Project 02
Diversity Among Architects: From Margin to Center (Routledge Press, 2016)
In hopes of setting in motion conversations around why and how to build a more inclusive profession, Diversity Among Architects is a set of essays and lectures presented over a twenty-year span that challenge the homogeneity of architectural scholarship and practice. The edited collection covers a wide range of topics that have traditionally been the privy of an overwhelmingly white and male architectural culture only. The informative critiques and ruminations on such wide-ranging subjects as history, music, pedagogy, practice, aesthetics, urbanism, social justice, racial and spatial theory, as well as professional responsibility contained within are all penned from an African American perspective; a small but no less vital point of view that has been missing from the discipline for far too long.
Reviews
People, places and politics are central to all architecture. Social equity and front-and-center participation can only be created if talent can be trained, heard and flourish. Craig’s essays forcefully establish that using bolt-cutters to remove the shackles of our non-diverse architecture profession is essential if the social equity of diverse creation is to thrive. Read these essays with your eyes; understand them with your heart; act with your color-blind choices. Let his messages spread like a virus and infect us all.
Jeffrey A. Scherer, FAIA
Founding Principal, MSR
The future — our future — will be shaped in the space among monolithic institutions and the people whose roots, passions, and talents are seen by many to occupy the fringe. Risk resides in this space, of course, and Wilkins engages it fully, helping us to imagine new practices, curricula, and potential. As brotha Craig asks: ready for a little sumpin’ sumpin’ special?
Wes Janz, Architect
Professor of Architecture, Ball State University
Spanning three decades, Craig Wilkins’ essays, ranging in tone from playful and rebellious to critical and combative, reflect his evolving intellectual memoir on the complexities surrounding diversity and architecture. From the historic Million Man March to the trajectory of the Hip Hop phenomenon and its ability to empower the marginalized and disenfranchised in the construction of a just society, Wilkins, a designer with activist tendencies as well as a scholar and cultural critic, challenges conventional lenses that frame our world.
Kathryn H. Anthony
ACSA Distinguished Professor, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Author, Designing for Diversity: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession