Space Unveiled

Since the early 1800s, African Americans have designed signature buildings.
However, in the mainstream marketplace, African American architects,
especially women, have remained invisible in architecture history, theory and
practice.
Traditional architecture design studio education has been based on the
historical models of the Beaux-Arts and the Bauhaus, with a split between
design and production teaching. As the result of current teaching models,
African American architects tend to work on the production or technical
side of building rather than in the design studio. It is essential to understand
the centrality of culture, gender, space and knowledge in design studios.
Space Unveiled is a significant contribution to the study of architecture
education, and the extent to which it has been sensitive to an inclusive
cultural perspective. The research shows that this has not been the case in
American education because part of the culture remains hidden.

Carla Jackson Bell, PhD, is currently the Director of Multicultural Affairs

in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction at Auburn
University, USA. She is recognized as being one of only ten African American
women architecture faculty to be appointed tenure in the United States,
and is the only educator to be awarded a specialized doctoral degree in
architecture education. She has been recognized nationally for supporting
less insular educational environments that encourage students and faculty
to share the experiences, understandings, and aesthetics of their culture.
Routledge Research in Architecture

The Routledge Research in Architecture series provides the reader with the
latest scholarship in the field of architecture. The series publishes research
from across the globe and covers areas as diverse as architectural history
and theory, technology, digital architecture, structures, materials, details,
design, monographs of architects, interior design and much more. By making
these studies available to the worldwide academic community, the series aims
to promote quality architectural research.

An Architecture of Parts
Architects, Building Workers and Industrialisation in Britain 1940–1970
Christine Wall

Towards an Articulated Phenomenological Interpretation of Architecture

Phenomenal Phenomenology
M. Reza Shirazi

Architectural System Structures

Integrating Design Complexity in Industrialised Construction
Kasper Sánchez Vibæk

Space Unveiled
Invisible Cultures in the Design Studio
Carla Jackson Bell

Architectural Temperance
Spain and Rome, 1700–1759
Victor Deupi
Space Unveiled
Invisible Cultures in the
Design Studio

Edited by
Carla Jackson Bell

Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Carla Jackson Bell
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material,
and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance
with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Space unveiled: invisible cultures in the design studio/Carla Jackson Bell.—
First [edition].
pages cm.—(Routledge research in architecture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Architecture and race. 2. Architecture and women.
3. Architectural practice—Social aspects. 4. Architecture—
Study and teaching. 5. African Americans—Professional education.
6. Professional education of women. I. Bell, Carla Jackson,
editor of compilation. II. Bell, Carla Jackson, author. African
American education.
NA2543.R37S63 2014
720.89⬘96073—dc23
2014003831

ISBN: 978-0-415-72441-8 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-76599-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Contents

List of Illustrations ix
List of Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xv
Foreword xvi
SHARON E. SUTTON
Preface xix
JACK TRAVIS

PART ONE
Introduction and History 1

1. African American Education: Lifting the Veil 3

CARLA JACKSON BELL

2. The Background on Architecture Education 10

CARLA JACKSON BELL

3. Booker T. Washington’s Architectural Strategies 14

ELLEN WEISS

4. Brick Making and the Production of Place at the Tuskegee

Institute 26
DONALD E. ARMSTRONG, JR.

5. The Education of African American Architects: Rethinking

Du Bois’s Principles, “about us, by us, for us and near us” 37
AKEL I. KAHERA

PART TWO
Eurocentric Topics in Architecture 51

6. ‘Blackness’: An Architectural Discourse 53

CARLA JACKSON BELL AND MELVIN L. MITCHELL
vi Contents
7. Once More unto the Breach 62
CRAIG L. WILKINS

8. The Academic Political Economy 74

CARLA JACKSON BELL

PART THREE
Teaching Approaches in the Design Studio 87

9. Space (Un)veiled: Techne as a Means of Promoting Visibility

in the Beginning Design Studio 89
DONALD E. ARMSTRONG, JR. AND CARLA JACKSON BELL

