All these losses, for me, carry equal weight, precisely because, for Black, research and writing about building held as much transformational potential as design and construction. Indeed, it might be true that, for Black, such a duality did not exist. Perhaps, for him, writing and spatial thinking were one and the same. This is what most excites me... See more

Ruins have inspired similar kinds of objectification for millennia. For many, they’re visual objects, things to romanticize, fetishize and look at from afar. It’s a simplified way of seeing that lends itself to extraction more than engagement, a kind “over-aestheticization of past eras." Henri Lefebvre explored the phenomenon in 1968, writing that... See more

“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... See more

During this formative time, she developed the roots of what one historian has called her “ecosocial” interpretation of the built environment, which considered architecture and the built environment to be an extension and manifestation of human ecology.5 This preference for the social led her to elevate Buckminster Fuller’s ecological utopianism... See more