Charlotte Faculty Edits New Book With Diverse Views Of Architecture In The United States
It has been six decades since Charlotte architect and former mayor Harvey B. Gantt desegregated Clemson University and earned a degree in architecture. In 1970, just one year before Gantt and Jeffrey Huberman founded North Carolina’s first racially integrated architecture firm, the Ford Foundation joined the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in a $1 million initiative to provide 70 full tuition scholarships to architecture schools for minority students. At that time, 2% of architects in the United States were Black.
Much has changed in the intervening half-century, but that number has remained the same. While the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) reported in July 2024 that “New Architects Are Increasingly Diverse,” the population of licensed architects in the U.S. is 62% white and male, and Black architects still make up just 2%.
Those statistics are at the heart of Margin & Text: Amplifying Diverse Voices in Architecture, a new book edited by David R. Ravin School of Architecture faculty Betsy West, Kelly Carlson-Reddig, and Jósé Gámez, who is also dean of the College of Arts + Architecture. Published by Princeton Architectural Press, Margin & Text is a wide-ranging collection of essays, reflections, definitions, facts, and images from the past and the present that foreground the contributions of those who too often remain on the sidelines.
“Our contributors are a rich amalgam of Black, white, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Pacific Islander,” West writes in the book’s introduction. “Each is a unique manifestation of their lived experience…they have different points of view about architecture, and together they give us an unfamiliar but exciting picture of what architecture in the United States could be.”
The book’s contents include:
- Michelle Joan Wilkinson (Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture) on resilience
- Aneesha Dharwadker (University of Illinois) on America’s architectural diaspora
- Jack Travis (Jack Travis Architect) on a Black aesthetic
- Chris Cornelius (University of New Mexico) on indigenous place and space
- Ron Rael (UC Berkeley) on borderland communities and design cultures
- Ghazal Jafari (University of Virginia) on exclusionary design practices
- Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman (Estudio Teddy Cruz+Fonna Forman) on the Mexico border
- Zena Howard and Lauren Neefe (Perkins & Will) on the architecture of repair
- Meejin Yoon (Höweler+Yoon) on the multicultural aspirations of architecture
The idea for the book emerged four years ago, when West was asked to help curate a lecture series for the School of Architecture that highlighted minority architects and academics. Many of those lectures, tightened and polished for print, became the bedrock of the book.
As the project became larger, West pulled in Carlson-Reddig and Gámez. Of primary concern was the audience.
“We wanted it to be broad,” Carlson-Reddig said, “and we definitely wanted it to reach younger readers.”
The book’s colorful mosaic-like format, designed by Carlson-Reddig, reflects its multi-centric message. Intriguing images and powerful quotes share space with both long and short-form essays and vital explanations. The intention, West said, was to “make it possible for someone to be able to drop in and out of the book.”
The intention, too, is to “present a new way forward,” writes Sekou Cooke, author of Hip-Hop Architecture, in his foreword to Margin & Text. The most recent data point to that path. According to NCARB’s report, nearly half of architecture licensure candidates identify as a person of color.
For the book’s editors and its many contributors, a multiplicity of perspectives will ultimately lead to better architecture. As West writes, “The built version of humanity to which we aspire can only grow out of a rich accumulation of different lived experiences, different histories, different values, and different translations of the world.”