20 17 / T H E U N I V E RSI T Y OF T E X AS AT AUST I N / SCHO OL OF A RCH I T EC T U R E
PLATFORM
Platform Convergent Voices
guest editors
Nichole Wiedemann Charlton Lewis
3 dean’s introduction Memory and Action D. Michelle Addington
managing editor
Stacey Ingram Kaleh
4 contributors
36 alumni profile Elizabeth Chu Richter 37 Alumni profile Gregory G. Street
38 endowments 40 philanthropy
design
Page/Dyal Branding & Graphics The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture 310 Inner Campus Drive B7500 Austin, Texas 78712-1009 tel 512 471 1922 stacey.kaleh@utexas.edu soa.utexas.edu to our readers
We welcome ideas, questions, and comments. Please feel free to share your thoughts with us. on the cover
David Adjaye. Photo courtesy Adjaye Associates. Wendell J. Campbell. Photo courtesy AIArchitect. Zaha Hadid. Photo by Christopher Pledger. The Telegraph (Telegraph.co.uk). Jane Jacobs. From Aesthetic Realism Foundation. Frank Lloyd Wright. Courtesy of Douglas M. Steiner, Edmonds, Washington. I.M. Pei. New York Times. Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Personal Papers. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
6 Convergent Voices Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis 10 Portals to Freedom or Researching in Limbo Time Andrea Roberts 12 Origins: The Sacred Ground Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr. 14 Activating Architecture Lori Brown 16 What is Hip Hop Architecture? Michael Ford 20 Let’s Talk. Conversations on Race and Gender in the Built Environment Charlton Lewis 22 What If? Spaces: Practices for Diversity, Equity, Place, Identity, and Change Felecia Davis 24 Reflections on Teaching Race and Urban Development Anna Livia Brand 26 Memory Devices Walter Hood 28 Mapping Detention Space in Texas: A Pedagogical Experiment Sarah Lopez
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PLATFORM is the annual magazine of The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. It serves as a “platform” for the school to investigate the intersection of its research, practice, and pedagogic interests with a broader audience.
Each issue of PLATFORM features thought-provoking articles of topical interest in the disciplines of architecture, architectural history, community and regional planning, historic preservation, interior design, landscape architecture, sustainable design, and urban design. Guest editors selected from the School of Architecture’s faculty develop a new theme or prompt for the publication each year and drive its conceptual direction. This issue, titled Convergent Voices, is edited by Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis and centers on a conversation between contributors with expertise ranging from architectural history and landscape architecture to community and regional planning. It represents a dynamic collection of distinct voices and viewpoints brought together by a shared concern for the inequities in our cities and built environments and the urgent need to address these inequities.
DE A N ’ S I N T RODUC T ION
Memory and Action D. Michelle Addington, Dean
I grew up in a progressive family and believed myself to be fair, open, and without bias. Had the term “I don’t see color” been in vogue back then, I cringe now to think that I just might have used it. Nevertheless, these two instances unsettled me and opened a tiny crack between my abstract construction of the world around me and the world of inherent bias and daily transgressions that the young African-American supervisor inhabited. I spent the next three decades actively looking for those rifts between worldviews, not only for that momentary glimpse into a world I will likely never inhabit, but also because each crack, each rift destabilizes my own neat construction, pushing me to rethink many of my assumptions and presumptions about what constitutes an objective reality.
D. Michelle Addington, Dean Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture
on my first day as the manager of geo-textile manufacturing in a large chemical plant, my area supervisors informed me of a concern they had with a new young line supervisor who had just been promoted from the union ranks. He had apparently erred in his handling of a personnel situation, resulting in a union grievance. The supervisors lamented that his promotion was offered too early, before he was qualified, because he was African-American. They felt as though they had tried to do the right thing, but had clearly made a mistake in promoting this young man, as he just wasn’t cut out to be a supervisor. A few months later, these area supervisors brought the same error to my attention, this time made by another new line supervisor. In this case, they felt as though the young supervisor was basically a good guy with great potential, and that this error was just part of the normal process of learning and growing. This young supervisor was white.
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It must seem odd to those of you reading this that I would begin my introduction to a scholarly publication in such a personal manner. It is, however, the personal that renders the subject of diversity among the most difficult ever faced by academia. As scholars, we are guided by the presumption of critical distance between ourselves and our subjects of study. We accept that there is an inherent bias in how we choose to frame our study, but we also recognize how multiple secondary frames or viewpoints will collectively and objectively position the primary subject within the canon. Scholars may, of course, challenge the canon, but do so with a careful regard as to how and where their argument is placed. Questions raised by diversity tend to be shoehorned into this construction, as a subordinate element of content, but this approach presumes that critical distance sets the rules. For many individuals, the study of diversity is inextricably personal. For the remainder, there is also an absence of critical distance—it is extraordinarily difficult to construct a framework in which to place content based on the worldviews of individuals for whom history is manifest daily in their lived experience. We cannot have a discussion about what is primary when our views have no common ground upon which to converge. And, for those well-meaning individuals who believe that increased empathy might begin to construct a path, if not the ground, among these divergent points of view, this approach goes awry more often than not. When we empathize with another, we try to read their personal circumstances through our own experiences and via our own frameworks, and, in so doing, can become even more inward–looking and disconnected. What, then, can we do? As I read through the essays in this issue, I was struck by how often the contributors referred to memory and action: Memory, not as preserved in a mausoleum of artifacts, but as a living legacy of divergent and heretofore ignored voices; Action, not just as public behavior, but as direct physical engagement with a place. If memory foregrounds the individual and thereby tugs on the boundary of the normative worldview, action dynamizes the collective and begins to operate in the rifts between worldviews.
In The Space of Appearance, George Baird brings Hannah Arendt’s theory of action to the design of urban space by arguing that constituent physical space determines the nature and occurrence of contingent public action. Designers are as responsible for creating spaces for the fleeting and transient moments as they are for producing permanent and stable structures. Can we, as we design for a diverse public, create the scaffold for its memories as well as the armature for its full engagement? The challenge to more fully embrace and engage diversity has often been addressed by the academic disciplines and design practice in a piecemeal fashion. We have added courses, formed task forces, and pledged to invite more women and minorities to sit at the table. Yet, at most, we have opened very discrete doors to let few into our constructed worldview, and we haven’t fully reached out to engage with their worldviews. Our work is just getting started. The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture believes that design plays a critical role in addressing complex local, regional, national, and global issues, and that our graduates and our work will advance a better quality of life for all people. A diverse learning environment that welcomes a variety of perspectives and worldviews is vital to addressing these collective concerns. In 2008, the UT Austin School of Architecture was one of the first schools to begin questioning its own approach to diversity in the design fields. By 2015, the seeds planted by this introspection led to the development of the Committee for Diversity + Equity (CODE), currently led by this issue’s co-editors Charlton Lewis and Nichole Wiedemann. This committee has set the standard for how other academic units at the university are addressing diversity through its comprehensive review and strategic vision. In the year following the formation of CODE, the school introduced an initiative titled “Race and Gender in the Built Environment.” Two of the initiative’s first fellows, Anna Brand and Andrea Roberts, are contributors to this issue. We are welcoming a new fellow, Edna Ledesma, this Fall, and a new Assistant Professor for Race and Gender in the Built Environment, Miriam Solis, in 2018. Is this enough to adequately address questions of diversity in the design fields? No. But it is a meaningful foothold as we try to chart a path into the rift. Our commitment to diversity is not about being politically correct, but about being active participants and contributors in the larger world. Diversity is essential to our very ethos of design, and design is one of the most powerful means to engage diversity.
C ON T R I BU TOR BIOS
Anna Livia Brand is an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2016-17, Brand was an Emerging Scholar Fellow in Race and Gender in the Built Environment of the American City at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Her research focuses on the historical emergence of and contemporary changes in black mecca neighborhoods in New Orleans, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, and New York.
Lori Brown’s research focuses on relationships between architecture and social justice, with particular emphasis on gender and its impact on spatial relationships. She has published two books, including Feminist Practices: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Women in Architecture and Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals. Brown is currently working on the book project, Birthing Centers, Borders and Bodies, as well as co-editing the Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture with Dr. Karen Burns. She is co-founder and director of ArchiteXX, a women in architecture group working to bridge the academy and practice in New York City. She is a professor of Architecture at Syracuse University and a registered architect in New York.
Dr. Felecia Davis is an assistant professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design and Computation at the Pennsylvania State University School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. She is director of SOFTLAB@PSU, a lab that develops soft materials which can be programmed with electronic signals or other environmental cues. Her work in architecture and textiles connects art and science, and was recently featured by PBS in the Women in Science Profiles series. Davis’ work develops computational methods and design in relation to specific bodies in specific places engaging social, cultural, and political constructions. She completed her PhD in the Design and Computation Group at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, where her dissertation focused on how designers can use computational textiles for communication and the formation of space. Davis is currently working on a book, Softbuilt: Networked Architectural Textiles.
Michael Ford is a designer, born and raised in the city of Detroit. Ford received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Detroit, Mercy, where he completed his thesis titled, “Hip Hop Inspired Architecture and Design.” He has worked as a designer at Hamilton Anderson Associates in Detroit, Michigan and Flad Architects in Madison, Wisconsin. In addition, Ford has taught as an adjunct professor at his alma mater. He is dedicated to stimulating cross-disciplinary discourse between practitioners and residents on the sociological and cultural implications of architecture and urban planning. Ford’s Hip Hop Architecture research has been the topic of numerous lectures and articles published in a variety of publications, including the University of Pennsylvania’s annual Unspoken Borders Conference and Harvard University’s Journal of AfricanAmerican Policy.
Contributors
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Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, California. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects both nationally and internationally. Hood Design Studio is tripartite practice, working across art + fabrication, design + landscape, and research + urbanism. Their projects result in urban spaces and their objects act as public sculpture, creating new apertures through which to see surrounding emergent beauty, strangeness, and idiosyncrasies. The Studio’s award-winning work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Dwell, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, Architectural Digest, Places Journal, and Landscape Architecture Magazine.
Charlton Lewis specializes in the areas of architectural design and construction. Since the Fall of 2006, Lewis has taught continuously at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. In addition to teaching studio and construction courses, Lewis teaches various seminar courses including, most recently, Race and Gender: By Design, which examined design relative to the narratives of race, gender, and diversity. Lewis earned his Master and Bachelor of Architecture degrees from the UT Austin School of Architecture. Lewis maintains an active design practice principally focused on residential design and construction, and has been associated with the firms Dick Clark Architecture, Black and Vernooy Architects, Mell Lawrence Architects, and Barnes Gromatzky Kosarek Architects. Lewis currently serves as co-chair of the UT Austin School of Architecture’s Committee on Diversity and Equity.
Sarah Lopez is an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture and a 2016–17 Princeton-Mellon Fellow in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities. As a built environment historian and migration scholar, Lopez's research focuses on the impact of migrant remittances—dollars earned in the United States and sent to families and communities in Mexico—on the architecture and landscape of rural Mexico and the urban USA. Her acclaimed book, The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration to Rural Mexico and Urban USA, was published by the University of Chicago Press and received the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2017. Lopez is currently working on the architecture of immigrant detention facilities in Texas, a project in partnership with the Humanities Action Lab’s national traveling exhibition, States of Incarceration.
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Dr. Andrea Roberts is a native Texan and founder of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project. She was an Emerging Scholar Fellow at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture from 2016-17. A graduate of the UT Austin PhD Program in Community and Regional Planning, Dr. Roberts served on the City of Austin’s Historic Landmark Commission from 2013-15. She holds a MA in Governmental Administration and Public Finance from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Political Science and Women’s Studies from Vassar College. In addition to her scholarship, she brings twelve years’ experience in community and economic development to her work. Her research frames planning and historic preservation as social justice practices. She is specifically concerned with grassroots planning history and contemporary preservation practices in freedmen’s settlements. She joined Texas A&M University in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning.
Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr. is a principal of D U S T, a design/build practice in Tucson, Arizona. Born in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to a Korean immigrant mother and Mexican-American father, Robles Jr. was raised in the deserts of Southern California and grew up in parts of Texas. Upon earning his Master of Architecture degree from Texas Tech University in 2003, Robles Jr. left West Texas with a strong desire to collaborate and create, to learn and hone his craft. During this time, he worked for Rick Joy Architects and Sebastian Mariscal Studio. He studied under various craftsmen and architects, refining his sensibilities and skills as a finish carpenter, designer, and builder. This time greatly shaped his virtues toward the craft of architecture. Influenced by the natural order of things, Robles Jr. seeks qualities of the immeasurable and the ephemeral.
Nichole Wiedemann is an associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Wiedemann’s research primarily focuses on the investigation of site as a cultural construct. Her work on Rome and New Orleans, both independent and collaborative, has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the 10th Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. Wiedemann’s work has been published in JAE, On Site, and other outlets. A registered architect, Wiedemann maintains a small independent practice with projects in Texas, Georgia, and Florida. Wiedemann received her Bachelor of Design degree from the University of Florida and Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University. She previously taught at the University of Florida, RISD, MIT, and the University of Arkansas, where she held the John Williams Distinguished Professorship. She is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
Convergent Voices Co-editors: Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis Cities are complex urban environments that integrate the physical, natural, and social worlds of human settlement. Arguably, a strength of urbanity is its diversity—the dynamic intersections between race, gender, and experience. Through the presence of and engagement between people with diverse identities and experiences, cities hold the power to act as knowledge generators, providing new solutions and opportunities to address some of the most pressing needs and challenges in society today. However, the power of the city and its potential to engage with diversity can be undermined by the prolonged history of social segregation and gentrification, as well as the economic and political disenfranchisement of African-American and other minority constituencies. Similarly, discrimination related to gender identity and sexual orientation continues to markedly impact progress. Although much has been done to address these inequalities, much more work is needed to encourage the manifestation of the shared urban experience and processes that guide its advancement. A collection of distinct voices brought together by a concern for the inequities of race, gender, and sexual orientation in our cities and built environments creates this unique issue of PLATFORM. The dialogue that emerged here portrays divergent viewpoints and unexpected synergies surrounding five topics: diversity, equity, place, identity, and change. Initially in a group conversation, and later as a distillation of essays, these topics were developed over several months by contributors with wide-ranging expertise—in architecture, landscape architecture, planning, preservation, design, art, history, and more—in reference to their experiences, whether in practice, academic research, or both.
A Conversation On March 3, 2017, Nichole Wiedemann (NW) and Charlton Lewis (CL) moderated an open dialogue between contributors surrounding the topics of diversity, equity, place, identity, and change in relation to built environments. Contributors proposed questions that were used as prompts during the discussion. The outcome is an unfolding narrative that begins to address how designers and scholars can work to make American cities more equitable, healthy, fair, safe, and beautiful.
NW: What role do architects and designers have in creating a more diverse world? Michael Ford As architects and designers, we can create a more diverse world by not designing for, but designing with. The design profession is a very privileged one that is protected by several formal and systematic validations one must obtain. These validations have limited our profession in terms of being able to create diversity.
Anna Brand We also need to include urban planners in this question, particularly because planning pedagogy is so based on community participation and inclusion. While I think we need to deepen our analyses of how planning can end up hindering community-based diversity efforts and visions, planners play a critical role in shaping urban spatial and social structures as well as the development decisions that do or do not support diversity. But, we also need to move beyond rhetorical commitments to building more diverse urban settings and do the work to really support diverse ways of being and seeing. This work would counteract the ways that places are gradually becoming more and more homogenous through development paradigms. Felecia Davis We need to train designers to develop empathy toward the people for whom they make things, spaces, and objects. In terms of creating different spaces, I think that part of the problem is how we, or how we neglect to, teach people to have empathy—to design with people. It seems like there are a multitude of ways we could work with each other to advance empathy. Sarah Lopez I’m not an architect, I’m an architectural historian, so I don’t come at this from the perspective of practice. Nonetheless, I have been very interested in the expanding role of architects who are becoming both the client and the architect; assuming the role of the developer, but with an explicit social justice agenda. Not just design-build, but beyond. I think it’s really intriguing how architects can leverage their creative roles by increasing their involvement in the pragmatic, nuts-and-bolts, of getting things done.
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Jesús Robles Jr. Sarah, I appreciate that perspective. I think the expansion of the architect’s role is probably necessary moving forward in the global economy—politically, socially, and culturally. The idea of the architect as client and developer emphasizes what Michael was saying about removing the validation process to spark ideas. I was wondering, Michael, if you could expand on what that validation process is, and if you have any thoughts on how to remove it? Michael Ford That validation is just the academic part of it, like a degree, or an advanced degree to become a professional. I’m talking about the climate right now, the race issues we’re having in America, and the academic institutions themselves and their treatment of African-Americans throughout history through standardized tests, which have proven to be biased. We can begin to remove these processes once we become design professionals. What I'm doing right now is working with Hip Hop artists in the Bronx to design the universal Hip Hop Museum. The best people to design the Hip Hop Museum are the artists themselves. So, I invited a bunch of Hip Hop artists, designers, and architects from around the country to come to the Bronx. We provided them with the tools they need to design. We had Autodesk come in and give them a training in 3-D modeling so that they can bring their thoughts and visions to a tangible form, and we taught them how to 3-D print. We were able to avoid having their history and contributions to Hip Hop interpreted by someone else through the design process. Walter Hood If people were to design based on their own experiences and were clear about their values and attitudes, as well as the kinds of environments they want to live in, you would think we would achieve diversity. There is a wide range of experience in this country, but, somehow, through the educational process and how we train architects and designers, we “design out” the kind of idiosyncrasies or more specific views people bring to the table. You would think that, in America, this complex place with such different regions and cultures, this dynamic representation in architecture and design could be possible if we choose to build upon our differences. That is the first layer of diversity—
choosing to build upon our differences. We can then build in aspects of race, gender, and country of origin. But, there has to be this clear understanding that architecture and design start with different, authentic views, not one central viewpoint that’s based on antiquity or “International Style” or Postmodernism. Those are just trends or moments. Everyone should have their own preference when it comes to how they want to practice and what’s important to them. We shouldn’t design that out in school.
NW: Can the urban landscape reflect a heterogeneous society where class and race are not divisively represented? How can we collectively value our cultural differences and integrate them into the built landscape, reinforcing the idiosyncratic patterns and practices of the varied polis? Sarah Lopez Why are we are erasing differences in the built environment? Why are we not embracing them? I think there's a lot of room for preservation, architecture, and landscape architecture to take a more active role in slowing down erasure and engaging this issue directly. The sub-question provided by Walter, ‘In order for people and communities of color to retain their identity, do they have to remain in ethnic enclaves?’ is really interesting because it is an inversion of how I think of ethnic enclaves as a product of unequal social, structural, and spatial relationships instead of community building and affirmation.
Anna Brand This raises questions about the dual possibilities of space. On one hand, we know that planning has played a central role in shaping racial and economic segregation and that racial processes, at least in the United States, have always had a spatial component. Obviously, segregation has worked to reify the outcomes of economic, educational, and environmental inequality. Yet, within these spaces, there's also a powerful sense of value for place and community. How do we imagine an urban world through planning and design that supports these different ways of valuing space beyond economics? If we start here, perhaps we can move beyond the continued erasure of these differences and spaces. Michael Ford I'll add another question to Walter’s question. Is it important that we have architecture where race is not represented? Historically, we've looked back at different styles or vernaculars of Architecture that have been inspired by race, religion, or politics. Architecture has always been inspired by culture, so should we aim for architecture or landscape architecture that does not reflect race? Felecia Davis We often think that African– American and other minority communities are enclaves of people who are always represented in physical ways. However, the most important representations of these communities are
frequently memories, told through stories that pass from one generation to the next. There are many ways to see different cultures in the landscape. Some are visible and some are invisible. Many cultures live through oral tradition or traditions we cannot see, but, nevertheless, are an extremely strong and important part of how we see and shape community. Is it always necessary that race be embedded in Architecture? I think not. Maybe stories and other ways that people understand their communities, which may not be manifested architecturally, are also part of making that place. Andrea Roberts I see Austin wrestling with this question. After years of denial about East Austin’s gentrification, we are hyper-concerned with what’s happening to affordable housing there. However, in the process, people ignore the fact that there were once sixteen black settlements throughout Austin, many scattered south of the river, and even further southwest. As a result, the notion of where the fight is keeps getting defined in a way that erases the broader city, not just the “East Side.” How we define the struggle for black (and brown) communities’ place-based heritage and the right to remain has much to do with this divisive excision of African-Americans from mainstream life and resources in 1928, as shown in the city plan from that time. But, this literal color line succeeds in cordoning off African-Americans in other ways, even though the demographics have long since changed and their heritage is intimately intertwined with everything that makes Austin, Austin. Walter Hood For me, it’s about how we can collectively value our cultural differences. Only when this happens will women and people of color be validated through design. Again, it’s not about making architecture that looks “black.” You would think that architecture would be amazing in this country because of the dynamic influences of its people. You look at American music and it is amazing. Why is it amazing? It’s amazing because people were inspired by one another. Miles Davis could be inspired by Mozart and Charlie Parker could be inspired by Beethoven. You also see white musicians inspired by black musicians, like Elvis Presley
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being inspired by Chuck Berry. This notion of reciprocation becomes important, and you don’t find it in Architecture or Design or Environmental Design. This may be because the dominant groups (primarily white men) feel like they have to lead through a myopic view of Architecture. I think that you can reciprocate in a lot of different ways. One way is listening. Another way is looking. You don’t even have to have empathy—you just have to be inspired. Inspiration will force you to think of things in a new way. Jesús Robles Jr. So much of what contributes to saving a culture or a neighborhood we can associate with class. Some might find enclaves within the city’s rich, and some might find them blithe. I can personally relate to a lot of these things. My mother was a Korean immigrant who left her culture and adopted the cultures of the places she lived. At one time, that region happened to be Southern California. My father is Chicano, so my parents’ marriage was one of two cultures, and my mom’s culture was essentially a hybrid of Chicano, Korean, and Southern Californian. A lot of that was driven by our environment. We lived in a place where streets were still dirt, and you saw chain link fences and pitbulls. My parents moved up pretty fast. They established job security and moved to Texas. Now, my mother, who is a Korean immigrant, has basically become this rich mix of Texan, Korean, Chicano, and Southern Californian. Race, or even the cultural aspects required for my mother to assimilate, could be removed, but, ultimately, class never could be removed. Moving through landscapes really dictated her means. When we left California, my parents sold our house to move to the suburbs outside of Dallas. I had never experienced culture shock until that moment. I moved from California, where my classmates at school were Filipino, Iranian, Korean, Japanese, Mexican and Greek, to a part of Texas that is predominantly white. There were probably around four African-Americans, six to eight Mexican-Americans, and a handful of Asian-Americans. Ultimately, I saw those ethnic enclaves. However, I didn’t see enclaves in the landscape or in neighborhoods because we were all mixed, and, for the most part, the majority of us were middle class. At that point, we were all living in the same tract home in similar neighborhoods. At school, and socially, that barrier seemed to dissolve.
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Anna Brand I think of class through displacement. I do a lot of work in New Orleans on the built fabric of Treme, which is a historic black community built by Free People of Color. There are very intricate relationships between race and class that take place through different spatial processes across the Treme community. It is an area that has always been negatively shaped by development forces, but it is also a vibrant community and culture. Post-Katrina gentrification and the displacement of people who have lived there for a long time, primarily the black community, are examples of the ways that ties to a specific place can be tenuous for communities of color and lower-income communities. This displacement is not just physical, it has social, emotional, and economic components. There is this tension about space and safety, and a sense that space can represent different cultures and diversity, but, ultimately, not everyone has the means to stay within the landscape that represents essential parts of their identity.
CL: How does protecting and preserving the built environment intersect with structures of inequality, land use, resource extraction, land rights, and territories on the local, national, and global scales? Michael Ford The elective preservation of certain areas ignores other areas and communities. A popular story is the Cross-Bronx Expressway and its relationship to Robert Moses. It was decided that the community did not need to be preserved and was not worth an investment. What happened here is something I call a literal representation of “structural racism,” exemplified by the low-income housing that was built in the South Bronx during the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway. Low-income housing was placed there in hopes of limiting the displacement of African-Americans and Latinos that lived in the Bronx. It also started to house several policies that directly affected the people in those places. So, I think it's all about elective preservation, especially in black communities, which is a topic of discussion right now with Madam CJ Walker's residence in New York. Anna Brand We saw this take place across numerous African-American communities in the mid-twentieth century. So many historic black communities and even thriving black business corridors were decimated in the name of “progress.” Now, we are seeing it again in new forms of displacement and urban development that place a strict emphasis on elevating the economic value of land. We need to draw parallels over time between what is preserved and what is deconstructed in the name of progress.
Sarah Lopez That reminds me of an article I read yesterday about preserving Nina Simone's childhood home. That’s another relevant example. Four African–American artists combined their own money to purchase the house because there wasn't any kind of preservation group or community effort to buy it. It’s an example of a grassroots initiative where the attitude is, “Let's just take on preservation ourselves, or else it’s not going to happen.” Michael Ford We can further relate this conversation to the work of architects, designers, and urban planners by looking at the community in Detroit called “Black Bottom” or “Paradise Valley.” This was an African–American community that was basically destroyed after the race riots in Detroit. Rumors are that the riots started with a meeting among some patrons of a bar. Recently, an expressway was built through that community. Now, designers are trying to re-create Paradise Valley digitally, so that people can take virtual tours where they can’t take physical tours. The expressway is impacting accessibility and has changed the space, so we see designers looking at how we can use technology to help preserve or bring back spaces that were not accurately preserved. Felecia Davis I think you raise a really important issue. Having experience with an African burial ground in the nineties, it took a long time to raise money to build a memorial, museum, and accompanying exhibition. It took a really long time. Technology in the form of augmented reality, for example, could have been useful and an interesting way to make present something that wasn’t physically there. To me, when Jesús was talking about his mother transplanted in Texas (Korean–American–Texan), it’s really these practices that you perform as you go from place to place that don’t have a physical mark. These practices foster connections for people. And, I think technology could potentially engage that idea and practice of making space and creating place. conversation continued on page 30
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Portals to Freedom or Researching in Limbo Time Andrea Roberts as a planning and preservation researcher with a passion for the poetic, the just, and the pragmatic, it seems fitting that I would be enchanted by in-between or liminal spaces. Solutions to the challenges we face (creating, protecting, and preserving sustainable built and unbuilt landscapes) are often catalyzed by a sense of wonder or possibility. Often, it is remembering something seemingly irrelevant that perfects a formula, addresses a design flaw, fills a budget gap, or increases forgotten people and places’ access to resources and agency. I am perpetually seeking spaces of possibility imbued with significance by African–American memory. These spaces may manifest as virtual discourse on Twitter, decaying wood on a pier at a water’s edge, a capped spring, or even an abandoned church in a historic settlement. Spatial conditions and uses change over time, but meanings are constant. In-between fuzzy municipal boundaries, farm roads, and manmade rivers, these often rural spaces take us somewhere both forward and backward in time—recalling what was and imagining what could be—particularly when unadulterated black voices and images are able to clearly define the present as they see it. For African-Americans, these spaces may lend themselves to tapping into one of many iterations of diasporic experience. In between a shared past of displacement and forced disconnection from our cultural continuities, a present sense of disorder or yearning for a more just future, and a perpetual search for safe, unsullied, real, and imagined collectivities emerges and informs the way we create places, buildings, and art. My ethnographic and archival research documents the planning, placemaking, and heritage conservation innovations situated in these moments and spaces.
The natural spring at Shankleville Settlement. I was drawn to this lush green entryway, pulled into its dark center when I first saw it in 2014. This wooded area leads to a spring where two formerly enslaved Africans reunited after being divided in Mississippi. After the sale of Jim Shankle’s wife and children, he attempted to find them. He is said to have crossed several “great” rivers as a fugitive slave running away from Mississippi. He found Winnie in Newton County, TX in the early 1840s at the spring at the end of this swirling circle of green. His descendant, Harold Odom maintains the spring at this site surrounded by crepe myrtles, once bushes are now towering trees. Harold lives in almost 3 hours away in suburban Houston, but returns to the spring and family homestead in Shankleville as often as he can.
voices of those traditionally on the margins of placemaking to the center. The focus of the film is a settlement called Ibo Landing, a cinematically constructed place Dash concedes is an imagining of the island off America’s southern coast where enslaved members of I think those of us who deal with the Ibo tribe from West Africa purposely hid and later the built environment must be drowned themselves rather than be taken as slaves to open to improving our practices the mainland. Existing in what Sheila McKoy calls “limbo time,” the film captures a moment in which by recognizing, validating, Ibo Landing serves as an intergenerational, dialogic bridge between life in the settlement that appears to and integrating various forms have sustained itself and its Africanisms despite the of expertise into our notions of Atlantic slave trade and mainland encounters with what expertise looks like. South Carolina and Christianity. This construction of time, explains McKoy, is a “Diaspora notion of time, While conducting research in the marshy, wooded one that is a fusion of African cyclical time and the bottom land of East Texas Freedom Colonies in 2014- disruption of this cycle forced by the Middle Passage. 15, I recalled poetic images that helped me formu- The impetus here is to defy Western temporal notions late an understanding of how black settlements and of time; time becomes a means to challenge Western landscapes enable us to contemplate possibility and attempts to disfigure Diaspora culture.”ii Ibo Landing collectivity amid ongoing struggle against oppression is in danger unless its residents learn to reconcile these and cultural annihilation. They were flashes from two seemingly disparate forms of change and conserJulie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.i Though fictional, vation in a way that allows the young to flourish while the surrealist spatial narratives in the film illuminate embodying limbo time and living in-between. Elders the ways that descendants of the African diaspora who hoped the youngest generation would stay on the (in America) use storytelling and memory to move island and others who wished people would return
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US 190 Bridge at Neches River. This bridge hovers over the many bodies of water serving as both recreation venue and flood prevention. Founded in 1933, the Lower Neches Valley Authority created the Neches River Basin and Sam Rayburn Reservoir and Dam B in the 1950s. There are several reservoirs in the area which often government seizure of Black and poor farmers’ land.
from the mainland coexisted with the voices of those who saw salvation in leaving the island. In much the same fashion, though with nowhere near the elegance of Julie Dash, I documented Freedom Colony stories of those living in-between, in limbo time. These placemaking and preservation stories, transferred across space, class, age, residency, and notions of rootedness varied, but one constant was a commitment to reconstituting a point of return to a diasporic past through cultural reproduction. These performances in ritual celebration and remembrance are aimed at preserving place continuity and sovereignty within sparsely populated black settlements founded by former slaves. Accessing these spaces to record story and memory required building an intimacy and locating entryways, portals into these liminal spaces. It also required a willingness to learn to move, listen, and feel limbo time. These intimacies of field research, relationships, and feelings, these affective mnemonics in wooded spaces along manmade lakes, bridges, and even sterile, masterplanned suburbs, open doors to limbo time. I am always warily pursuing these spaces in limbo time that include people’s homes, thickly wooded green spaces and
Homecoming weekend at Jamestown Settlement, Pinehill Church, Newton County, Texas (2015) Places of worship are spaces in which the liminal is most visible. Surprised by my momentary invasion, then amused, an elder and her nephew fellowshipped like so many others who came to these sleepy, quiet settlement each summer. Filled to capacity, they recalled ancestors and sang into the early morning hours over two days in a settlement with less than 50 families left. During homecoming, Jamestown is home to 200+ visitors from major Houston, Texas metros, California, and around the country. Clear Creek Church at Clear Creek Cemetery. Jasper County, Texas.
springs that sustained fugitive slaves, bridges, choirs singing during annual homecoming celebrations, abandoned or adapted churches and Rosenwald schools, and unlit dusty county roads. I am always hoping my efforts to open a reciprocal portal of exchange and equilibrium do not dishonor, expose, or corrupt.
ations.”iv I was betwixt and between middle class suburbanites, elderly women living alone in the woods, wealthy executives frying fish in a barn, and bodies in their final sleep that won’t stop speaking through their keepers and griots.
Architects, planners, and preservationists should always think about their work with sacred spaces, considering landscapes (not just buildings) as being inextricably linked to power dynamics of the past and present. If anyone isn’t recognizing their power or ways that power can manipulate them and their role in a project, the community suffers.
These photos of limbo time, these portals to the past, invite us to honor, wonder, and learn from the experience of living in diaspora, in-between homes. Others, living in settlements full time, also embody the in-between. Their persistence and commitment to maintaining a sense of place abuts land use convention and a culture in which newness equates progress. These quiet, dusty country roads lead to buildings, places, and spaces of possibility, meaning, and an integrity more powerful than that found in craftsmanship or style. To those who own family land and regularly return to freedom colonies, these communities are places where African-Americans mobilize memories. Together, they work out their salvation from economic uncertainty, danger, disenfranchisement, and alienation through stories of perseverance and ingenuity, where home is both a past reality and future vision within reach.
Embodiment of liminality is prevalent among Freedom Colony residents who, rather than find themselves in the chaos of the in-between, embrace the status as “a space of greatest invention, discovery, creativity, and reflection.”iii Many descendants of settlement founders live within multiple locations, such as those who live in Houston but call Freedom Colonies their homes. The photos accompanying this essay are my psycho-geographic depiction of experiencing liminality, the “state of being betwixt and between structures and situ-
i Julie Dash. The Making of The Daughters of the Dust / Julie Dash and Cast. Documentary, accessed from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xmxfX2Vo624. March 23, 2016. ii Sheila Smith McKoy, “Limbo: Diaspora Temporality and Its Reflection in Praisesong for the “Widow and Daughters of the Dust,” Callaloo 22, no. 1 (1999): 209. The film, according to McKoy, is subversive in its approach to storytelling in its nonlinear style reflecting a diasporic notion of time. She argues, “time becomes a means to challenge Western attempts to disfigure Diaspora culture.” iii D. Soyini Madison. Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance. Page 158. SAGE Publications, Inc., USA. 2012. iv Madison, 2012.
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Tour guide, Gwen Bluiett of Mount Union settlement, recalling Clear Creek Church as a child. She lived most of her adult life in Crosby and Houston. Once retired, she returned to Mount Union and now volunteers at the Jasper County Historical Commission.
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Origins: The Sacred Ground Jesús Edmundo Robles Jr.
How do you empower the community that you're trying to preserve? How do you empower the people that are already there?
light and atmosphere in the desert; its vastness and great big sky. The promise and repose of the horizon shape our images and memories of the Southwest. Fire and water have shaped this landscape and influenced the identities and practices of cultures and civilizations.
of the Santa Cruz River in Tucson and of all major waterways in Southern Arizona. The Santa Cruz River is integral to Tucson’s story and was vital to the Pueblo’s existence for 10,000 years. Today, it is dry. This region has been farmed for over 3,000 years, but in the last 100 years it has seen a rapid degradation of its watershed and a drop in the water table. Architecture as a Land Ethic
White House Ruins, Canyon De Chelly, Navajo Nation, Arizona. Photo by Jesus Robles.
Saguaro National Park West, Tucson Mountains, Arizona. Photo by Jesus Robles.
The state of Arizona currently diverts water from the Colorado River through a 336-mile aqueduct system to Phoenix and Tucson using some of the canal routes that were used by the Hohokam. If the snow melt of the Rockies decreases, then the valve on the aqueduct closes due to geopolitical mandates spanning back generations. This situation, in regard to water, is beyond cliché or novelty in context of the Southwestern deserts.
The recent scars of the land show Western civilization’s plunder for ores, oil, and water. Layer that with our industrial agriculture and cattle ranching history, and, over time, the scars subtly reveal the dramatic and systemic alterations to the landscape through erosion and impact to flora and fauna. The wars of regional tribes for land and resources dating back a millennium, their culture and architecture give us a glimpse of the carrying capacity of the land and the region, pre-European influence. The Hohokam natives had engineered over 500 miles of canals for their agrarian society and dug houses partially into the earth. Scientists and anthropologists believe a cause of ancestral migrations or abandonment of culturally advanced civilizations was drought. Their response was to band into smaller tribes and migrate to other river valleys and higher elevations—the canyons, cliffs, and mesas. 1 2 / P L AT FOR M / 20 17 / C ON V E RGE N T VOICE S
Tucson Mountain Retreat was our first commission, completed in summer of 2012. It is located in the Tucson Mountains west of town, and is adjacent to the Saguaro National Park West, on a property still marked by tailing piles of a failed mining prospect. The valley the house sits in is on the eastern slope, under Wasson Peak, the highest elevation in the West mountains. The site is studded with ancient Saguaros, Palo Verdes, Creosotes, Ironwoods, Jojoba, Cholla, and Brittlebush Sage. The house sits between two major outcroppings, an extension of the living space and adjacent to a major wash and riparian corridor. This mountain region’s history is rich with cultural artifacts and the remains of human habitation and petroglyphs of past civilizations. Its geological history is rich with volcanic activity, a mash-up of rocks known as the Tucson Mountain Chaos. The geologic makeup ranges from Rhyolite Lava, Pink Granite, and Quartz, to Granite and Gneiss.
Canyon De Chelly, Navajo Nation, Arizona. Photo by Jesus Robles.
Volcanoes and erosion have sculpted our experiences and identities with deserts of the Southwest. Water was critical to how tribes and civilizations inhabited this region, and will continue to be a protagonist in its future narrative.
Our current work, musings, and recently finished projects are an investigation into a desert aesthetic and our sensory experiences. We look to engage the place and land sensitively, meaningfully, and thoughtfully. We work to achieve a reverence that attempts to leave a place with a capacity for regeneration and growth.
Central Arizona Project aqueduct, near Picacho Peak, Arizona. Photo by Ben Lepley.
How can we, as humans, find value in our perceptions and observations of our world and environment that support the diverse community of plant, animal, and human life? How does this help shape our built environment? What is the story of your place and what will your role be in that story? These questions bring us back to an acute awareness of our place, and in our instance, just how fragile life can be in the desert. It defines and frames our perception of how we choose to engage and act in our place. We are all part of the biotic community. Therefore, plants, animals, and the Earth should be regarded as equals. Wilderness is the raw material out of which man has hammered the artifact called civilization. – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac There are conservationists, activists, and desert dwellers that dream of and work toward the eventual return
The house was designed with challenges of no air conditioning or water availability in mind. Our precedents were the vernacular row house found in the barrios. Shared mass walls, orientation, and use of vegetation for shade, and space planning of buffer zones to mitigate the heat. While it does have the luxuries of a well and mechanical heating and cooling, the basis of the design was that it would perform if those conditions were not available. On a hundred-degree summer day in the sun with the doors open, one can find the temperature in the opened living room twenty degrees cooler with a breeze. Passive solar design, thermal mass, and cross ventilation were key components for success. The water in the well was tested. We discovered that it hadn’t been replenished in the range of 350 to 750 years, and had high levels of arsenic and alkaline. Given the finite potential of the well, and the size of the roof and annual average rainfall, a 30,000-gallon water collection storage and filtration system was incorporated to offset the use of groundwater. It is enough water for a family of three to use moderately a year. Grey water was planned for surrounding vegetation and future solar tie-ins.
pavilion for the Paton Center for Hummingbirds run by the Tucson Audubon Society. The region shifts between the Oak Grassland and Woodlands ecosystems, and is located in the valley between the Santa Rita Mountains and the Patagonia Mountains. The pavilion’s backyard is essentially the Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve. The watershed of Sonoita Creek is one of the few remaining permanent streams in one of the richest riparian habitats in the region. The floodplain consists of Fremont Cottonwoods, Arizona Black Walnut, Velvet Mesquite, Velvet Ash, Netleaf Hackberry, various Willows, and Oaks. Since the property is located in the floodplain, the caretaker house, built in 1915, was situated on an elevated berm that separated it from the adjacent creek and floodplain. Tucson Audubon Society has been working on regenerating the site with native species, pollinators, and restoration to the creek’s edge. In regard to the placement of the pavilion, the decision was made to reclaim and regenerate that specific part of the property and attempt to return it to the level of the floodplain to the Southwest, just beyond the property.
Tucson Mountain Retreat by DUST. Photo by Bill Timmerman.
Tucson Mountain Retreat by DUST. Photo by Bill Timmerman.
Approach to Casa Caldera, DUST. Photo by Cade Hayes.
A path gradually descends down two feet to the pavilion pad. The pavilion measures forty-two feet long by fourteen feet wide, and is comprised of three steel columns supporting a central beam made of laminated White Oak. The tapered rafters are dual cantilevered three by twelve-inch solid White Oak. The roof shade structure consists of sixteen-gauge steel ribbons and twists to deliver rainwater to two low points of drainage. Strategically designed catch basins were planned, excavated and planted to harvest and slow down the water runoff. The reward is a regeneration of grasses and pollinator plants to attract and provide food for the birds in the community while offering the viewer a natural stage back drop for hummingbird observation. Over 120 tons of soil had been cut and filled or donated to local residents to connect back to the floodplain and harvest the water. The site work was completed in February 2017 as part of the first phase to ensure usability of the site during birding season. Planting is currently underway to allow a monsoon season to help initiate the regeneration of the site work and basins. The structural components are projected to be completed in Fall 2017 after the peak birding and monsoon seasons.
Zaguan looking West, Casa Caldera, DUST. Photo by Jeff Goldberg.
Baja Arizona Map. Image courtesy of DUST.
Our next commission, Casa Caldera, was completed in the winter of 2015. The house is located in the high desert grasslands of Baja, Arizona, in the valley that contains the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River. It is a region rich in cultural history including hunter gatherers and conquistadors, Apaches, cowboys, migrants, narcotrafficantes, and conservationists. It is a region with roots in social, political, economic, and environmental issues, including human and drug trafficking, conservation, restoration, mining, cattle ranching, and agriculture, to name a few. The landscape is a lab for watershed and habitat restoration, native plant propagation, and preservation of wildlife corridors.
reclusive quality. Nestled on a westward facing slope amongst the Emory Oaks and Manzanitas, the design offers a quality or refuge as it is protected from outside visibility. In addition, the design exploits the prospect views toward the San Rafael Valley and the Patagonia Mountains to the West.
Pre-industrial age dwellings of the region, ranch houses and Zaguan houses, served as our precedent. A new vernacular material replaced the adobe brick with lava aggregate walls called scoria. Given the proximity to the border, the house took on a defensive and
With each project, there is a sensitivity and mindfulness to the environments and habitats that we are impacting and displacing. The ecosystem is affected by our habitation, and adapts to it. Our survival may depend on our ability to adapt and our potential to regenerate a healthy relationship to the land and the diverse communities that support our being.
This house is completely off-grid, relying on a two-kilowatt solar skid for minimal electrical consumption, a well for water, wood fuel for heat, and natural ventilation for cooling. Thermal mass and passive heating and cooling strategies bolster its effectiveness. Rainwater is harvested and distributed to a grove of young Oak trees to the Northwest, which naturally fends off the late summer sun. Located in the same region as Casa Caldera, fifteen miles to the West in the town of Patagonia, Arizona, is da project currently under construction. It will be a Rendering of Hummingbird Pavilion for Tucson Audubon Society, in progress. Image courtesy of DUST.
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Activating Architecture Lori Brown
as thomas fisher notes in Expanding Architecture Design as Activism,1 between only two to five percent of all that is built worldwide has been constructed in consultation with an architect. This devastatingly low number reflects a grave disparity between what we imagine and what we instill in our students as architecture’s role, even responsibility, to the built environment and its inhabitants, versus the reality and brutal truth of how and for whom architecture is practiced. There can be no denying that architecture serves, almost exclusively, the wealthy of the world. As both an architect and an academic, I have two aims. First, I am invested in expanding the discipline’s engagement with the broader public. This includes architects working in areas where we typically do not and working with those we have historically ignored. This also relates to how and where architecture is practiced. Design research, invested in broader influences on the built environment, is not solely based on the design of buildings. Rather, this form of inquiry examines forces that both directly and indirectly shape our world. Design research often begins from the examination of everyday political, social, and cultural concerns that move the discipline beyond one of form for form’s sake.
It's critical for students to be introduced to a much wider range of how we understand the built environment. At what point are concerns about political, social, and economic forces introduced to students? These should become critical elements of their education. The other aim is for architecture to engage in the most pressing challenges of our time. For example, Architecture should engage climate change, poverty, public infrastructure, and housing. I will discuss a few examples of my work that take different forms, from scholarly research and collaborative design with communities to activism that brings architectural knowledge to broader groups in diverse and oftentimes unexpected applications. In part, this architectural activism has emerged through interdisciplinary conferences, speaking engagements, and the desire for architecture to become more politically engaged. Reproductive Healthcare Initially envisioned as a design research project, this material was published in Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals2 and has since led
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to several tangential projects. I am providing design consultation to a number of abortion clinics in several parts of the country to reconsider their public interfaces. Another related research area focuses on clinic building code analysis in order to assist lawyers arguing that clinic building code changes are not serving their intended purpose of improving the life and safety of their users. I have also served as an expert witness based on these analyses. Another related, yet unexpected, tangent resulted in the inclusion of some of the data I collected for Contested Spaces becoming part of the American Society for Emergency Contraception database. One aspect of the project considers other places for the possible expansion of reproductive healthcare access, such as the availability of emergency contraception (EC) through pharmacies. I collected data on whether pharmacies in the most restrictive states across the country stocked, sold, or denied access to EC. These four examples demonstrate how my design research has moved into broader arenas — moving Architecture into current debates that intersect with the politics of spatial relationships. Architecture can impact the broader world and must do so more often. Diversity in Architecture All aspects of our discipline, from architectural education to the highest level of professional management and leadership, must diversify. For too long this discipline has been a white man’s club. It is way past time for women and people of color to participate at all levels of the academy and practice. Personal identity and lived experiences shape who we are and how we exist in the world. Students need to see people who look like them in the classroom, at public lectures, and in leadership positions. Otherwise, how will they know that they can do those things, too? To be a more responsive discipline requires a diverse group that more accurately reflects society’s needs and range of experiences. As the population becomes more and more diverse, the discipline must evolve to reflect these changing demographics. This enables a discipline to better respond to the complexity and diversity of society’s problems. Architecture’s future is at stake if we do not create a more diverse and equitable profession. We will miss out on having a voice and role in addressing some of the most critical concerns of our time if we do not make a change. As co-founder and leader of ArchiteXX, a New York City-based women in architecture organization, I collaborate with a multi-generational group of women to bridge the academy and practice. We create opportunities to raise awareness of women in the discipline, both within schools, practice, and out in the broader public. We achieve this through two major initiatives.
Abortion clinic. Courtesy Lori Brown.
Our University Hubs brown bag lecture series works with students and faculty from architecture programs across New York State to provide more opportunities for women to discuss their design and research. This programming allows students to lead discussions, promote women in architecture programs, and to network and build alliances across different schools.
I think the discipline will not change unless it's forced to change legally. The second initiative is called #WikiD. An international effort to write more women into Wikipedia, this project initially began as a response to Despina Stratigakos’s Places essay,3 where she witnessed women being edited out of Wikipedia. Now in our third year, we continue
Data regarding pharmacies in Mississippi and abortion facilities in Texas. Courtesy Lori Brown.
to challenge the history of our discipline and teach others to become Wikipedia contributors. We have collaborated with the Australian group Parlour and the Berlin group N-ails to do so. #WikiD is beginning to have a significant impact on architecture and design content on Wikipedia. We will continue these efforts until parity is reached. In addition to these programming efforts, ArchiteXX provides mentoring for women at all stages of their careers, a reading and writing group, and educational workshops and design activities to target short-term design-related challenges. We are also planning a traveling exhibition, 40 Years Later: Architecture, Activism, Alliances, examining the impact and influences in the 40 years since the critically important “Women in American Architecture” exhibition and publication in 19774, organized by Susana Torre. The exhibition takes a critical look at the progress made in fostering a more inclusive discipline; progress which was not inevitable, but the result of a hard-won battle by impassioned advocates to keep the unique struggles of marginalized groups at the forefront of national consciousness. This will include movements such as Black Lives Matter,
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LGTBQ, gender and immigration rights, and others that provoke us to envision a future for Architecture that enables all architects to achieve their potential, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical ability. Through all of our efforts, ArchiteXX bridges academia and practice, preparing soon-to-be and recent graduates for what lies ahead as they embark out into the profession, creating more exposure for women in the discipline, and supporting women who have been in the profession for quite some time. We believe it would be a missed opportunity not to create a bridge between the academy and practice. We are working to fill this critical gap. Design research creates a variety of opportunities to use our spatial expertise to engage with some of the most pressing issues of our time. Working as an academic, an architect, and an activist, this methodology enables me to move between the academy and practice, addressing issues of power and social justice concerns to positively affect the world at large. I fervently believe our discipline must be at the forefront of collaborating with others to address problems of the built environment.
