ART/STYLE
There should be more black female architects and urban planners because our experience leads us to think about space so differently than most other humans.
Other humans tend to think less about black women’s space than they do about everyone else’s, they just do not see us as well as they see others—and yes, that is changing—but engrained psychological patterns do take time to eradicate. I am telling you as a black woman that black women should be given free scholarships to study architecture and create urban plans. We see a lot of what you miss.
I am constantly thinking about space—relationally with other people, and how my body relates to buildings. My first semester at Columbia I had a tough time going into the library because of the feelings of erasure it brought up inside. It is a monument to white, male, privilege. When I entered, my shoulders would fall the slightest inch and I would do my business and try to get out as soon as possible. As if I was holding my breath and I only had a limited amount of time before I lost consciousness.
Buildings really show us what we think about possibility. They show us what we think about ourselves and each other. And they show us what and who we leave out.
I am telling you: unleash a network of black women on an urban planning project. Women of different classes, educational backgrounds and religious affiliations. I want to see those buildings. Like, today.
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A couple of months ago, I was introduced to Mabel Wilson, who gave me a glimpse into her world. I told her I was writing a play about some architects and she invited me to come by her office some time. That I must do soon!
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How freely other people move, how freely people move just really fascinates me.
I watch white men sometimes. Their approach to taking up space is a foreign language I haven’t quite mastered yet.
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I first became interested in architecture in undergrad when I took a cross-listed Afro-studies and architecture class. My professor was a black man.
He was cool.
I started to think about black women’s hair as architecture: as some of the only structures we owned in the world.
The structures we build on our heads are all ours.
My final project (I think I was a junior) was an interview series of other black women and girls about their hair and their relationship to it. I presented my findings as proof of our need to exist in architecture.
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I don’t feel the same way about the Columbia library that I did my first semester. I worked a lot of those feelings out from the root. My shoulders don’t fall anymore. I can now walk into that building smiling inside of myself, and giggling about how impossible it is to erase me.