Below, there is an extensive list of Resources for reading and viewing on race and architecture, compiled by Mario Gooden, with Mabel O. Wilson and the Architectural League of New York staff – published by the Architectural League of New York. We would like to share this here. Please find a link to the original source of this list by clicking here.
Books and Articles:
Aggregate Collaborative Black Lives Matter project
Introduction: Black Lives Matter • Jonathan Massey, Meredith TenHoor with Sben Korsh
Is “Justice Architecture” Just? • Raphael Sperry
Schools and Prisons • Amber Wiley
Fair Policing for the Fair City? • Researchers for Fair Policing
Defensible Space and the Open Society • Joy Knoblauch
Designing the Great Migration • James D. Graham and Michael Abrahamson
The Invisible Brother with a Brick • Brian Goldstein
Race, Planning, and the American City • Joseph Heathcott
The Rights to the Suburb • Dianne Harris
Air and the Politics of Resistance • Derek R. Ford
Black Spaces Matter • Charles Davis II
Toward a Black Formalism • Darell Fields
Farming the Revolution • Mike Carriere, Antoine Carter, and Fidel Verdin
Valuing Black Lives Means Changing Curricula • Héctor Tarrido-Picard
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James Baldwin, “A Letter to My Nephew,” Progressive Magazine, 1962
James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” (Beacon Press, 1955)
Craig Barton, ed., Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001)
Adrienne Brown, The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019)
David Brown and William Williams, Row: Trajectories Through the Shotgun House (Rice School of Architecture, 2004)
Simone Brown, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (Duke University Press, 2015)
Anne Anlin Cheng, Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface (Oxford University Press, 2010)
Irene Cheng, “Race and Architectural Geometry: Thomas Jefferson’s Octagons” J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2015
Irene Cheng, Charles L. David, Mabel O. Wilson, Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic, June 2014
Kimberly Dowdell, “Racism is built into US Cities,” Fast Company, June 2020
Darrell Wayne Fields, Architecture in Black: Theory, Space and Appearance (Bloomsbury, 2015)
Thelma Golden, ed, Harlemworld: Metropolis as Metaphor (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2004)
Mario Gooden, “Appearances and (Non)Erasures: Mapping Confederate Monuments and the Racial Conditionedness of Liberation,” Chicago Architecture Biennial, 2019
Mario Gooden, Dark Space: Architecture, Representation, Black Identity (Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2016)
Nikole Hannah-Jones, “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine
Dianne Harris, Little White Houses (University of Minnesota Press, 2012)
Le Corbusier, “The Spirit Of The Machine, And Negroes In The USA,” When the Cathedrals Were White, pp. 158-164 (McGraw-Hill, 1964)
Bryan Lee, Jr., “America’s Cities Were Designed to Oppress,” Citylab, June 2020
Lesley Lokko, White Papers Black Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2000)
Joanne Merwood-Salisbury, “Western Architecture: Regionalism and Race in the Inland Architect,” Chicago Architecture Histories: Revisions and Alternatives, ed. by Charles Waldheim and Katerina Ruedi Ray (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Vintage, 1992)
Melvin Mitchell, The Crisis of the African-American Architect: Conflicting Cultures of Architecture and (Black) Power (iUniverse, 2002)
Jimmy Robert, “Imitation of Lives” , interview with Mario Gooden, Performa 17 Magazine, November 2017
Sarah Schindler, “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment,” Yale Law Journal, April 2015
Sharon Sutton, When Ivory Towers Were Black: A Story about Race in America’s Cities and Universities (Fordham University Press, 2017)
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Race for Profit (University of North Carolina Press, 2019)
Huda Tayob and Suzanne Hall, “Race, Space and Architecture: towards an open-access curriculum” (London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Sociology, 2019)
Dell Upton, What Can and Can’t be Said: Race Uplift and Monument Building in the Contemporary South (University of California Press, 2015)
Paul A. Wellington, Black Built: History and Architecture in the Black Community (2019)
Mark Wigley, White Walls, Designer Dresses (MIT Press, 1996)
Craig Wilkins, Diversity Among Architects: From Margin to Center (Routledge, 2016)
Craig L. Wilkins, The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture, and Music(University of Minnesota Press, 2007)
Mabel O. Wilson, Begin with the Past: Building the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture
Mabel O. Wilson, “Black Bodies/White Cities: Le Corbusier in Harlem” ANY: Architecture New York, No. 16, Whiteness: WHITE FORMS, FORMS OF WHITENESS, 1996
Mabel O. Wilson, “Carceral Architectures,” e-flux
Mabel O. Wilson, “Mine Not Yours,” e-flux
Mabel O. Wilson, Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums(University of California Press, 2012)
Mabel O. Wilson, “White by Design” Among Others: MoMA and Blackness,” ed. by Darby English and Charlotte Barat (MoMA Publications, 2019)
Whitney M. Young, 1968 AIA Convention Speech
Films and Performances
13th (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2016) — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8&feature=youtu.be
Black and Tan (dir. Dudley Murphy, 1929) –https://criticalcommons.org/Members/kfortmueller/clips/black-and-tan-1929/view
Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 — Available to rent at Youtube, Google Play, iTunes
Do the Right Thing (dir. Spike Lee 1989) — Available to rent at Youtube, Google Play, iTunes
Eyes on The Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (dir. Henry Hampton, 1987) – Available to purchase at PBS. All interviews from the series are available for free viewing and reading at the Washington University of St. Louis Film and Media Archive.
Fruitvale Station (dir. Ryan Coogler, 2013) — Available to rent at Youtube, Google Play, iTunes
I Am Not Your Negro (dir. Raoul Peck, 2016) — Available for free viewing at PBS until 6/21/20, available to rent at Youtube, Google Play, iTunes
Imitations of Lives (performance by Jimmy Robert, 2017) –https://pinupmagazine.org/articles/imitation-of-lives-performance-video-pinup-jimmy-robert
I Wanna Be Ready, (Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, 2018) –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3eO7xD8gmo
Killer of Sheep (dir. Charles Burnett, 1978) – https://www.milestonefilms.com/products/killer-of-sheep
Modern Living: Villa Savoye (performance by Gerard & Kelly, 2019) – Read a write-up of the performance by Alexander Gorlin and watch an excerpt here.
Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014) — Available for free rental at Youtube, Google Play, iTunes for the month of June
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (dir. Stanley Nelson, 2015) — Available for free viewing at PBS until 7/4/2020, available to rent at Youtube, Google Play, iTunes
Organizations