1 Thomas Fisher. “Public-Interest Architecture: A Needed and Inevitable Change.” In Expanding Architecture Design as Activism, edited by Bryan Bell and Katie Wakeford. Metropolis Books, New York, 2008. 2 Lori A. Brown. Contested Spaces: Abortion Clinics, Women’s Shelters and Hospitals. Surrey, Ashgate Publishing Limited, England, 2013. 3 Despina Stratigakos. “Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia,” Places Journal, April 2016. Accessed from doi.org, June 26, 2017. 4 Susana Torre, ed. Women in American Architecture: A Historic and Contemporary Perspective. Whitney Library of Design, New York, 1977.
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What Is Hip Hop Architecture? Michael Ford
“Negro music has touched American (music) because it is the melody of the soul joined with the rhythm of the machine. The music of the era of construction; innovating. It floods the body and heart, it floods the USA and it floods the world. Jazz, like the skyscrapers, is an event and not a deliberately conceived creation. They represent the forces of today. The jazz is more advanced than the architecture. If architecture were at the point reached by jazz, it would be an incredible spectacle.”i – Le Corbusier merging contemporary black music with architecture is not a new concept. Le Corbusier, a SwissFrench architect and urban planner known as a pioneer of modern architecture, was mesmerized by the impromptu nature of Jazz music and its musicians. During the Harlem Renaissance and his subsequent stalking of Josephine Baker during his Negrophile period, Le Corbusier became aware of the improvisational mastery of Jazz tools by Jazz musicians, allowing them to seamlessly come together from various regions to create unwritten, beautiful music. He pondered whether architects would ever master the tools of design and construction to create something just as innovative, or if architects should be relied upon as the sources of innovation within the profession? He pondered, “if they (African-Americans) had brought about a spiritual and cultural reformation in music, other outside forces could bring about a reformation in architecture?”ii Hip Hop has surpassed the international notoriety of jazz and has the intellectual identity to serve as the catalyst the architectural profession needs to achieve the “incredible spectacle.” Today, Le Corbusier would undoubtedly fantasize about the merger of Hip Hop and Architecture. Hip Hop has established itself as a gravitas culture that crosses borders of race, ethnicity, class, religion, and profession. Constituents of the Hip Hop generation carry the residue of the culture into all spaces they inhabit, and their individual works are seasoned with its flavor and architecture is not exempt. As a variety of academics continue to explore the validity of Hip Hop culture and disseminate the social significance of Rap, it is now time for the architecture profession to explore the benefits the culture provides to its current and future practitioners. In fact, the profession has taken initial steps in exploring the intersection of Hip Hop culture and architecture, from Ice Cube’s involvement with “Celebrate Eames” to Pharrell Williams’ invitation to be the Keynote Speaker at the 2014 American Institute of Architects National Convention. More recently, YKK has a produced an on-going series of rap themed music videos titled “I’m An Architect,” aimed at celebrating the profession in hopes of inspiring the next generation of practitioners.
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Each instance acknowledges the marketing power of of the African American” and gain firsthand informaHip Hop culture while the latter depressingly uses the tion on the discrimination faced by blacks in America. culture, especially the role of the MC, as nothing more Le Corbusier assigned special significance to Africanthan an attention-grabbing gimmick. Unfortunately, Americans because they were part of the underclass. He this series is the latest example of “eroding lyricism believed that, unlike other groups in American society, in favor of easy hooks” essentially dumbing down Hip “blacks were predisposed to change. He endorsed the widely Hop and removing it from its message of liberating its held European belief that they were more primitive, more listeners by providing knowledge of self. “Is there a unspoiled, nobler, and open to new ideas.” Just as many way to acknowledge Hip Hop’s burgeoning commercial other spaces and places produced by the often well-instrength without its ethic being compromised?”iii tended but non-inclusive architecture and urban planning professionals, he believed, “these Americans had the Instead of simply using Hip Hop to promote architec- most to gain by change and renewal.”vii ture to new practitioners, I suggest we study Hip Hop culture and the necessitation of its birth to heighten the social and cultural consciousness of the profession Sometimes, we can have as a whole. Doing so would start to repair the profes- good intentions and think we sion’s reputation in underrepresented communities and can mold people's lives for the can serve as a catalyst in providing holistic solutions to the complex problems plaguing those communities. better, but the attempt to mold Since its inception, the Hip Hop MC has served as a someone's life for them is a voice for the disenfranchised, the often unconsulted form of punishment. end users of urban renewal initiatives. Hip Hop lyrics are saturated with first-hand accounts of injustices suffered at the hands of policies such as slum clearance, In the conclusion of his book, The City of Tomorrow and eminent domain, failed urban planning, and the deplor- Its Planning, Le Corbusier states that it’s a “great pity” able conditions of monotonous high-rise, low-income that his plans do not take into account the various housing developments. “Are these manifestations complexities, including financial figures and required insignificant at a time of great economic, political, compromises, which could further validate his visions. and social crises? They serve to stir up consciousness He added that he was convinced that both the figures in a profound way. They introduce new values into and the compromises are positives and would not the depths of the heart.”iv It’s no secret that modern negatively affect society. He wrote his wish for sometown planning and high–density, low-income housing one else, who he described as a specialist, to come and superblocks have failed inhabitants across the country. implement his vision for modern town planning. As a hiphopper, born into these environments, I see the musical component of the culture capable of providing The Worst Sample in History solutions to many complex problems within the built environment. Again, this is not a new position to take, New York City developer Robert Moses must have taken Le Corbusier stated, “a lyrical” contemporary mass so Le Corbusier’s self-criticism as a direct invitation to pull invincible that I could see the foundation of a new the plan forward, and despite Le Corbusier’s vision sentiment of music capable of being the expression of receiving its fair share of criticisms, Moses and other the new epoch.”v developers helped propel the model into a national standard for low-income housing. During one of Moses’ largDid Le Corbusier Seek to Liberate est projects, the Cross-Bronx Expressway, which started African-Americans? in 1959 and cut directly through the heart of the working class areas in the Bronx, he turned to Le Corbusier’s Le Corbusier’s visions for Modern Town Planning, The modern town planning to accommodate displaced Contemporary City, and Plan Voisin, although originally residents and support his slum clearance initiative. In intended for the center of Paris, became the basis for Jeff Chang’s book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, A History of the how a large populous of low–income inner-city dwell- Hip Hop Generation, he notes, “[Robert] Moses found ers would live in America. In his book, “Le Corbusier in the ‘tower-in-a-park’ model was a blackboard equation America,” Marges Bacon describes how Le Corbusier, that neatly solved thorny problems—open space in the because of Paris’ refusal to implement his “audacious urban grid, housing for the displaced poor—with a tidy plan,” substituted African-Americans throughout cost efficient solution to slum housing.”viii the United States for the intended inhabitants of his renewal schemes from the working class citizens Sampling and remixing have played integral roles in of Paris. Le Corbusier’s “…intimate friendship with Hip Hop since its inception. Early DJs perfected the Josephine Baker helped him to appreciate the character extraction of portions of songs, which evoked savory
emotions from listeners. Commonly referred to as “break beats,” those extracted samples were looped, stuttered, sped up, slowed down, reconfigured, and extended, ultimately serving Hip Hop’s “break dancers” or producing new songs altogether. Robert Moses failed to fully implement Le Corbusier’s schemes for Modern Town Planning. He simply extracted a sample from Le Corbusier’s visions, the physical architectural component itself—the “towers-in-a-park”—eliminating the social, economic, and political amenities described by Le Corbusier as essential to success. In essence, Moses extracted a sample, which, unlike Hip Hop extractions, did not resonate with people’s souls. Moses decided to loop this bad sample over and over, throughout the Bronx. This sample would become the standard for low-income housing across the country. Le Corbusier’s plan was sampled and remixed. For instance, Le Corbusier envisioned that “provisions are bought wholesale, direct from the country, such as meat, game, vegetables and fruit, and then are placed in cold storage on the ground floors of the towers.” This would provide inhabitants a savings of “30 to 40 percent as against the prices charged at the great stores.” This idea starkly contrasted many of the inner-city food deserts across the country. Le Corbusier envisioned lush green spaces and recreational facilities such as running tracks perched upon green roofs. The low-rise tenement housing in his plan were located adjacent to places of employment, the high-rise office towers, affectionately known as the “Towers in a Park.” Instead of office towers flanked by tenement housing, America’s implementation of Le Corbusier’s scheme became solely high–rise housing complexes without the office towers, eliminating the benefit of immediate access to employment. Developing these geometrical barracks, void of the amenities described by Le Corbusier and coupled with the racially biased policies and practices of American cities, resulted in structural racism, both literally and figuratively. Occupant Advisory: Non-Inclusive Design “Why are some, now standard, building typologies copied over and over, but are never tested for evidence of their adaptation? It doesn’t occur to those architects to undertake medical response experiments just to make sure that what they are doing is not making people ill. Those untested environments may in fact be stressful or otherwise harmful to their users. The problem is that architects are not at present trained to measure physiological indicators.”iˣ -Nikos Salingaros During the 2010 academic year, I established an ongoing Hip Hop Architecture Lecture Tour that has evolved into The Hip Hop Architecture Camp. Both initiatives focuses on academic research centered around urban culture’s influence on the architectural profession and vice versa through three interconnected realms: academic research, professional practice and media. Using Hip Hop samples as dialogue, commentary, and counterpoints, it is easy to see how Hip Hop lyrics serve as the post-occupancy evaluation of Modernism.ˣ Hip Hop Architecture exposes “the legacy of the systematic destruction of working-class and poor African–American communities.”ˣi Ultimately, Hip Hop Architecture halts the historical
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discourse and the acceptance of the black ghetto’s existence solely because of the cultural behaviors of black and brown people, while exposing both the conscious and subconscious efforts of our profession to absolve the most powerful shapers of society—architects— from any responsibility. Architectural Criticism Predicts the Birth of Hip Hop Culture
Corbusier must believe that architecture can create disorder, if he stands by the principle that his stylistic approach to architecture, which calls for architecture to function like a machine, can produce a better citizen. If Architecture has the power to produce order, it must also have the power to destroy it.
We see designers looking at how we can use technology to help preserve or bring back spaces that were not accurately preserved.
In my opinion, the greatest Hip Hop song of all time is Grand Master Flash and The Furious Five’s “The Message.” Verse after verse provides lyrical descriptions of the physical, economic, social, and political discrimination instituted by modernist visions implemented in the inner city is a stark contrast to the well-intentioned Modern Town Planning described by Hip Hop Architecture is not a stylistic approach resultLe Corbusier. Among other qualities, Le Corbusier’s ing in whimsical architectural forms, nor is it another plan included translucent prisms of glass, immediate “–ism,” such as Modernism, which created the challengaccess to employment, and tranquil, lush green scenery ing environments necessitating the birth of the culture, with fresh air and no noise. “The Message” describes the when coupled with the other –isms such as classism, reality of the urban renewal strategy as a stifling, ines- racism, and sexism. Hip Hop Architecture is a war capable entanglement of failed urban policies which on Modernism, and spares no expenses as it fights to ushered, among other things, predatory loan practices, right the wrongs of Modernism on black and brown racism, and classism into low–income neighborhoods communities across the country. Hip Hop Architects and to the front doors of public housing developments. are armed with the mastery of the Afro-diasporic elements that comprise the culture as they set out to Broken glass everywhere create an aesthetic articulation, and, most importantly, People pissin’ on the stairs, you know they just don’t care a liberating, empowering, intellectual, and programI can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise matic identity within our communities and the archiGot no money to move out, I guess I got no choice tecture profession. Rats in the front room, roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat As the post-Hip Hop generation of architects comes of I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far age, we bring the failure of Modernism in our commuCause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car nities to the forefront of discussions and call for increasing cultural consciousness and diversity within (chorus) Don’t push me, cause I’m close to the edge, the profession. Stylistic approaches do not solve probI’m trying not to lose my head. lems. Only through a comprehensive design process, It’s like a jungle sometimes that makes me wonder how one that embraces inclusive programming and commuI keep from going under.ˣii nication with both paying clients and non-paying end users, can we produce holistic solutions that address The resounding chorus harmonizes with a criticism these complex problems and prevent the creation of of Le Corbusier’s visions found in the French archi- non-inclusive spaces. Hip Hop has long served as tectural magazine Le Architect’s September 1925 issue, the voice of the voiceless, and Hip Hop Architecture which I see as a prediction of Hip Hop, nearly fifty is no different. Hip Hop Architecture gives voice to years before Hip Hop’s officially recognized emergence. the people and the challenges they face in the spaces The criticism speaks to the uncertainty about the socio- and places produced by the often well-intended but logical impact the towers would have on inhabitants. non-inclusive architecture and urban planning professions. “Things are not revolutionized by making revolu“Is the next generation really destined to pass its existence in tions. The real revolution lies in the solution of existing these immense geometrical barracks, living in standardized problems.”ˣv In conclusion, Le Corbusier said, “to being mass production houses with mass production furniture? with, man needs a dwelling and a town. The dwelling Their games, and by that, I mean their recreations, are all and the town will result from the spirit of today, the based on the same model…Poor Creatures! What will they modern spirit, this irresistible force, overflowing and become in the midst of all this dreadful speed, this organi- uncontrollable now, but derived from the slow efforts zation, this terrible uniformity? So much logic taken to its of our forefathers.”ˣvi Hip Hop Architecture encapsuextreme limits, so much “science,” so much of the “mechan- lates the spirit of today, and is driven by the irresistical” everywhere present and challenging one on every page ible force of hip hop which undoubtedly is overflowand claiming its insolent triumph on every possible occasion. ing the boundaries of it’s birthplace, the Bronx, and to Here is enough to disgust one for ever with ‘standardization’ many it seems uncontrollable. Hip Hop Architecture is and to make one long for disorder.”ˣiii the evolution of the efforts of the culture’s forefathers, - Le Architect Magazine including Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc, who established the four foundational elements of hip hop In disagreement, Le Corbusier responded to this crit- as the DJ, MC, Bboy/BGirl and Graffiti. The widely icism, saying, “So these principles do triumph! Thank accepted fifth element, under which architecture falls, you very much, for this is just what I am aiming at.” In is knowledge of self. You never thought that Hip Hop disbelief he continues, “So now we have reached the would take it this far! stage where architecture is to lead to disorder.”ˣiv Le
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WWW.HIPHOPARCHITECTURE.COM Hip Hop Architecture Lecture. Photo by Bradlee Bertram.
About The Architectural Advisory Label
Recognizing Potentially Inappropriate Content
The Hip Hop Architecture community owns the OCCUPANT ADVISORY UNINCLUSIVE DESIGN Architectural Advisory Label trademark (the “AAL Mark”) for use with respect to architecture and other physical constructions. Any person that wishes to use the AAL Mark to label architecture according to their personal comfort standards may do so free of charge once they inhabit a space and feel a sense of non-inclusiveness. Use of the AAL Mark on any other product, or in any other manner, is not prohibited and requires no written permissions.
If discrimination, violence, sex or substance abuse are present in a theoretical or constructed work that lacks community participation, the AAL Mark is typically applied prominently to the structure. The AAL Mark may also appear in connection with digital architectural renderings or services, or in advertising for an architectural product.
The Hip Hop Architecture Community takes responsibility to help citizens determine what spaces are non-inclusive and takes threats to their safety and well-being seriously—that’s why the Hip Hop Architecture community and its constituents created the Architectural Advisory Label (AAL) program. Children now have access to the spaces and places their parents may or may not have imagined, and we provide the community with a tool they need to make decisions that benefit their children while nurturing their passion for architecture and design. The AAL Mark is used to help parents recognize when space discrimination may be present, and is applied when a community member decides, based on personal experience, that there is a need to warn others of a theoretical or constructed work before the space becomes damaging for mainstream consumption.
How It Works The AAL program is a voluntary initiative for architects, designers, urban planners, and, most importantly, for the communities who inhabit the spaces we create. The program permits audiences greater freedom of expression while also giving them the opportunity to help others make informed decisions about the potential impact of the spaces they inhabit. Architects and designers do not work directly with community members to decide which spaces should receive an AAL Mark to indicate uninclusive spaces. Community members are empowered to make this decision independently. In some instances, community members may ask a designer or architect to re-design certain spaces or to revise programming because an inclusive and safe use of the spaces demands such a revision. Sometimes spaces are simply removed altogether. When either party (community member or design professional) decides that there are issues with a constructed work, despite the reputation of the party responsible for the work, an AAL Mark is applied directly to the package. For more information on how to display an AAL Mark or other type of AAL Notice, please trust your instincts. The Hip Hop Architecture Community does not represent all communities, but sympathizes with all instances of injustice and works to ensure that communities are forewarned when spaces may be inappropriate for habitation on a temporary or permanent basis. Many public parks and buildings may have policies that prohibit the placement of signage displaying the AAL Mark. Use the AAL Mark at your own discretion.
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i Le Corbusier. “Funereal Spirit.” When the Cathedrals Were White: A Journey to the County of Timid People. Place of Publication Not Identified: Publisher Not Identified, 1947. 156-61. ii Mardges Bacon. “Le Corbusier’s Reaction to the ‘Country of Timid People’.” Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. 226. iii Michael Eric Dyson. “Language, Diaspora, and Hip Hop’s Bling Economy.” Know What I Mean?: Reflections on Hip-hop. New York: Basic Civitas, 2007. 53. iv Le Corbusier. “Searchings and Manifestations of The Spirit.” When the Cathedrals Were White. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. 131. v Bacon, Mardges. “LeCorbusier’s Reaction to the “Country of Timid People” “Le Corbusier in America: Travels in the Land of the Timid. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2001. 223-224. vi Mardges Bacon, 2001. 222-23. vii Le Corbusier. “Searchings and Manifestations of The Spirit.” When the Cathedrals Were White. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964. 131. viii Jeff Chang. “Necropolis: The Bronx and the Politics of Abandonment.” Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2008. 11-12. iˣ Nikos Salingaros. “Unified Architectural Theory: Chapter 9B.” ArchDaily. N.p., 04 Apr. 2015. Web. June 20, 2017. ˣ Michael Ford. (2017, March). Hip Hop Architecture, The Post Occupancy Report of Modernism [Video file]. Accessed from https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=N4J5Y_4_ddM. June 2017. ˣi Tricia Rose. “Introduction.” The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—and Why It Matters. N.p.: Basic Civitas, 2008. 9-10. ˣii Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. The Message. Sugar Hill Records, 1982. Vinyl recording. ˣiii Le Corbusier. “Newspaper Cutting and Catchwords.” City of To-morrow and Its Planning. Mineola, NY: Dover., n.d. 133. ˣiv Le Corbusier. “Newspaper Cutting and Catchwords.” City of To-morrow and Its Planning. Mineola, NY: Dover., n.d. 134-137. ˣv Le Corbusier. “Finance and Realization.” City of To-morrow and Its Planning. Mineola, NY: Dover., n.d. 301. ˣvi Le Corbusier. “Sensibility Comes Into Play.” The City of To-morrow and Its Planning. New York: Dover, 1987. 39.
The Recording Industry Association of America states, “The music industry takes its responsibility to help parents determine what may be inappropriate for their children seriously—that’s why RIAA and its member companies created the Parental Advisory Label (PAL) program.” The creation of the PAL label is largely related to a letter written by the FBI to the rap group, N.W.A. Inspired by this, we remixed the letter and created the Architectural Advisory Label (AAL) program. Our remix proposes that we, the Hip Hop Architecture community, take our responsibility to help people determine what may be hazardous for their habitation seriously.
Architecture has always been inspired by culture, so should we aim for architecture or landscape architecture that does not reflect race?
Dear Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris aka Le Corbusier, A vision recorded in the book, The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning, encourages violence amongst and disrespect of the inhabitants of the spaces you envisioned. I have dedicated my academic and professional careers to bringing this to the attention of the Hip Hop community. I understand your moniker, Le Corbusier, recorded and distributed this vision, and I am writing to share my thoughts and concerns with you. Advocating violence and assault is wrong, and we in the Hip Hop community take exception to such action. If you “Don’t Believe The Hype,” please review the work of John B. Calhoun. Violent crime is a major problem in our community, and was a predicted outcome of your vision by Le Architect Magazine in 1923. Your vision resulted in behavioral sinks and continues to push violence to unprecedented highs while simultaneously diminishing interest in architecture among communities of color who inhabit these spaces across the inner cities of America. Architects, designers, and urban planners dedicate their lives to the protection of our environments, and visions such as the one from Le Corbusier, incorrectly incorporated by Robert Moses, are both discouraging and degrading to these brave, dedicated professionals. Music plays a significant role in society, and I wanted you to be aware of Hip Hop’s position relative to this vision and its message. I wouldn’t dare say my views reflect the opinions of the entire Hip Hop community! Sincerely Yours, The Hip Hop Architecture Community
1989 letter from FBI to Gui Manganiello at Priority Records.
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Letter from Michael Ford and the Hip Hop Architecture Community to Le Corbusier.
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Let’s Talk. Conversations on Race and Gender in the Built Environment Charlton Lewis Lineage I come from women who soak their pinto beans overnight. Mama/Grandmother/Great-Grandma meet in my kitchen when the pot is seasoned right and I grease my skillet for cornbread. The smells and sounds have a hundred year old memory. Man this is a pot of beans By Lynn Lewis.
in the opening act of my recent seminar at The University of Texas at Austin, Race and Gender: By Design, the implications of the conversations to come were simultaneously and intensely inviting and daunting. These were to be, at times, personal, insightful, and often painful examinations of issues that would certainly impact the participants, but that might remain elusive in meaningful discussion. The challenge put before the seminar as a whole was to engage in a reflective discourse that investigated the impact of race and gender inequalities on the built and designed environment. Students were asked to foster an awareness of the subtle and not-so subtle influences of race and gender inequalities over time, understanding the predictable and direct but also seeking the unpredictable and the indirect—the inequalities and inequities that have impacted both the world and environment in front of our eyes and within ourselves. The presumptive naivety of the students’ previous associative understandings waited to be weighed and challenged by our examinations. Much like the conversations and threads present in this issue of PLATFORM, a rich diversity of topical examinations presented themselves in seminar discourse. Discussions explored the physical manifestation of a museum dedicated to curating the history of an African-American people and the nature and meaning of that representation. Our discussion was made even richer and more complex by the examination of the politics and impediments to the museum’s planning, siting, and eventual construction. Beyond that examination of this physical manifestation, we sought to hear and react to the voices of those directly impacted by the presence of the museum, raising the question, “Who is this museum for and how might its design reflect that question?” When we now see this symbol become a subject of vandalism and receive a polarized response from audiences, this conversation becomes one of a “real time” nature.
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larly in addressing design and the built environment. However, parallel to that representation is the stark reminder that this discussion is an incomplete one without an attempt to understand historic inequalities related to the empowerment, control, and direction of the manifestation of our designed and built fabric. A critical portion of the course centered on exploring and grasping the inequalities within a given application of design control and design agendas.
