Underrepresented Minorities in Architecture Symposium proposal by SoCA - Social Change and Activism - a GSD student group November 28, 2007
The complexion of America’s architects has been a subject of introspection and discussion since at least 1968, when Whitney Young, Jr., president of the National Urban League, chastised attendees at the AIA’s national convention for the scarcity of African-American and women practitioners... Dennis Mann, co-director of the Directory of African-American Architects, says that his directory currently includes 1,578 licensed African-American architects. That figure accounts for 1.5 percent of all licensed professionals in the nation, a percentage virtually unchanged since Young’s powerful speech. Architectural Record, 25 April 2007
Framework Less than two percent of registered architects in the United States are African-American. Schools of architecture have similarly low levels of faculty and student diversity; the GSD has never had a black tenured professor and in recent years each incoming MArch I class includes just one black student. This extreme underrepresentation is uniquely problematic: many black, Hispanic and Native American communities are those most underserved by the design professions. Forty percent of licensed African-American architects graduate from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, according to the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). How can the HBCU network together with schools of architecture nation-wide accelerate integration within the architecture profession? The GSD is currently partnering with Tuskegee School of Architecture, first in the country to train black architects, to begin answering this question. Despite architecture’s cycles of critical reinvention throughout the 20th-century, the discipline remains constrained by its lack of diversity. For example: Derek Ham, MArch I ‘03 has pointed out that research for Learning from Las Vegas, one of the seminal works of modern architecture, was conducted by a group of white male students from Yale and one woman. Their conclusion that architecture as “legible” sign and symbol is more important than monument overlooks the city’s gross segregation. What alternate critiques might students from other backgrounds have formulated? What are the implications today when architects and planners attempt to revise failed urban experiments, such as inner-city public housing, that are outside their own life experience? Given that “blackness” and the black perspective are near-absent from the discourse of architecture, what are implications for the profession today? More than questions of “what is black community,” a more productive conversation emerges through discussion of the interface between problems implicit to marginalized built environments and potential strategies for design intervention. This symposium explores the relationship between (schools of) architecture, black architects and the black community through the coupled questions: How specifically does black underrepresentation within architecture impact the design professions? What strategies are most operative toward increasing the discipline’s diversity? While focusing on the black case, the forum seeks to generate new ideas and energy with respect to minority recruiting in architecture more generally. 1
Organization Systems for Inclusion: Design Agency GSD student groups Student Forum and SoCA, in partnership with the Department of Architecture and the nonprofit Design Corps, are organizing a conference on community-based design April 4-6, 2008 at the GSD. Conceived as a summit for students and young professionals, Systems for Inclusion (SFI) addresses the theme of “Design Agency”: Design as a global effort to solve problems begins with agency—the agency of design itself; relationships between design and advocacy; the politics and power of design. Thinking across disciplines and neighborhoods suggests that affecting real-world change demands new models for (design) practice. If we want to “make the world a better place,” what are best approaches toward stakeholder equity—for example, to what extent are designers more effective with investors instead of clients? There is a re-emerging trend among students: we want to talk about more than just form; we hope at this summit to jumpstart new conversation about the social dimensions of the built environment. The SFI conference schedule consists of a keynote lecture on Friday evening, panel sessions on Saturday, and breakout workshops on Sunday. Panels focus on social entrepreneurship, politics and funding, international development, agro-environmental systems, and the role of the expert in the community. Including a symposium on underrepresented minorities in architecture within the conference structure of SFI will serve not only to highlight the issue’s urgency, but also guarantee a strong presence of minority student leaders, including those attending from HBCUs, within what will likely prove to be a landmark event for architecture today. Social Change and Activism (SoCA) SoCA was founded at the GSD in the 1990s as Students of Color Assocation. In 2005, with so few non-Asian minorities at the GSD, the name was changed to Social Change and Activism. The mission remains similar: As a group of concerned students who view social responsibility as central to our education and our profession, SoCA seeks—through a coupled advocacy and activism—to reground design and planning in the social issues of today’s global reality. With the goal of challenging design paradigms to engage “other” perspectives and the multiplicity of contemporary cultural landscapes, SoCA prioritizes a proactive agenda: 1) Encourage GSD students to complement their formal studio education through extracurricular community work. Recent student-initiated projects incubated by SoCA include a community center in Khayelitsha, South Africa; a teen center in Lowell, MA; and a hospital for health NGO Partners in Health. 2) Foster a new generation of minority designers. SoCA gives tours of the GSD to minority teens, and each semester runs Design Initiative for Youth (DIY), a 10-week Saturday school that introduces underpriviledged 8th-graders to architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning.
