Napkin Sketch 011: Dark Matters University's Venesa Alicea-Chuqui, Ifeoma Ebo, LEED AP, NOMA + Bryan C. Lee, Jr. by Danei Cesario

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Dark Matter University (DMU) is a democratic collaborative network of academics, practitioners and educators working to create new forms of knowledge sharing. The university is founded to work inside and outside of existing systems to challenge, inform, and reshape our present world towards a better future. Venesa Alicea-Chuqui, Ifeoma Ebo, LEED AP, NOMA + Bryan C. Lee, Jr. are among the many key contributors + organizers of DMU.

Additionally, Venesa Alicea-Chuqui is founding principal at NYVARCH Architecture.

Ifeoma Ebo, LEED AP, NOMA is the founding director of Creative Urban Alchemy, LLC

Bryan C. Lee, Jr. is founder and design principal at Colloqate.

Location: Zoom

1.       Beverage of choice?

Venesa Alicea-Chuqui: Seltzer water

Ifeoma Ebo: Water

Bryan Lee Jr.: Water with a bit of lemon + watermelon juice. Or sweet tea.

2.      Beyond Dark Matters University (DMU), what are you best known for?

VA: My involvement with lots of different organizations, including AIA and City College.

IE: Same, namely Blackspace and Open Space for Design Justice.

BL: Paper Monuments or Project Pipeline. Educational space is where I have been invested for over a decade. Many people know that program and the impacts that it has had on the world.

3.       Tell us more about the Dark Matters University origin story + how it aligned with your values.

VA:  There are many origin points.  Personally, I was connected with Bryan through a Design As Protest (DAP) event we held at the Center for Architecture on the National Day of Action.  A few years later, I helped co-organize a Design Justice Summit with AIA National.  Fast forward a few years later to the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath of that, DAP had some national calls.  There was some online discussion and virtual chatter about the role of design education and how it could evolve and I got involved on those calls, which was almost a year ago in August, from the official launch of DMU. 

I personally got involved because of design justice in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the lack of response, aid and the importance of community resiliency when resources are not being provided. This was building on some of what I saw in New York City after Superstorm Sandy, so my initial involvement really stemmed from resiliency conversations and community vulnerabilities. There are so many different lenses you can use when you really look at design justice; part of what I’ve been doing these last few years is what I call ‘de-colonizing’ my education and my practice.  I am rethinking about a lot of things that I took for granted or didn't think of correctly and looking at how do we think things a little bit differently. 

The idea of like anti-racist design justice is important to me because it's really centering the lived experience of people in space and we have a big role in that as architects and planners in creating and building and designing those spaces.

IE: I wasn't deeply entrenched in the Initial organizing of DMU, but when it came about, I was already teaching a class on design justice.  DMU allowed me to collaborate with others to develop structure for what an academic environment could look like that centered in design justice.  It was an incredibly valuable for me because at that point, I was doing it by myself.  DMU created a foundation where others could tap into.

The intellectual capacity of other BIPOC academics exploring these topics in their various corners of the country and even the globally working together to create structure to what a pedagogy and curriculum could look like was a lot more robust than what we could do individually.

DC: Honestly, that's the power of collaboration -  there are many who work in silos and then there's so much that's missed in that format, because one person can only do so much.

VA: And one of the things that I find so fascinating about the collective work is the natural tendencies for collaboration, but also the concept of co-creation, which is something that we've really been looking at; co-producing knowledge is something that you don't really discuss in education. The collective efforts are more important than the one.

BL:  DMU is a byproduct of DAP getting off the ground and having an academic and educational organizing group.  This flowed out of the DAP Collective and into its own self-sustaining entity. So as far as it aligns, it was a direct result of organizing around what’s been done over the last five years.  Prior to that, there was Project Pipeline, which centered on social justice through design and education, so it was always a brainchild of design justice ethos from the very beginning.

4.      How do you believe DMU meets the needs of designers + students?

IIE: I think this building off of what Venesa just mentioned -- this needed to understand how to work collaboratively or how important the concept of collectivism is to design equity in the built environment because we're not taught to work collaboratively with others as students.  I think that definitely is an incredible asset to how you support students.  Just supporting that capacity building (particularly if students are interested in this type of work) directly impacts communities when we work collectively is amazing. Here, you can contribute your insight and expertise, but then also be open and flexible to that being molded and shaped by others.