10. Reality-Based Learning in Design Education 102

SHARON E. SUTTON

11. Design Collaborative Learning in Design Studio Education 113

CARMINA SÁNCHEZ-DEL-VALLE

12. Piecing Together Place: A Design Process 125

SHERYL TUCKER DE VAZQUEZ

13. Making Every Stitch Count: Lessons in Naturalistic

Feedback 136
MAGDALENA GARMAZ

14. Contested Spaces: Teaching Cultural Competency in the

Design of American Cities 143
TONI L. GRIFFIN

PART FOUR
Teaching Approaches in the Non-Design Curriculum 155

15. Gender and Race in Contemporary Architecture:

Reflections on a Seminar Taught for Over Two
Decades 157
KATHRYN H. ANTHONY

16. NOMA Competition: Design Action 172

KEVIN MOORE
 Contents vii
17. In Situ: Diversifying Design Education Through “Green
For Life”—A Community-Based Environmental Research,
Education and Outreach Project 180
REBECCA O’NEAL DAGG AND CHARLENE LEBLEU

18. Working in the Jazz Architectural Workshop 188

NATHANIEL QUINCY BELCHER

19. Race and Gender in Architecture Education: A Distance

Learning Model 196
DAISY-O’LICE I. WILLIAMS, ANDREW CHIN, AND
RONALD B. LUMPKIN

20. Consensus Imagination: Design Competition in a

Non-Studio Setting 206
LA BARBARA JAMES WIGFALL

PART FIVE
Diversity 215

21. On Otherness: Looking at (Different Ways of) Inculcating

Diversity 217
GEORGE EPOLITO

22. “Inside and Out”: Three Black Women’s Perspectives on

Architectural Education in the Ivory Tower 227
FELECIA DAVIS, J. YOLANDE DANIELS, AND MABEL O. WILSON

Index 235
Thispageintentionallyleftblank
Illustrations

Figures
1.1 Lifting the Veil of Ignorance 4
1.2a Master Builder 5
1.2b Girls Industrial Sewing 5
1.3 Bailey Architecture Class 7
3.1a Carnegie Library 17
3.1b Tompkins Dining Hall 18
3.2 Tantum Hall 19
3.3 Student Joseph J. Evans’s Drawings for a House in
Topeka, Kansas 21
4.1a Brick Yard at the Tuskegee Institute 30
4.1b Students Making a Kiln 30
4.2 Dorothy Hall, Tuskegee University (brickwork detail) 33
5.1a Adam Long: Mask Analysis 43
5.1b Bryan Brooks: Mask Analysis 44
5.2 Phillip Myres: Mask Analysis 45
8.1 Sandy Moore—First African American Woman to be a
Dean at a Traditional Architecture Program 83
9.1 Comparative Studies Board (Tiffany Anderson) 95
9.2 Model (Tiffany Anderson) 96
9.3 Model (Eric Barnes) 97
9.4 The Ephemeral House 99
10.1 Mission for the Senior Center 106
10.2 Intergenerational Living Program 107
10.3a Kevin Zhang’s Separate Apartment Buildings for
Families, Youth, and Seniors 108
10.3b Lauren Rock’s Village-Like Atmosphere for Extended
Families 109
10.3c Ray Ranaweera’s Flexible Apartments for Communal
Living of Mixed Populations 109
11.1 Word Cloud of Concepts Associated with Interdisciplinary
Collaborative Projects 116
x Illustrations
11.2 Thesis Studio Peer Review, Small Group and Individual
Evaluation 117
11.3 Thesis Studio Peer Review, Small Group 120
12.1 Conceptual Model Studies, Gees Bend Quilting Museum 132
12.2 Exploded Axonometric, Gees Bend Quilting Museum 132
12.3 Interior Perspective, Gees Bend Quilting Museum 133
13.1 Mozell Benson’s Quilting Studio 137
14.1 A Student Just City Collage (Blake Fortson) 149
14.2 A Sample of One Team’s Indicators and Metrics,
Moss and Kim 152
15.1a Student Enrollment by Gender and Race 158
15.1b Student Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity 158
15.2a Students on Chicago Field Trip, 2013 159
15.2b Students Review Construction Documents at African
American Owned Firm, Moody Nolan Inc. 160
16.1 Movement in Time: Multiple Future Scenarios 173
16.2 Movement in Space: Anticipating Future Events 175
16.3 RENOVATE>CULTIVATE>INNOVATE: Streetscapes 176
17.1 The Stormwater BMP Design-Build Projects at the Boykin
Community Center 182
17.2 Non-Studio Based Learning Includes Research and
Outreach 183
17.3 The LID Demonstration Site 186
18.1 JAWS Poster 189
19.1a Teaching Methods Workshop FAMU 199
19.1b Teaching Methods Workshop FAMU 200
19.2 Workshop Findings FAMU 201
20.1 Core Members of the K-State Student Team Working in
Studios 208
21.1 Rebecca Stephen’s Award Winning Scheme, Chiavari Italy 224
22.1 Felecia Davis, J. Yolande Daniels, and Mabel O. Wilson 227

