CONVERSATION W/ DEVANNE PENA

Devanne Pena ("Dev-in Pee-nuh") is an Architect Entrepreneur. She is proud to be among the first 400 African American women living history to be licensed to practice architecture. A fourth generation Cape Verdean, Devanne conducted independent research in her native West African islands to define future architectural service for the culture. She is the owner of a design consultancy, Archidev LLC, and this year founded a start-up called AFROSPACE. Creating resilient and protective space for black women is a design problem she intends to solve.an architectural practice as well as . She first envisioned this venture by asking the question, “How can we design resilient, habitual and protective spaces for Black Women+”?

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DevannePena

LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannepena/

Tangible Remnants Interview

Here is a rebroadcast of my interview with Tangible Remnants, a podcast that explores the interconnectedness of architecture, historic preservation, sustainability, race & gender. Host Nakita Reed and I met at a women in architecture event years ago. Check out Tangible Remnants on Apple & Spotify

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TangibleRemnants/

CARIBBEAN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ALUMNAE

Shelly-Anne Tulia Scot, AIA and Shani Chambers, AIA are both graduated from the Caribbean School of Architecture and graduated from Florida A&M University. In this episode, they share their Caribbean experiences, culture shock and racism.

---

Shani Chambers is a Virginia based architect with over 15 years’ experience in the planning, design and construction industry. Her specialties include Federal, Public Safety and Industrial Architecture. She excels at the integration of complex processes and user needs into high performance design. She also enjoys dabbling in weaving for lessons in architecture.  

Ms. Chambers graduated from Florid A&M University and The Caribbean School of Architecture University of Technology, Jamaica.

Shelly-Anne Tulia Scott is the Director of Architecture at Sizemore Group in Atlanta GA. She is a Trinidadian born architect who started her architectural education at the Caribbean School of Architecture after completing an Associate of Arts degree in Interior Design. She worked both in Miami, Trinidad & Barbados before returning to do complete her M. Arch degree at Florida A&M University. She has seventeen years combined experience in Architecture and Interior Design with a broad range of experience in Award winning Libraries, Mixed Use Development, Religious, and Academic Buildings as well as in Feasibility Studies and Concept Design Projects.

After more than a decade in the field she became an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow, working with a non-profit housing developer and operator of senior housing, PSL in the North Eastern market. The goal was to help build their in-house design capacity and build her own knowledge of housing using the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) process and Continuing Care Retirement Communities.

She is a pragmatic thinker and a problem solver, and has studied and worked in several counties where she has gained an invaluable wealth of knowledge and a passion for community engagement. She is driven and motivated by her love for design, community, culture and life. She would like to focus more on equitable community development encompassing the design of both civic buildings, housing and other support buildings which provide the vessels for our human experience. Her main goal is to help bring the benefits of architecture and design to the people and communities who need it most and help foster strategic partnerships with other entities and providers of services which help sustain and enhance community life.

As an added bonus to her creative flare she is also a photographer with an eye for unique perspectives in the building environment and in the emotions of people. See some of her photography work here (http://tuliascott.com). She is also active with community and professional groups like USGBC Equity Committee, AIS HSDC, NOMA, Globalbike, Southern Scholarship Foundation Alumni and a graduate of the Leadership Greenville Class 42 and 2017 Greenville Dreams Grassroots Development Program with training in community leadership and leveraging community assets.

One of her favorite quotes by Samuel Mockbee: “Architecture has to be greater than just architecture. It has to address social values, as well as technical and aesthetic values. On top of that, the one true gift that an architect has is his or her imagination. We take something ordinary and elevate it to something extraordinary.”

Current Events; September 2020

No intro music, no fancy mic, just a cellphone and recording app. This episode discusses current events, personal journey and podcast updates.

POC ARCHITECTURE (CANADA)

Janelle Brookes and Ethan Perrotte are a couple of black architecture students from Canada. They created POC Architecture to support architecture projects done by people of colour. During the course of their education, Janelle and Ethan noticed a lack of architecture projects from people of colour being taught. As a result, POC Architecture Instagram page was created to promote diversity in the field of architecture. On the POC website, they create access of important resources for architecture students to improve their skills and information that are often not taught or shown to students by faculty.

If you would like your work to be featured, please email us at pocarch@gmail.com or direct message on Instagram.