Not surprisingly, the existence of the “glass ceiling” relative to gender and race in the profession and the institutional personification of design and architecture were topics that emerged, both with the acknowledgement of the “historic” inequality and with a speculative discourse framing the current and future ambitions toward equity. We targeted specific readings addressing these topics, often paired with more current video content, such as Rosa Cheng and Bryan Lee’s Ted Talks With similar ambition, we looked at a myriad of issues (“Equity In Architecture and Race Architecture,” and regarding gender and gender equity within the built “Tales for the Hood,” respectively). These talks were a environment. In examining articles and case stud- part of a direct analysis of justice and equity, and were ies from practitioners such as Joel Sandersi and texts valuable as we looked further into an understanding of such as Gender Space Architecture,ii we gained insight the personification of control of our built environment. into how this body of research can inform a position on societal issues as well as reflection upon the role of What is of profound interest to me is that this seminar is unavoidably and inextricably linked to a personal design in achieving equity. reflection and recalibration of the world that I understand and engage, one that now affords me the opporThe world that I was raised tunity of crafting a particular agenda with substantive aspirations. The world that I was raised in, rural East in, rural East Texas, resonates Texas, resonates with me daily but is very much at with me daily but is very much odds with the urban reality I have prospered within. at odds with the urban reality However, I now realize that the speculations and explorations I am afforded in teaching and exploring this I have prospered within. particular seminar have brought to light a curiosity and introspection relative to these disparate contexts. In Joel Sanders’ book STUD: ARCHITECTURES OF Issues such as gentrification and sometimes challengMASCULINITY he states, “But the essays in this volume ing transformations reside in both existences, as do will suggest, the ostensibly innocent conventions of issues of identity. And, the artifacts of one clearly influarchitecture work in convert fashion to transmit social ence the other. The issues of equity are perhaps most values in unexpected places—the everyday and often visibly understood and most impactful in the urban banal places where our daily lives unfold. For this realm. But, in my perspective, they are very much reason, STUD investigates a series of commonplace but manifested in the rural realm as well. ideologically overdetermined spaces—houses, bathrooms, gyms, offices, streets, parks—environments When I travel home, there are times when I find the that we habitually take for granted but that quietly abruptness of the change disheartening. What was and decisively participate in the manufacture of male once a strong and vibrant black community has been subjectivity.”iii As an architect with a robust theoreti- somewhat diminished over time and gentrified as a cal approach to practice, Sanders offered our seminar a recreational refuge for an ever-increasing population dynamic and relatively current series of case studies to of transient hunters and recreation-seekers, which has engage in parallel to a thoughtful compilation of essays resulted in a loss of community. The irony is that the challenging our understanding of gender related to land that was afforded to my family and neighbors— MY community—was available generations ago solely ideas of the creation and occupation of space. due to its perceived lack of value. It was seen as “bottom These examples are but a small representation of the land,” yet it was of the highest value to my community, tremendous opportunities and challenges put forth a community that is represented in the poem crafted in any discussion of race, gender, and equity, particu- by my sister at the beginning of this essay. Her poetry
National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Photo by Nichole Wiedemann.
aptly describes the environment and consciousness of that formative existence. As I consider these perspectives and others that my seminar research and discourse can impart upon participants, I find myself eagerly interested and appreciative of an exploration of that which is tangible and real. And much like the collaborative conversations in this issue of PLATFORM, this exploration is empowering and offers an opportunity to directly engage the complex issues that confront us all. As we, The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture community, tackle the issues of design, planning, and preservation within and beyond the academy, we should not hesitate to seek out and take advantage of similar opportunities. The widening of our pedagogical discourse to considerations of race, gender, and equity offers unique and compelling possibilities for all and positions our students and faculty to enrich the understanding of our impact on an increasingly diverse and complex society and environment. i Joel Sanders and Susan Stryker. STALLED: GENDER-NEUTRAL PUBLIC BATHROOMS. October 13, 2016. ii Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner and Iain Borden. Gender Space Architecture. iii Joel Sanders. STUD: Architectures of Masculinity. Vol. 3. Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. The Contemporary Austin. Photo by Charlton Lewis.
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What If? Spaces: Practices for Diversity, Equity, Place, Identity, and Change Felecia Davis and serve as a forum for discussion as well as a training ground. Setting up a maker space hub in a community by giving it the physical space it needs grants it a chance to become a stable yet highly dynamic and flexible organization to help people participate in the making or imagining of their cities or towns. A good example of this is the Fab Lab in Barcelona, Spain, where the idea of education through making is a way to reimagine and rebuild their city. The members of Fab Lab Barcelona have issued a challenge to the entire global Fab Lab network. Their model moves the focus from the lab to the city with an initiative called FAB City. According to their websiteiv a FAB City is: • A new urban model for locally productive and globally connected self-sufficient cities. The purpose of a FAB City is to become more ecologically sustainable and reduce the flow of materials and energy in a city so that it can become entirely self-sufficient. • A city that produces at least 50% of what they consume. • A global repository of open source designs for city solutions. • A city where materials are sourced locally through recycling and digital means. Figure 1. yourHOUSE on exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 2008 by Larry Sass.
Barcelona aims to achieve these goals by 2054.
what if maker spaces, hacker spaces, and fabrication labs, aka “fab labs,” could be reimagined as community design hubs, or catalysts for cities, in addition to innovation tech spaces for gadgets and hobbies? Why not tweak the maker space/hacker space/fab lab model so that it addresses the problems of our cities? Maker spaces/hacker spaces/fab labs, all interchangeable in name, are places in communities across the globe where people come together to make things using collective tools, to learn new skills, and to collaborate. These spaces often house computer numerically controlled [CNC] tools, such as laser cutters, milling machines, metal cutting machines, 3-D printers; equipment for “do it yourself” (DIY), and other electronics, welding equipment, sewing and knitting machines, etc. In these spaces, there is heavy emphasis on the use of digital technology for fabrication. Many of these technologies that architects and designers have access to today can be used, augmented, and hacked to support new kinds of practices that can shape and impact our cities. These places have potential to be not only places of innovation and invention of useful, novel things that can produce an income for a community, but, in their very ability to collect people, spaces that propose alternative social and practical structures for changing cities.
Based on the civic engagement successes of Barcelona’s Fab City, there is now a bill in the United States Congress to charter a National Fab Lab Network.v While these are admirable goals, I would argue that, as this happens, makerspaces must be included in communities of color and in poor communities. These communities would offer other perspectives on how to achieve goals for a FAB City.
Some of these maker spaces go further in terms of reaching beyond one space to work within a global network. The Fab Lab, for example, is a system of approximately 1,000 globally networked Fab Labs that started as a science, technology, engineering, math [STEM] outreach effort by Neil Gershenfeld, director
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of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms. A Fab Lab “is a technical prototyping platform for innovation and invention, providing stimulus for local entrepreneurship. A Fab Lab is also a platform for learning and innovation: a place to play, to create, to learn, to mentor, and to invent. To be a Fab Lab means connecting to a global community of learners, educators, technologists, researchers, makers and innovators–a knowledge sharing network that spans 30 countries and 24 time zones. Because all Fab Labs share common tools and processes, the program is building a global network, a distributed laboratory for research and invention.”i
Melvin King, a community activist in Boston and professor emeritus in city and urban planning at MIT, formed the South End Technology Center [SETC] and Melvin H. King Fab Lab in the south end of Boston. Both of King’s facilities work on the agendas below, which are simultaneously aligned and different from Barcelona’s Fab City goalsvi:
To set up a Fab Lab requires money. If one uses DIY kits to make CNC machines, the price can be considerably less than the $100,000 or more it costs to use the ready-to-go equipment specified by Gershenfeld. Indeed, Gershenfeld and his students have spent a lot • Recruit and train persons in computer technology who have been excluded from the technological revolution of time developing DIY kits for CNC printers, cutters, and are at an increased risk of joblessness. and other tools that are much cheaper to make, and that also serve as learning opportunities for Fab Lab • Encourage community residents to use information technology as a means of personal and professional users. According to Gershenfeld, a Fab Lab consists development. of “…3-D scanning and printing, large-format and precision machining, computer-controlled lasers and • Help residents move from being consumers of inforknives, surface-mount electronics production, embed- mation to producers and creators of knowledge. ded programming, and computing tools for design and collaboration.”ii If people have access to these kinds of More of these spaces are needed. It is important to spaces, then it is possible for them to become genera- attract an even more diverse group of participants, as tors of new knowledge rather than purely consumers.iii 81% of makerspace users are men.vii Often, the attitude Activities like making a new bench for a public park can of makers/hackers/fab lab users toward people who become significant for a community in terms of setting do not know much about the technology contained up social structures for a collective project to happen, in a Fab Lab is not empathetic, which can discourage
potential makers. Computer and technology-driven techniques could be practiced alongside handcraft and other methods, thus opening makerspaces to a more diverse group of people. Furthermore, it is important to maintain a level of complexity in the work for those who are experts, but also to create a culture that is friendly to those who want to learn. An example of this can been seen in Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch’s work with Native American baskets. Aranda and Lasch are architects who practice in New York City and focus on using computational methods to produce furnishings and architecture. They collaborated with an award-winning Native American basket weaver, Terrol Johnson, to develop new baskets, skills, and ideas about the connections between materials and spatial organization, among many other concepts. Aranda, Lasch and Johnson held a workshop on traditional basket weaving that brought together students and families from Sells and Tucson Arizona.viii It is also important to consider that different kinds of making are gendered. For example, work with textiles is traditionally associated with women, but could be expanded by collaborative work with textiles that engages both men and women. There are many different approaches to explore without attaching certain activities to men or women. An example of such work includes textiles made by Sanita Chaturvedi Esteban Colmenares and Thiago Mundim for their project titled Knitectonics. Chaturvedi, Colmenares, and Mundim are students at the Architectural Association in London. They ask, “can a simple household craft facilitate a proto-tectonic system?”iˣ (See Figure 3). In this example, their idea for a CNC machine to manufacture a knit architecture was inspired by the household circular knitting machine. Incorporating more machines and digital tools into the studio space and production process is one way to open up maker spaces to people with a more diverse range of skill sets.
Technology could support people in different economic and social conditions to foster a more diverse kind of participation in architecture and placemaking. It is critical that there be a diverse team of people making tools for schools, and for students to play with these tools and become their own authors. Open source software and DIY tools fuel an atmosphere of learning and training in makerspaces. Today, we find a plethora of software and resources for making things online. These resources are available to people free of charge, and are often accompanied by online forums where users can ask technical questions. For beginners who benefit more from hands-on learning or prefer to learn with other people, face-to-face, or in group settings, this can be frustrating. In order to encourage prospective makers and beginners, I believe face-toface learning opportunities must be a key component of any makerspace agenda in order to increase in diversity. YourHOUSE, a digitally fabricated house designed for post-Katrina New Orleans by Larry Sass, a professor in
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Figure 2. Aranda Lasch’s collaboration with Terrol Johnson and Community workshop in Arizona, January 2017.
Figure 3. Knitectonics by Chaturvedi, Colmenares and Mundim. From home craft circular knitting machine in the left photograph to manufacturing concept for knit full scale architectures in the right photograph.
the design and computation group at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, demonstrates a method of building using wood pieces cut on a CNC milling machine and connected using a rubber mallet (See Figure 1). This method is easily accommodated by tools included in a maker space/hackerspace/fab lab, and is one of multiple houses that can be made with programming tools and digital fabrication tools available to the Fab Lab network. One could imagine expanding the capability of a makerspace to not only focus on the tools of digital fabrication, but also on other methods that can be shared and accessible to the global network. These methods could offer new approaches to community building and city building. Such methods may include the creation of or participation in walking tours that engage in storytelling, digital oral history projects, or community building through music workshops. These ideas, and others, could be methods that not only teach STEM skills, but also make use of community building and communication skills that are vital to building shared knowledge, a hallmark of the Fab City network. Overall, what I am suggesting is that the idea of a makerspace/hackerspace/fab lab can mean more, and be more, to more people. We need to integrate diverse methods, tools, and approaches to attract diverse groups of people to these spaces. An architectural practice is a large group of people who come together temporarily to achieve a civic goal. I see a potential new model of architectural and design practice inspired by the Fab Lab in Barcelona. New architectural practices could plug into a Fab Lab-inspired system, and makerspaces can provide new avenues to engage people who have previously been left out of the conversation that shapes their cities. There are many ways to plug in, scale, and adjust.
i “SETC. (n.d.).” Accessed from http://www.tech-center-enlightentc. April 19, 2017. ii D.L. Chandler. January 4, 2016. “3 Questions: Neil Gershenfeld and the spread of Fab Labs.” Accessed from http://news.mit.edu/2016/3questions-neil-gershenfeld-fab-labs-0104. April 19, 2017. iii “SETC. (n.d..,” 2017. iv “Fab City Global Initiative. (n.d.).” Accessed from http://fab.city/ about. April 17, 2017. v Chandler, 2016. vi “SETC. (n.d.),” 2017. vii Bean, V., Farmer, N. M., & Kerr, B. A. “An exploration of women’s engagement in Makerspaces.” Gifted and Talented International. 2015. 30 (1–2), 61–67. Accessed from https://doi.org/10.1080/15332276.2015.1 137456. viii http://arandalasch.com/works/basket/ and http://arandalasch. com/basket-weaving-workshop/ iˣ Chaturvedi, S. Colmenares, E. and Mundim, T. “Knitectonics.” In the proceedings ACADIA 11: Integration through Computation [Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture. ACADIA, Banff, Alberta, Canada. October 2011. pp. 186-195. Accessed from http://papers.cumincad.org/cgi-bin/works/Show?_ id=acadia11_186&sort=DEFAULT&search=knitectonics&hits=1
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Reflections on Teaching Race and Urban Development Anna Livia Brand¹
in spring 2017, I taught a course on race and urban development at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture. Throughout the semester, the following questions were central to our discussions: How do we translate the breadth of work on black geographies, black political thought, and black feminist geographies into the pedagogy and practice of urban planning? In doing so, how can we analyze and critique how planning is bound up in the white racial framei and the white spatial imaginary?ii From this critique, how can we elevate the subaltern, counter-hegemonic visions of socially, politically, and geographically marginalized groups whose “blues epistemologies”iii and “surrealist dreams”iv raise the possibility of a non-racist and non-sexist city? What might a radical black and feminist geography tell us about the poetic possibilities of our own practice? In our work together, this diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students and I asked difficult questions, often working out our thoughts and ideas together on the chalkboard. We were inspired and grounded by the readings, yet our efforts to translate them into new visions for pedagogy and practice often made us realize the sheer depth of the dilemmas we face in urban planning and design. It made us yearn for new models of scholarship and practice. Here, I share with you some of our insights and hopes. Racial Processes and Timeline Obsessions In our first module, we read the Omi and Winant’s indispensable Racial Formation in the United States.v to understand the temporality and persistent salience of racialized structures. To situate our work on race as bound up in white supremacist processes, we read Joe R. Feagin’s The White Racial Frame.vi Through these texts and discussions, and a bit of obsessive timeline drawing, we mapped how racial processes and white supremacy have changed over time. This historical view helped us situate and, therefore, think critically about the parallel history of urban planning theory and processes. It allowed us to critique how planning has itself been shaped by and bound up in these racial processes, white supremacist imaginaries, and spatial practices as they have taken place over time.
Our third module focused on work that draws out these connections to urban planning and policy. Thomas and Ritzdorf’s still critical edited volumevii helped us understand how zoning has been a tool for racializing space and, therefore, shaping the historical processes we enter through planning paradigms. We also grappled with how these contexts are now shaped by the carceral state and Neoliberal redevelopment paradigms. Then we drew out, as McKittrickviii does, the historical links between plantations and prisons. To detail these histories spatially and then through the lens of urban planning was helpful for shaping our thinking about the ways plantation and colonial pasts might resurface in present geographies and spatial imaginaries. Additionally, it was a way for us to articulate how planning might be bound up in the white racial frameiˣ (Image 1).
Our work here highlighted a need for planning pedagogy and practice to engage in analyses and processes that critique, affirm, imagine, and demand. Planners are relatively good at critiquing, or at least noting racialized inequality. Drawing on McKittrick and Woods’ work in Black Geographies and the Politics of Placeˣi, our discussions highlighted the need for planners to develop and apply more critical analyses of the intersectional forms of inequality and oppression that account for 1.) How these analyses themselves can reify racialized difference, and 2.) How historical and ongoing racial processes continue to shape the everyday lives of residents in the communities within which we work. A counter-systems and reparations-based analysis (both of which we have few tools for in planning) could begin to address this dilemma of critique.
Critique, Affirm, Imagine, Demand
The second point, to affirm the beauty, vitality, humanness, difference, insight, and dreams of communiIn our final weeks, we focused on the radical imagina- ties and people of color shifts our work from one of tion and asked what it means to dream of freedom in consensus aggregation in planning processes to opena world so overwhelmingly shaped by multiple forms ing up the doors to what scholars like Iris Marion of intersecting violence. As we discussed in class, this Young might call the “necessary power of difference.” violence is not only the physical and emotional violence ˣii We see some of this inclination in planning through against black and other non-white male bodies and engaged and participatory processes, but these are often minds, it is the spatial violence of under-development, quite weak in engaging difference and elevating issues gentrification, displacement, and dispossession. In this of racialized inequity toward more just, redistributed context, what does it mean to dream the world anew outcomes. For us, to affirm dreams of freedom means and to imagine, to borrow from poet Jayne Cortez as to give weight to difference in a way that validates Robin Kelleyˣ does in his work, Freedom Dreams, “some- and advances different world views and imaginaries. where in advance of nowhere?”
Making Connections: Race, Place and Urban Planning In our second module, we further delineated the links between race, place, and urban planning by critically analyzing the ways that race is intrinsically bound up in and takes place through spatial processes. Land and the human geographies in which we work are central to planning, but these geographies are valued differently, in literal and symbolic ways. While our work in this module unearthed these connections, it also provided a platform for understanding the latent and ongoing spatial/racial processes in which our work as planners and designers is embedded.
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Image 1: Articulating how planning might be bound up in the white racial frame. Board Work: Devin Oliver.
ining solution A or B and, thus, re-center the poetic imaginaries of people in communities of color. These counter-frames, home culturesˣiii, resistant strategies, and black spatial imaginariesˣiv have never been absent in a world of deeply racialized oppression, colonization, plantationism, and capitalism. Yet, they are under-represented in the world of planning theory. This silence speaks volumes. If we can track racial processes, as Omi and Winant doˣv, we can also track and therefore draw on the deep historical counter-stories embedded in communities of color. While we should be mindful about co-optation, appropriation, and the rearticulation of these imaginings, we have yet to develop tools and processes that focus on what communities are already doing to imagine the world anew. Image 2: Engaging in critiques of planning imaginaries, processes and practices. Board Work: Devin Oliver.
Image 3: Grappling with alternative, decolonized roles for planning. Board Work: Devin Oliver.
Finally, and only from the critiques, affirmations, and imaginings, we make the demands to move toward a better world for those who are the least well off and those who have suffered from overt/tacit/historical/ ongoing racial and colonial processes. Our demands need to be specific and actionable, enabling us to uniquely address these moments and spaces, rather than call for general, abstract commitments to equity. For planning to move beyond the tropes of a spatial imaginary that it has grown accustomed to using (“resilient,” “sustainable,” “green,” “equitable”), we have to move beyond these colonizing language pitfalls and do the work—as scholars, teachers, practitioners, and students—of dreaming more radical practices alongside community members. We can then make strides toward racial and spatial equality and imagine a new role for the state in supporting these claims. Planning from the Third Eye
Image 4: Envisioning new roles for planners. Board Work: Devin Oliver.
To both critique and affirm also means to elevate the subaltern and resistant framings of a more racially and spatially just society in a way that presents communities as nuanced and complex.
How do we imagine an urban world through planning and design that supports different ways of valuing space beyond economics? If we need better critiques and actual affirmation, then we also need to dream and to imagine what a better future might be. Planning is intrinsically bound up in future scenario planning. However, I think my students’ insights and work with the readings offer a more poetic set of practices that de-center the planner from imag-
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We need to create pedagogical platforms for our students to grapple with these issues in meaningful ways (Images 2 and 3). While I don’t believe that de-centering planners in order to re-center people should raise any existential dilemmas, I do think that we lack language for the role that planners might play. My students do have a strong sense of the role they would like to play (Image 4), and this role includes lifting up meaningful histories, dialogues, and ideas from communities of color that can distinguish the ways we represent community and represent the complex and nuanced ways that race makes space. We need to envision new questions and analytical approaches for planning that can deal with the ongoing spatialization of white supremacy. We need to train our students to do this work and to critique, affirm, imagine, and demand. For me, this work raises important questions about how planners can elevate counter-frames and break the cycle of trying to fix problems in ways that exacerbate racial and spatial inequality. How can planners meet the needs of amending present racialized inequalities while contributing to or supporting a non-racist and non-sexist state? How can we, as Robin Kelley charges us to doˣvi, plan from the “third eye” for spaces that are free? The third eye is the place from which we dream of a world that is not yet realized—a world of more social, racial, economic justice. To do this requires a deeper look at the privileges and biases we bring to our work, and it requires that we work with communities via platforms that challenge the status quo. Asking how the Movement for Black Lives’ policy platformˣvii can be supported through urban planning policies and development approaches is a good place to start when
it comes to thinking through the specific and immediate ways that planners can support the work of the people who have always been imagining something different. Gratitude We don’t often talk about how much our students teach us. This semester has shifted me permanently and this is, quite simply, because of my students. Their insights into the discipline of planning, their critiques and hopes, their work grappling with tough questions that we might not have the answers to, has confirmed for me more profoundly than ever before that students are our best teachers about what we need to be doing as scholars and teachers. They can’t possibly know what this time has meant to me as a scholar, teacher, and human being. I am incredibly grateful for the insights that my students were brave and passionate enough to share and for their work to look “back in search of a better future.”ˣviii A Reading List Below is a reading list from our class. It is not exhaustive, but it is a critical start. Arlene Davila, Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City Joe R. Feagin, The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination George Lipsitz, How Racism Takes Place Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, Black Geographies and the Politics of Place Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2014 Edition Mary Pattillo, Black on the Block Rashad Shabazz, Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago Clyde Woods, Arrested Development 1 While the words in this paper are my own reflections on our class and a close reading of my own class notes, they also reflect the work of each student in my class. The faults in argument are my own, though I have tried to reflect my students’ thoughts, insights, questions and concerns. i Feagin, 2013 ii Lipsitz, 2011 iii Woods, 2017 iv Kelley, 2002 v Omi and Winant, 2014 vi Feagin, 2013 vii June Manning Thomas and Marsha Ritzdorf. Urban Planning and the African-American Community: In the Shadows. SAGE Publications, California. 1997. viii McKittrick, 2011 iˣ Feagin, 2013 ˣ Kelley, 2002 ˣiMcKittrick and Woods, 2007 ˣii Iris Marion Young, 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ˣiii Feagin, 2013 ˣiv Lipsitz, 2011 ˣv Omi and Winant, 2014 ˣvi Kelley, 2002 ˣvii “The Movement for Black Lives, Policy Platform.” Accessed from https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/. June 17, 2017. ˣviii Robin D. G. Kelley, 2002, p. 15
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Memory Devices Walter Hood
the united states is a nation with a complex make-up of races, ethnicities, and cultures. How can architecture and design be inspired by the DNA of the United States, where identity is ingrained in economics, race, culture, and politics? How can the “normative’” and dominant social view become pluralistic and accepting of other voices, values, and attitudes? The country’s planning and architectural legacy is colonial, embedded within the values of erasure as it pertains to the construction and maintenance of place. The literal construction of place and identity are crucial goals of colonialization. City planner John Reps writes, “The first settlers in the New World were Spanish, French, English, Dutch and Swedish. They were not yet Americans. Their language, their dress, their political, social and religious beliefs, and their architecture were those of their homelands… These cultural and physical characteristics changed to meet the opportunities and requirements of the American Environment. Although European influences continued, with the passing of time their power waned, and new modes of life more appropriate to the changed circumstances of the settlers emerged… The European way of life, as represented by the various colonial groups, began its metamorphoses to a new and different pattern.”i These new modes and patterns of life emanating from colonial influences transformed into what we refer to as the “American melting pot”; the amalgamation of the colonial, immigrant, and previously enslaved, all mixed together. However, what emerged in the dominant popular culture is something more homogenous as illustrated by our language, dress, political, social, and religious beliefs, as well as our planning and architecture. These Western European influences, I argue, are maintained through memory of homelands and their associated cultural norms. Americans are quick to embrace their European heritage and our history shows that we are more hesitant to embrace others. For indigenous or enslaved cultural groups, this metamorphosis has presented a process of acculturation, isolation, or erasure. Acculturation strips away specific cultural identity, diversity, and idiosyncratic qualities, leaving the acceptance of normative and homogeneous sets of values and attitudes as we see in much of the US built environment. Diversity and equity struggle to emerge from within this cultural context in the post-colonial landscape. Whether place-specific or tied to identity, we must be aware that this history and its lasting impact have been a gain for some and a loss for others. Validating the legacy of culture through design can give voice to those that are unheard. This is key to navigating an epistemology that has historically excluded certain cultures. Cultural legacies are the personal, communal, intergenerational, and familiar awareness and introspection that each of us experiences. They offer designers ways to bequeath and bequest cultural
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traditions through built form. They can create palimpsests; layers which help us understand and exhume what has been forgotten or erased. This is not simply a nod to stereotypes and pedagogical installations, but a nod to embrace other patterns and practices of daily life that lead to new norms and aesthetics. Cultural differences in the United States can inspire and inform the creation of palimpsests that tell new stories and forge diverse physical spaces.
stone pathway system and porch areas beneath. When the light is right, the inside of the steel grid brightly reflects the sunlight. They say when shadow and the light are in tune the spirit rides to heaven.