Table
19.1 HBCU and predominantly White institution Student
Awareness of African American Architects (2013) 202
Contributors

Carla Jackson Bell, PhD, is a faculty member and the Director of Multi-
cultural Affairs in the College of Architecture, Design and Construction
at Auburn University. She is recognized as being one of only ten African
American women architecture faculty to be appointed tenure in the US.
Her professional strengths are recruiting and retaining less insular educa-
tional environments and encouraging students to share the experiences,
understandings, and aesthetics of their cultures.
Kathryn H. Anthony, PhD, is a Professor and past Chair of the Design
Program Faculty at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. She also serves on the faculty of the Department
of Landscape Architecture and the Gender and Women’s Studies
Program. She was one of the first women in architecture at her school
to receive tenure and promotion to Full Professor.
Donald E. Armstrong, Jr. earned a Master of Architecture degree from the
University of Florida. A licensed architect, he is a tenured Associate
Professor at the Taylor School of Architecture and Construction
Science, Tuskegee University. His research focus is critical theory in the
arts. Don publishes a blog called Material Practices (www.donaldearm
strong.com).
Nathaniel Quincy Belcher is a Professor of Architecture in the H. Campbell
and Eleanor R. Stuckeman School of Architecture and Landscape Archi-
tecture at The Pennsylvania State University. He has held teaching
appointments over the past 22 years. He is also a licensed architect and
interior designer. He has a special interest in the diverse affluence of
contemporary critical making practices.
Andrew Chin is an Assistant Dean/Director of the Architecture Programs
at the Florida A&M University (FAMU) School of Architecture (SOA).
He is a tenured Associate Professor and has taught at FAMU since 1991.
He teaches the thesis research and urban design classes. His research
focus is the public health impacts of public school siting.
xii Contributors
Rebecca O’Neal Dagg is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Auburn
University School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.
She earned a Master of Architecture at Harvard University. Her under-
graduate degree is from Auburn University. Her research and creative
work focuses on architecture theory and representation, interior
architecture and architecture pedagogy.
J. Yolande Daniels received architecture degrees from Columbia University
(M.ARCH 90) and City College, CUNY (BS.ARCH 87). She has taught
at the graduate schools of architecture at Columbia University, City
College, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and held the
Silcott Chair at Howard University. She is a principal of studioSUMO
in New York.
Felecia Davis is a PhD candidate in the Design and Computation Group at
MIT. She received her Master of Architecture from Princeton Univers-
ity, and her Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Tufts University.
She is principal in her own design firm FADSTUDIO. She has also taught
architectural design for over 10 years at Cornell University, as well as
most recently teaching design studios at Princeton University and the
Cooper Union in New York.
George Epolito is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture
in the U.K. His research explores the intersection of politics and culture
particularly regarding people of African, Iberian, and Italian descent in
the displaced margins of North and South American societies, and the
innovative, hybridized aesthetics they produced.
Magdalena Garmaz is an Interim Program Chair of Environmental Design,
and Ann & Batey Gresham Professor of Architecture at Auburn
University. Her teaching has been featured in the Metropolis magazine,
the Journal of Architectural Education, and in the book Exploring
Materials by E. Lupton and I. Alesina.
Toni L. Griffin is a Professor of Architecture and the Director of the
J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City at the Spitzer School
of Architecture at the City College of New York, and also maintains
an active urban planning consulting practice, Urban Planning and Design
for the American City.
Akel I. Kahera, PhD, is a Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean at
Clemson University. Dr. Kahera has authored over two dozen essays as
well as three books: Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space