Format SoCA is committed to working with Harvard’s Department of African and African-American studies to select participants whose varied academic and professional backgrounds will lead to a high profile and highly productive forum on this critical issue. Sessions are intended to be inter-generational as well as interdisciplinary. The symposium will consist of two sessions on either April 3 or 4, 2008: the first is a strategy session on improving minority recruitment; the second is a typical panel format relating black cultural studies and architecture design. Partners This grant proposal is for the Symposium on Underrepresented Minorities in Architecture only. Funding for this symposium is intended as a separate forum that complements the broader agenda of the SFI conference. GSD Student Forum and SoCA have independently developed support for the main track of the SFI conference. Pending and confirmed partners for SFI include GSD Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning and Design departments, Kennedy School of Government, National Organization of Minority Architects, American Institute of Architecture Students, Boston Society of Architects, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Northeastern University School of Architecture, MIT School of Architecture and Planning, University of Florida School of Architecture, Design Corps, Public Architecture, Architecture for Humanity, LEF Foundation. 2
Session I: Plan of Action Examine root causes for black underrepresentation within architecture and assess best practices for recruiting minorities to schools of architecture. A working session with faculty, administrators and student leaders to develop a plan of action for advance minority recruitment short- and long-term. Discussion to include the impact of introductory programs for minority high school students, such as SoCA’s Design Initiative for Youth, the Boston Architectural Center’s Summer Academy, and the Cooper Union’s Saturday Outreach Participants: * Michaele Pride, MAUD ‘01_Director, University of Cincinnati School of Architecture and Interior Design, and Chair of the GSD Alumni Council * Maurice Cox, LF ‘05_Director of Design, National Endowment for the Arts, and Associate Professor, University of Virginia School of Architecture * Steven Lewis, LF ‘05_President-Elect, National Organization of Minority Architects * Richard Dozier_Dean, Tuskegee School of Architecture * Ted Landsmark_President, Boston Architectural College * Marshall Purnell_President-Elect, American Institute of Architects Session II: Global Perspectives (*Likely a second event in ongoing series) Design is increasingly a global project, particularly at top-tier schools of architecture. Conduct an interdisciplinary dialog that seeks to situate the African-American experience as it relates to architecture and the built environment within the larger context of the global Black and African diaspora, i.e. Afro-Deutsch, Black British, Baianos, “Jamarican,” Americo-Liberian, etc. Participants: * Mos Def_Hip-Hop Artist * Spike Lee_Filmmaker * Cornel West_Professor of Religion, Princeton University * Derek Ham, MArch ‘03_Assistant Professor of Architecture, Florida Agricultural and Technical University, and member of GSD Alumni Council * Tyler Stovall_Professor of History, University of California Berkeley * Jason Glenn, PhD ‘05, Assistant Professor of the History of Medicine, University of Texas
Budget: Session I: Plan of Action Travel and accomodations, 15 students from HBCUs
$500 per student
$7500
$400 per panelist $500 per panelist
$3200 $4000
Travel and accomodations, 8 panelists and speakers Travel Accommodations Speaker honoraria Food and drink for reception Publicity and printing materials Website design and hosting
$1500 per panelist *Celebrity Speaker, $10000 provisional
$12000 * $10000 $1200 $2000 $1000
Total (not including celebrity speaker)
$30900
Total (including celebrity speaker)
$40900 3