I have been revisiting some of the designs I completed while working in architectural firms in the last year or so. The idea is to look back and assess the common themes of my work, update some of the more relevant themes, and at rare times to retroactively reverse some of my more utopian positions. […]
William A. Gleason, Sites Unseen: Architecture, Race, and American Literature (New York: NYU Press, 2011) TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Race, Writing, Architecture: American Patterns Cottage Desire: The Bondwoman’s Narrative and the Politics of Antebellum Space Piazza Tales: Architecture, Race, and Memory in Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Stories Imperial Bungalow: Structures of Empire in Richard Harding Davis and Olga […]
Each year high schools around the country have career fairs to help students determine what they will study in college. One of the potential career paths available to minority students is architecture and architecture related fields (such as Landscape Architecture, Architectural Preservation, and Architectural History). However, minority representation in architecture continues to lag behind other fields. […]
I have been making my way through Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer’s Henry Hobson Richardson and His Work (1888) in the last couple of days. Her biography provides details about his Southern Plantation heritage, his ties with New Orleans Creole culture and his ambivalent attitude toward the Civil War. These details are interesting to me because I have yet […]
Georges Teyssot, A Topology of Everyday Constellations (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2013) Table of Contents A Topology of Everyday Constellations Figuring the Invisible Dream House The Wave The Story of an Idea Toward a Cyborg Architecture Prosthetics and Parasites Windows and Screens I am going to use my post this week to explore the writings […]
Note: The following essay will be published in the proceedings for the 2014 ACSA annual conference. I want to thank ACSA for giving me permission to repost it here on my blog. The horizon that lies before us is one that science cannot approach alone. It is the horizon that represents the ethical, moral and spiritual dimension […]
Introduction “June Jordan was an architect,” or so declares the black feminist writer and blogger Alexis Pauline Gumbs.[1] This declaration involves some political risk on Gumbs’ part, as Jordan is more popularly known as a writer, playwright, and poet. Several rhetorical questions immediately come to mind when one considers the veracity of her claim. Questions such as, […]
An exhibit that I collaborated on had a soft opening this past Monday (the 14th). The show, entitled “Primitive Parametric: Biology as Architectural Catalyst” investigates the formal and cultural meaning of biological metaphors in design from the nineteenth century to the present. The subject of this show grew from my own interests in the cultural […]
I recently had a lovely conversation with Caroline McMillan Portillo of the Charlotte Observer about the historical roots of the reuse of railways cars in contemporary architecture. Portillo was especially interested in the architectural firm that had completed work for the Democratic National Convention last year. We spoke about the historical integration of wartime materials and assembly processes […]
I have decided to begin writing this current blog entry as I am waiting for my flight home from Washington, DC. This trip to the nation’s capital gave me an opportunity to go and visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, which was completed in 2009. I have been teaching this particular monument for a […]
