If you were asked to name the greatest American architects, who would you pick? Folks like Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and Philip Johnson usually spring to mind. However, alongside those men were many Black architects who also pioneered the design world alongside their white colleagues while simultaneously facing major social barriers — all while never attaining the same level of recognition.
The art and architecture that surrounds us can influence the way we live our lives, but they also reflect the times during which they were made. Design can be used as a way to bring people together, with public works projects like affordable housing, or be used to divide, such as in the case of racially motivated urban planning. Many major cities, Los Angeles included, remain starkly racially divided due to the redlining of yesteryear.
In fact, Black people were still barred from studying architecture and design in many states until the 1950s and ‘60s. And, due to segregation and restrictive property covenants, even the most successful and well-known Black architects, such as Paul R. Williams, were frequently unable to live in the neighborhoods where the homes they designed were built.
Of course, not all trailblazing Black architects lived in the past. And while schools are no longer segregated and people of color are no longer barred from pursuing architecture as a profession, the design world is still often criticized for its lack of diversity.
That’s why DIRT has added five influential working architects to our list of ten legends who not only broke ground on the buildings they designed but also broke real-world racial barriers and proverbial glass ceilings. (Additions are the final five on the list.) Each addition, which includes a husband and wife team who have practiced together for more than 40 years, seeks to harness the power of architecture to reflect, challenge and better the society in which it exists. Many are also educators and theoretical movers and shakers in addition to practicing architects.
Like their legendary professional forebears, all of the practicing architects own this list are blazing their own unique architectural trail and will leave their own indelible stamp on the world.
A version of this story first appeared on Dirt.com in February 2021.
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Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons; Facebook Moses McKissack III (1879 – 1952)
In 1905, Moses McKissack founded McKissack & McKissack alongside his brother Calvin. Theirs was the first Black-owned architectural firm in the United States and is now the oldest Black-owned firm in the country. Their grandfather, for whom Moses was named, came to the U.S. in 1790 as a slave who worked under a contractor that used him as a master builder. He would later pass on the lessons he learned to his son, who then taught Moses and Calvin. The brothers designed buildings like the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, the Carnegie Library at Fisk University and and the Universal Life Insurance building in Memphis.
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Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons; Associated Press Abele was the first Black student admitted to the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design. However, during his time at the university, he was not allowed to live in the dorms or to eat in the cafeteria with other students. After graduating from UPenn, Abele spent three years traveling Europe, visiting countries like France, Italy, England, Germany, Switzerland, and Spain — a detail he would mention in his 1942 application to the American Institute of Architects. Upon joining the AIA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art director Fiske Kimball would call him “one of the most sensitive designers in America.” During his career, Abele planned and designed the Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Duke University’s west campus.
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Image Credit: Associated Press Beverly Lorraine Greene (1915 – 1957)
When she was just 27 years old, Greene became the first Black woman licensed to practice architecture. Upon graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Greene also became the first Black woman to earn a degree in architectural engineering. Though she began her practice in Chicago working for the first architectural firm led by a Black person, Greene felt she and her fellow Black architects were being passed over for major projects by the city and would eventually move to New York. There, she began working on the Stuyvesant Town housing project, which ironically did not allow African-Americans to live in the apartments she was designing. She would go on to work with major architects like Edward Durell Stone, with whom she designed the Arts Complex at Sarah Lawrence College, and assisted Marcel Breuer with the construction of the UNESCO United Nations Headquarters in Paris.
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Image Credit: Texas Exes; Humanities Texas Chase was the first Black student to enroll in the University of Texas School of Architecture master’s program and was the first Black person to enroll in graduate school in the entire U.S. South. But upon his graduation, no firm would hire him. So, Chase moved to Houston and began teaching at Texas Southern University (a historically Black university) and started his own firm — which he would run for 50 years. In the process, he became the first licensed Black architect to practice architecture in Texas. During his career, Chase designed iconic buildings like Riverside National Bank (the first Black-owned bank in Texas), the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanities Building at Texas Southern University and the Tunisian U.S. Embassy.
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Image Credit: Los Angeles, Conservancy; Associated Press Back in the day when a person belonging to Hollywood’s “It” crowd wanted a new home, they likely would have commissioned Paul Williams. Known as “the architect of Hollywood,” or the “architect to the stars,” Williams designed over 2,000 homes in 50 years and built houses for the likes of Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and Barron Hilton. He was licensed to practice in 1921 and became the first African American to join the American Institute of Architects in 1923. Williams would go on to design iconic buildings like the Crescent Wing of the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Golden State Mutual Life building and partnered on the construction of the futuristic LAX Theme Building.