BL: I think DMU’s intentions and the execution of DMU’s intentions are wrapped around shifting to a radical paradigm for how we think about the relationship between people and the spaces that they inhabit. So, the work itself challenges and aligns with the core mission of design justice, which is twofold. One is to challenge existing privilege and power structures that use architecture and design as a tool of oppression to maintain power. And the other is to fundamentally envision new methods and new modes of generating spaces that are civic, communal, social, by their very nature. And, that seeks some form of reparation through the process and outcomes of design.

VA: And I think the other element related to students is that we're really trying to promote co-teaching as a model, so that there's not necessarily one point of view in the room. It also ensures that there's representative diversity beyond race and ethnicity, but also in discipline in who the students are seeing and learning from.  we have been trying to sort of highlight authors of color, projects that are maybe not the traditional projects that you might learn about in school, but projects that embody design justice and community in their priorities.

DC: We have talked a lot about diversity of thought and inclusivity of varied experiences, and I think that that lends itself more to a better education.  

5.     How did you get here?

IE : My mother was born and raised in Nigeria and she came here because an African American woman who owned a cosmetic company saw her and decided to adopt her and bring her to United States.  That  kick-started a whole new life.  Ten or fifteen years later, she gave birth to me.  That took her away from scrubbing floors and taking care of other people's children through to getting her Masters degree at Columbia. I think that that really sets the tone for just me and just how I view the United States and its opportunities.  It’s always given me this perspective; I think the first-generation American is just like ‘you have to be whatever is out there’ and I think that's why I’m in this place right now, where I am doing so many things.

Much is borne in me understanding my mother's story and not wanting it to be in vain. Being born to someone who arrived in this country during the Civil Rights Movement and struggled during a really tough time here while not fully understanding it but benefiting from its outcomes is interesting to me. How did I get here, I think, is my mom's fight, but also my own being a black woman in this country - nothing comes easily.

VA: I would say, my mother and my grandfather. He came from Puerto Rico to New York when labor was being recruited from Puerto Rico in the 40s and 50s.  I did not realize until my early thirties that I was being groomed to be an architect my entire life.  My Uncle’s and architect, so he and my grandfather built the house that I would spend my summers in in Puerto Rico on the farm. It was destroyed during Hurricane Maria and it felt full circle, like, I have an opportunity to rebuild a place for my family and that to me is like the most important thing.

I don’t remember where I saw it, but someone said architecture is a Western notion --everywhere else people build, people do this on their own.  I remember giving a presentation to a first grade class in Harlem and I was trying to explain what an architect is; a bunch of hands went up:  “oh my grandmother built the house back in Jamaica”.  So many places like where our families come from in the Caribbean are involved with building their own homes.

People know what they want and what they need.  I’ve worked on some pretty cool projects but, honestly, I just want to build a house from my mom (laughs).

DC: I think you come to a point in your career where you have worked on a number of high profile projects, and (like you said) it comes full circle where you start to wonder how you can apply your education and experience to building your own community, home and profession.

BL: It's a long road.  It's one of those that started very young and I've always really wanted to be an architect. I've always really wanted to do architecture as a means to support family, and that family extended to supporting my community and that extended to supporting a larger culture. So, I'm here because my family supported an adolescent dream of designing spaces that served to anchor community in real ways. And so that grew into something that defined every part of our practice today.

 

6.       What do you like to do (beyond DMU + your other commitments)?

IE: I enjoy gardening and have a beautiful vegetable garden with kale, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, you name it. I love spending time there.

BL: I like to coach sports.  I used to coach high school football and baseball, and I like to play both of those things as well. I like the beach and (these days), I like to run a little bit more than I used or go on long walks. I really like to write as well. It's difficult, but it is a thing that I enjoy, especially when I'm effective at it.

VA: I like dancing—for me, it’s healing. I also work a lot with Students in helping them navigate the path to licensure to become registered architects.  I’ve been very active with the architecture alumni at my alma mater City College.

7.       Can you suggest a book?

IE: The recently-published Reconstructions from MOMA’s exhibit.  It's a compilation of essays from many different academics, practitioners and creatives. They made it into a field guide for those interested in doing work to rectify or reckon with the impacts of redlining.

VE: I recently started to tackle The Wretched of the Earth, which talks about the relationship between racism, colonialism and decolonization in general.

BL: Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois. It is a defining book of the last century in terms of blackness and where, how we've ended up, where we are in this country and ultimately gives a clear path forward. And to be clear, it gives us a clear path forward because this country never made any course corrections and never actually fixed the inherent problems that were vested into the creation of this nation.