Website Link: https://pocarch.wixsite.com/pocresources

Instagram: @poc_arch

#BLACKINARCHITECTURE UK

Black In Architecture is a hashtag to amplify the voices of Black/Black British architectural professionals and students in the UK. It is also a black-led research initiative, proposing a new approach to achieving racial justice and ending structural racism and inequity in architecture. This is a start in defining the changes that we, as black people, want to demand in architecture and across the various dimensions of the profession - in education, practice, recruitment, professional memberships, regulatory bodies, media, events, to name a few. The aim is to gain richer insight into the persistent racial injustice in the profession, and how it often impacts on the everyday lives of black people in architecture - at home, at the workplace, in finding work and business opportunities, in higher education and in other situations.

Juliet Sakyi-Ansah ARB RIBA AGIA, is a Ghanaian-British architect based in the U.K. She is currently studying for a PhD in architecture and the built environment, and is the Founder and Lead at The Architects' Project.

Also in the conversation is Irvine Toroitich , Shade Abdul, RIBA and Zubaydah Jibrilu

Website: https://blackinarchitecture.uk/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/blackinarch

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tap.narratives/

MUSLIM WOMEN IN ARCHITECTURE

Muslim Women in Architecture (MWA) is a network and collective working to empower, inspire and celebrate Muslim women in the architecture and built environment industry. In this episode, I talk to Tahin Khan, Zahra Mansoor and Rim Kalsoum about MWA as it aims to provide a platform to not only support Muslim girls and women who want to pursue a career in the field, but to encourage an open discussion amongst those within the profession and outside.

Tahin Khan is a British Bangladeshi Part 2 Architectural Assistant at ArchitectureDoingPlace. She completed her Part 1 and 2 at the University of Westminster. Over the years, Tahin has worked with a number of architects on projects ranging from private residential to healthcare to the preliminary design for the Tower Hamlets Town Hall. Currently, she is working on several social housing projects for local authorities in London. Tahin understands the importance of communities, and how the wellbeing for an individual correlates to the communities they are a part of. She explored this in depth in her Master’s thesis, which she continues to do research on. Tahin is keen on tackling social, political and environmental issues through architectural interventions.

Zahra Mansoor is an independent architectural designer currently based in India. She met fellow co-founders Rim Kalsoum and Tahin Khan while doing her Part 1 at the University of Westminster. During her term as president of the Westminster architecture Society (WAS), she and Rim organised the AF Megacrit under the theme "Architecture and Power". While studying in London, she realised that the lack of diversity in the industry affected the way students were supported in their education and careers. Her interests include the influence of power and social systems on architectural ethnography as well as the use of digital fabrication in architectural practice.

Rim Kalsoum is a British Syrian Architectural Assistant based in London. Having completed her RIBA PART II at the University of Westminster, she currently works for Golzari NG Architects and Architecture Doing Place. As Ex-Vice President of the Westminster Architecture Society, she co-organised the Megacrit in 2019 with Zahra Mansoor. She is a researcher for Palestine Regeneration Team (PART) and is currently working on a range of research projects, most recently the Secrets of a Digital Garden, in collaboration with RIWAQ which was exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2019 and the Berlin Film Festival in 2020. Her work arches from examining methods of urban landscape annihilation in conflict areas to erosions of public space in London.

Design Disrupted

In this episode, Melissa shares her thoughts about the recent events involving black lives and Call to Action to Starchitect (celebrity architect) professionals.

CONVERSATION W/ PROFESSOR AMBER WILEY PhD

Amber Wiley is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Rutgers University. She provided insight on Tyler House neighboring areas like LeDriot Park and Dunbar High School. Born in Oklahoma, Wiley recalls visiting her grandfather in DC which set the foundation of her future works.

---

Professor Wiley research interests center on the social aspects of design and how it affects urban communities - architecture as a literal and figural structure of power. She focuses on the ways local and national bodies have made the claim for the dominating narrative and collective memory of cities and examines how preservation and public history contribute to the creation and maintenance of the identity and sense of place of a city. Her publications cover African American cultural heritage, urbanism in New Orleans, school design, urban renewal, and preservation. Her current book project is entitled Concrete Solutions: Architecture, Activism and Black Power in the Nation’s Capital.

Amber was co-Principal Investigator of the National Historic Landmark Nomination Update for the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site. She gave expert testimony for the highly contested Barry Farm historic landmark designation in Washington, DC. She also worked as a consultant for the National Building Museum exhibition “Community Policing in the Nation’s Capital: The Pilot District Project, 1968-1973.” She has served on the National Park System Advisory Board Landmarks Committee, and on the boards of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and the Yale Black Alumni Association.