Despite his success, Williams still faced considerable obstacles during his career including the fact that he was legally barred from living in most of the residences he designed — a fact which pained him. “Today I sketched the preliminary plans for a large country house which will be erected in one of the most beautiful residential districts in the world,” Williams wrote in a 1937 article for American Magazine that was later reprinted in Ebony. “Sometimes I have dreamed of living there. I could afford such a home. But this evening … I returned to my own small, inexpensive home … in a comparatively undesirable section of Los Angeles. Dreams cannot alter facts; I know … I must always live in that locality, or in another like it, because … I am a Negro.”
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Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons; Associated Press Norma Merrick Sklarek (1926 – 2012)
If ever there was a barrier-breaking trailblazer, Sklarek was it! She was the first Black woman to become a licensed architect in both New York and California, the first Black woman to join the American Institute of Architects, the AIA’s first female Black fellow, and the first Black woman to co-own an architecture firm — the largest woman-owned firm in the U.S. at the time.
During the time she spent getting her degree in architecture from Columbia, Sklarek was shunned by her fellow students, many of whom refused to work with her. Undaunted, she instead sought out collaborative work opportunities outside the classroom, giving her a real-world advantage over her peers. She went on to design the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles, the embassy of the United States in Tokyo and Terminal One at the Los Angeles International Airport.
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Image Credit: Associated Press Born in Tanzania, Adjaye is one of the most sought after and highly-respected architects practicing today. Upon his graduation from London South Bank University in 1990, Adjaye won the RIBA Bronze Medal for the best project produced at a bachelor’s level worldwide and later received his master of arts degree from the Royal College of Art. He is perhaps best known for his ethos-minded community projects and his artistic and visionary sensitivities. His practice, Adjaye & Associates, was founded in 2000 and now has offices in London, Accra and New York.
In 2017, Adjaye was knighted by Queen Elizabeth and awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2021 — some of the highest honors achievable in British architecture. He’s built homes for the likes of Alexander McQueen, Ewan McGregor and designed buildings like the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development in Harlem and the Mole House in London. Adjaye is currently working on projects like the Studio Museum in Harlem, the National Cathedral of Ghana and the Princeton University Art Museum.
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Image Credit: Bwaf.org; KState.edu Washington is the founder of Roberta Washington Architects, one of the only architecture firms in the country led by a Black woman. After graduating from Howard University, she received a full scholarship to Columbia University where she received her master’s degree in architecture. She then went on to work in Mozambique for four years designing housing and hospital projects.
Upon her return to the U.S., she moved to New York City and joined a community board in Harlem (where she was chair of the Housing Committee and co-chair of the Land Use Committee), and currently serves on New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. She’s worked on projects like the Barnard Environmental Magnet School, New York City’s Harmony House and the African Burial Ground Interpretive Center.
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Image Credit: Harvard.edu Williams is best known for her social and civic-minded architecture and her bold, modern designs. Williams worked for as a design leader for firms like SOM, Perkins+Will and AECOM and went on to found her own company, AGWms-studio in 2017. She prides herself on ability to intertwine environmental awareness, history and urban context into her constructions. She’s designed buildings such as the August Wilson Center in Pittsbugh, the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise in Singapore and the Princess Nora Abdulrahman University for Women in Saudi Arabia.
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Image Credit: Associated Press In 1982, Curtis Moody founded Moody Nolan, the largest Black-owned architecture firm in the United States in the midst of an economic downturn in Columbus, Ohio. When he began his practice, Moody sought to bring diversity into a space where he felt people of color were overlooked. Although Moody Nolan began the company with just one other employee, the firm now employs over 230 people and has 12 offices. Moody Nolan has created works like the Student Library and Learning Center at Texas Southern University, the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s Martin Luther King Branch Library and the Nashville Music City Convention Center (in partnership with Tuck-Hinton Architects).
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Image Credit: HOK; KimberlyDowdell.com Detroit native Kimberly Dowdell is one of less than 500 Black women licensed to practice architecture in the United States. An “architect determined to make the world a better place,” per her website, Dowdell is less known for her built projects than as a sought-after writer, speaker, advisor, and thought leader who believes architecture and the built environment has a vital role to play in preparing for a more sustainable, equitable and just future for marginalized communities, especially those of color.