So, it's a tremendous book and it gives a groundwork for so much of the work we do today.  The values of this country or the kind of ethos of America is vested in is connected to the labor capitalism of the north and the racial capitalism of the south that created a monster and persists today.

When we talk about design justice, one of the framing concepts is that for nearly every injustice that exists in this world, there's an architecture or plan or design that sustains that injustice. And that just means that everything is vested into the land to some extent. If we recognize that, then we have a better chance of solving some of our larger issues.

8.   What is the best lesson you have taught someone or been taught?

IE: To be curious and pursue my curiosity. I think when I graduated from school, I was very much interested in a lot of what is very prevalent today like design justice, activism, social equity, but there weren’t a lot of opportunities.

Creation-- whether it's going to Grad school or trying that unconventional organization to work for-- allowed me to grow, develop and expand my capacity and understanding of what's possible.  It also allowed me to interact with so many different people of different backgrounds, insights and skills at different scales.  I think that's really been helpful for me in my unique path.

VA:  It's been something that actually came out of the ACP fellowship the Association for Community design. There was a cohort of us who shared our experiences and in trying to chart our practices there was a lot of personal sharing, as well as professional. One thing that came out of it was the importance of pausing with purpose.  I keep repeating to myself as a learned lesson, but I also like to share it because so many of us are doing this work. For so many of us, it is a Labor of love, so we have to take care of ourselves, in order to be able to do the work and be able to bring our best self to the table.

BL: One of the best lessons that I learned early on in NOMA was that when you have a path or you have an aspiration in this world, everyone in front of you becomes a mentor.  That doesn't mean they always have positive attributes to, to bring to the world, but you learn a lesson from everyone. Making everyone a person that you can constantly be learning from will get you where you want to go faster. Learn from other people's mistakes, learn on someone else's dime, and trust people who are critical. DMX just said a few weeks ago, before he passed:  trust people to be who they are and trust yourself to see, to see that also trust for us that those who are.

9.   Favorite city + why?

BL: I really do love New Orleans. I would say my favorite city is Toronto. There is a shared history between Canada and United States that make the space really comfortable and familiar. Toronto is clean and deals with a lot of the same issues. So, I understand the city in real ways, I genuinely enjoy the people and the sites and features there.

IE:  Baia, Brazil.  It’s eclectic and home to many Afro Brazilians and there’s a beautiful blending of African and Portuguese cultures from the food to the architecture.  While there, I was living in a favela community, which fostered this culture of making, creating, adapting, and growing organically.  The favela could be perceived as chaos, but there was a pattern there that they knew.  A pair of outside eyes would have seen and it just looked like crazy chaos for them, but they had organization within and it was created by Community.  The government had to come in and work around it to make infrastructure work. I was so inspired by how informal settlements grow.

VA:  I really love to Barcelona. I think that there was like an interesting mix of sort of culture, history, but also some newness at the time that I went, around 2004. In the US, I love New Orleans.  It has a cultural heritage mixture of a melting pot of everything and everyone that ever landed there and there's something really beautiful about it.  They also have the best food!

10.   What advice would you give to future generations or tell your younger self?

VA:  Learn to negotiate and advocate for yourself early on. Don’t settle.

BL: For future generations: learn to fail a lot early and enjoy the process. Failure is just a rung on the ladder to success. Your job is to acknowledge the lesson and keep moving up.

IE: Don't put so much weight on what other people have to say about your path or your value.

11. If you could have dinner with anyone (alive or deceased), who would be?

IE: Toni Morrison.  She knew who she was and had a profound sense of self. woman, just like knew who she was. She was unapologetic and I just feel like I would get so much inspiration from he.  Her sense of inspired her to write what she's written and harness the creativity to put this into the world.

VA:  Antonio Arce, my grandfather.  He died when I was about 15 and I feel like I would want to have him tell his story. I would want to like have that recorded because we didn't really get to do that.

BL: W.E. B. Du Bois.  His life spanned between the harmful actions and foundational actions of what this nation was and what it would become. Someone who chronicled that experience is someone you want to engage with on a deeper level to document and to research the impacts of enslavement, on culture and community and black people writ large is tremendous.

I think ultimately, he was a forefather of sociology. You see it in his response around land value and land ownership, around educational attainment, around so many other corresponding or causal relationships between space and place and the people who inhabit those spaces.

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