Gender and Aesthetics, 2002; Design Criteria for Mosques, 2009; and
Reading the Islamic City, 2011.
Charlene LeBleu, FASLA, AICP is an Associate Professor of Landscape
Architecture at Auburn University, Alabama. Her primary area of
research is low impact development design. She is a member of the
 Contributors xiii
American Institute of Certified Planners, and a Fellow of the American
Society of Landscape Architects.
Ronald B. Lumpkin is an Assistant Professor and Director of Student Services
at Florida A & M University School of Architecture. Primary research
interests include design and human behavior and the impact of the built
environment on academic achievement.
Melvin L. Mitchell is currently the President and CEO of Bryant Mitchell,
Architecture & Development, PLLC. He is former Director and Dean
of Architecture at Morgan State University. He is the author of the book,
The Crisis of the African American Architect: Conflicting Cultures of
Architecture & Black Power. He has degrees from Howard University
and Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Kevin Moore is an Assistant Professor in Architecture and Interior
Architecture at Auburn University. His professional experience is in
integrating interior and exterior for renovations and new buildings in
urban settings. His research focuses on spatial and temporal sequences
that order diverse environmental effects in combination with social and
spatial potentials.
Carmina Sánchez-del-Valle is a Professor of Architecture at Hampton
University in Virginia, and a licensed architect. Her research explores
modes of representation for architectural analysis, design, simulation
and collaboration. She advocates for interdisciplinary work. Her
published work has covered 3D modeling, transformable adaptive
architecture, mapping, and the city in graphic novels.
Sharon E. Sutton, PhD, FAIA has been a professional musician, an artist,
and a practicing architect; and is currently Professor of Architecture and
Urban Design, Adjunct Professor of Landscape Architecture and Social
Work, and Director of the Center for Environment Education and
Design Studies at the University of Washington. She is a registered
architect and was once a member of the musicians’ union in New York
City.
Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez is a registered architect and Professor of
Architecture at Prairie View A&M University. Her writing has been
published in numerous books and journals including Center 15:
Divinity, Creativity, Complexity and Places magazine. Her design work
has been recognized with multiple design awards.
Ellen Weiss is an Emerita at Tulane University, and has written Robert R.
Taylor and Tuskegee, An African American Architect Designs for
Booker T. Washington (2012); City in the Woods, the Life and Design
of an American Camp Meeting (1987); and twenty-one articles and
reviews about African Americans in architecture and building.
xiv Contributors
La Barbara James Wigfall is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture
and Regional and Community Planning (at Kansas State University), and
has research interests in cultural landscapes, community development,
and participatory action. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Archi-
tecture from Howard University and her Master’s Degree in City and
Regional Planning/Urban Design from Harvard University.
Craig L. Wilkins, PhD, teaches architecture and urban planning at the
University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban
Planning. He is the former director of the Detroit Community Design
Center and creator of an award-winning afterschool architecture
program for Detroit Metro High School Students. He is the author of
The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture and Music,
2007.
Daisy-O’lice I. Williams is an Assistant Professor with the University of
Oregon Department of Architecture. Prior to joining the faculty at UO,
Williams taught for Hampton University’s Department of Architecture.
She completed her Bachelor of Science in Architecture, and Master of
Architecture at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.
Mabel O. Wilson’s transdisciplinary practice Studio & operates between the
fields of architecture, art, and cultural history. As the Nancy and George
E. Rupp Professor, she teaches architectural design and history/theory
courses at Columbia University’s GSAPP and is a Senior Fellow at the
Institute for Research in African American Studies.
Acknowledgments

