Mission
The Black Reconstruction Collective (BRC) provides funding, design, and intellectual support to the ongoing and incomplete project of emancipation for the African Diaspora. The BRC is committed to multi-scalar and multi-disciplinary work dedicated to dismantling systemic white supremacy and hegemonic whiteness within art, design, and academia. Founded by a group of Black architects, artists, designers, and scholars, the BRC aims to amplify knowledge production and spatial practices by individuals and organizations that further the reconstruction project.
The BRC engages the public through an annual process of reviewing proposals and providing critical and financial support to projects that have been selected by the committee. This work will manifest in built commissions, research funding, exhibitions, events, and publications, that will collectively imagine transformations to the built environment in the Black Radical Tradition.
Founding Board Members
Emanuel Admassu is co-principal of AD—WO, an art and architecture practice based between Brooklyn and Providence and an Assistant Professor at Columbia University GSAPP.
Germane Barnes is the Director of Studio Barnes and an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture.
Sekou Cooke resides in Charlotte, North Carolina where he runs the design practice sekou cooke STUDIO and is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Master of Urban Design Program at UNC Charlotte.
J. Yolande Daniels is a partner at StudioSumo with offices in Los Angeles and New York, and an Assistant Professor at MIT.
Felecia Davis is principal of Felecia Davis Studio and an Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University and is the Director of SOFTLAB@PSU.
Mario Gooden is a Principal at Huff + Gooden Architects in New York and a Professor at Columbia University GSAPP where he is the co-director of the Global Africa Lab.
Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA, a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a MacArthur Fellow.
Olalekan Jeyifous is a Brooklyn-based visual artist who employs a sci-fi lens wrought with a synthesis of utopian and dystopian ideals.
V. Mitch McEwen is the co-founder of the design practice Atelier Office in Harlem and Assistant Professor at Princeton School of Architecture.
Amanda Williams is an acclaimed Chicago-based visual artist who’s work investigates color, race, and space in the city while blurring the conventional line between art and architecture.
Supporters
THE ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION
The Black Reconstruction Collective is one of 19 projects and organizations supported through the Foundation’s newly established Humanities in Place program. Humanities in Place will focus on work that includes or incorporates historic and community spaces, museums and other institutions, and media and conveners of cultural heritage and public experiences as spaces of learning, expression, and exchange. Organizations engaging in this work play a pivotal role in determining how and where the stories of our histories and communities are told across public experiences as varied as built environments, digital platforms, and ephemeral programs.
GRAHAM FOUNDATION
The Black Reconstruction Collective is one of 38 organizations to receive support for projects responding to today’s challenges, fostering new connections across disciplines, and expanding the field of architecture.