To validate legacy is to celebrate the everyday and mundane—the simple objects and landscapes in people’s lives; to understand lifeways—the cultural practices that give rise to pattern and physical form; and to commemorate—pay homage to the past. The powerful landscapes and buildings that emerge from this force a different conversation about the way we construct space and places. Landscapes and buildings are cultural legacy. In practice, I have chosen to employ metaphorical and allegorical constructions as an unfolding physical palimpsest through the placement of objects in space. The following are stories that emerged through six design projects, and continue to inform my work today: Splashpad Park The Splashpad was a traffic intersection featuring a curved concrete and rock splash pool with a water jet that shot up in the air, designating arrival to the Lake Shore shopping district. Local businessmen built the fountain to attract attention to the business district on the East side of Freeway 580. The fountain fell into disrepair and the site lay fallow for more than twenty years, apart from when the city would transfer its unwanted palm trees from other sites. The story of the Splashpad is legible in the ten-year-old redesign of the district. Shadow Catcher Narrow curved paths meandered through the oak wood, intentionally disobeying Jefferson’s Village. I had read that slaves disobeyed the regimented plantation landscape by forging alternative paths. A perimeter wall, remembered from visits, and sculpted ground depressions mark a burial site. Local cemeteries and burial sites are graced with stone borders and the ground plane of the burial plot is slumped. Even in wooded areas, the sites illuminated a slumping form suggesting decomposition. They say blacks came to the area below the University of Virginia campus and called it Canada. A black woman named Kitty lived there and took in a community of free blacks working for the all boy school across the way. Today, a steel grid traces the Kitty Foster House archeological site, its inside face made of stainless steel and its outer painted, projecting its shadow onto the ground. Slots of landscape are removed to reveal the
Design comes out of creativity, and to be creative one has to be inspired. Elements of the site were preserved; the sidewalk and curb that defined the traffic island, and all of the palm trees. The formal plan of the Splashpad was conserved by using the basin as the structure for the new paved area, composed of wood decking and pavers. Its shape is exaggerated with seat walls and a tilted lawn that faces South. The freeway column grid extends into the space as walkways that stitch the ground and overhead plane of the freeway deck together. Today, people still refer to it as Splashpad Park, and the curvilinear shape and new fountain pay homage to the memory of the splash pool.
Bay View Opera House African–American neighborhoods in San Francisco communities were supplanted from the Fillmore and other redeveloping areas in the city to what is now Hunters Point. The transplanted communities came to the rescue of one of their new neighborhood’s oldest landmarks, the Bay View Opera House, which had suffered years of neglect following a 1902 earthquake and fire. Residents learned music and drama, and the arts flourished in this small district of San Francisco. The name of Ruth Williams, a community matriarch of that time, now graces the building’s moniker. But, during the past few decades, the building and its landscape became more of a model for social reform and behaviorist troupes. Hay bales, chickens, and community gardens in tubs combined to form the stereotypical landscape toolbox used in marginal neighborhoods. During a community meeting, advocates, exacerbated with such design elements, vowed to “shut it down!” if their voices were not heard and their Opera House not returned to them. Our design gestalt was a pair of black hands embracing the Opera House. This metaphor became “floating walkways” that wrap the building on its steep slope, creating a level datum connecting the front door, porch, and stage area. The community’s renewed ownership is highlighted by the historic wood structure and the hill it sits atop. The design also features a wooden outdoor stage with seating, lighting, and amplifier equipment that face out into the community. Even when the building is closed, the site can be used by the neighborhood for performances and other community events. Witness Walls On the West side of the historic Metro Nashville Courthouse sits a set of four concrete walls that are steps away from the site of the historic April 19,1960 student-run protest that led then-Mayor Ben West to disavow the segregation of Nashville’s lunch counters.
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It was a clear day as I was crossing the Bay Bridge heading to San Francisco. As I drove through the tollbooth, I saw it– the “5 M’s!” Right in front of me was the back of a truss structure supporting lights and signage. The diagonals were visually compelling and jumped out at me as if they had been waiting all along.
The walls bear witness to this event, recreating the civil rights struggle through a collage of images and text that simply reads, “sitting and walking.” The Witness Walls are like a classical Roman frieze, depicting the victory and triumphant battle of the day. The images are enmeshed in the concrete. On one side, akin to a giant block print, figures of policemen and civil rights advocates are featured prominently. The other side features women walking their kids to school through a gauntlet of white protesters. As you move closer, concrete etchings emerge, representing the men, women, and children of Nashville, sitting and walking. 7th Street Gateway At every community meeting we held, two men dressed in dashikis would be in the back asking for the five M’s; Martin, Malcom, Maya, Madam CJ Walker, and Medgar! After every meeting, I would tell the participants that I was listening. Previous sculptures and commemorative works placed in the community to identify the African–American culture were Afrocentric in their imagery and benign to the way people experience or see the landscape around them. Each time they asked about the “5 M’s,” I would cringe thinking about how this could manifest.
Driving down 7th Street in West Oakland, five faces grace a large truss structure that spans the five-lane road. Martin, Malcom, Maya, Obama, and Esther are aglow in the skyway. Madame CJ and Medgar were replaced with the local heroine Esther of Esther Orbit Room, a historic fixture on the street, and the then newly elected President. Every day at sunset, looking westward along the street, the sun lights my black heroes, just like in many African–American families’ kitchens or living rooms, where Martin and John kept us safe. Conclusion Memory is cultural. It can be impacted by change and loss, and eventually leads to nostalgia. Cultural Geographer David Lowenthal suggests that, “For mobile modern man, nostalgia is not so much being up-rooted as having to live in an alien present.”ii Cultural memory is embedded in places and the lives of people who exist within them. When you validate the presence of people in the built environment, you create the lynchpin for new memories. Design validates certain places of “remembrance” and removes others where memory is not valued. All places are full of memories, and when we consistently devalue some memories, we suggest and reinforce that all are clean, definable, homogeneous, and normative. No one wants to live in an “alien present,” but the physicality of memory can validate identity where there is nothing else. i John W. Reps. The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States. Princeton University Press. 1965. ii David Lowenthal. Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory. American Geographical Society. 1975.
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Mapping Detention Space in Texas: A Pedagogical Experiment Sarah Lopez immigrant detention has been at the center of recent ities, Texas has a total of about thirty-three places to describe the US-Mexico border as “battleground” immigration debates, and social scientists, public that have the capacity to detain and incarcerate over that repels a wave of Mexicans. However, an analysis of policy and legal experts are shaping the conversation.i 30,000 migrants daily.v Of these facilities, only two who is detained in Texas reveals that facilities incarcerYet, buildings—the detention facilities themselves— are owned and operated by Immigration and Custom’s ate individuals from over 200 countries. The majority are often overlooked.ii The design and construction Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for of those detained are from Central American countries, of immigrant detention facilities in Texas—a state executing national immigration policy. The majority are but individuals from Somalia, Eritrea, and Iraq also known for detaining and incarcerating more individ- owned and managed by private corporations such as enter the United States through its southern border. uals than any other in the Union—is a key venue for GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America In addition to individuals crossing the border, some exploring larger questions of equity, access, and justice (CCA), which have complex government contracts for foreign nationals who are granted tourist or student in the architecture and design professions.iii To engage “detention beds” with federal, state, and county officials visas “flip” once they arrive in the United States by petiarchitecture students in social issues, I participated across Texas. Funded by taxpayers, ICE is required to tioning the government for asylum and are detained. in a national pedagogical experiment spearheaded by share information with the public, whereas the private Individuals are also detained when police check immithe Humanities Action Lab (HAL) at the New School corporations that manage and own the majority of gration status during routine traffic violations or when of Social Research in New York City. During the Fall Texas’ detention centers are not required to share infor- ICE conducts work raids and hunts migrants down in of 2015, twenty professors from universities across the mation. To create this map (pictured above), students their homes at the crack of dawn. nation taught classes related to incarceration and deten- compared an official government document (a spreadtion. Each class conducted on-the-ground, empirical sheet of ICE contracts in 2014) with research conducted A veil of secrecy regarding who is detained extends to research that culminated in an exhibition titled States by Detention Watch Network, Grassroots Leadership, and information about the design and construction of the of Incarceration, which is touring the United States for ACLU of Texas.vi They conducted dozens of cold-calls to detention facilities themselves. Using available satellite the next three years.iv facilities that were not listed in these other sources but imagery, students abstracted the massing of each facilwere called “detention centers” or mentioned in news- ities’ footprint—rooms strung together along a linear At The University of Texas at Austin, graduate students paper articles on the subject. As illustrated here, places “telephone pole,” campus plans, singular massive warein the School of Architecture and in the humanities meant to immobilize migrants are spread throughout houses, or rows of semi-permanent tents or barracks— who have not experienced detention or international Texas’ rural hinterland, far from cities that are hubs of to discover that the basic layout of today’s detention migration investigated the question, “How does archi- immigration-related activity such as pro-bono legal centers mirrors those of historic mid- and late twentitecture shape punishment?” This essay presents visual services.vii eth century prisons for civilian convicts.iˣ arguments created in the context of this class. To visualize detention, students relied on two primary strateThe interior spaces of these prison-like complexes are gies. First, they mapped the physical locations, architec- Why is it that graduating nearly impossible to access. While the public is technitural forms, and building history of detention centers. architects are not necessarily cally granted access to these taxpayer-supported facilSecond, they worked with people who had formerly ities, private prison corporations denied my requests seeing themselves as part of been detained to create visual stories of their migration for class tours.ˣ The La Salle County Detention Center, journeys and experience of detention. Our project seeks a profession that is explicitly one of Texas’ few publicly owned and managed facilities, to define detention space, reveal how it is produced, political and related to issues was the exception. Filled to half capacity with male and describe the experience of detention through migrants’ female migrants, as well as a small number of civilian of social equity? own words, and render these spaces and experiences convicts, my class toured the facility in the Fall of 2015. visible to a broader audience. One student’s visual recollection of the space (pictured In popular media, the term “illegal” is often used as a above) illustrates the hardened world of confinement Including immigrant detention centers, city and stand-in for a Mexican migrant. Conservative think and containment ever-present in the visitation rooms county jails that house migrants, and immigrant pris- tanks like the Center for Immigration Studies contribute where fathers and husbands see loved ones through ons known as Criminal Alien Requirement (CAR) facil- to this perception.viii Pundits use hyperbolic language glass partitions. In addition to long rows of stacked pens or cellular dormitories, a disorienting mixture of fluorescent light, discordant noises, and noxious odors raised questions regarding the environmental intentions behind detention. Rather than punishment, detention is, by law, a civil procedure that is used for migrants awaiting trial. With the exception of immigration prisons, migrants in detention are not “doing time” for unauthorized crossings, and yet they endure conditions akin to facilities designed for civilian criminals. Students also engaged with people who have experienced detention first-hand to facilitate their own visual stories of confinement. Miguel Sanchez, an asylum seeker from Columbia, drew a cognitive representation of his physical environment in the South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall, Texas (pictured right). Fig. 1 Detention facility locations in Texas. Drawing by Natalia Lopez and Tsering Shawa.
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Fig. 2 Where the detained come from. Infographic by Katie Slusher and Joyce Hanlon.
Fig. 4 Student ‘cognitive drawing’ of La Salle Detention. Drawing by Katie Slusher.
Fig 3 Facility footprints. Illustration by Sarah Dubicki.
Fig. 5. Asylum seeker ‘cognitive drawing’ of detention. Drawing by Miguel Sanchez.
Detained for four months, he lived in a rectangular tion space visible is a first step toward developing a dormitory with two long, windowless walls lined with “spatial imagination” that examines the purpose such metal bunk-beds and two communal tables running a landscape serves, and what the relationships are— down the center. A small, enclosed recreational space is and should be—between migrants, citizens, and their on one end, and bathrooms and showers partially open environments.ˣiii This project is also a pedagogical to view are on the other. His description corresponds practice that creates pathways for architecture students with the “hardened environments” of standard prisonsˣi to engage with real-world issues both in and beyond Most remarkable, this dormitory space is designed to the classroom. house 100 men “from all over the world” 24/7, meaning that men ate, slept, exercised, prayed, used the i See Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz, The Deportation Regime: bathroom, lounged, and more, in this one enclosure, Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Duke University producing what several interviewees described as the Press, 2010); Julie Dowling and Jonathan Xavier Inda, eds., Governing Immigration Through Crime (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); claustrophobia of everyday life.ˣii Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis (Athens:
There's not a collective project. There are five million projects that are going in five million different directions. A multidisciplinary approach, including historical research, analysis of architecture, and the stories of immigrant detainees, exposed the micro experiences of detention as constituent of the macro processes that shape United States immigration policy. Private corporations design and build detention centers as highly institutionalized environments with little oversight and in the architectural style of civilian prisons. This not only increases our capacity to detain men, women, and children in prison-like conditions despite the fact that they have not necessarily committed a crime, it also predisposes migrants to punitive environments and experiences for years to come. Rendering deten-
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University of Georgia Press), 2012; Paul Ashton and Amanda Petteruti, “Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies,” Justice Policy Institute, June 2011, 1-44; Harvard Law Review Association, “Improving the Carceral Conditions of Federal Immigrant Detainees,” Harvard Law Review Association, vol. 125, no. 6 (April 2012), 1476-1497: 14801481; Denise Gilman, “Realizing Liberty: The Use of International Human Rights Law to Realign Immigration Detention in the United States,” Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 36 (2013), 243-333 ii For architectural histories on related subjects see Tings Chak, Undocumented: The Architecture of Detention (Montreal/Amsterdam: The Architecture Observer), 2014; Sean Anderson and Jennifer Ferng, “The Detention-Industrial Complex in Australia,” Journal of Architectural Historians, vol. 73, no. 4, 2014: 469-474; Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017); and Manuel Hertz, From Camp to City: Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara (Lars Muller, 2012). iii Bethany Carson and Eleana Diaz, “Payoff: How Congress Ensures Private Prison Profit with Immigrant Detention Quota,” Grassroots Leadership, April 2015, 1-27; email correspondence with Bob Libal, Executive Director of Grassroots Leadership, in author’s possession, April 12, 2017. iv In addition to touring the U.S. for three years, the exhibit came to The University of Texas at Austin in October of 2017. The online exhibit is available at: http://statesofincarceration.org/states/texas-
spatial-stories-migration-and-detention. v Criminal Alien Requirement Facilities overseen by the Bureau of Prisons are not technically detention centers; they are filled with migrants who have been charged with immigration-related crimes like unauthorized border crossings, as well as other offenders. vi “ICE Authorized Facilities Matrix,” 2014; Grassroots Leadership, research available at: http://grassrootsleadership.org/research. html; Detention Watch Network research available at: http://www. detentionwatchnetwork.org/issues; American Civil Liberties Union, Warehoused and Forgotten: Immigrants Trapped in the Shadow of our Private Prison System, June 2014, 1-101: 22. Accessed on October 10, 2015. https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/060614-aclucar-reportonline.pdf. vii Dr. Denise Gilman argues that the location of detention centers hurts migrants’ chance at winning asylum due to lack of legal representation. Class lecture at The University of Texas at Austin, September 24, 2015. viii See Center for Immigration Studies blog post, especially note “How to Make Illegal Immigrants Pay for the Wall.” Accessed on April 15, 2017. http://cis.org/north/how-to-make-illegal-immigrants-pay-for-wall. iˣ Norman Johnston, Forms of Constraint: A History of Prison Architecture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006). ˣ South Texas Detention Center and South Texas Residential Center, called by author, October 2015. ˣi Justice Facilities Review, American Institute of Architects, Jury Comments, 1997/98, iv. ˣii Miguel, interview by Jessica Carey-Webb and author, November 2015. ˣiii Dell Upton defines this as a sense of the relationships among people and their environments. See Dell Upton, Another City: Urban Life and Urban Space in the New American Republic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) and Upton, “Persuasion and Coercion: Therapeutic Landscapes of the Early National Period,” International Journal of Conservation and the Built Environment no 6.2, 116-137, 117.
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Walter Hood I think that this question of protecting and preserving the built environment again goes back to an ethic that needs to be encouraged for palimpsest—the notion of building upon what’s already there instead of erasing it. We need to look at what’s important to a varied group of people, not just a singular group of people. It’s almost about memory— preservation is about memory and nostalgia. Who gets to choose what gets to be preserved or conserved? Thinking then about palimpsest, how do you make decisions about that? One way to approach it is at the community level, by listening to people and understanding what their memories might represent, because they can give you a different way to think of preservation that resonates with audiences. Preservation might be in the landscape. It might be a building. It might be a place or an environment. It doesn’t always have to be a physical thing. Right now, I don’t think there’s a collective way in which architects and environmentalists understand where those memories lie and how to bring them back. I think technology and some other kinds of storytelling are powerful. But, if you look at cultures around the world whose places and landscapes have been validated through preservation, they still exist in a physical place. There is a respect for the people reflected in the places that are physically preserved. The more we can have this detritus of elements from different groups of people that live around us, the more we respect them and give voice to them. People that live among ruins that have been preserved are perhaps more enlightened and powerful because their history and environment have been conserved and therefore hold power. No matter how mundane, I think these can be powerful things. Whether it’s the shotgun houses that Rick Lowe saved in the Third Ward or a tree that’s been standing for 150 years, those things are important because someone saw that tree and someone lived in that house. Jesús Robles Jr. The thing that keeps coming to my mind is the Dakota pipeline. The pipeline battle that's going on now is a similar to the story of the four artists coming together to preserve Nina Simone's house. There's always an economic piece in these situations. The fact that four artists had to pony up and buy a house to preserve it is the catalyst. How do you deal with that part? How do you empower the community that you're trying to preserve? How do you empower the people that are already there? You see a very complex modern-day battle for this with the Dakota pipeline. Each party is playing their piece. How do we, as architects, play this game? How do we influence economics and policy?
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Andrea Roberts It is very much about power. Architects, planners, and preservationists should always think about their work with sacred spaces, considering landscapes (not just buildings) as being inextricably linked to power dynamics of the past and present. If anyone isn’t recognizing their power or ways that power can manipulate them and their role in a project, the community suffers. This is essential in both cases. What you have are environmental assessors (planners) and cultural resource managers (preservationists) not coordinating their work from the beginning, and, if you look at the Baltimore demolition initiative, we may have rushed to destroy and redesign without recognizing the permanent shifts in the landscape and demographics that may result from redesign. In each case, the move to design and build has to happen in concert with the impulse to conserve and preserve.
NW: How does Architecture, i.e. the built environment, shape punishment? Sarah Lopez I'll provide some background on this question. I have been doing research on the design of prisons, specifically immigration prisons and detention centers. In San Francisco, there is a group called Architects/Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility, led by Rafael Sperry. They address questions of social justice and activism in the context of design, arguing that architects should not design solitary confinement and execution chambers. I got into an interesting debate with an editor about whether architecture (the formal dimensions of it) shapes punishment. She argued that solitary or other aspects of prisons can look and feel like a prison, yet can offer someone a wonderful experience. She viewed the real problems as power, politics, and policy. For me, I don’t see Architecture and politics as separate entities. My last question is, ‘Does Architecture shape immigration policy, and, if so, how?’ because one of the surprising findings of my research on the architecture of immigrant detention is that the prison corporations managing our private
prisons and immigrant detention centers are also design-build corporations. The architects, engineers, and managers are folded seamlessly into the corporation. Structurally, this is important for us to notice. Like I was saying earlier, the client is deciding what and where and how to build. If the client is a private prison corporation, this is very pernicious. I think there is a link between Architecture—what we build—and the policies that we establish regarding incarceration. Anna Brand This is such a provocative question. I think we can even widen it beyond the concept of the prison to think about landscapes and how they might shape punishment and racialization. I'm thinking of bell hooks' essay about valuing black vernacular architecture and understanding how it has been erased through new spatial forms, such as the mid-twentieth century public housing developments we see across the United States. hooks talks about public housing being designed to strip residents of their agency over space. We should think about the idea that punishment and inequality are shaped by the built environment in a wider sphere than just prisons and immigrant detention facilities. Felecia Davis I was thinking about Mario Gandelsona’s book, The Urban Text, which formally examines the structure of Chicago and basically unearths white Chicago and black Chicago through the placement of streets. It looks at which highways cross through and divide the city, as well as buildings that intersect, all of which are components that aren’t immediately apparent until you map them out formally. I agree that the question is really provocative. There are definitely structures in place to separate people and control them to some extent. Michael Ford In response to what Sarah and Anna were saying about public housing, if we think about Modernism and the mission of a lot of modernist architects or just modernists period, they had this idea of liberating people. Le Corbusier's plans for Paris, which he referred to as a machine, were based on the idea that if the working class of Paris inhabited those spaces, they would have a better life.
We know that Paris did not implement this; the United States did. A quote I assume was from a journalist in Paris in the 1920s stated that, “Anyone who would inhabit this space will rage against the machine.” I call this a predecessor of Hip Hop culture, and that statement was made almost 50 years before the birth of Hip Hop about the people who would inhabit these structures of inequality, if you will, and strip from them control of their own lives. Sometimes, we can have good intentions and think we can mold people's lives for the better, but the attempt to mold someone's life for them is a form of punishment. Architecture and its ability or its hope to liberate people is a punishment for the inhabitants because the people we're trying to liberate are not the people who are at the table helping us create spaces of liberation. Lori Brown The question of whether Architecture shapes punishment and immigration policy raises a lot of interesting thoughts for me. It reminds me of a piece written several years ago in the New York Times Magazine about prisons in Germany. They discussed how design plays a part in the rehabilitation process, how space and spatial relationships help define a prisoner’s relationship with self and others. The prison was a modern, contemporary facility and was the first one I'd seen with design that reflected any consideration of humanity. Another issue the question raises is what gets publicized in mainstream media about these types of spaces. I've begun research into facilities for children and mothers coming across the US-Mexico border, and there's so little imagery that the public actually has access to, which I think is quite revealing about how horrendous these spaces are and the control over what the public sees. What other aspects about housing does or does not get disseminated? I also think it's critical for students to be introduced to a much wider range of how we understand the built environment. At what point are concerns about political, social, and economic forces introduced to students? These should become critical elements of their education, alongside being asked to consider formal relationships. Sarah Lopez Recently, in the Yale Law Journal, I noticed an article titled “Architecture and Exclusion.” It outlines the reasons why and how Architecture is political, exclusionary, racist, etc., at a Planning scale (organization of cities, building of roads and walls). But I'm still grappling with how to teach this at not just a planning scale, but at the scale of Architecture. To what extent is it important for architecture students to view designing as political, not only thinking about the broader built environment, but also buildings themselves as smaller, micro-units, that are equally political?
