Barrier-Breaking African American Architects We Should Be Celebrating

In many ways, design today is treated as avenue to inclusion. Architects beautify and reconceptualize affordable housing, devise public spaces that bring art out of galleries and to the masses, and create environmentally conscious structures to preserve our planet’s dwindling resources. Likewise, the set creating such design is diversifying. But the process is, and was, far from organic. As is the case with most necessary stepping stones on the way to progress, individual boundary-pushers are vital—those willing to disrupt convention and welcome the spotlight, if not only for themselves.

African Americans were long barred from the architecture profession; from the higher-education institutions that granted degrees to the firms that excluded based on race alone. Today’s African American architects and designers did not arrive by wave of wand, or even as the conventional narrative would say, gradual progress. For this we thank controversial Supreme Court rulings, schools willing to make exceptions, and the most essential: driven and unafraid black students, unafraid to tolerate a swarm of flashbulbs on their first day of classes, or graduate without the support of the trade itself. Though laws regarding segregation have since evolved, architecture is still often fairly critiqued for its homogeneous makeup. Here, AD recognizes some of the most influential African American architects who were trailblazers in their own ways, leaving a mark on the built world for years to come.

Nast, Condé. “Barrier-Breaking African American Architects We Should Be Celebrating.” Architectural Digest, February 21, 2019. https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/barrier-breaking-african-american-architects.