Amber received her Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington University. She also holds a Master's in Architectural History and Certificate in Historic Preservation from the University of Virginia School of Architecture, and a B.A. in Architecture from Yale University.

Links: 

Website: https://ambernwiley.com/

“The Dunbar High School Dilemma,” Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States, 2 ed. Edited by Max Page and Randall Mason (London, New York, NY: Routledge, 2019)

“A Model School for a Model City: Shaw Junior High School as a Monument to Planning Reform,” Designing Schools: Space, Place and Pedagogy. Edited by Julie Willis and Kate Darian-Smith (London, New York, NY: Routledge, 2017): 158-174

“A Modern-Day WPA,” Bending the Future: Fifty Ideas for the Next Fifty Years of Historic Preservation in the United States. Edited by Max Page and Marla R. Miller (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016): 261-264

“Geography, Planning, and Performing Mobility in New Orleans,” Walking in Cities: Quotidian Mobility as Urban Theory, Method, and Practice. Edited by Timothy Shortell and Evrick Brown (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2016): 177-196

“Carrie Mae Weems, When and Where I Enter the British Museum,” Accelerate: Access and Inclusion at the Tang Teaching Museum. Edited by Ian Berry and Rebecca 

MONEY. POWER. LAND. SOLIDARITY.

In this episode, we talk to G.P. Jacob (Jake Virden) about his podcast, Money. Power. Land. Solidarity. We discussed economic and urban development, politics, race, the working-class and the Upper Harbor Terminal Development, a project slated for North Minneapolis' riverfront.

Jake Virden is an artist, practitioner of popular education and host of the Money Power Land Solidarity podcast.. Check out the Money Power Land Solidarity podcast on Patreon at:

Patreon.com/MoneyPowerLandSolidarity

Twitter: @gp_jacob @mplspodcast

IG. g.p.jacob @moneypowerlandsolidarity@gmail.com

CONVERSATION W/ CURATED TOLERANCE

Rapid changes in the aesthetics of a community you grew up in has lasting effects. Some study architecture, some create podcast and others write an essay. Meet Amber Delgado (non-architect), a writer and filmmaker from Fayetteville, North Carolina. In this episode, we talk about gentrification and architecture.

Amber Delgado received her BFA in film/media production and BA in art history from East Carolina University. Approaching her filmmaking and research through a Black feminist lens, Amber aims to make art and academic spaces accessible and equitable to people who have been historically excluded. Amber is currently based in currently based in Minneapolis to pursue a Masters degree in Heritage Studies and Public History at The University of Minnesota. 

Curated Tolerance is the title of her most recently published essay, and she is currently accepting zine submissions for the curated tolerance zine. Learn more about the project at:

https://www.patreon.com/curated_tolerance

Amber Delgado’s essay : Curated Tolerance: the aesthetics of gentrification

ARCHITECTURE & MAPPING SEGREGATION IN DC

In the episode, we discuss mapping public housing and the displacement of blacks in the district. We also talked about Northwest One and architecture.

Sarah Jane Shoenfeld is an independent scholar and public historian. She co-directs the project Mapping Segregation in Washington DC, which is documenting the former extent of racially restricted housing in the nation's capital along with other historic mechanisms of segregation and displacement. Sarah's company, Prologue DC, engages in a variety of history projects, including research for exhibitions and films, historic landmark and district nominations, oral histories, and walking tours. 

Sarah was the lead historian for several DC Neighborhood Heritage Trails and has produced historical essays and other content for the Smithsonian Institution, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and the PBS series American Experience, among others. She received an M.A. in History and Certificate in Public History from Northeastern University, and is a graduate of DC's Wilson High School. 

PUBLISHED WORK 

"Barry Farm's historic landmark designation was pitted against affordable housing,"                                 The Washington Post, Feb. 21, 2020.

“The history and evolution of Anacostia’s Barry Farm,” D.C. Policy Center, July 9, 2019.

"Open Data Meets History: Mapping Segregation in American Cities, Then and Now," Open Cities: Open Data: Collaborative Cities in the Information Era (Palgrave Mamillan, 2019).

"Mapping segregation in D.C.," D.C. Policy Center, April 23, 2019.

"Race and real estate in mid-century D.C.," D.C. Policy Center, April 16, 2019.

Review, Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappucino City, by Derek S. Hyra, Washington History, Spring 2018.

"Don't let development push out low-income residents," The Washington Post, March 23, 2018. 

"How segregation shaped DC's northernmost ward," Greater Greater Washington, Sep 14, 2017.