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The move to design and build has to happen in concert with the impulse to conserve and preserve. Walter Hood Felecia speaks about how Planning has been used to suppress marginalized groups of people, primarily through infrastructure. This includes everything from sewage treatment plants to freeways. It creates this inequity so that people have to live in an environment of punishment. We know that your environment plays an important role, and that the things you see, smell, and taste daily have an impact on who you become. So, if you do believe in environmental determinism, with punishment on one end for one group—particularly if you are looking at the group that’s filling up the jails—there might be this causality between environment and the places people end up. We know that in planning prison reform the panopticon has always been present in the design of the city. If you take the larger idea of social reform, it can work in the best of ways, but it can also work in the worst ways. Who is to say that people should act a certain way? If you take a group of people who have lived in close proximity and who are used to more oral methods of communication and put them into an environment that separates them and is more antiseptic, then there is an expectation for them to act in an antiseptic way. An environment can deconstruct cultures to a point where they become isolated, and isolation gets you right back into prison. I think that architects and designers have to be very critical of the things that we think are “good.” We have to be cautious of thinking that if we build this, then these people will be able to do _____[fill in the blank].
CL: How does the culture of place impact our perceptions of ourselves in that place? Lori Brown I'm happy to say that a lot of geographers have written about this idea that we are all socially and culturally produced. Our identity is incredibly integrated with what we've experienced and how we’ve experienced it, so I think the culture of a place critically impacts how we understand ourselves and our relationship to the world. In some ways, this is the counter position to what the modernist platform was, when Michael was discussing Le Corbusier's vision of cities and modernist social housing in the United States.
Walter Hood We know that our environments shape our identities and we want our environments to validate us. Place becomes important to the integrity of the culture, in particular, to the people who live and experience it. Our environment does change our perception. So, if you live in a housing project and you don’t have anything and then someone gives you a tree and you’ve never seen a tree in your life, why would you love the tree? I use that as an example of the familiar element, these things shape us and tell us things. Sometimes familiar elements tell us do’s and don’ts. Sometimes they tell us ‘don’t go in there.’ Sometimes they tell us we’re safe or not safe. These cues are all around us, and it just so happens that in America these cues are skewed. Some people’s perceptions of themselves are understood through the looking glass of an environment that has nothing. It is expected that this group of people be like the other group of people who have an environment with everything, and it just doesn’t work out. Michael Ford I'll talk about this academically. It's not a common part of curricula to discuss a variety of different architects and urban planners of color. There is a great discussion to be had involving not only enrollment, but also the retention of students of color when they are not seeing themselves as part of the culture of a place. I think curricula needs to be adjusted in order to adjust the culture of academic institutions and help increase retention and recruitment rates. If minorities don’t see themselves celebrated in Architecture, or in our architecture and urban planning institutions, that influences the self-image of these students and their perception of what they can contribute to the profession.
Walter Hood I don’t think that for AfricanAmericans to see architecture they need to be architects. I think that gives too much credence to being an architect. That’s like saying if I’ve never seen a black senator, I can’t see myself as a senator. And, along the same lines, if we never had a black president, I could never see myself becoming president. Environments are created by a wide array of people, institutions, and actions. I think that people, particularly people of color, do see the architecture and environment around them. The more empowering aspect is for someone to be inspired by their predicament. I’ve met too many architects of color that are not inspirational because they basically copy everything an instructor taught them. Just because you’re black doesn’t mean you’re going to speak a certain way. There has to be an inspirational aspect to architecture, which no one has mentioned yet in this discussion. Design comes out of creativity, and to be creative one has to be inspired. When I think about “good design” or “good architecture,” they are inspired by a diverse set of things. We don’t have to follow the people we canonize—we can be inspired by them. I look at Le Corbusier and he inspires me, but I’m not inspired to do what he did. I think this is where our education fails. We often teach through emulation and now we are at this point where it is all precedent. An alternative is to say, “I’m inspired by how they thought about this! How do I set up my work so that I can have a voice that somehow gets magnified the way they’ve been able to magnify their voice?” Felecia Davis One of the things that crossed my mind as Michael was speaking about the Hip Hop Museum and the involvement of Hip Hop artists is letting the “we” be the authors. There could be a more diverse group of people involved in making architecture. We could begin to see practices that are very different from what we see now. Technology could support people in different economic and social conditions to foster a more diverse kind of participation in architecture and placemaking. It is critical that there be a diverse team of people making tools for schools, and for students to play with these tools and become their own authors. When you start making something, inherently some things are included and some things are excluded. That is the nature of design. We can begin to create new architectural practices that promote more options for people to shape their environments in a way that is accessible to them and in a way that is meaningful.
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Jesús Robles Jr. At a fundamental level, we need to incorporate the skilled workforce into the creator/maker workforce so that roles are broader than, "I'm the contractor, you’re the subcontractor, I'm the architect." It might go back to the preservation of communities and place—a sense of ownership, a sense of pride— using the skills and trade to empower. My family is from what is called "El Norte." Throughout California, Arizona, and El Paso, they were all masons. It’s important to distinguish and have respect for a place, and to respect the culture that's already there.
Felecia Davis Have you heard of Project Row Houses in Houston? That seems like an interesting method to engage community practices. It's run by an artist, Rick Lowe, who has been living in Project Row Houses for years. I think part of his methodology involves sticking around to see results over a really long period of time, because anything in a community, and I think in Architecture and in Planning, takes a really long time. That's why it's difficult to extract meaningful data when you go somewhere, stay for a couple of days, and then leave and punch numbers.
NW: What are the methodological possibilities and limitations of elevating subaltern visions for redevelopment?
Michael Ford Thinking about approaches to challenge urban planners and designers, I often refer to this unscripted, unfiltered, and unsolicited post-occupancy evaluation of Modernism. One of the things I've done—I'm originally from Detroit and am currently living in Madison, Wisconsin— is work for the planning department here. I created a camp called The Hip Hop Architecture Camp, which partnered with the city planning departments to create riffing sessions where I encouraged the planners and city officials to listen to Hip Hop. Hip Hop music is saturated with critiques of the built environment. I allowed the creators of Hip Hop culture, the youth here in Madison, to participate and create visions for the future of the city. At this time, the city is updating its comprehensive plan looking five years into the future, so I thought it was vital for the city to step back and consider this music and how the youth fit into the plan. I wanted them to consider a vision that will resonate 25 years from now and to get the youth acclimated to what the city has done in the past. The city planning department was then able to create a vision that was aided by the youth. The whole idea, again, is that we are enabling people who may not be privy to go through some of those validation processes to be creators of their own spaces.
Anna Brand To provide some background for this question, I think I've been slightly obsessed with methodological possibilities since much of my research took place in post-Katrina New Orleans. My experiences there have challenged me to think through my own role as a scholar working in communities of color or lower income communities, particularly in hyper-settings like New Orleans, where residents needed to get back into their homes and to literally and symbolically reclaim their space in their city. Residents gave a lot of their time, insights, and ideas to planning processes after the storm, but the planning process failed to deal with the redistributive claims being made on the state and alternative visions for how the city might be developed to reflect a lived landscape that embodies more social, racial, and economic justice. This is also a pedagogical question about how we engage students in communities to design with, and plan with, their communities. My real concern is, ‘What are different methodologies for working with communities that can produce a different urban sphere? Andrea Roberts Well, this semester I have been teaching a course for Planning, Historic Preservation, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture students—all in one class. They are learning ethnographic research methods of cultural landscapes. Frankly, and this may be because I am a participatory planner/historic preservationist/theorist, I was surprised that the architects and landscape architects struggled so much with positionality. They are trained to center around structures so much that they have difficulty understanding the ways in which people define their own spaces, and how they, as researchers, should be behaving in those spaces. It’s a heady thing, being empowered to manipulate structures, both politically and physically. My students take that power for granted. I’ve worked hard to ground them and to enable them to think reflexively.
Andrea Roberts That sounds amazing. I especially appreciate your emphasis on looking at ways that youth can be a part of space creation. Anna Brand Through some of my work in Treme, New Orleans and in Atlanta, we've drawn on visual representations of place, particularly in spaces that might be looked upon by planners as denigrated spaces or spaces that no one would want to occupy. Underneath the highways that have gone through, and even decimated, black communities are spaces that have been reclaimed by residents through everyday acts, celebrations, music, and art. These more complex narratives show that space should not be thought of solely as denigrated and in need of removal.
As architects and designers, we can create a more diverse world by not designing for, but designing with. Michael Ford One thing I want to add is that the Hip Hop Architecture Camp concentrated on a music video. After getting this comprehensive look at architecture from different perspectives, students created a song about building their communities. The song was about some of the failures of the past, and about what the youth see as the solution to planning communities in the future. This is something I will replicate in the cities I visit, cities where people can really use the local Hip Hop culture to help them define space and understand what happened in their communities with the planning of different places and spaces. Lori Brown One issue your question raises for me is how we consider expertise and professionalism. One aspect that is not helping the discipline of Architecture is the rigid defense of the discipline at the expense of its ability to be far more expansive and collaborative, especially when it comes to the ways we interact, facilitate, and encourage improvement of the built environment. I think the issue of who is the “expert” is an important one to deconstruct for alternative visions. We need to prioritize collaboration with those who will be using and living with our designs. Andrea Roberts I challenge expertise, what it means and how it is used to erase or ignore places of significance to people of color who are usually associated with deficiency and neediness. I also document the way expertise has always existed in communities of color, especially among women. I look at expertise in social service provision, governance, and institution building. I think those of us who deal with the built environment must be open to improving our practices by recognizing, validating, and integrating various forms of expertise into our notions of what expertise looks like.
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NW: For architects and designers, what is the collective project today, and will it be the same tomorrow? What should young architects and designers learn today? Sarah Lopez For me, that question leads back to the first question, to Lori Brown's question regarding how we transform the educational atmosphere and profession. The first thing I thought was, Is there a collective project? There's not a collective project. There are five million projects that are going in five million different directions. However, the question of what young architects should learn today is critical. We must examine our curriculum and how accreditation happens. Why is it that graduating architects are not necessarily seeing themselves as part of a profession that is explicitly political and related to issues of social equity? From there we can ask, how do we remedy it? Michael Ford I will make a quick statement. If there's one thing designers should learn, it is simply that Architecture is far beyond bricks and mortar. Jesús Robles Jr. I am thinking of Michael’s earlier statement about dissolving or removing validation. I was a product of affirmative action. It gave me the opportunity to go to a university and become one of these young architects. It goes back to removing barriers and creating opportunities to spread knowledge across all different facets of American culture. That is step number one. Step two, once you achieve this diversity of students, is to let them be keen observers of where they came from—of what
they saw, who they are, and their perception of themselves. This starts to provide nuanced tools for an individual to plug-in socially and realize how to have social impact, in our case, with architecture as the medium. Michael Ford Because ‘affirmative action’ is this buzz word that has so many negative connotations, I don't want the design profession to look at minorities who come into Architecture as affirmative action cases. Minority groups such as African-Americans, Latinos, etc., are actually not the largest benefactors of affirmative action. White women are the largest benefactors. I just want to mention that so people don’t think affirmative action is a process that eliminates opportunities for people who have academic success and provides opportunities for people who may be failing academically. Lori Brown I would be far more radical in terms of how we create more diversity in both our educational structures and the discipline at-large. I think the discipline will not change unless it's forced to change legally. I don't think it's going to move fast enough—it has not moved fast enough. I am completely in support of having our educational system reflect the population. But, I think in terms of the question, I would argue that there is not a collective project. I think that is, in fact, one of the downfalls of architectural education. Architecture education has only been written from the white male perspective and we must open up how we teach and who we teach in order for architects to engage with the most pressing issues of the day. I am on the side of a greater multiplicity of voices, not one voice. Rather than the discipline narrowing, I think it has to become far more expansive, responsive, and reflexive to current and future conditions. That requires a far more radical system of education for designers and architects than exists today. Charlton Lewis I think that concludes our conversation. We really appreciate your participation. I think it makes a huge difference to have the ability to hear your voices in addition to your written statements. Nichole Wiedemann This has been a really wonderful start to an ongoing discussion, and I'm extremely appreciative of all these distinct voices. Thank you.
Celebrated singer Nina Simone’s childhood home in Tryon, North Carolina, as seen on Realtor.com.
Entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist Madam CJ Walker’s residence in New York. Courtesy Historic New England. Photo by David Bohl.
North Derbigny Street, New Orleans, in 1958. Courtesy of the Ralston Crawford Collection of New Orleans Jazz Photography, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University.
Hundreds marched to protest the destruction of sacred sites and burial grounds in the path of the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. Photo by Dallas Goldtooth. From Larry Buhl, “Sacred Burial Grounds Destroyed, Judge Halts Construction on Portion of Dakota Access Pipeline.” 2016.
Street art in Treme, New Orleans. From Tour New Orleans.
The Cross-Bronx Expressway in New York City, designed by Robert Moses. Photo by James Estrin. The New York Times, January 28, 2007.
Michael Ford with participants at The Hip Hop Architecture Camp. Photo by MOD Media Production. Courtesy Michael Ford.
Cover of The Urban Text by Mario Candelsonas, FAIA. MIT Press. 1991.
Austin city plan cover sheet. City of Austin, 1928.
Aerial view of Project Row Houses in Houston during Round 41, curated by Ryan N Dennis. Photo by Peter Molick, courtesy Project Row Houses.
States of Incarceration exhibition, organized by Humanities Action Lab with help from Sarah Lopez and UT Austin students. Photo by Kelsey Riddle. Courtesy UT Austin School of Architecture Visual Resources Collection.
Community gathers at Project Row House CDC Duplexes in Houston during 2006 festival. Photo courtesy of Project Row Houses.
Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris. © F.L.C. / ADAGP, Paris / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York [2017].
States of Incarceration exhibition. Photo by Panchajanya Gudigar.
A LU M N I P ROF I L E
Alumni Interview with Elizabeth Chu Richter, FAIA recession upon arrival. There were no jobs to be found for new graduates. Soon, we returned to Dallas where I worked at my mother’s restaurant and David built furniture. Subsequently, we moved to Corpus Christi to build a house for David’s parents. We both found jobs there. When our first child was born, we decided that building a family was important. I gladly set aside my career, knowing that I would re-start when the time was right. Twelve years and three children later, at the age of 40, I went back to pursue a full-time career. I worked as an intern, completed the IDP requirements, passed the licensing exam, and became an architect. Since then, everything in my career has been at double time. I'm enjoying a wonderful family and a rewarding career.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE A DEFINING MOMENT IN YOUR EDUCATION OR PROFESSIONAL CAREER THAT HAD A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON HOW YOU VIEW DIVERSITY AND EQUITY?
From the day I arrived at the School of Architecture, it was evident that the profession lacked diversity. I remember searching for books about women architects in the library. I came across Julia Morgan and Mary Colter. That was about all I could find. I had to have faith that women can and will succeed in the architecture profession. Today, the search is a lot easier with the internet, and the number of successful women in Architecture has grown. Another memorable moment was when Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown came to lecture at UTSOA. It was the first time I met a successful husband and wife team. Years later, as national AIA President, I was beyond thrilled to call Denise Scott-Brown to announce that she and Robert Venturi had been chosen to receive the AIA Gold Medal. It was the first time in the history of the AIA that a married couple was the recipient of the prestigious award. The likelihood of such rewarding collaborations is greater than ever before, as the ratio of men and women entering architecture schools is about 50/50. Role models are also important in shaping perspective. If we are receptive, they are often right in front of us. For example, my trailblazing mother showed me what courage looked like. As a young widow, she crossed the Pacific Ocean with her six young children to pursue the American Dream. In the late 1970s, my fellow board members at the YWCA showed me what diversity and inclusiveness looked like. The board was comprised of women of diverse races who were professionals, stayat-home mothers, and community volunteers. Their ages ranged from 30 to 70. All of them were respectful of one another and worked together toward a common goal to improve opportunities for women and girls. TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR CAREER PATH.
I didn't know at the beginning that the path to my career was going to be a long journey. After graduating, I was ready to start my career and get licensed. I married a fellow architecture student, David Richter, and we headed for Miami. David interned there the previous summer and had a job offer. That was 1974. We were met with an oil embargo and an economy in 3 6 / P L AT FOR M / 20 17 / C ON V E RGE N T VOICE S
HOW CAN ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS, BROADLY SPEAKING, POSITIVELY CONTRIBUTE TO MAKE AMERICAN CITIES MORE EQUITABLE, HEALTHY, FAIR, SAFE, AND BEAUTIFUL?
Cities that commit their resources to developing and maintaining public infrastructure and amenities that are pedestrian-friendly will support equity, good health, and beauty. Having spent my formative years in Hong Kong, I have an appreciation for an urban environment that offers diverse mobility options for citizens. Young and old, rich and poor, all have choices when it comes to transportation. This ensures livability for people of all ages and social and economic statuses. Healthy cities put people first. A city that values emotional well-being is ahead of the game. A city that offers diverse mobility options is bound to grow in a healthy direction. Furthermore, cities are the sum of their people. Raising public awareness is an essential component of designing healthy and sustainable cities. Architecture and urban design are not about feeding the ego of the creators. They are about feeding the minds and bodies of those who occupy the cities’ spaces and places. It's about helping others see the value of a thoughtful, well-planned environment that is flexible, beautiful, respectful, and inclusive. It is essential that architects and designers be involved in the community and lead discussions about the impact of infrastructure on livability, sustainability, resilience, and health. The more discussion in the public realm, the more knowledgeable decision makers become. Every project is a collaborative opportunity to elevate the discourse. We should move beyond architects as form makers. We are more than that. There’s no need for oneupmanship. Social media shows us there is plenty of creativity around the world. We need to filter the noise and allow time to test successes. Former Acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak once told a group of architects that we are essentially public health workers. He is right in that we, as architects and urban designers, have the ability to design and build healthy, equitable, and beautiful environments. We can design to eliminate waste— to con-serve money, material, manpower, energy, and water. As Lushniak said, we have the ability to “promote health, prevent diseases, and prolong life.” WITH A DISTINGUISHED CAREER AS A PRACTITIONER, CAN YOU OFFER SOME REASONS TO BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE PROFESSION CONCERNING RACE AND GENDER IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT?
It is highly encouraging that approximately 50% of architecture students are women. We have made progress. However, there remains a significant lack of diversity in the practice environment. As of 2015, only 19% of full-time practitioners are women. The good news is that the profession is taking note. The AIA and its collateral organizations, such as the National Council of Architectural Registration Board (NCARB) and Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture(ACSA), have acknowledged that we have a gap to narrow. In 2016, the AIA published a Diversity in Architecture study that examined the demographics of the profession in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender. This was an effort to quantify anecdotal information and to set a benchmark to measure achievement toward the goal. The information also provided a framework to act quickly and holistically. During my tenure as AIA President, I appointed an Equity in Architecture Commission to develop recommendations and set priorities to assist in achieving equity, diversity, and inclusiveness in the profession. These priorities are now core values of the AIA Board of Directors and component organizations’ leadership. As technology provides tools that require more brain than brawn, women as well as men are able to advance quickly and achieve success in the design and construction industries. However, the one issue that stands out as a challenge for women is the biological clock and time out for raising a family. At some point in their child-bearing or child-rearing years, women agonize over a choice between career or family. Some struggle by taking on both. We are still pretty locked into productivity measurements that came from the Industrial Age. Like machines and assembly lines, workflow is regimented and time-based, and productivity is judged by quantity of widgets produced and/or seat time. In a knowledge economy, number of hours is not as important as creative solutions and resulting innovations. Flexibility in work/life arrangements is highly sought-after and collaboration is increasingly valued. It will take commitments from both employers and employees to create new work models that satisfy flexibility and accountability. I also believe that equity in Architecture is affected by the profession’s earning power. Too often, we hear about long hours and low pay. This is likely not the first career choice for people who wish to rise from poverty, support a growing family, and pay back high college debts. Young people want to do good and do well. To attract and retain bright people of all races and genders, we need an accessible profession that has high impact and high earning power. DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE TO SHARE WITH OUR STUDENTS AND/OR RECENT GRADUATES?
We will face challenges throughout our careers and lives. It's nearly impossible to achieve work/life balance. Balance is a really state of mind. Accepting the fact that life does not stand still, and that juggling is just part of life, we might pay more attention to creating harmony. We are at once the composer, the player, and the conductor. It's finding harmony in the changing rhythms of life that transforms a cacophony to a symphony. Elizabeth Chu Richter, FAIA, [BArch ‘74] is CEO of Richter Architects in Corpus Christi, Texas. She served as the 2015 President of the American Institute of Architects.
A LU M N I P ROF I L E
Alumni Interview with Gregory G. Street
path to architectural licensure, and will be done testing very soon. Overland, with its advancement/strategic plans and overall support of continuing education, makes opportunities for growth seem limitless. I look forward to continuing my professional development at OPA with amazing people and projects. AS AN ALUMNUS OF THE UT AUSTIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, ARE THERE ANY COURSES AND/ OR EXPERIENCES THAT WERE SIGNIFICANT IN POSITIONING YOU FOR SUCCESS?
CAN YOU DESCRIBE A DEFINING MOMENT IN YOUR EDUCATION OR PROFESSIONAL CAREER THAT HAD A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON HOW YOU VIEW DIVERSITY AND EQUITY?
In both my education and professional career there have been many moments that have contributed to my purview of diversity and equity. It is difficult to isolate just one “defining” moment, as they tend to build upon each other. However, one class that I took at UT that stands out for me in more ways than one was a class called The Black Power Movement with Dr. Leonard Moore. This class was offered through the College of Liberal Arts, and was so valued that dozens of people who were not registered for the class would sit in to hear the lecture. For me, this was a safe space for discussion centered around diversity and equity. While we uncovered problematic themes that circulate through our collective histories in regard to race and equity in the United States, Dr. Moore stressed the importance of making impacts, not impressions. I was able to uncover and re-focus my energy in a meaningful way, and really take a hard look at myself and how I was engaging with those topics. I realized in those moments that I had to become the person I had been looking for all of my college career, and that if I waited for a model to emulate that somehow fit my own unique perspective, then I would wait forever. That reality was empowering. As a result, my views on the subject matter were magnified, and I began to believe even more strongly in the inherent value of diversity and its necessity. TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOUR CAREER PATH.
I am an Architectural Designer at Overland Partners Architects in San Antonio, Texas, where I have had the opportunity to work on some of our largest, and, arguably, most influential projects such as the Paul L. Foster Campus at Baylor University. I started at Overland as an intern through the Professional Residency Program at UTSOA, and came back full time shortly after graduating. I have called Overland home ever since. I am on the
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While at UT, I took every class that was offered by Juan Míro, from Construction V to Studio Spain. I chose this path because I viewed Juan as a well-rounded architect, with the ability to successfully navigate the nuance of professorship and professional practice. I am in constant pursuit of that level of development in my professional career, and do believe that each class that I took with Juan was a worthwhile experience, and are significant to my positioning today. I also believe that being involved with UTSOA’S chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architecture Students was defining for me. While it did offer a platform for discussing the Activist Architect, it also gave me the opportunity to develop my leadership skills and test different ways of leading with my fellow members. I bring a lot of that discovery with me to my current role at Overland Partners as I collaborate, interact, and manage people. That being said, I give a lot of credit to my work with NOMAS for making me a more effective professional. HOW CAN ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS, BROADLY SPEAKING, POSITIVELY CONTRIBUTE TO MAKING AMERICAN CITIES MORE EQUITABLE, HEALTHY, FAIR, SAFE, AND BEAUTIFUL?
The profession of Architecture has a multitude of issues that are waiting to be addressed. It is my belief that many of these issues are pedagogical, and begin with architectural education. However, the process associated with the creation of spaces and places requires a certain level of critical thinking unique to architecture. This process deals with what happens at the cross sections of art, architecture, culture, equity, and placemaking among other things. As a result, I believe that individuals with architectural training and professional experience should embrace alternative roles in related fields as advocates and thought leaders. All too often, in places where a critical eye could be the most impactful, change is met with systematic inefficiency and resistance. If we develop a culture where architecturally trained professionals are members of both local and national government, sit on code review boards, become lawyers, and work with/as developers and contractors, we could spend less time educating these entities on the power of good design, and more time evaluating our work and researching alternative options. In addition to raising awareness about architecture, this shift has the
added benefit of providing architects with a firsthand account of the inner workings of some of these groups, allowing us to better understand their point of view and the perspective from which they make decisions. A lot of this hinges on architects becoming even more culturally competent and diverse. Meaning, in order to go into more visible roles as advocates concerned with protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public, architects and designers must become more self-aware, and must have the ability to view the world from many spatial perspectives. There is no way to solve the most critical problems of the City without this. AS AN EMERGING PRACTITIONER, CAN YOU OFFER SOME REASONS TO BE OPTIMISTIC ABOUT THE PROFESSION CONCERNING RACE AND GENDER IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT?
