The following essay appears in volume 42 (Winter/Spring) issue of Log, a special issue that was entitled “Disorienting Phenomenology.” The full title of my essay is “Blackness in Practice: Toward an Architectural Phenomenology of Blackness.” I would like to thank the editors for permitting me to post this essay on my academic blog. Table […]
This essay is a longer version of one that will be published in the next issue of Harvard Design Magazine. I would like to thank the magazine for allowing me to publish this longer version on the blog. The moral and intellectual complexities of safe spaces and physical violence in today’s campus protests may seem […]
I am happy to announce that an article I wrote, entitled “Louis Sullivan and the Physiognomic Translation of American Character” has recently been published in the Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians (See March 2017 issue). This article is a fragment of chapter three of my forthcoming book manuscript, Building Character: The Racial Politics […]
I recently wrote a blog entry reviewing the controversy that emerged in the American Institute of Architects (AIA) that resulted from a prematurely written letter from the CEO Robert Ivy, which seemed to pursue the possibility of new work while tacitly condoning the divisive rhetoric of the election campaign. In an attempt to get my […]
Just after the 2016 Presidential election was called and Donald Trump became the President-elect, the CEO of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) wrote a letter to congratulate the new administration and secure business contracts for the more than 89,000 members of this organization. Metropolis magazine was one of the first sources to cite the […]
1. The Echo Art Fair has become an annual event for showcasing the latest trends of curators and artists connected to Buffalo, New York. This year’s show took place in an old Albert Khan factory located on the East Side of the city, which is now home to many African American residents. Khan, a […]
Beth Tauke, Korydon Smith and Charles Davis. Diversity and Design: Understanding Hidden Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2015) Table of Contents Foreword: Closing the Gap between the Design and the Recipients of Design Introduction Part I: Race and Ethnicity 1. No Longer Just a Dream: Commemorating the African American Experience on the National Mall 2. Diverse […]
By Charles Davis | This essay examines the rhetorical function of invisibility in Ralph Ellison’s postwar novel Invisible Man. The author claims that invisibility serves as an allegory for the act of uncovering the political motivations of urban spaces. The main protagonist’s curse of invisibility and his eventual retreat to the sewers –the literal ‘underground’ of the city–is interpreted as a prompt for unveiling […]
1. The first instance of recording police abuse that I can recall (at least vividly) is the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. Though the footage was grainy, and I was still in high school, it was a visceral reminder of the monopoly on state-sponsered violence that police officers employed against the black body. It also […]
Each year, the Friend of Architecture at Morgan (FoAM) host a panel on one issue related to the architectural profession. This year the theme was ‘History and the Profession’. I was asked to serve as a panelist with an architect and a preservationist. It ended up being a really interesting conversation, primarily because we all […]
Race & Architecture 