"DC's Comprehensive Plan, a document we use today, preserves the racial segregation of our past," Greater Greater Washington, Jun 13, 2017.

"'A Strictly White Residential Section': The Rise and Demise of Racially Restrictive Covenants in Bloomingdale," Washington History, Spring 2017.

Review, Just Another Southern Town: Mary Church Terrell and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Nation’s Capital, by Joan Quigley, H-AfroAm, Feb 2017.

Become an insider by supporting the show at https://glow.fm/archispolly where you can support the show on a recurring or one-time basis!

CONVERSATION W/ SARAH AKIGBOGUN

Sarah Akigbogun is a London-based transdisciplinary practitioner and educator. An architect, filmmaker and writer, she is founder of Studio Aki London and theatre collective Appropri8, which seeks to work with communities to activate disused urban sites. Sarah is passionate about diversity within architecture and is Vice Chair of Women in Architecture UK and founder of the XXAOC project. In 2017 she directed the film She Draws : She Builds, which collates the voices of 15 female architects. Trained as an architect and structural engineer, Sarah studied Architectural Engineering at the University of Westminster and completed her Diploma at the Architectural Association (AA).  At the AA  her work focused on themes of mental illness and architecture and the use of film as a tool to explore and document experiences of the city. 

 After graduating Sarah worked at several international practices including Alsop Architects and Foster and Partners. She also holds an MA in Acting from Central St Martins and is currently an Associate Lecturer at Canterbury School of Architecture.

Sarah’s current film project, for which she has received support from Arts Council England, tells the stories of Female Architects of Colour.  The film is part of the wider XXAOC research project which is intended as an online resource documenting female architects of colour past and present.  Last year as part of this project Sarah conducted an interview with Dr. Sharon Egretta Sutton which is was published by Parlour and Architecture Australia.

Connect with Sarah:

Twitter: @SarahAkigbogun @xx_aoc

Insta: @studio.aki. @xx_aoc

Check out the newest link: https://www.archispolly.online/dope-videos-1

Become an insider by supporting the show at https://glow.fm/archispolly where you can support the show on a recurring or one-time basis!

CONVERSATION W/ EBEHI IJEWERE

Born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria, Ebehi Ijewere always had an innate passion for design, color, materials, and crafts. After graduation, Ebehi found that there was no space where she could listen to experiences from designers of color so she started a design podcast, Layers of Design. She also uses her platform to amplify the voices of African architects as well as participate in meaningful design competitions that look to solve social and humanitarian problems through architecture. 

Listen to Layers of Design on Apple Soundcloud

Follow on Instagram Twitter

CONVERSATION W/ NOMAS RPI CHAPTER

Architecture students across the country are denouncing systemic racism in academia. I spoke to Malika Yansaneh and Kelsey Mitchell , members of National Organization of Minority Architects Student (NOMAS) Chapter at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), about the lack of diversity in architectural history, the NAAB statement on racial injustice, student life at Rensselaer as well as the pandemic. At the time of this recording, both women are pursuing a Bachelor of Architecture degree at RPI.

NAAB Statement on Racial Injustice: https://www.naab.org/naab-statement-on-racial-injustice/

RPI NOMAS Instagram: @nomas_rpi

RPI NOMAS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nomasrpi

CONVERSATION W/ HOUSTON NOMA

Architecture is Political Podcast had the honor of hosting Houston NOMA (National Organization of Minority Architects) Happy Hour Series. In this episode, we explore ‘How Architecture is Political’ in the current climate. Special thanks to Mona Elamin and Antoine Bryant of Houston NOMA for making this event possible.

To support NOMA National, go to https://membership.noma.net/donations/ for more information.

To become a NOMA member, go to https://membership.noma.net/ for more information.

PANDEMIC FLOSS: A.I ARCH

Audio Block

Double-click here to upload or link to a .mp3. Learn more

In this episode, the host talks about her love/hate relationship with the AIA and the controversies with their most recent statements about the protest and prison design.

Check out the newest link: https://www.archispolly.online/dope-videos-1

Become an insider by supporting the show at https://glow.fm/archispolly where you can support the show on a recurring or one-time basis!

PANDEMIC FLOSS: ARCHITECTS WEAR BLACK

In this episode, Melissa extends the Pandemic Floss series due to recent global protests. She reflects on the written responses from architecture firms and allied organizations and how to cope in a work environment when you are the only black/brown person.

Become an insider by supporting the show at https://glow.fm/archispolly where you can support the show on a recurring or one-time basis!