Dear readers,
While Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests continue, many have shifted their efforts from the emotional marches of early-June to organizing and making concrete demands from governments and institutions. Intense rallies and marches have already yielded palpable legislative gains, from the abolition of the Minneapolis Police Department, to more modest reforms in New York, to the two sweeping Supreme Court decisions on transgender and immigrant rights in the past week. At least some in the government felt the pressure and they responded. Now, people are returning from the streets and evaluating the big picture. In this, architecture is no exception.
For one, calls for diversity have been ongoing for decades. To see just how far architecture has to go—if you haven’t already—take a look at the Instagram account Architecture Is So White (@archsowhite). Stark black and white charts visualize what anyone with experience at an architecture school or at a firm can easily see: blacks have been systematically excluded—from schools, teaching posts, and top positions at leading firms. Why is this? How can we understand such a systematic lack of representation? Who is to blame? How can this change?
Another way of thinking about this: last Sunday I attended a Zoom call with fellow alumni from the Yale School of Architecture, including Richard “Dick” Dozier and Ron Bedford (M. Arch 1970), who were founding members of the the Black Workshop, a community design center (CDC) funded by the school in the late 60s and early 70s. The group briefly enjoyed a storefront space on New Haven’s Chapel Street. Yet, community-based design work is no longer part of Yale’s curriculum (I’m sorry, the First-Year Building Project just doesn’t count). Furthermore, the Black Workshop’s demands for diversity have yet to be met fifty years later! In my M. Arch I class of 2016 we did not have a single African American student (in our graduating class of over fifty, we had one African student, but he was not American).
On the call, there was consensus that the one-black-per-class approach must be deliberate at Yale. Nevertheless, many students at architecture schools around the country have taken up the cause of diversity in wake of the BLM protests. How are their demands different from those of past decades? Is there the political will to change? What should a decolonized curriculum look like? What is the role of NCARB and the AIA? Can they even be reformed?
While there have been efforts and open letters at practically every school of architecture in the US, how might these efforts coalesce and establish a new set of norms and standards across institutions? This is the question that My-Anh Nguyen and others are asking with their Alumni Collective in Solidarity, which is currently compiling anti-racist efforts at schools of architecture to create trans-institutional dialogue. What should the future of architecture school look like?
Of course, the future of schools is inextricably linked to the future of practice. Recently, it seems architects have pivoted away from noodling interest in trends like Object Oriented Ontology (OOO)—a recent Twitter post asked “Is OOO cancelled?”—to more tangible inquiries like who has access to our profession and how we affect the built environment of marginalized communities. With this, we return to a familiar question of how design can be an agent of positive social change, or at least how its practitioners and educators can be people with good politics. But what is an architecture practice with good politics? Many have discussed the possibility of requiring community-oriented design be part of the path to licensure. If this is done through CDCs, a recent look at NCARB’s list of certified CDCs in the New York area reveals that only one exists outside of the confines of local institutions like the City University of New York (CUNY) system. Should architects become involved in CDCs or is this an antiquated model? What might we learn from projects carried out by CDCs in years past?
This raises the broader question: what does socially-engaged architecture look like in 2020? Forensic Architecture (FA) received much media coverage for their exhibition “Triple-Chaser” in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, which used digital tools to track and visualize the use of “less-lethal” weapons produced by Safariland. The piece was mostly framed as a protest against Whitney board of trustees vice president, Warren B. Kanders, who is an owner of Safariland. Nevertheless, it is also notable that this kind of design work embraces the gaze of the architect as visualizer, a compiler and processor of digital images and animations, 3D arguments aimed at pushing public opinion. Brooklyn’s own SITU Studio has followed this path with recent work tracking the use of violence at a Nicaraguan protests, the design of healthcare systems during Covid-19, and even a video primer in collaboration with Amnesty International on the use of teargas. Is the architect-documentarian-visualizer the model for a politically engaged practice?
Finally, as direct action continues in cities across the country, the debate around Confederate monuments has again risen to the surface. Friday, June 19 was Juneteenth, which was marked by nationwide celebrations in honor of the date on which African-Americans in Texas, the last enslaved people (in the Confederacy) were notified of their freedom. That night, BLM protestors toppled Washington, DC’s only outdoor monument to the Confederacy, the statue of Brigadier General Albert Pike. After pulling down the statue with a rope, the bronze figure was set ablaze. I even heard that jubilant revelers carted it around the city afterwards (rumor or true?). Regardless, what is the role of these cathartic acts of destruction? How can we understand the role of architecture and design in relation to the un-doing of monuments to white supremacy? On the same day, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (JSAH) released a statement calling for the removal of confederate statues, but called for their storage in “safe locations.” What should the afterlife for these monument look like?
As we enter the other side of Juneteenth, the solstice, the downward curve of Coronavirus cases (at least in NY), the tapering off of mass protests, and with city life resuming, the above and many other questions could serve as the beginning of a pitch to The New York Review of Architecture. They could serve as the kernel of a letter to the editor. If you would like to respond or write an article, email EDITOR@NYRA.NYC.
We also need correspondents to cover events, of which there are actually many this week. See the full list on our website, NYRA.NYC, if you would like to attend and write a review. Here are a few:
On Monday at 7pm:
The New York Architectural League — League Prize 2020: Night 1. With Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb of New Affiliates and Luis Beltrán del Río García and Andrew Sosa Martínez of Vrtical.
On Tuesday at 6pm:
The Center for Architecture (AIA NY) — A Primer in Effective Community Engagement and Design
On Wednesday at 7pm:
The New York Architectural League — League Prize 2020: Night 2. With David Eskenazi of d.esk and Leslie Lok and Sasa Zivkovic of HANNAH.
On Thursday at 4pm:
Open House New York — Mindy Fullilove: On Equity
Also, on Thursday at 7pm:
The New York Architectural League — Joel Sanders: Body Politics: Social Equity and Inclusive Public Space. JSA/MIXdesign founder Joel Sanders discusses his design think-tank and consultancy's response to the coronavirus pandemic.
And, in case you missed it:
The Cooper Union End of Year Show is still up. Surf through the Foundation Building on your laptop?
Finally, thank you to those who joined our second Zoom event on Thursday, June 18. A video of the conversation is now available on the NYRA YouTube channel, where you can subscribe for future content. For that event, Professors Amber Wiley and Joy Knoblauch discussed their reactions to the ongoing BLM protests, research on the architecture of socialization and control (school and public housing in particular), and diversity and racism within the architectural profession.
I would like to note that at the end of the call Prof. Knoblauch mentioned that she was frightened by calls to abolish the police, fearing people are unaware of the potential pitfalls of self-policing. There have been numerous articles about what abolishing the police might actually mean, such as Mariame Kaba’s recent opinion in the New York Times. We can also learn from recent examples of police departments being disbanded, such as in Camden, NJ. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that calls to abolish or defund the police do not exist in a vacuum and are typically followed by equally fervent demands for more funding for healthcare, social services, and education. If self-policing is riskier than having a militarized police force, it is because inequality and racism have not been addressed in our country. Indeed, in her recent book, The Architecture of Good Behavior, which I would love for someone to review, Knoblauch tracks the way architects used design to address social issues. Unfortunately, they often ignored the material and political realities that generate these problems in the first place. Should our calls for police reform (or our designs aimed at a better world) fail to move hand in hand with parallel political efforts aimed at a more just society, we are certainly doomed to repeat the past.
—Dante Furioso, Managing Editor