The Crisis of the African-American Architect
The Crisis of the African-American Architect

Author: Melvin L. Mitchell

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0595243266

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" another missing piece of our rich history and profound contribution to western civilization. For history buffs please put this book on your must read list... " George C. Fraser, Author of Race For Success and Success Runs In Our Race "[Mitchell] believes that the entire future of blacks in the field of architecture is in jeopardy He then discusses the impact of the Harlem Renaissance on black architecture and the subsequent emergence of Howard University as the center of the black architectural universe..." The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education " seminal " Architecture Magazine In this long overdue book, aimed at Black America and her allies, Melvin Mitchell poses the question "why haven't black architects developed a Black Architecture that complements modernist black culture that is rooted in world-class blues, jazz, hip-hop music, and other black aesthetic forms?" His provocative thesis, inspired by Harold Cruse's landmark book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, exposes the roots of an eighty-year-old estrangement between black architects and Black America. Along the way he provides interesting details about the politics of downtown development in the Marion Barry era of Washington, DC. Mitchell calls for a bold and inclusive "New (Black) Urbanism." He sees the radical reform and "re-missioning" of the handful of accredited HBCU based architecture schools as a critical tool in refashioning a rapprochement between black architects and Black America.

African American Architects
African American Architects

Author: Melvin Mitchell

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9781734496024

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Melvin Mitchell believes that the 2016 opening of the NMAAHC signals either a black architect renaissance or the demise of the black architect-practitioner corps in the U.S. by 2040 if not earlier...along with the demise of Black America's cultural, political, and spatial beachheads in America's big cities.He argues in this book that America's perennial housing crisis - most acutely manifested in Black America's accelerating displacement from America's cities - must be countered by a new progressive 21st century movement that re-invents the revolutionary construction-based architecture modus operandi deployed 100 years ago by Booker T. Washington. Mitchell believes that Washington completed the build-out of the Tuskegee Institute campus as a counter to America's building of the "White City" aka the 1893 Chicago World's Fair-Columbian Exposition 600 miles to the north in Chicago, Illinois.

When Ivory Towers Were Black
When Ivory Towers Were Black

Author: Sharon Egretta Sutton

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0823276139

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This personal history chronicles the triumph and loss of a 1960s initiative to recruit minority students to Columbia University’s School of Architecture. At the intersection of US educational, architectural, and urban history, When Ivory Towers Were Black tells the story of how an unparalleled cohort of ethnic minority students overcame institutional roadblocks to earn degrees in architecture from Columbia University. Its narrative begins with a protest movement to end Columbia’s authoritarian practices, and ends with an unsettling return to the status quo. Sharon Egretta Sutton, one of the students in question, follows two university units that led the movement toward emancipatory education: the Division of Planning and the Urban Center. She illustrates both units’ struggle to open the ivory tower to ethnic minority students and to involve those students in improving Harlem’s slum conditions. Along with Sutton’s personal perspective, the story is narrated through the oral histories of twenty-four fellow students who received an Ivy League education only to find the doors closing on their careers due to Nixon-era urban disinvestment policies.

Dark Space
Dark Space

Author: Mario Gooden

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781941332139

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This collection of essays by architect Mario Gooden investigates the construction of African American identity and representation through the medium of architecture. These five texts move between history, theory, and criticism to explore a discourse of critical spatial practice engaged in the constant reshaping of the African Diaspora. African American cultural institutions designed and constructed in recent years often rely on cultural stereotypes, metaphors, and clichés to communicate significance, demonstrating "Africanisms" through form and symbolism--but there is a far richer and more complex heritage to be explored. Presented here is a series of questions that interrogate and illuminate other narratives of "African American architecture," and reveal compelling ways of translating the philosophical idea of the African Diaspora's experience into space.

Black Landscapes Matter
Black Landscapes Matter

Author: Walter Hood

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2020-12-09

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0813944872

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The question "Do black landscapes matter?" cuts deep to the core of American history. From the plantations of slavery to contemporary segregated cities, from freedman villages to northern migrations for freedom, the nation’s landscape bears the detritus of diverse origins. Black landscapes matter because they tell the truth. In this vital new collection, acclaimed landscape designer and public artist Walter Hood assembles a group of notable landscape architecture and planning professionals and scholars to probe how race, memory, and meaning intersect in the American landscape. Essayists examine a variety of U.S. places—ranging from New Orleans and Charlotte to Milwaukee and Detroit—exposing racism endemic in the built environment and acknowledging the widespread erasure of black geographies and cultural landscapes. Through a combination of case studies, critiques, and calls to action, contributors reveal the deficient, normative portrayals of landscape that affect communities of color and question how public design and preservation efforts can support people in these places. In a culture in which historical omissions and specious narratives routinely provoke disinvestment in minority communities, creative solutions by designers, planners, artists, and residents are necessary to activate them in novel ways. Black people have built and shaped the American landscape in ways that can never be fully known. Black Landscapes Matter is a timely and necessary reminder that without recognizing and reconciling these histories and spaces, America’s past and future cannot be understood.

Black Built
Black Built

Author: Paul A Wellington

Publisher:

Published: 2019-04

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9781732965102

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Architecture by Black Architects, discussing the history and influence of a wide range of American works in the Black community from the 19th century to present.

African American Architects
African American Architects

Author: Dreck Spurlock Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-03

Total Pages: 855

ISBN-13: 1135956294

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Since 1865 African-American architects have been designing and building houses and public buildings, but the architects are virtually unknown. This work brings their lives and work to light for the first time.

African American Architects
African American Architects

Author: Dreck Spurlock Wilson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-03-01

Total Pages: 1258

ISBN-13: 1135956286

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African-American architects have been designing and building houses and public buildings since 1865. Although many of these structures survive today, the architects themselves are virtually unknown. This unique reference work brings their lives and work to light for the first time. Written by 100 experts ranging from architectural historians to archivists, this book contains 160 biographical, A-Z entries on African-American architects from the era of Emancipation to the end of World War II. Articles provide biographical facts about each architect, and commentary on his or her work. Practical and accessible, this reference is complemented by over 200 photographs and includes an appendix containing a list of buildings by geographic location and by architect.

The Invention of Public Space
The Invention of Public Space

Author: Mariana Mogilevich

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1452963932

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The interplay of psychology, design, and politics in experiments with urban open space As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society. New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City’s Urban Design Group. The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.