The Black Space Project

This presentation will outline the mission and activities of The Black Space Project, an interdisciplinary research initiative starting at the University of Texas at Austin. These activities include research collaboration with the National Trust, an exhibit on communal uses of the Black home, and a digital archive on non-licensed Black contributions to the built environment. All of our activities are meant to challenge the artist-architect definition of authorship within the discipline by pluralizing the historiography of Black architectural modernity in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Charles L. Davis II is an associate professor of architectural history and criticism and Director of the Architecture PhD Program at UT Austin’s School of Architecture. He received his PhD in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.Arch from the University at Buffalo. His academic research excavates the role of racial identity and race thinking in architectural history and contemporary design culture. He is currently working on a monograph entitled Black Architectural Modernity: A Spatial History of Racial Uplift in the U.S. Settler Colony. This research explores the historical role of spatial occupation and programmatic innovation in the development of a modern Black architectural tradition in the United States between 1865 and the 1990s.

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