It is difficult to adequately express my gratitude for the unselfish contribu-

tions made by family, friends, and Auburn University colleagues throughout
this production process. I owe a major debt of gratitude to the chapter authors,
Valecia M. H. Wilson, my graduate assistant and my editor, Dr. Susana
Morris, who provided additions, deletions, and corrections by reading my
chapters. I am truly grateful to Francesca Ford and Alex Hollingsworth for
believing in this project, and providing visibility to the diverse voices and
practices in Space Unveiled. I could not have completed this project without
the support of my mentor Daniel Bennett, my mother, Ethel Jackson, my
sons, Nicholas and Cameron, and especially my husband, Roger Bell, who
contributed more than I could possibly express.
Foreword
Sharon E. Sutton

According to noted Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot (1995),

a subordinate group is silenced when historians imprecisely record their
contributions to society. Most architectural historians have silenced African
Americans by turning a blind eye toward such contributions as those of
artisan slaves who, along with other free blacks, “practiced throughout the
South before and after the Civil War” (Woods 1999: 54), as well as those
of Tuskegee Institute’s black alumni, who “work[ed] as architects, builders,
and real estate developers, profoundly shaping the new African-American
communities that arose after emancipation” (Woods 1999: 80). More recently,
an analysis of texts used at leading architecture schools revealed that their
authors overwhelmingly ignored contributions of African Americans (Gürel
and Anthony 2006), and even the field’s groundbreaking tercentennial publi-
cation celebrating architecture education in America, edited by Ockman and
Williamson (2012), renders black educators and issues of race all but invisible.
Despite taking such a critical part in designing and building the fabric of the
nation, the contributions of African Americans remain silenced—invisible—
in the annals of American architecture.
Space Unveiled: Invisible Cultures in the Design Studio calls attention to
this silenced dimension of architecture. By paying tribute to Tuskegee’s
significance in shaping the field’s traditional practices, by acknowledging
black culture’s influence on today’s emergent practices, by chronicling
the practices of contemporary black and brown educators and those of
women, this book advances a more precise understanding of architecture’s
cultural heritage—a precondition for achieving equity in this persistently
exclusionary field.
Among the first American architecture schools—alongside those at
MIT, Columbia University, and the University of Illinois—Tuskegee was
unique in providing students with a construction site on campus and in the
nearby community where they built what remains as “the largest collection
of extant buildings designed, built, and used by African-Americans in the
United States” (Woods 1999: 73–74, citing Dozier 1990). With architecture’s
well-documented indebtedness to l’École des Beaux Arts, Space Unveiled
 Foreword xvii
makes visible Tuskegee’s contributions to pedagogies now prevalent in the
field—ones that feature community service, design build, and community
participation.
Space Unveiled also makes visible a black aesthetic that, by necessity,
melded together—and transformed—the chaos and fragmentation caused by
enslavement, producing such improvisational artifacts as black women’s
quilts, black artists’ collages, and black musicians’ jazz, which flowed “from
home to street to club” (Fullilove 2004: 16). It offers that aesthetic as a way
of theorizing solutions for this nation’s declining post-industrial cities,
depleted of population and commerce but alive with impoverished residents’
informal placemaking efforts. And for the world’s developing cities that are
seeking to assimilate formalistic Western-style architecture, while still
maintaining their informal way of life.
Notably, this book showcases a rising generation of black and brown
architecture educators. While they situate themselves as heirs of a genera-
tion of “firsts” to achieve standing in the field—among them, Robert R.
Taylor, J. Max Bond, Jr., Richard K. Dozier, Brad Grant, and myself—these
upcoming educators stake out their own pedagogical turf. They not only
adopt instructional approaches advanced by 1960s student activists, espe-
cially black student activists, whose protests transformed the academy’s
autocratic ideals (Rogers 2012), these educators unabashedly lay claim to
theorizing the influence of race on architectural form and aesthetics. Their
pedagogies, applied within a context of contemporary technology, include:
community-based learning that addresses societal needs and provides
naturalistic feedback; collaborative, interdisciplinary learning that incorpor-
ates peer mentoring; learning that advances cross-cultural understanding and
competence; and learning that values local vernacular knowledge.
With sixteen of the twenty-two chapters written by faculty based at
southern universities—Auburn, Clemson, Florida A & M, Prairie View
A & M, Tulane, Tuskegee—Space Unveiled perhaps unintentionally makes
visible a distinctive, often rural perspective on architecture education. How
fitting that this particular book, which seeks to promote more inclusive
teaching approaches, emerged from the South where, after one hundred
years of racially motivated exodus, so many black and brown people still
live, and, increasingly, choose to live. For example in 2010, the South’s black
population was 20 percent—the greatest proportion in the country—with
55 percent of all blacks living there (United States 2010 Census Data 2011).
Yet, the South also boasts nine of the nation’s ten poorest states (24/7 Wall
Street 2011), rendering the area ripe for the kind of socially just, culturally
competent design interventions described in this book.
Unlike many other investigations of underrepresented architects, Space
Unveiled goes beyond documenting inequities to offer alternative practices
that can advance inclusiveness in the field and also elevate all architects’
status as purveyors of meaningful design interventions.
xviii Sharon E. Sutton
Bibliography
24/7 Wall Street (14 September 2011) “America’s Poorest States,” at http://247wall
st.com/investing/2011/09/14/americas-poorest-states (accessed January 4 2014).
Dozier, R. K. (1990) Tuskegee: Booker T. Washington’s Contribution to the Educa-
tion of Black Architects, University of Michigan, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations
Publishing.
Fullilove, M. T., MD (2004) Root Shock: How Tearing up City Neighborhoods
Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It, New York: Random House.
Gürel, M.Ö. and Anthony, K.H. (2006) “The canon and the void: gender, race, and
architectural history texts,” Journal of Architectural Education, 59(3): 66–76.
Ockman, J. and Williamson, R. (2012) Architecture School: Three Centuries of
Educating Architects in North America, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Washington
DC: Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.
Rogers, I. H. (2012) The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial
Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972, New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
Kindle Edition.
Trouillot, M-R. (1995) Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History,
Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
United States 2010 Census Data (2011) “Census Briefs: the Black Population,” at
www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-06.pdf (accessed January 4 2014).
Woods, M. N. (1999) From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in
Nineteenth-Century America, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Preface
Jack Travis