The AIA just published a document titled “The Habits of High Performing Firms”. This document is the product of a body of research that revealed patterns and cross currents gleaned from AIA COTE Top Ten award recipient firms. What was encouraging about the work with respect to race and gender in the built environment is that it can be used as a metric to give quantifiable value to diversity. The research uncovered quite a bit, but two things that stand out to me are that these “High Performing Firms” generally have 50% more women on staff, and are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors if ethnic minorities are represented. So, as an emerging practitioner, I am optimistic that celebrating diversity and being faithful to the ideal is bulletproof in a way. I would also venture to say that, despite our current political climate, the pulse of our humanity still beats toward a society that is more inclusive, more tolerant, and, of course, more diverse. I have to believe that architecture will have no recourse but to fully embrace that trend. DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE TO SHARE WITH OUR STUDENTS AND/OR RECENT GRADUATES?
I believe that, in its highest form, architecture has the ability to help us define who we are and be a conduit for growth. I would challenge future alumni and recent graduates to be in aggressive pursuit of a career path that utilizes their architectural education to make positive impacts on people and the environment in which we live. This could mean that the traditional lane that many of us take may not be the most effective way to realize those goals, and that a “non-traditional” grey zone could be where the greatest potential lives. As long as the process is composed of consistent forward movement, respect, and reflection, something extraordinary is bound to happen. Gregory G. Street [BArch ‘14] is a designer at Overland Partners in San Antonio, Texas. While studying at UT Austin, he was an active mentor and leader in the school’s National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) student chapter.
E N D OW M E N TS
Vital Forces School of Architecture Endowments
These 140 endowments have an approximate market value of $33.7 million and account for over $1.6 million in annual, renewable funding that directly supports students, faculty, programs, travel, lectures, prizes, research, and other initiatives as directed by the dean. Invested for perpetuity, endowments grow in market value over time and provide a reliable funding stream to advance the vision of the School of Architecture to prepare students to be leaders in the design disciplines and address important and complex social issues at the community, statewide, and global scales.
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SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ENDOWMENTS AS OF JULY 2017
AIA Austin Charles Moore Endowed Scholarship Brooke and Frank Aldridge Endowed Faculty Excellence Fund Blake Alexander Traveling Student Fellowship in Architecture Architexas Endowed Scholarship Francisco "Paco" Arumi-Noe Memorial Fellowship in Sustainable Design Yvette Atkinson Memorial Scholarship in Architecture Marvin E. and Anne Price Beck Endowed Scholarship Wayne Bell Excellence Fund for Historic Preservation Edwin E. Beran Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Carl O. Bergquist Endowed Scholarship Myron Geer Blalock Endowed Presidential Scholarship Jean and Bill Booziotis Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Architectural History Jean and Bill Booziotis Endowed Excellence Fund Jean and Bill Booziotis Excellence Endowment in Honor of the Texas Rangers Jean and Bill Booziotis Endowed Annual Lecture in Architecture Hal Box Endowed Chair in Urbanism Hal Box Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Brightman/York Endowed Lecture Series in Interior Design Brochstein Excellence Fund C. William Brubaker/ Perkins+Will Endowed Presidential Scholarship David Bruton, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Urban Design John Buck Company and First Chicago Investment Advisors for Fund F Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Kent S. Butler Memorial Excellence Fund in Community & Regional Planning Edwin W. and Alyce O. Carroll Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Matt Casey Memorial Scholarship in Architecture Center for American Architecture and Design Endowed Excellence Fund Center for the Study of American Architecture Endowment John S. Chase Endowed Presidential Scholarship Dick Clark Student Travel Fund Fred W. and Laura Weir Clarke Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Architecture honoring Carl Bergquist Fred W. Clarke Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Architecture honoring Alan Y. Taniguchi Bartlett Cocke Regents Professorship in Architecture Bartlett Cocke Scholarships Cogburn Family Foundation Architecture and Urbanism Prize Peter O. Coltman Book Prize in
Architecture and Planning Bluford Walter Crain Centennial Endowed Lectureship Roberta P. Crenshaw Centennial Professorship in Urban Design and Environmental Planning The Paul Philippe Cret Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Architecture Fred Winfield Day, Jr. Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Isabelle Thomason Decherd Endowment for Preservation Technology Jorge Luis Divino Centennial Scholarship in Architecture Amy Dryden Endowed Scholarship Raquel Elizondo Staff Excellence Fund William H. Emis III Traveling Scholarship in Architecture Excellence Fund for Topics in Sustainable Development O'Neil Ford Centennial Chair in Architecture Ford, Powell & Carson Endowed Scholarship Terry Norman Forrester & Nancy Hoppess Forrester Dean's Excellence Fund Ted Freedman Endowed Scholarship Suzie Friedkin Endowed Scholarship in Interior Design Gensler Exhibitions Endowment The Cass Gilbert Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Architecture Golemon & Rolfe Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Herbert M. Greene Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Adam Conrad Grote Memorial Scholarship in Architecture Harwell Hamilton Harris Regents Professorship in Architecture HDR Architecture Endowed Scholarship Mike Hogg Professorship in Community and Regional Planning Lily Rush Walker and Coulter Hoppess Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Architecture Humphreys & Partners Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Interior Design Endowed Excellence Fund Janet C. and Wolf E. Jessen Endowed Presidential Scholarship The Wolf and Janet Jessen Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Wolf E. Jessen Endowment Fund Journeyman Construction Faculty Excellence Fund in Architecture Professor Terry Kahn Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Community and Regional Planning Karl Kamrath Lectureship in Architecture Martin S. and Evelyn S. Kermacy Collection Endowment Martin S. Kermacy Centennial Professorship in Architecture Henrietta M. King Endowed Excellence Fund for Historic Preservation Henrietta Chamberlain King Endowed Scholarship Matthew F. Kreisle, III/Page Southerland Page Graduate
Fellowship in Architecture Dr. Nancy Panak Kwallek Endowed Chair in Design & Planning William E. Lake, Jr. Excellence Fund for Architecture Lake/Flato Endowed Scholarship Leipziger Travel Fellowship Fund Hugo Leipziger-Pearce Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Planning Lynne Brundrett Maddox Scholarship in Interior Design Harvey V. Marmon, Jr. FAIA/ Marmon Mok Scholarship in Architecture Sue and Frank McBee Fellowship in Historic Preservation McCall Endowed Excellence Fund Eugene and Margaret McDermott Excellence Fund for the Study of American Architecture Eugene McDermott Centennial Visiting Professorship Margaret McDermott Centennial Teaching Fellowship in Architecture Meadows Foundation Centennial Fellowship in Architecture Meadows Foundation Centennial Professorship in Architecture Mike and Maxine K. Mebane Endowed Traveling Scholarship in Architecture Alice Kleberg Reynolds Meyer Foundation Centennial Lectureship in Architecture Gene Edward Mikeska Endowed Chair for Interior Design The W. L. Moody, Jr. Centennial Professorship in Architecture Jack Morgan Endowed Scholarship Charles M. Nettles Endowed Presidential Scholarship Oglesby Prize Endowment Overland Partners Endowed Presidential Scholarship George M. Page Endowed Graduate Fellowship Page Southerland Page Fellowship in Architecture Jane Marie Tacquard Patillo Centennial Lectureship Barbara & Donald Pender Endowed Scholarship Claude M. Pendley, Jr. Memorial Scholarship Fund (for Graduate Fellowships) Edward J. Perrault Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Interior Design Alma Piner Scholarship in Architecture John William Potter Endowed Fund for the Encouragement of Risk Taking Potter Rose Graduate Fellowship Potter Rose Professorship in Urban Planning Boone Powell Family Prize in Urban Design Paul C. Ragsdale Excellence Fund for Historic Preservation The Sid W. Richardson Centennial Professorship in Architecture Debbie Ann Rock Scholarship in Interior Design Henry M. Rockwell Chair in Architecture
Roland Gommel Roessner Centennial Professorship in Architecture Edwin A. Schneider Centennial Lectureship in Architecture School of Architecture Advisory Council Endowed Excellence Fund School of Architecture Faculty Fund for Student Domestic Travel School of Architecture Scholarship and Fellowship Awards Endowment Joy & Morin Scott/Sally & John Byram Graduate Fellowship Brandon Shaw Memorial Endowed Scholarship Overton Shelmire Scholarship in Architecture Sixth River Architects Endowed Fellowship Snøhetta Endowed Scholarship in Architecture Established by Craig Dykers and Elaine Molinar Louis F. Southerland Endowed Scholarship Lawrence W. Speck Excellence Fund Lawrence W. Speck Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Lawrence W. Speck/ PageSoutherlandPage Graduate Fellowship in Architecture Frederick Steiner Endowed Excellence Fund in Landscape Architecture Ruth Carter Stevenson Regents Chair in the Art of Architecture Emily Summers Excellence Fund for the History of Interior Design Lance Tatum Endowed Scholarship John Greene Taylor Endowment for Collections Enhancement John Greene Taylor Family Graduate Fellowship in Architectural History Texas Chapter American Society of Landscape Architects Endowed Graduate Fellowship Jack Rice Turner Endowed Scholarship in Architecture The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture's Advisory Council Women's Endowed Scholarship Urban Edge Developers Dean's Excellence Fund Wilmont "Vic" Vickrey, FAIA, Endowed Excellence Fund for Architecture of the Americas Wilmont "Vic" Vickrey Endowed Scholarship J. M. West Texas Corporation Fellowship in Architecture Robert Leon White Memorial Fund Roxanne Williamson Endowed Scholarship Trisha Wilson Endowed Professorship Fund Wilsonart Endowed Lecture Series in Interior Design Endowments Are Forever To create a new endowment or make a gift to support an existing endowment, please contact Luke Dunlap, Director of Development, at luked@austin.utexas.edu or 512.471.6114.
E N D OW M E N TS
Shaping the School Professor Sinclair Black Creates Endowed Chair in Urban Design
Professor Sinclair Black. Photo by Mike Knox.
Courtesy Black + Vernooy Architecture and Urban Design
as an esteemed school of architecture faculty member for over fifty years, Professor Sinclair Black has made countless contributions to the education, careers, and lives of several generations of architects. As an architect and urban designer, his work has had an enormous impact on shaping Austin into an innovative, major American city. In recognition of his retirement during the May 2017 commencement ceremonies, interim dean Elizabeth Danze remarked, “Sinclair saw the potential for downtown Austin’s development as an international destination and had a large hand in making it happen. In this sense, he is a true visionary, and will continue to be a guiding force for responsible urbanism in Austin and Central Texas for years to come.”
annual earnings from this $1-million endowed chair will support a professor with distinction and expertise in urban design, bring in visiting critics and lecturers, sponsor events and activities related to urban design, and support students with interest in the field of urban design.
Professor Black, a San Antonio native and 1962 graduate of the school, most recently held the title of Roberta P. Crenshaw Centennial Professor in Urban Design and Environmental Planning and was the longest serving faculty member at the School of Architecture. He also served as the school’s acting dean from 1972 to 1973.
“Professor Black’s five decades of teaching, research, and practice have left their legacy in manifold ways— from his sensitive understanding of the vernacular in Central Texas to his leadership in developing a progressive plan for Austin, from his mentoring of students and colleagues to his engagement with the public at large—and we see the marks of this legacy in the places and faces that surround us,” remarked Dean Michelle Addington. “With this extraordinary gift, his generosity will now touch the future lives of students and faculty in this school. Sinclair’s responsibility to the past and his commitment to the future will forever remain in our hearts and minds at The University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture.”
The most prestigious type of faculty endowment, endowed chairs not only provide vital resources in a given area of study, but elevate the reputation of the school in wider academic and professional circles. The creation of the Sinclair Black Endowed Chair in the Architecture of Urbanism signifies a meaningful and enduring investment in the study of design at the metropolitan and regional scale, a field of growing importance as the world becomes increasingly urbanized. The seventh endowed chair for the School of Architecture, the Black Chair joins a notable list of important names in Texas philanthropy, architecture, and design education, including O’Neil Ford, Hal Box, Ruth Carter Stevenson, Gene Mikeska, Henry Rockwell, and Nancy Kwallek.
In making this generous gift, Black stated, “My vision is to position the UT Austin School of Architecture as a leader in urban design and to promote urban issues that enhance the quality of life in Austin and beyond through placemaking, equity, and economic sustainability. This could be pursued through visiting faculty, visiting critics, and lectures and events featuring experts who represent the leading edge of best practices in architecture, planning, landscape architecture, historic preservation, urban development, and
public policy. The reputation of the school, as well as The University of Texas at Austin, would be greatly enhanced through communication and cooperation relating to these community goals and initiatives.”
To celebrate his half century of teaching at the School of Architecture, Professor Black is making another important and lasting contribution to the school and the practice of urban design through the creation of a substantial faculty endowment, the Sinclair Black Endowed Chair in the Architecture of Urbanism. The
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Reflecting on his illustrious career at the School of Architecture, Professor Black recognized former deans, “I owe my career to Alan Taniguchi and Hal Box.” He then joked about his tenure, “Every year I got older, but the students did not.”
P H I L A N T H ROP Y
Thank You. Friends of Architecture
We would like to extend our thanks to all donors, including those who wish to remain anonymous.
ENDOWMENTS AND SCHOLARSHIPS 4X40 GRADUATE FUND
HAL BOX ENDOWED CHAIR IN URBANISM
Eden Box
Gabriel Durand-Hollis, Jr. [BArch ‘81] John Grable [BArch ‘76] Overland Partners Inc. Patricia [BA ‘86, BA ‘86] and D. Andrew Vernooy [MArch ‘78, MSArchE ‘90]
Ernst & Young Foundation Harriet [BS ‘68] and Austin Helmle Howard Templin [BArch ‘72]
ADAM CONRAD GROTE MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
HUMPHREYS & PARTNERS ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Alfred Conrad, Jr. Jessica Dierks Beth and Daniel Grote Robert Hardy James Lee
ARCHITECTURE CLASS OF ’78 SCHOLARSHIP HONORING TOMMY KOSAREK
Anonymous
ARCHITEXAS ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN HISTORIC PRESERVATION
ARCHITEXAS
BLAKE ALEXANDER TRAVELING STUDENT FELLOWSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Karen Pope [PhD ‘81]
BOONE POWELL FAMILY PRIZE IN URBAN DESIGN
Laura Powell [MSCRP ‘95] and John A. Hartman [MSCRP ‘95] Boone Powell [BArch ‘56] BRANDON SHAW MEMORIAL ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP
The Boeing Company William Larsen [BSChE ‘72] Margaret and Joseph Maycock, Jr. Brewster Shaw III Kathleen and Brewster Shaw, Jr. DR. NANCY PANAK KWALLEK ENDOWED CHAIR IN DESIGN & PLANNING
Randall Ackerman [BArch ‘73] Diane Cheatham Dick Clark [BArch ‘69, BBA ‘69] F. Marie Hall Raymond Landy [BArch ‘70] Urban Edge Developers Ltd. FRANCISCO “PACO” ARUMI-NOE MEMORIAL FELLOWSHIP IN SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
Marcia Roberts [MArch ‘80]
FREDERICK STEINER ENDOWED EXCELLENCE FUND IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
John Nyfeler [BArch ‘58] Studio Outside LLC
HARVEY V. MARMON, JR. FAIA/ MARMON MOK SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Gregory Faulkner [BArch ‘80] Humphreys & Partners Architects JACK RICE TURNER ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Betty and Jack Rice Turner [BArch ‘53]
JEAN AND BILL BOOZIOTIS ENDOWED ANNUAL LECTURE IN ARCHITECTURE
Lexa Acker [BArch ‘63] Frank Aldridge III Mary Bloom Stuart Bumpas [JD ‘69] Lyle Burgin [BArch ‘81] Diane Cheatham Kent Collins [BArch ‘81] Datum Engineers, Inc. Margaret Dear Claire Dewar D. Jerrell Farr [BBA ‘57] Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund Lois and Ross Finkelman Ben Fischer Suzi Greenman Marilyn Halpin [BA ‘69, MA ‘69] Julie Hooper Lance Hughes Christine Killough Janet Kutner Jane Landry Lucas/Eilers Design Associates L.L.P. Sandra Lucas [BSID ‘78] Chris Mantzuranis Effie McCullough [BA ‘71] The Eugene McDermott Foundation Melissa McNeil [BA ‘70] Peter O'Donnell, Jr. Karen Pollock [MBA ‘98] Caren Prothro Deedie Potter Rose Anna Schwartzel Regina Singer Patricia Snider Gay Solomon [BA ‘64] Mary Spillman [BA ‘48] John Sughrue The Elizabeth W. Pounders Trust Gregory Wohl [BArch ‘84] Gerald Worrall KENT S. BUTLER MEMORIAL EXCELLENCE FUND IN COMMUNITY & REGIONAL PLANNING
Bruce Butler [BSA ‘75] Eugene Peters [MSCRP ‘82] Jeffrey Wood [BA ‘03, MSCRP ‘05]
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LAKE|FLATO ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP
Edward Flato Sarah Juntunen Marvin Windows and Doors LAWRENCE W. SPECK ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Hemisfair Park Area Redevelopment Corporation McKinsey & Company Inc. Lawrence Speck LAWRENCE W. SPECK/ PAGESOUTHERLANDPAGE GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
The Page Southerland Page Foundation
LILY RUSH WALKER AND COULTER HOPPESS ENDOWED PRESIDENTIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Coulter and Lily Rush Hoppess Foundation MATT CASEY MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Joe Casey, Jr. [BSGeoSci ‘76] Kent McNeil Thomas Walsh [BA ‘96] OVERTON SHELMIRE SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
James A. and Mayme H. Rowland Foundation Mary and Day Shelmire [BA ‘85] PAUL C. RAGSDALE EXCELLENCE FUND FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION
The Ragsdale Foundation
PETER O. COLTMAN BOOK PRIZE IN ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING
Felicity Coltman Heather Coltman [PhD ‘90] Peter Coltman, Jr.
