by Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
Contributing Editor

Summary: At work is a new generation of minority architects who experience, but are not deterred by the more subtle forms of exclusion and unequal opportunities that persist today. Below is an excerpt of interviews with two such architects: June Grant in Oakland and Zevilla Jackson Preston in Harlem. Their focus is to contribute to society by re-examining current processes, looking at other disciplines for insights, using the latest tools for communicating and delivering design, and becoming a force in the community. (For the full article, click on the PDF link in the reference column.)

June Grant, RA
June Grant, founder and principal of BLINK-lab, is such an architect. Born in Jamaica, she realized early its cultural restrictions, and sought access through emigration, as many before her. She ended up earning a degree in international finance from Baruch College at the City University of New York, followed by an MArch from Yale, followed by moving to Oakland to set up a small but active office in a peaceful old Black district.

SAK: You have two business-related degrees, and a graduate degree in architecture. Why architecture?
JG: The built environment has been a fascination for as long as I can remember—neighborhoods, people, intersection, and movement. Architecture was all I have ever dreamt of pursuing. When I arrived in the U.S., I discovered that as a permanent resident I did not qualify for financial support, which I would need during graduate study. I needed a plan. Lacking the architectural background and financial support to prepare for entry into an architecture program at the graduate level, I studied for a second degree in international finance, with a minor in studio art. My plan was to graduate with honors, work at a well-paying job, save for graduate school, and sculpt nights until I received my citizenship papers. Having a business and sculpture background has been a vast asset.

SAK: Did you at Yale encounter stereotyped attitudes regarding women students and other minorities?
JG: In my graduating class, I remember one Mexican Chinese American [he was born in the U.S. with one parent from Mexico and the other from China]; no Native Americans. The Asian population was well represented. This I noted but it was not my essential concern. My intent at Yale was to enjoy three years studying what I had waited for all my life. At Yale, I encountered a far more serious issue than stereotype. My chief concern and source of aggravation and disappointment was and continues to be how Euro-focused and insular the architecture program was. To an immigrant such as myself, with a strong grounding in world art, history, and economics, this small window through which I was asked to view the world was simply frustrating and oppressive.

SAK: Your firm is called Blink!
JG: I wish there were a mystery to the name but there is none. The original was “Think,” but that was a bit pompous. I remember one of my first instructors at Yale declaring: “there is no room for whimsy in Architecture!” So out of rebellion came “Blink!” If you wish, you could make the association that B relates to Borderlessness (an international citizen); “link” the means. And that would be true. When I first started to craft the idea of my studio, it was clear that my interests were so vast I needed to go beyond traditional architectural thought; a lab/research type environment, questioning concepts and developing ideas.

Zevilla Jackson Preston
Practicing on the opposite coast from Oakland is another young African American woman architect. Zevilla Jackson Preston is principal of J-P Design, Inc. (JPD), a 13-year-old practice situated in a Harlem storefront on West 131st Street. The office is a single space subdivided by vertical industrial corrugated siding that gives it a gritty, no-nonsense scale. A blond wood conference table is inlaid with African symbols.

SAK: How did you end up starting your own firm?
ZJP. I was a fast learner and working on my own as a design consultant just three years out of college (City College of New York) after short stints with Roberta Washington and Harry Simmons. When I came out of school the initial idea was not to work for a large White firm. My thought was: “You’re Black, you go to work for a small Black firm.” True or not, that was the perception. At that time [1990] my experience had been that White firms didn’t hire young Black people fresh out of school coming from schools like City College. If you came from MIT, Cornell, or Harvard, maybe your chances were greater.

I was fortunate enough to find a firm like Roberta Washington. If I stand on anyone’s shoulders, it’s the Roberta Washingtons of this world! Being a firm owner, I understand that it takes a special principal and a special firm to invest in the development of a young person by taking time to teach a young architect what they themselves had learned from someone else, and not being so busy they’re not willing to pass it on.

SAK: What are your design principles?
ZJP: As an architect I care most about pushing the mundane, ordinary envelope of the spaces that city dwellers live in every day so the architecture can embrace people and their lives, not run counter to them. New York is spending so much money on housing and doing all of it the same way, because no one is suggesting any other way. Finding answers to design challenges in the built environment that affect the ordinary person, not an elite class, is what excites me about architecture. Change only comes through looking at what’s out here critically, writing about it, forcing people to discuss it. Then you start to see progress.

There must be a market for experimental apartment buildings that have nuclear apartment units, along with common kitchens and common dining rooms and common living rooms, and the extended family can rent it. The apartment building then begins to look like a dormitory facility that you might get on a college campus. What’s wrong with that? And as for housing for the elderly, perhaps you don’t really need it. Maybe what you need are extended living environments where you can live with your family in an apartment building and have a separate smaller efficiency unit for an elderly person who’s part of their unit. Why do we have to shut off elderly people in separate buildings? Try telling these things to HPD [Department of Housing Preservation and Development, a New York City agency].