The very notion of culture within any of the environmental design disciplines
—urban design, architecture, landscape architecture, interior architecture,
interior design, interior decorating—remains hidden in plain view. Conse-
quently, many students of color still find an undeniable void of theory,
concept, resource, methodology, and strategy when seeking to discover how,
through appropriate design of rooms, buildings, and neighborhoods, they
might reflect the mores and aspirations of inhabitants who look like them.
The first stage of this failure in the environmental design disciplines is of
course found in the canon, and the pedagogical training methods and prac-
tices of the academy. For the academy is where aspiring designers are trained
in the procedures of an established tradition that never included women and
men of color in any substantive way. And nowhere is the evidence of guilt
more apparent than in the tradition, structure, and methodologies of the
design studio. However, the design studio is not the only culprit. This bastion
of white male supremacy is bolstered by a whole host of required and elective
courses including history, technology, and professional practice.
Space Unveiled addresses this failure. It was motivated by the editor’s
observations while teaching architecture history to typically African American
architecture students at Tuskegee University—one of the oldest historically
black colleges and universities in the South, which in 1933 became the first
architecture program in the nation to admit African American women. This
book calls attention to the continued underrepresentation of licensed minority
architects, especially African American women. It developed from the editor’s
dissertation findings—ultimately revealing that inclusive cultural perspectives
have been practically invisible in architecture education for women and
especially for all people of color. As an educator and practicing African
American architect with over 35 years of experience, I am of the same mind
as that of the authors in this book.
The editor, Dr. Carla Jackson Bell, has assembled a highly respected group
of educators and practitioners with the intent of laying out an inclusive
examination of architecture education beginning with a series of historical
perspectives, followed by a set of chapters on teaching design and non-design
studios, and concluding with diverse contemporary perspectives on the field.
xx Jack Travis
Dr. Bell’s work is timely and necessary. Space Unveiled is compelling in
not only exposing the causes and effects of long-standing past exclusionary
practices but in also pleading for more minority participation in current
practices and for broader pedagogical theories that include other cultures
and peoples who will inhabit the spaces/places today’s students will design.
Further, this publication provides crucial teaching tools for refocusing the
cultural, historical, and pedagogical approaches in architecture and other
related fields to effect change in the number of underrepresented groups.
My preface follows a foreword by Dr. Sharon E. Sutton, who arouses the
interest of the reader with her analysis of what Space Unveiled contributes
toward achieving an inclusive field that can render socially just, culturally
competent design solutions. We both concur that Space Unveiled offers a
significant contribution to architecture education and practice, and to the
history of the field. In the end, it does something that no other book does—
it unveils invisible space, culturally competent teaching strategies, and diverse
philosophies in architecture education.
Part One
Introduction and
History
Thispageintentionallyleftblank
1 African American Education
Lifting the Veil
Carla Jackson Bell

In the midst of teaching architecture design studio and architecture history

and also completing my dissertation research, I uncovered critical debates
and theories about how African Americans are and have been taught and
how the subsequent teaching methods influence modern architecture
education. My research revealed that inclusive cultural perspectives have
been missing in architecture education, as culture is practically invisible in
American history. This investigation was initiated while teaching second year
architecture design studio with Don Armstrong at Tuskegee University and
proceeded after my history students and I read the novel Invisible Man by
Ralph Ellison, a Tuskegee graduate and American novelist. In class, we
debated how Booker T. Washington is depicted lifting the veil of ignorance
from his people, symbolized by a terrified slave (see Figure 1.1). The slave
holds a book representing education and crouches on a plow and anvil,
representing tools of agriculture and industry. Yet the narrator in Ellison’s
Invisible Man, describes the structure with a sense of ambivalence: “I am
standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or
lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more
efficient blinding” (Ellison 1952: 36).
I wanted to uncover the motivation behind Ellison’s ambivalence; how-
ever, I was unclear about how to begin this search. Eventually, I decided to
trace the historical and philosophical territories in the education of African
Americans and began with research on a group of black people who were
directly affected by the educational practices between Washington and Du
Bois after the Civil War from 1895–1915. This subject illuminated pathways
that are vital to an understanding of the philosophical purpose and teaching
history in traditional education; however, the Washington/Du Bois debate
was the first historical and philosophical perspective to dispute African
American education and training in modern American history.
Many thinkers in Space Unveiled may disagree on the specific strategies
for African Americans’ social and economic progress, but we all agree
that Washington and Du Bois made a permanent mark on the educational
debate over how African Americans should achieve equality in America. The
debate has divided the energies of the wider African American population,
4 Carla Jackson Bell