The Cornell- and Harvard-trained architect spent several years focused on a $12 million project to revitalize Detroit’s Fitzgerald neighborhood before she took the reins as marketing principal in HOK’s Chicago studio, where she helped found the HOK Impact social responsibility initiative 10 years ago, and currently co-chairs the firm’s Diversity Advisory Council.
Her influence and accolades, however, extend far beyond the global offices of HOK. Dowdell is a past president (2019-2020) of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), is a member of the National Organization of Minority Architects Council (NOMAC), the organizations highest level of recognition, and in 2020 was recognized for her activism by Architectural Record’s Women in Architecture Program. -
Image Credit: DNA Architecture + Design Prior to founding L.A.-based DNA Architecture + Design, UCLA-educated Valéry Augustin, also an associate professor and director of global studies at USC, worked with several illustrious firms in Los Angles, London, and Miami, on a wide range of projects from museums to airports, restaurants, multi-family housing, and private residences.
Licensed to practice in California, Florida, and Texas, Augustin’s projects with DNA include Delicious, an informal eatery at L.A.’s historic Dunbar Hotel, which was originally built as the Hotel Somerville to provide first-class accommodations for African Americans attending the first West Coast convention of the NAACP in 1928. Other commissioned projects include the Riverside Family Shelter and the conversion of a two-car garage in L.A.’s Ladera Heights into a simple and stylish studio apartment.
Alongside commissioned projects, Augustin and DNA have developed numerous theoretical projects that take on endemic urban issues such as affordability, sustainability and architectural representation. Among the firm’s proposals are a 42-story mixed use tower in Seoul, South Korea, that’s faced with what DNA’s website calls an “Active façade” that “incorporates photovoltaics to optimize building performance,” while another even more innovative proposal is described as a “visionary linear community occupying the air rights above the expo line, providing 4,475 apartments,” and stretching 14 miles from downtown to Santa Monica. -
Image Credit: FaithAndForm.com; Stanley, Love-Stanley William Stanley III and Ivenue Love-Stanley
Husband and wife team William Stanley III and Ivenue Love-Stanley met in 1972 at Georgia Tech, where he was the first African American to complete an architecture degree from the university’s College of Architecture and, five years later, she became the first African American woman to graduate from the College of Architecture.
They married in 1978, the same year they launched their Atlanta-based firm Stanley, Love-Stanley P.C., nowadays one of the largest African-American architectural practices in the south. Stanley serves as the principal designer, while Stanley-Love manages the nuts and bolts of the production side.
More than 40 years later, their many award-winning projects have been instrumental in shaping Atlanta. On the campus of their alma mater, they designed the Olympic Aquatic Center, site of the 1996 Olympic swimming, diving, and water polo competitions, as well as the 34,000-square-foot New Horizon Sanctuary at Atlanta’s historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was inspired by African sculpted mounds and where Dr. Martin Luthor King, Jr. was co-pastor from 1960 until his assassination in 1968. -
Image Credit: Silman.com; HGA Peter D. Cook has architecture in his genes. His great-grand-uncle is pioneering Black architect Julian Abele, who designed Philadelphia’s Free Library, as well as dozens of buildings on the campus of Duke University. In his family footsteps, Cook graduated with his architecture degree from Columbia University in the late 1980s, and currently serves at the design principal at the interdisciplinary firm HGA.
Much of Cook’s work is in the Washington D.C. area, and encompasses museums, memorials, libraries, and cultural and learning centers, as well as mixed-used projects and neighborhood master planning. Among his high-profile projects in D.C. are the modernization and expansion of the South African embassy, the St. Elizabeth’s Gateway Pavilion, and, most notably, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. -
Image Credit: atelier masōmī Born in France, raised in Niger and trained in the U.S., at the University of Washington, Niger-based Mariam Issofou Kamara has a global perspective. A founding member of united4design, an international collective of architects working on projects in the U.S., Afghanistan and Niger, Kamara founder atelier masōmī in 2014, through which she take on a variety of public, commercial, cultural and residential projects.
Her work is guided by the principal that “architects have an important role to play in creating spaces that have the power to elevate, dignify and provide a better quality of life,” and that “context, people and cultural heritage” are building blocks to creating relevant designs that are at home in their local context but also reimagined for the 21st century.
Mentored by David Adjaye as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, Kamara’s varied projects include the conversion of a former mosque into a library and community center, as well as a regional market in the village of Dandaji. For the city of Niamy, where atelier masōmī is headquartered, Kamara has also designed the Niamy Cultural Center, a cluster of five raw-earth buildings, four of them topped with semi-circular towers that mark the entrances to the buildings.