by Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
Contributing Editor

Summary: How open to black architects is access to the white patron establishment, what progress has occurred, and what still remains to be done? how open is access to the white patron establishment, what progress has occurred and what still remains to be done? Read opinions by black practitioners from various parts of the nation along with comments by a major patron.

Instead of resting in a few autocratic hands, architect selection has been spread over a great surface, determined by innumerable top and middle executives, committees, college presidents, museum directors, boards of directors; second guessed by multiple review boards, mortgage lenders, bankers, insurance companies, and the bond-voting electorate; and in the end praised or condemned by battalions of building users, visitors, maintenance staffs, passers by, and professional critics.

This system has worked very well for established design firms and for rising firms with the right credentials. It has had the opposite effect on the fortunes of black architects, leaving them impatiently waiting to come in from the cold of exclusion into the warm precincts of acceptance and good connections.

You cannot legitimately say you do not know of qualified black architects if you haven’t looked
—Zevilla Jackson-Preston

As a result, a very high volume of work by black architects has come to them from within the black community and from set asides. This has meant on the one hand, an architectural diet mostly of schools, churches, and local community centers, rich in personal fulfillment, but thin in fee income and unpredictable as to volume. Moreover, such structures do not demand the resources of a very large firm, and the firm that can easily prepare contract documents and construction administration services for delivering an elementary school will be stretched to do the same for a 30-story office building or a $40 million museum.

On the other hand, set-aside programs have offered minority architects the first step up the ladder to success.

A question of size?
The disadvantages of modest size and limited resources have not been lost on the white patron establishment that commissions America’s largest and most significant buildings. Tales abound of black-owned firms not invited to submit credentials due to their size, most recently in the selection of a well-known majority architect to design the National Museum of African Art on 110th Street in Manhattan. One cannot fault owners if that has been the sole cause for rejection. The phenomenon isn’t limited to the private patron, whose circle is hardest for the black architect to penetrate. The public client, too—from federal agencies and state construction authorities all the way to city and township departments of design and construction, and local school boards—admit, when asked, to this form of discrimination, citing doubt about the black architect’s resources of people, technology, and capital being capable of delivering the work on time, on budget, and at the desired level of quality.

We need the black architects to go down below 96th Street.
—Roberta Washington.

The full-text article develops these points and the insight of the late publisher of Jet and Ebony, John H. Johnson, who early on made the bold and rewarding move of exploring and tapping the talent of black architecture firms for his publishing firm’s Chicago headquarters. To develop business opportunities, Johnson said, it is important to be in “the area of gossip”; to be in the informal gatherings where business deals are initiated.

You will also hear from:

• Zevilla Jackson Preston, RA. Black architects need the support of the wealthy black community, including sports and entertainment personalities. You cannot legitimately say you do not know of qualified black architects if you haven’t looked. It is national exposure for black architects’ work that will help crack the glass ceiling.
• Michael E. Willis, FAIA. Depend on your network and yourself, build your expertise—sometimes with partners but mostly without—and show your work. God bless her forever, but don't wait for Oprah.
• M. David Lee, FAIA. The tendency on holding minority and young firms to a different set of selection criteria than star firms is counter to the clients’ own interests. And on the dismal record of black athletes, celebrities, and captains of industry in hiring black architects, it’s true: not knowing is not a legitimate excuse.
• Jack Travis, FAIA. It is important for black architects to get their work known by potential patrons. As Roberta Washington, whose office is on 125th Street, has said, “we need the black architects to go down below 96th Street.”
• Cornell West. “Affirmative action is not the most important issue for black progress in America, but it is part of a redistributive chain that must be strengthened if we are to confront and eliminate black poverty,” West writes in Race Matters. “If there were social democratic redistributive measures that wiped out black poverty, and if racial and sexual discrimination could be abated through the good will and meritorious judgments of those in power, affirmative action would be unnecessary.”

The full-text article also explores the effectiveness of affirmative action and set asides, black-owned banks, churches and public works as patrons, marketing, and architects acting as catalysts for creating work opportunities.

To read the full-text article, click here.