the unveiling of Thomas’ monumental The Embrace sculpture that now sits at the southern edge of America’s oldest public park in the newly-created 1965 Freedom Plaza, a short distance away from the 236-year-old statehouse and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. By rights, putting the legacy of its subjects in proper place alongside the Hub’s other paragons of social justice causes from centuries past.

Image courtesy MASS Design Group

Dr. King met his wife, the late Coretta Scott King, at Boston University’s Myles Standish Hall while the two were both graduate students at different institutions in early 1952. Thomas wanted to create a lasting monumen...

Former KKK auditorium to be reborn as a cultural arts center in Fort Worth

2022-05-20T15:28:00-04:00

A Texas-based, non-profit by the name of Transform 1012 N. Main Street (Transform 1012) has announced the purchase of a former Ku Klux Klan auditorium in Fort Worth, Texas. It will be converted into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing, a new cultural hub and space for reconciliation and reclamation for the community.

The auditorium, located at 1012 N. Main Street, originally opened in 1924, when Fort Worth had one of the largest KKK memberships in the United States. It served as the group’s headquarters in Texas and was designed to intimidate Black, Hispanic, and immigrant residents returning home from the city center.

The acquisition served as the driving force behind the formation of Transform 1012 in 2019. The non-profit is a coalition of local arts, grassroots, and service organizations as well as pro bono partners and individuals. The purchase of the building was made possible by a significant donation from the former owners and a grant from the Rainwater Char...

Researchers call for dismantling of 'racist infrastructure' to improve U.S. neighborhoods

2021-09-07T17:54:00-04:00

A group of researchers from Northeastern University and Tufts University has called for funds from President Biden’s infrastructure bill to be diverted to dismantling “racist infrastructure” which is currently disproportionally impacting minority neighborhoods in the United States. The stance is set out in a new thought piece on The Conversation written by Joan Fitzgerald, a Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University, and Julian Agyeman, a Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University.

The researchers focus on the network of urban highways built across the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, which the team posits was deliberately run through neighborhoods occupied by Black families, and other people of color, thus physically distancing the communities from jobs, opportunities, and urban connectivity. Scholars identify the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act as the beginning of a trend whereby transportation planners used highways to form...

NOMA leadership echos the need to 'fight all systems of bias, oppression, and prejudice' following the guilty verdict in the Chauvin trial

2021-04-26T17:37:00-04:00

On Wednesday, April 20th, the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd brought a ripple effect of response and emotion across the nation. While this verdict is a step, it is not a "static pivot," explained by NOMA's current President Jason Pugh and former NOMA President Kimberly Dowdell. As the Black Lives Matter movement continues to spark awareness and action, architecture schools, firms, and organizations across the nation responded with support to stand with the Black community and to demand racial justice within the industry.

After hearing the trial results, it led me to reflect on the statements and plans from the architecture community shared in 2020. Since last year, what tangible results have occurred since architects, firms, and institutions addressed the need to dismantle systemic racism and white supremacy? While steps towards anti-racism are a daily affair, how deep can these statements and reform plans go before we see a change?

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The inaugural Anti-Racist School of Architecture Virtual Symposium will explore the intersection of architecture, race, and education

2021-01-07T16:58:00-05:00

The Anti-Racist School of Architecture Symposium 2021 will shine a spotlight on the intersection of architecture, race, and education. The Symposium aims to address the following topics:

Injustices Black, Indigenous, and People of Color face in the architecture and design education system
Antiracism by design discussions on social justice and our roles as design students and professionals
The global perspective of Architecture, Race, and Education
Explore what an anti-racism university looks like to students and professionals across the world

The Symposium will open on Monday, January 18th with an opening keynote from Bryan Lee, Founder and Principal at Colloqate Design. There will be a panel discussion moderated by Wandile Mthiyane, CEO and founder of Ubuntu Design Group, which will be followed by a second keynote from Dr. Kwesi Daniels, Department Head of Architecture at Tuskegee University.

Previously on Archinect: DAP: Design Justice for Black Lives initiative seeks to streamline pr...

Remembering the built environment of segregated America

2020-12-07T13:22:00-05:00

Vestiges of racism and oppression, from bricked-over segregated entrances to the forgotten sites of racial violence, still permeate much of America’s built environment.

For the NYT, photojournalist Richard Frishman shares powerful images of sites, buildings, and places throughout the United States along with their almost forgotten, sometimes preserved, stories from America's segregated past.

"All human landscapes are embedded with cultural meaning," Frishman writes. "And since we rarely consider our constructions as evidence of our priorities, beliefs and behaviors, the testimonies our landscapes offer are more honest than many of the things we intentionally present."

