Archinect - News

Theaster Gates teams up with Prada to launch incubator for emerging designers of color

2021-09-02T17:01:00-04:00

Theaster Gates is teaming up with Prada to launch a program that will support and invest in up-and-coming artists and designers of color.

Dorchester Industries, the design and manufacturing arm of Theaster Gates Studio, in partnership with Gates’ Rebuild Foundation and Prada Group, announced the launch of the Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab. Based on the South Side of Chicago, it is a three-year program that will serve as a platform for artists of color by creating opportunities to amplify their work, invest in their development, and expose them to organizations looking to work with diverse talent.

Designers in the areas of fashion, furniture, industrial and graphic design, and the arts will be trained, funded, and mentored through design awards and public programming. It will provide a platform for exhibitions, performances, and public dialogue, creating “a nucleus of design intelligence on the South Side,” as stated on Gates’ Instagram.

Related on Archinect: A Con...

2020 NOMA Conference opens virtually to the largest conference audience yet, gathering socially motivated architects, designers, and allied professionals

2020-10-15T14:51:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA)

In a year challenged with COVID-19, a recession, and social awakening, NOMA experienced record membership, partnership and sponsorship support.

The 48th Annual National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Conference opened on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2020, with an online audience of more than 1,500 registrants, making it the largest NOMA conference gathering ever. The virtual conference surpasses the record-breaking attendance of over 1,200 at last year’s NOMA Brooklyn conference. In an unprecedented year due to COVID-19, a resulting recession and social unrest, the conference will bring together architects, designers, academics, urban planners, community developers, artists, and students to champion and discuss how to shift the issues of our current structures to more equitable systems through architecture during the online conference, Oct. 14-17, 2020.

“When faced with the difficult question ...

Join NOMA as they present their 2020 Virtual Conference - Spatial Shifts: Reclaiming our Cities

2020-09-29T15:57:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA)

Together on October 14-18, 2020, we will explore ways in which can break down barriers to creating meaningful projects, share ways to remix the role of the designer, and unpack new approaches to the design processes of our built environment. Each one of us will find our ikusasa, Yoruba for future or progress, to forge our path towards progression.

Now we’re just days away and the agenda has been published at https://conference2020.noma.net/ making today the PERFECT time for you to join the hundreds that have already registered! Early registration ends October 2nd!

Courtesy of NOMA

Cities are changing. Populations and economies in Oakland, Dakar, and beyond. Globally, our cities are changing from population to economies near and far. We, as designers, community members, leaders, and environmental stewards, need to be prepared to champion and shift the issues of our current structures to more equitab...

Madame President Goes ALL-In; A Conversation with NOMA President Kimberly Dowdell

2019-09-26T18:35:00-04:00

For Archinect Sessions episode #145, we are joined by Kimberly Dowdell, a principal at HOK in Chicago and the current President of the National Organization of Minority Architects. Our conversation covers Kimberly’s impressive path to success in architecture and the leadership role she’s taking in NOMA. We’ll also discuss the upcoming NOMA conference taking place in Brooklyn in a few weeks from October 14th-20th.

Listen to episode 145 of Archinect Sessions, “Madame President Goes ALL-In”.

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button below the logo to automatically download new episodes.
Apple Podcast App (iOS): click here to subscribe
SoundCloud: click here to follow Archinect
RSS: subscribe with any of your favorite podcasting apps via our RSS feed: http://archinect.libsyn.com/rss
Download: this episode

Shownotes:

19th Annual Dunlop GSD Lecture: Kimberly Dowdell

Hamad International Airport Passenger Terminal Complex, the first project by Kimberly Dowdell at HOK, 2008...

Majority of new hires in America are people of color

2019-09-10T18:03:00-04:00

The surge of minority women getting jobs has helped push the U.S. workforce across a historic threshold. For the first time, most new hires of prime working age (25 to 54) are people of color, according to a Washington Post analysis of data the Labor Department began collecting in the 1970s. Minority hires overtook white hires last year.

Despite the wider trend in the American workforce, the architecture industry continues to lag in terms of diversity and gender inclusivity.

A 2018 National Council of Architectural Registration Boards report, for example, shows that although the ethnic and racial diversity within early career professionals continues to rise—roughly 45-percent of new AXP participants identified as non-white in the survey—the numbers drop off precipitously among higher ranks.

NOMA equips young students of color for an architectural future

2019-08-14T10:00:00-04:00

...Project Pipeline is designed to nurture the next generation of design professionals from middle school all the way through higher education and beyond...the ultimate goal of the initiative is to create a network of minority professionals across the country who will support one another and lift up the next generation in turn.

The 2019 SoCal NOMA Project Pipeline Architecture & Engineering Summer Camp put on by the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) included students between the ages of 10 and 16, and took place on three consecutive Saturdays in July, according to the Los Angeles Sentinel.

“Every year, we try to choose an exciting project that’s going on in the community at a place in the community that’s highly visible, that is accessible to our campers and that is in a community that they all live in,” said the camp's director, Eletrice Harris. This year, the students were tasked with creating "designs for the upcoming streetscape project, Destination Crenshaw, a 1.3-mile open-air museum that will celebrate and revitalize the art, culture, and spirit of Black Los Angeles."

Moreover, Professor Nina Briggs, who was a guest speaker at the camp, emphasized the importance of "designing for people," a valuable lesson for young aspiring practitioners. In the long run, NOMA's goal in this prog...

How one architect is fighting for diversity in the field

2017-08-22T14:47:00-04:00

The project, called Paper Monuments, will entail a series of posters plastered all over the city that detail the people, places, events, and movements of the city’s 300-year history. “When we make decisions that do embody hatred, whether we mean to or not, it allows for society to grow along those frameworks. Our job should be to acknowledge them and counteract them and produce things that elevate the welfare of the constituents that we serve.”

“It’s not simply about the ways individuals hold onto ideology, but it is more so about the way individuals embed their ideology into the spaces and places we all frequent. For us the Paper Monuments project is still rooted in the fact that these symbols of oppression need to be countered by symbols of those people who’ve fought against that oppression.”

Bryan C. Lee Jr., a New Orleans-based architect, has been working on increasing representation in the field and fighting the inequalities that architecture perpetuates because of that lack of diversity. Formerly the director of place and civic design at the Art Council of New Orleans, Lee formed his own design-firm-cum-nonprofit Colloqate Design to coalesce his efforts to fight the racism embedded in the built environment. In addition to that, Lee started a local chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects in NO and another one at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he received his masters degree in archite...

Norma Merrick Sklarek obituary: Pioneering African American architect was 85

2012-02-10T14:22:00-05:00

Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect, who helped produce Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and the American Embassy in Tokyo, died Monday at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 85.