Figure 1.1 Lifting the Veil of Ignorance

(The Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University)

and created two opposing camps in American educational history. In the

essay “Of the Training of Black Men” (1903), Du Bois argues that whites
in the South and North would not teach African Americans; if African
Americans were to learn, they must teach themselves. In response to the
age of Jim Crow, Washington (1901: 311–312) inculcates the principles of
providing practical training for African Americans and helping them
develop economic self-reliance through the mastery of manual trades and
agricultural skills (Harlan 1983: 55). Du Bois thought Washington’s
emphasis on industrial education actually kept African Americans trapped
in lower social and economic classes by suggesting they were best suited to
service occupations. Du Bois (1903) believed that a liberal arts education
was more important than industrial skills. Richard Dozier (1990) argues that
Washington’s constructivist apprenticeship approach made it difficult for
African American women to enter the field of architecture; therefore, I
conclude that Washington’s teaching approaches may have directly affected
the number of women in the architecture profession (Bell 2009: 50). The
cultural perspectives of African American women have been missing in the
architecture profession, and remain practically invisible in American history.
Figure 1.2a Master Builder
(The Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University)

Figure 1.2b Girls Industrial Sewing

(The Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee University)
6 Carla Jackson Bell
In Space Unveiled, the veil represents several cultural and spatial
relationships. It is an analogy for the separation and invisibility at the center
of the Washington and Du Bois debate and also reflects the teaching
approaches and historical and philosophical theories that have been hidden
under a veil of American education. Space Unveiled serves as a basis for
pedagogical approaches that are hidden under a veil of traditional teaching
space in architecture curricula content.
The research that inspired this book reveals that little or no scholarly
thought has been paid to cognitive apprenticeship approaches (CAAs)—
teaching approaches—by practicing architects and educators as a basis for
curriculum change in modern education.1 With this in mind, it was therefore
crucial to ask, “What teaching approaches and learning environments are
needed in architecture curricula content to make architecture and design
education more accessible to minorities and women?”2 This question directed
me to conduct a study of the affirmations, perceptions, and attitudes that
resulted in responses from licensed African American architects and educators
in architecture education and practice. Respondents in this study included
410 licensed African American architects and African American educators
drawn from a 2003 list of 1,368 African American architects and faculty
members in the United States. From the sample of the respondents to complete
the questionnaire, ten participants were selected as a sub-sample, and six were
interviewed. The respondents identified four of seven CAAs—Problem-based
learning through guided discovery; Social-cultural-situated modes of learning;
Collaborative learning; and Naturalistic feedback and learning from errors—
that assist the reader with varying kinds of practice situations. The results
also argued that more American American faculty members are needed to
teach diverse topics further than the traditional Eurocentric curricula con-
tent. The affirmations and the perceptions and attitudes from the respondents
in this study served as a basis for additions to traditional architecture curricula
content and teaching approaches. My research findings indicate that
including CAA teaching and learning examples and other recommendations
will allow the reader of this book to be more adept at teaching the four practice
situations that directly affect the culture of expert training, and ultimately
enrich visibility and scholarship for minorities, especially African American
women, and students in general in architecture and design programs. This
book is not meant to make one an expert, but merely to instill confidence
and an understanding of the CAAs so that the reader can better contribute
to the teaching and research enterprise.
I edited this book because I felt the need to uncover CAAs that incorpor-
ate the role of culture, space, gender, knowledge, and diverse perspectives in
traditional curricula content. Most existing books only approach the subject
from a historical point, excluding theoretical and methodological teaching
and learning examples as a basis for curriculum change in modern education.
In order to generate teaching and learning scenarios for the CAAs, I have
assembled a group of renowned educators and practitioners with the intent