Charles L. Davis II discusses an "antiracist framework for architectural history"

2020-11-03T18:14:00-05:00

2020 has stirred up architectural discourse as practitioners, academics, and students address racial and social inequality within the industry. With the turbulent Summer months sparking the nation to mobilize and bring social and racial justice to the forefront, academic institutions have used their Fall lecture series as a way to bring these discussions to light within their campus community.

Earlier this October, Harvard GSD invited Charles L. Davis II, assistant professor of architectural history and criticism at the University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning. As a designer, architectural historian, and cultural critic, his work focuses on racial identity and race thinking related to architectural history and contemporary culture. In his lecture, "Cannon Fodder: Debating the Racial Politics of Canonicity in Modern Architectural History," Davis presented a series of physical and textual case studies that re-examine architecture's understanding of "western canon to ...

The tuition to income ratio is very concerning for all, and terrifying for the Black community

2020-10-09T13:46:00-04:00

Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Think Tank have released some very troubling new data as part of their ongoing work studying structural racism in architecture. Part of their research has tracked the cost of tuition, along with other related typical expenses with student living, with the median household income in a number of cities across the US.

In Manhattan, for example, the annual tuition at Columbia GSAPP, in the M.Arch program, costs over $61k, with additional related expenses adding up to nearly $100k. Meanwhile, the median white household income is around $86k and the median Black household income is only $28k.

Archinect Sessions #158: A Conversation with Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia of WAI Architecture Think Tank

The "Anti-Liberation Paywall", part of their larger Manual of Anti-Racist Architectural Pedagogy, describes this problem in detail, and discusses the role of academic institutions as instruments of settler-colonial legacies, displacing infrastruct...

Leading architects donate creative works to support racial justice

2020-07-29T18:07:00-04:00

Launched July 1st by a group of students and alumni from the Harvard GSD, Design Yard Sale is a month-long fundraising event that "sells and auctions creative works to support [Colloqate Design and The Bail Project], two organizations fighting systemic, and anti-Black racism." Creative works by people like Frank Gehry, Billie Tsien, and Denise Scott Brown have been donated to the effort and are available for auction. The pursuit has already raised over $80,000 and has a goal od reaching $100,00 by the end of the month.

Frank Gehry, Beekman Street Housing print.

Some highlights of items up for auction include blueprints of Robert Venturi’s Vanna Venturi House, donated by Venturi’s longtime engineering partner, Keast & Hood. Additional objects include a collage by Tsien, signed prints of Scott Brown’s historic 1960s-era photos of Las Vegas exclusive to Design Yard Sale, a concrete stool by Jerome Byron, and a limited-edition signed lithograph of a Gehry drawing.

Jerome Byron, Concrete...

Archinect Sessions #158: A Conversation with Nathalie Frankowski and Cruz Garcia of WAI Architecture Think Tank

2020-07-28T08:30:00-04:00

On today’s show Donna and I are joined by Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski of WAI Architecture Think Tank.

The last time we had Cruz and Nathalie on the podcast was for our Next Up series at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial. We’ve since also had Cruz on the podcast to discuss the unfortunate changes at Taliesin’s School of Architecture, where Cruz and Nathalie were both visiting teaching fellows. On each of these instances we had a limited time with them to discuss highly specific aspects of their work, so we wanted to have them back on to learn more about their backgrounds, how they met, and what drives their work.

Paul in conversation with Cruz and Nathalie at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, in 2015

If you’ve been following them, you’ll know that they recently published a book on their work entitled Narrative Architecture. They’ve also published a powerful anti-racist manifesto on un-making architecture, as the fight for equality pushes forward, propelled by the ...

Princeton SoA students publish open letter demanding racial justice

2020-07-20T13:20:00-04:00

Students of the Princeton University School of Architecture have published a letter advocating for widespread changes to how the school operates in order to pursue an anti-racist agenda.

The open letter, published as an Op-Ed in The Daily Princetonian, offers a nine point plan for beginning to move the institution in the right direction. The letter, which is signed by over 80 current students and nearly 200 alumni, seeks to have the university divest from campus policing initiatives, recruit Black students, faculty, and speakers, provide administrative and financial support for Black students, center Black voices in the school's curriculum, "dismantle white supremacy in studio," ban inequitable labor practices at the school, implement anti-racism training for professors, staff, and students, deepen university and community relationships with the Black community, all the while pursuing these goals with a focus on transparency and accountability.

Previously on Archinect: "Princeton'...