PROFESSOR TERRY KAHN ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP IN COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING
Lou Allen [MSCRP ‘76, MBA ‘80] BP Foundation Inc. Pamela [BSGeoSci ‘84, MSCRP ‘89]and Terry Cole [MSCRP ‘89] HRI Resources Inc. James Regan-Vienop [MSCRP ‘98] James Rice [MSCRP ‘85] William Thomas [BA ‘70, MSCRP ‘79] Bruce Uphaus [MSCRP ‘94] Xichang Zhang [PhD ‘94]
SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ADVISORY COUNCIL ENDOWED EXCELLENCE FUND
lauckgroup Randall Ackerman [BArch ‘73] Bobbie Barker Allen Boone Humphries Robinson LLP Allied/CMS Inc. Richard Archer [BArch ‘79] Charles Armstrong [BArch ‘81] John Avila, Jr. [BSArchE ‘75] David Barrow, Jr. [BBA ‘53, BArch ‘55] Bentley / Bratz Architects Ken Bentley Susan Benz [BArch ‘84] Myron Blalock III [BArch ‘78] David Bodenman [BA ‘72, MSCRP ‘76] Melissa Bogusch [BArch ‘95] Laura Britt [MArch ‘00] Lyle Burgin [BArch ‘81] Gabriel Durand-Hollis, Jr. [BArch ‘81] Bibiana Dykema [BArch ‘79] Gensler The Ginkgo Group Ltd. John J. Grable Inc John Grable [BArch ‘76] Gromatzky Dupree and Associates Charles Gromatzky Royce Jay Hailey, Jr. [BA ‘68] Michael Hsu [BArch ‘93] Ford Hubbard III [BA ‘82] HRI Resources Inc. Impact Outdoor Advertising Company Terry Kafka Anne Kniffen [BArch ‘79] Lake|Flato Architects Inc. David Lake [BSArchStds ‘77] Laura Britt Design LLC Kevin Lorenz [MArch ‘84] Jessica Mangrum [BA ‘97, JD ‘02] Michael McCall [MArch ‘80] Dana Nearburg [BA ‘73, MArch ‘76] Overland Partners Inc. Donald Pender [BFA ‘78, MArch ‘81] Judith Pesek [BSID ‘78] Charles Phillips [BA ‘70, BArch ‘74, MArch ‘75] Jody Richardson [BJ ‘71, JD ‘80] Roland Roessner, Jr. [BArch ‘76] Deedie Potter Rose James Shepherd [MArch ‘94] Janie Smith [MArch ‘89] Lenore Sullivan Emily Summers Taniguchi Architects Evan Taniguchi Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc. Christine Ten Eyck Thompson Coe Cousins & Irons L.L.P. Helen Thompson [BA ‘71, MA ‘73] Kathleen Zarsky [BArch ‘94]
SNØHETTA ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP ESTABLISHED BY CRAIG DYKERS AND ELAINE MOLINAR
Elaine Molinar [BArch ‘88] and Craig Dykers [BArch ‘83]
TED FREEDMAN ENDOWED SCHOLARSHIP
Renee Stern [BA ’71, MA ‘80]
TEXAS CHAPTER AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS ENDOWED GRADUATE FELLOWSHIP
American Society of Landscape Architects, Texas Chapter WILMONT “VIC” VICKREY, FAIA, ENDOWED EXCELLENCE FUND FOR ARCHITECTURE OF THE AMERICAS
Wimont “Vic” Vickrey [BArch ‘49]
YVETTE ATKINSON MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE
Simon Atkinson PROGRAMS
ARCHITECTURE
John Cheetham [BArch ‘90] Fred Clarke III [BArch ‘70] Meredith Contello [BSALD ‘03, BArch ‘06] David Cooperstein [MArch ‘98] Sara [BArch ‘05] and Nicolas Costa [BSCS ‘03] Sheryl Jenkins [BArch ‘90] Susanna Kartye [BA ‘96, MArch ‘06] Kuan Liu [MArch ‘15] John Schmid Charles Studebaker [BArch ‘79] Andrew Torres [MArch ‘07] ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY
Larry Gooch [BArch ‘72] Virginia Kelsey [BArch ‘83] Emily Little [BA ‘73, MArch ‘79] Michael Perrin [BA ‘69, JD ‘71] Lesley Sommer [BFA ‘95] CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Camp Aranzazu Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund Jennifer Morgenstern [MArch ‘94] Surdna Foundation Inc. Kalpana Sutaria [MArch ‘78] COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING
Susan Appleyard [MSCRP ‘94] Richard Bilbie [MSCRP ‘74] Cheryl Larissa Cioffari [MSCRP ‘06] Mary French [MSCRP ‘90] Joelle Kanter [BA ‘98, MSCRP ‘04] Leeanne Pacatte [BA ‘80, MSCRP ‘93] Floyd Watson, Jr. [MSCRP ‘79] Leon Whitney [BArch ‘58]
HISTORIC PRESERVATION
Adam Spencer Alsobrook [BSArchStds ‘04] Bayou Preservation LLC Michelle Duhon [MSHP ‘09] Michael Holleran Kimberly McKnight [BA ‘99, MSHP ‘11] Urmila Srinivasan [MArch ‘14] John White [BArch ‘57] INTERIOR DESIGN
Marla Bommarito-Crouch [BSID ‘76] Nestor Bottino [MArch ‘83] Garreth Charles Casper Dell Technologies Inc. Gerald Griggs [MArch ‘11] Anne Horn Emily Kathryn Sutton [BSID ‘13] Laurie Tyler [BSID ‘82] Huiyi Yang LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Michael Pecen [MLA ‘07] Christine Ten Eyck MATERIALS LAB
Fuse Box Austin Erin Holdenried [MArch ‘09] SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE UNRESTRICTED
Lexa Acker [BArch ‘63] Juli Agustar [BArch ‘97] Frank Aldridge III Kristen Ali [BA ‘04, MA ’12] Shawn Alshut [MArch ‘84] Anand Anbalagan Nicholas Angelo [BArch ‘13] Anonymous Travis Martin Avery [MArch ‘12] Virginia Ballard Alexander Barclay [BArch ‘75] Bobbie Barker Roel Bazan [BSArchStds ‘72, BArch ‘73] Evan Beattie [BArch ‘04] Bechtel Group Foundation John Bechtel [BMusic ‘78, MArch ‘88] Bell & Anderson LLC Jennifer Bennett-Reumuth [BSUD ‘06, MSCRP ‘08] Martha Bennett [BArch ‘75] Carolyn Berg [BJ ‘90, BA ‘90] Bracton Bledsoe, Jr. [BSArchStds ‘95] John Martin Bodkin [BArch ‘15] Michael Robert Boduch [MArch ‘12] Morgan Bomar Gayle Borst [MArch ‘83] David Bourland [BSS ‘86] Bryan Michael Brady [BArch ‘10] Melissa Brand-Vokey [BArch ‘88] John Brown [BSArchStds ‘71, BArch ‘72]
Thomas Brown [BArch ‘04] Heidi Buchberger [MArch ‘16] James Buescher, Jr. [BArch ‘72] Pierre Bulhon [BArch ‘77] R. Brian Burnett [BArch ‘08] Richard Burnight [MArch ‘81] Anna Burns Paula Burns [MSCRP ‘95] Robin Camp [BSRTF ‘80, BArch ‘90] Margaret Campbell [MArch ‘02] Rachel Carson [MArch ‘07] Paul Thomas Cato Jr. [MSHP ‘15] Scott Cavaness [BArch ‘80] Christopher Cecchine [BSArchStds ‘91] Ann Elizabeth Charleston John Cheetham [BArch ‘90] Chien-Yu Chen [BSCS ‘99, BS ‘99] John Chilton [BArch ‘71] Jacquelyn Chuter [BA ‘99, BSRTF ‘99, MSCRP ‘02] Richard Cleary Heather Coltman [PhD ‘90] Sean Coney [MArch ‘86] Michael Conrad [BArch ‘78] Hilary Crady [BSID ‘83] Corey Credeur [BSArchStds ‘97] Dennis Crow [BA ‘75, PhD ‘81, MSCRP ‘84] Jason Harrell Cummins [BA ‘10] CSI South Central Region Michael Dalton [BSID ‘93] Jutta Dambach-Stierle Philip Danze [BA ‘81, JD ‘84] Leah [BA ‘89, MArch ‘95] and John Dean [BS ‘89, BA ‘89, PhD ‘96] Lisa DeLosso [MA ‘10] Charles Di Piazza [BA ‘91, MArch ‘96] Charles Dickson [BArch ‘77] Patricia Lynn Dolese [BSArchStds ‘87] Isabelle Donatelli Tara Dudley [MArch ‘03, PhD ‘12] Caleb Duncan [BSArchE ‘97, BArch ‘98] Matthew Dungan [BArch ‘06] Bibiana Dykema [BArch ‘79] Rebekah Eaddy [BArch ‘78] Jill Fagan [BSArchE ‘96, MSCRP ‘06] Witt McCall Featherston [BArch ‘07] Linmor Feiner [BSArchStds ‘64] Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund Alex Finnell [BArch ‘01] Susan [BA ‘70] and Hollye Fisk [BArch ‘70, JD ‘72] Lauren Ford [MArch ‘99] Stephanie Nicole French [BSID ‘06] Dennis Gerow [BA ‘76, MArch ‘85] Francisco Gomes Marcia Gordenstein Kirstin Graham-Heckt [BSID ‘00] E. Anthony Grand, Jr. [BArch ‘82] Jacob Andrew Greene [BSArchStds ‘13]
41 / P L AT FOR M / 20 17 / C ON V E RGE N T VOICE S
Jennifer Griffith [BSID ‘96] Craig Grund [MArch ‘82] Doris Guerrero [BArch ‘93] Ranjit Balakrishna Gupta [BArch ‘96] Garron Guszak [MSCRP ‘86] Joannes Haakman [BSArchE ‘83, BArch ‘84] John Haba [MArch ‘94] Sarah Hafley [MArch ‘11] Kathryn Tate Hamilton [MArch ‘99] Rowena Wilson Hanks [MArch ‘13] Drita Harris Stephanie Harris Stephen Harris [BArch ‘87, MPAff ‘16] David Harrison [BArch ‘79] Andy Helms [BA ‘64, MSCRP ‘70] Gilbert Hickox [BArch ‘80] James Hill [BA ‘64, MSCRP ‘70] Jason Luke Hinson [MID ‘12] Dean Hobart [BArch ‘79] Kayla [BA ‘11] and Aaron Michael Hollis [BArch ‘12, BSArchE ‘12] Smith Holt [BArch ‘94] Julie Hooper Leland Horstmann [BArch ‘80] Nathan Howe [MArch ‘02] Molly Ellen Hubbs [March ‘12] Sandra Kenan Jamison [BSID ‘87] Jose Jimenez [BArch ‘63] Peng Ju [March ‘15] Stacey Kaleh [BSAdv ‘09] Joelle Kanter [BA ‘98, MSCRP ‘04] J. M. Kaplan Fund Inc. Lizamma Kappukattil and Gireesh Sadasivan Kamran Kavoussi [BA ‘85, BArch ‘91] Anne Kniffen [BArch ‘79] Roger Kolar [BArch ‘72, BArch ‘79] Poyy Kwan [BArch ‘73] Lyman Labry [March ‘96] Heather Lamboy [BA ‘93, MSCRP ‘98, MA ‘98] Tyler Dean Larson [BArch ‘13] Kent Lew [BArch ‘81] Paula Lewis [BArch ‘99] John LeBlanc [BFA ‘92, March ‘96] Bei Li [March ‘07] M. Zollinger AG Laurel Mahnke Ronald Marabito [BArch ‘61] Deborah Mark Lauren Marschall [MSCRP ‘11] June Martin Scott Martin [March ‘90] Jean Marusak [BArch ‘86] William Massingill [BArch ‘84] Jon Michael Mautz [MLA ‘13] Lisa Mayer [BSID ‘83] Megan Patricia McCall [MArch ‘11]
Ashley McClaran [MArch ‘01] Alma McElroy [BArch ‘02] Margaret McIntosh [MArch ‘10] Scarlett McKenzie [BArch ‘01] Ashley McLain [MSCRP ‘97] Kevin McLaren [BArch ‘83] Rubin Mendoza [BS ‘06] Katherina May Meyers [BSArchStds ‘14] Chuck Michie [BArch ‘81] Dwight Micklethwait [BSArchStds ‘72, BArch ‘72] Mason Miller [BA ‘06, BArch ‘06] Charles Milligan III [BArch ‘92] Lindsey Milligan [BArch ‘06] Christopher Andrew Minor [MArch ‘09] G. Scott Mitchell [BArch ‘72] Matthew Lee Montry [BArch ‘10] Kevin Hadsell Moore [MArch ‘09] Matthew Harris Moore [MSCRP ‘93] Steven Morales [MArch ‘95] Susan Morehead [BA ‘65, MSArchStds ‘97] Jennifer Morgenstern [MArch ‘94] Linda Moriarty [BArch ‘70] Meeta Morrison [MArch ‘07] Jonathan David Mosteiro [MSCRP ‘15] Kate Anne Mraw Stephanie Nguyen [BArch ‘15] Frank Ordia, Jr. [MSHP ‘16] Justin Oscilowski [BArch ‘12] Katherine Owens [MArch ‘81] Paula Pacotti [BSArchStds ‘11] Elizabeth Pagani [MSCRP ‘11] Robert Paterson Janette Patterson Khuyen Pauline Payne [BSID ‘02] Tami Pearson [BSID ‘73] Pegasus Ablon Properties L.L.C. Karen Pittman [MA ‘87, MArch ‘10] Pansy Price [BSArchStds ‘97] Adam Pyrek [BArch ‘91] Rene Quinlan [BArch ‘88] Judy Ramsey [BA ‘71, MSCRP ‘76] Vineeth Ravinder [MSArchStds ‘00] Johanna Reed [MArch ‘12] Consuelo Garza Rivera [BArch ‘94] Richard Robinson, Jr. [BArch ‘69] Sharyn Robinson [BArch ‘82] Rosanna Ross [BSALD ‘73, MArch ‘81] Chay Runnels [BA ‘96, MSArchStds ‘00] Philip Ryan [BArch ‘99] Saul J.E. San Juan [MArch ‘12] Armando Sanchez [BSArchStds ‘88] Mark Charles Santa Maria [MArch ‘86] The 1772 Foundation Laura Sherman [MArch ‘93]
Robert Simpson [BArch ‘75] Janet Sisolak [BSID ‘81] Louise Smart [MSCRP ‘70] Janie Smith [MArch ‘89] Laura Leigh Sockrider Lesley Sommer [BFA ‘95] Philip Southwick [MArch ‘04] Deanna Stanley [MSE ‘08] Julie Steele [BArch ‘89] Rhonda Stohrer Tracy Stone [MArch ‘85] Thomas Stovall [BArch ‘62] Robin and Charles Studebaker [BArch ‘79] Isabel Suarez [BA ‘15] Jessica Sun [BSArchStds ‘08] Emily Kathryn Sutton [BSID ‘13] Texas Central Partners The Lindsay Foundation Erin Thomas Charles Thompson [BArch ‘81] Billie Jo Thorne [BSArchStds ‘89] Cynthia Toles [BA ‘72, MA ‘75] Li Tong [MSHP ‘10] Marc A. Toppel [BArch ‘06] Brandon Townsend [BArch ‘01] Linda Tsai [MArch ‘93] Kristine Tsao [BBA ‘88] Heidi Tse [BSID ‘91] John Tyler [BSArchE ‘88, BArch ‘88] Miren Urena [BArch ‘16] Patricia Valbuena [MSUD ‘14] Namrata Venkatraman [MSHP ‘09] Clyde von Rosenberg [BA ’83, MSCRP ‘84] Cynthia Walston [BArch ‘82] Blake Austin Walter [BArch ‘15, BA ‘15] Susan Weaver [BArch ‘72 Julia Webber [BArch ‘94] Norman Weiner [MArch ‘96] Roddrick Barry West [BArch ‘12] Stephen Wettermark [BArch ‘01] Leon Whitney [BArch ‘58] Fred Williams [BBA ‘48] Julie Ann Williams [BArch ‘12] Anthony Yoder [MArch ‘05] Brandon Young [MArch ‘02] Travis Young [MArch ‘94] John William Zemlan [BArch ‘02] SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
Hannah Marie Fonstad [MSSD ‘13] David Bronson Hincher [MArch ‘05] VISUAL RESOURCES COLLECTION
John Stoudemire University Co-operative Society gifts continued on page 42
P H I L A N T H ROP Y
FACULTY SPECIFIC GIFTS ELIZABETH MUELLER
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation SANDRA ROSENBLOOM
American Planning Association JOYCE ROSNER
The Anchorage Foundation Inc. BJORN SLETTO
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy OTHER GIFTS ARCHITECTURE ANNUAL FUND
Battle Hall. Photo by Stacey Kaleh.
42 / P L AT FOR M / 20 17 / C ON V E RGE N T VOICE S
Randall Ackerman [BArch ‘73] George Adams [MSCRP ‘94] Robert Arburn [BArch ‘56] Jack Backus [MArch ‘97] Kimberley Barrera Kenneth Baxter [BArch ’70, MArch ‘74] Edward Bennett [BArch ‘61] Hilary Bertsch [MArch ‘95] Peter Boes [MArch ‘93] Teresa Bogatto [BSID ‘88] Farzad Boroumand [BArch ‘87] Jennifer Boverman Diana Bravo Gonzalez [BArch ‘81] Stephen Bright [MArch ‘88] Jay Brotman [BArch ‘79] Kent Broyhill [BArch ‘53] Donald Burrer [BSID ‘90] Thomas Campbell [BArch ‘59] Salvador Cardenas [BArch ‘65] Henry Carranco [BArch ‘75] Tamara Chambless [BArch ‘79] Elizabeth Chen [MArch ‘02] Simon Gown-Shar Chen [BArch ‘14, BSArchE ‘14] David Cochran* [MSCRP ‘71] Robert R. Coffee Architect and Associates Robert Coffee [BArch ‘74] John Corder II [BArch ‘95] Herman Coronado [BArch ‘78] Hilary Crady [BSID ‘83] Jack Crier [BArch ‘60] Thomas Daly [BArch ‘65] Bang Dang [BArch ‘98] Leopold Danze [BArch ‘55] Patrick Davis, Jr. [BArch ‘74] Robert Dickson [MArch ‘96] Robert Donaldson [BArch ‘95] Clarice Droughton [BJ ‘71] Katie Frances Droughton [BArch ‘09] Winston Evans [BArch ‘68] Terese Ferguson [BArch ‘80] Ashley Fisher [BA ‘04, MSCRP ‘06] Lauren Ford [MArch ‘99] Terry Forrester [BArch ‘59] Ron Foster [BArch ‘70] Norman Friedman [BSArchE ‘85, MArch ‘92] Michael Fries [MArch ‘84]
Gary Furman [BArch ‘86] Frank Genzer, Jr. [BSArchStds ‘67, BArch ‘68] D. Kay Gerfers [BArch ‘84] Mitchell Gilbert, Jr. [BArch ‘73] Egan Gleason [BArch ‘55] Frank Gomillion [BArch ‘92] Joseph Gorney [MSCRP ‘00] Craig Graber [MArch ‘94] Sharon Bray Graff [BSID ‘75] Kenneth Grajek [BSArchE ‘93, BArch ‘93, MSE ‘95] Michael Gray [BArch ‘94] Yolanda Gutierrez [BArch ‘90] Guy Hagstette [BArch ‘79] Rowena Wilson Hanks [MArch ‘13] Charles Harker, Jr. [MArch ‘71] Frederick Harrison [BA ‘71, MArch ‘78] Druanna Helms [BSID ‘77] Ingeborg Hendley [MArch ‘04, MSHP ‘08] Cindy Hendricks [BSID ‘83] Joan Hickey [BSID ‘84] Tom Hinson [BSArchStds ‘40, BAArt ‘70] Larce Holder III [BArch ‘68] Morris Hoover [BSArchStds ‘74, BArch ‘77] Montgomery Howard [BArch ‘83] Robert Jackson [BArch ‘70] Jacobs Architectural Group LLC Joseph Jacobs, Jr. [BArch ‘89] Priya Jayasankar Sheryl Jenkins [BArch ‘90] John Watson Architects Inc. Marianne Jones [BSID ‘81] Ann Kilpatrick [BArch ‘87] Poyy Kwan [BArch ‘73] Nancy Ledbetter [BA ‘82, MSCRP ‘91] George Lewis [BArch ‘82] Katherine Livingston [BArch ‘75] Carolyn Mangold [BSAdv ‘84, BSID ‘86] William Martin [BArch ‘58] Mario Martinez [BArch ‘87] Jean Marusak [BArch ‘86] Robert Laurent Marx [MArch ‘82] Kyle McAdams [BArch ‘86] Roy McCarroll [BArch ‘62] Scott McCrary, Jr. [BArch ‘71] Richard Meyer [BArch ‘70, JD ‘74] Jennifer Miller [BArch ‘95] Cindy Moore [BSID ‘97] David Moos [MArch ‘97] J. Neel Morton [BArch ‘75] Michael Munir [BSID ‘98] Gregory Musquez, Jr. [BArch ‘69] Nancy Ledbetter and Associates Inc. Charles Nelson [BArch ‘78]
Jim Nix [BArch ‘71] Charles Nixon [BArch ‘67] James Overton [BArch ‘75] Ann Patterson [MArch ‘82] Anthony Perez [BArch ‘88] Adam Pyrek [BArch ‘91] Rene Quinlan [BArch ‘88] Stephen Ratchye [MArch ‘96, MSE ‘97] Brent Redus [BArch ‘85] Don Reimers [BArch ‘58] Ronald Roeder [BArch ‘76] Margaret Rosenlund [BArch ‘49] Alesa Iola Rubendall [MArch ‘03] Karin Ann Salch [BArch ‘86] James Shackelford [BArch ‘80] Michael Shelton [BArch ‘66] Molly Sherman [BA ‘86, MBA ‘89] Sandra Bearden Smith [BArch ‘84] V. Raymond Smith [BArch ‘61] Marianna Sockrider Bryan Sperry [MSCRP ‘82] Stephen Springs [BArch ‘96] Shelley St. Clair [BSID ‘87] Jerry Stewart [BArch ‘64] Jo Strane [BSID ‘74] Raymond Studer, Jr. [BArch ‘57] Catherine Suttle [BSID ‘80] E. L. Swanson [BArch ‘52] Pat Sweeney [BArch ‘57] Patrick Tangen [MArch ‘90] Arthur Tatum [BArch ‘84] Howard Templin [BArch ‘72] Hsiao-Ling Ting [MArch ‘87] Robert Tobias [BArch ‘85] Kay Troutt [BSID ‘73] Bruce Turner [MSCRP ‘75] Drexel Turner [MSCRP ‘73] John Tyler [BSArchE ‘88, BArch ‘88] Jane Verma [BArch ‘90] Julie Walker [MSCRP ‘06] Floyd Watson, Jr. [MSCRP ‘79] Waxwing Design Studio LLC Weatherl & Associates Rick Weatherl [BArch ‘76] Michael Webber [BA ‘95, BSAsE ‘95] Aubrey Weeks [MLA ‘12] Tina Weintraub [BSID ‘81 BD Wheeless Consulting John White [BArch ‘57] Brett Wolfe [BArch ‘07] Ann Yoklavich [MSArchStds ‘87] *in memoriam CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS AND BUILDING RENOVATIONS/ REPAIRS
Jay Lattin Farrell [MArch ‘80] Saundria Gray [JD ‘86] Chay Runnels [BA ‘96, MSArchStds ‘00] Shell Oil Company Foundation Kalpana Sutaria [MArch ‘78] John Greene Taylor [BBA ‘48] Bei Zhang [MArch ‘16]
NON-MONETARY GIFTS
American Fasteners University Co-operative Society STUDENT SUPPORT
David Bourland [BSS ‘86] Brockett Davidson [BArch ‘05] Jada Garrison G. Charles Naeve [BSArchE ‘74] PC Snøhetta Architecture Design Planning Richard Swallow Degrees from The University of Texas at Austin are indicated. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this list. If your name was omitted, misspelled, or incorrectly listed, please accept our apologies and notify us, so that we may correct our error (supportUTSOA@utexas.edu). Interested in supporting UTSOA? Please visit our website (soa.utexas. edu/about/support-utsoa) or contact our development office at supportUTSOA@utexas.edu or 512.471.6114.
P H I L A N T H ROP Y
Goldsmith Society Founders and Current Members
Lexa M. Acker Diana Keller Aldridge and Frank Aldridge Phillip Arnold Lisa and Tim Blonkvist Suzanne Deal Booth David G. Booth Jean* and Bill* Booziotis Diane and Hal Brierley Lynne and Lyle Burgin Leslie Dickinson Cedar Diane and Chuck Cheatham Dick Clark, III* Reenie and Kent Collins Curtis & Windham Architects Willard Hanzlik J. David Harrison Nancy and Richard Jennings Journeyman Construction, Inc. Jeanne and Michael Klein Ray Landy Charles Lohrmann Lucas/Eilers Design Associates, LLP Lucifer Lighting Company Ileana M. Mendez and Kevin J. Lorenz The Eugene McDermott Foundation Robert J. Moore Dana Edwards Nearburg Cindy and Howard Rachofsky Gay and Shannon Ratliff J. Brett Rhode Deedie and Rusty* Rose Lloyd Scott Lawrence W. Speck Lenore Sullivan and Barry Henry John Greene Taylor Helen Thompson Melba and Ted Whatley Kathryn and Mike Wheeler Coke Anne and Jarvis Wilcox
*in memoriam
Eden and Hal Box Courtyard, Goldsmith Hall. Photo by Max Baird.
CREATE OPPORTUNITY JOIN THE GOLDSMITH SOCIETY The Goldsmith Society is a special group of principal benefactors who provide flexible, annual support to promote scholarly excellence and advance the school’s high standards of design. Gifts from Goldsmith Society donors have an immediate and direct impact on the School of Architecture, allowing the dean to seize opportunities and invest strategically in important projects that shape the school’s evolving teaching and research agenda. The Goldsmith Society is comprised of individuals, families, firms, corporations, and foundations that pledge $25,000 in unrestricted funds over five years ($5,000/ year). The school recognizes Goldsmith Society members for their generous support and hosts special events featuring leaders from the architecture and design world. Interested in joining the Goldsmith Society today? Contact Luke Dunlap, director of development, at luked@austin.utexas.edu or 512.471.6114.
43 / P L AT FOR M / 20 17 / C ON V E RGE N T VOICE S
Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Austin, Texas Permit No. 391 310 Inner Campus Drive B7500 Austin, TX 78712-1009
ADVISORY COUNCIL MEMBERS 2017 – 2018
Lexa Acker, AIA Emeritus
Kevin J. Lorenz, AIA
W. Randall Ackerman
Sandra Drews Lucas, ASID, TBAE, TAID
Diana Keller Aldridge
Graham Luhn, FAIA
Frank Aldridge III
Jessica Mangrum
Richard M. Archer III, FAIA, LEED AP
Patricia Mast
Charles Armstrong, FAIA, NCARB
Gilbert L. Mathews, Honorary AIA
John Avila, Jr.
Michael McCall, AIA
David Barrow, Jr., AIA, ASID
Kate Anne Mraw
Marvin Beck, AIA Emeritus
Dana Edwards Nearburg
Ken Bentley, AIA
John V. Nyfeler, FAIA, LEED AP
Susan R. Benz, AIA
Donald W. Pender, AIA, REEP, LEED AP BD+C
Rebecca Birdwell
Judith Pesek, FIDA, LEED AP
Myron Blalock, III
Charles Phillips, AIA, AIC-PA
Timothy B. Blonkvist, FAIA, LEED AP
E. Scott Polikov
David Bodenman
Boone Powell, FAIA
Melissa Bogusch, AIA, NCARB
Leilah H. Powell
Laura Britt, ASID, RID, ASSOC .AIA
Howard E. Rachofsky
Lyle Burgin, AIA
Gay K. Ratliff
Anthony R Chase
Jody Richardson
Diane Cheatham
Elizabeth Chu Richter, FAIA
Dick Clark, III, FAIA *
Roland Roessner, Jr.
G. Kent Collins
Deedie Rose
Tommy N. Cowan, FAIA
Lloyd Scott
H. Hobson Crow, III, FAIA
James W. Shepherd, AIA, LEED AP
Gary M. Cunningham, FAIA
William Shepherd, AIA, LEED AP
William P. Curtis, Jr.
Dan Shipley, FAIA
Gabriel Durand-Hollis, Jr., FAIA
Janie Talmage Smith *
Bibiana Dykema, AIA
Lenore Sullivan
Darrell A. Fitzgerald, FAIA, LEED AP
Emily R. Summers
Charles B. Fulton
Jim C. Susman, AIA
Ruth Gay
Jerry S. Sutton, AIA
John J. Grable, FAIA
Evan K. Taniguchi
Charles Gromatzky, AIA, USGBC, ULI
Christine Ten Eyck, FALSA
Royce Jay Hailey, Jr.
Helen L. Thompson
J. David Harrison
David H Watkins, FAIA
Christopher C. Hill
Michael L. Wheeler
Tony Horton
Gordon L. White, MD
Michael Hsu, AIA, IIDA
Jamie C. White, III
Ford Hubbard, III
Coke Anne M. Wilcox
Terry B. Kafka
Kathleen Zarsky, Assoc AIA, LEED APBD+C
Anne Kniffen, IIDA, LEED AP ID+C Reed Kroloff, AIA Sam Kumar David C. Lake, FAIA
*in memoriam