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Architecture Is Political

@archispolly

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A podcast where black and brown folks have a conversation about architecture. Listen on #applepodcasts #iheartradio #spotifypodcast #overcastpodcast

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🎤Mic Drop!🎤 Closing out the fifth season of ArchIsPolly 2025 is Amber N. Wiley, PhD and her transformative new book 'Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital' Our conversation covers the intersection of race, architecture, and education in Washington, DC's history. In this clip, discover how Washingtonians transformed public education into a strategy for liberation and community power. Amber chronicles how public school buildings became symbols of agency, citizenship, and resistance in the face of white supremacy. For many communities in Washington, DC, the school building was a permanent structure made of sturdy material that represented liberation, self-determination, and the right to exist as full citizens of the United States.In this episode, we explore the significant impact of Walter Fauntroy and his powerful vision for Washington, DC. We connect the Model City program, the 1963 March on Washington, and long-term community revitalization efforts. Learn how Fauntroy emphasized education and housing as foundations of strong neighborhoods, advocated for urban renewal that did not displace residents, and envisioned schools as central community hubs. We also highlight how his leadership created opportunities for architects and builders and helped reshape Washington, DC in ways that respected both development and community needs. by @archispolly

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8 months ago

Lastly, let’s 🎉🎉🙌🏾🙌🏾 the 2025 recipient Leslie Aileen Ponce-Diaz (Honorable Mention). “my name is Leslie ponce-diaz. I’m currently based in Boston. Born and raised in Kansas City. I heard about this scholarship through the @bosnoma newsletter. I applied to the no one and I honestly didn’t think I was gonna get it I’ll try to put myself out there. And so it gave me a lot of confidence and it also helped me look back at my own kind of growth throughout Noma. Like, just how it has also helped me find my voice in teaching and project Pipeline students. It’s cool to be able to reflect through the essays and also my involvement in school and so on. That’s why I applied” by @archispolly

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9 months ago

Wayyyy back when I was on the @districtnoma board… @kdapllc was president, I think Barbara was AIADC president, AND we won @nomanational Chapter of the Year. #goodtimes by @archispolly

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9 months ago

🎤Mic Drop!🎤 We celebrate this 100th episode with the recipients of The DVC Memorial Scholarship. The 2025 recipients are Taylor Latimer (Harrisburg Memorial Award), Cheryl Dixon (DC Memorial Award), @miss.kenzie_ (NOMA Award), and Leslie Aileen Ponce-Diaz (Honorable Mention). My name is MaKenzie Elam. I am originally from Durham, North Carolina. Work in Charlotte, North Carolina. Saw it in a Facebook group a couple years ago when I wasn’t sitting for my exams. And I kind of bookmarked it in my head and then I saw it again in a different Facebook group and I was like, you know, maybe I should apply. We’ll see what happens. I think I did the black women. In architecture. I think that was like, the more, I don’t think you had to be like DC or Pennsylvania. So I was like, I’ll just pick these two and then we’ll shoot for the moon . But I think it’s just nice to have different categories so then you can recognize multiple women, multiple minorities on their journey. ‘cause no one’s journey is the same. We’re all on the same path and similar journeys to be licensed. by @archispolly

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10 months ago

🎤Mic Drop!🎤 We celebrate this 100th episode with the recipients of The DVC Memorial Scholarship. The 2025 recipients are @TaylorrLatimer (Harrisburg Memorial Award), Cheryl Dixon (DC Memorial Award), Makenzie Anane Elam (NOMA Award), and Leslie Aileen Ponce-Diaz (Honorable Mention). Together they explore ways to expand the scholarship’s impact by suggesting resources for study materials, fostering stronger community ties among recipients, and establishing a shared network directory. The discussion concludes with heartfelt gratitude for the support and recognition the scholarship provides. This year’s recipients each received $1,410 toward their exams. Taylor Latimer I work at OCA Architects. I’ve been here for about three years, architectural designer. I’m the @newjerseynoma President. My connection to the scholarship. I’m really big on the network and family and so I joined the writing the Vortex Facebook group. And so I’m always trying to connect to people and find new ways that I can have a support system. So, i’ve always checked in on that group and looked in on, you know, @bwa_network the brunches. I would try to, to join those if I could. And they posted about this, this scholarship and this would be perfect for me. So until I got connected. by @archispolly

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10 months ago

🎤Mic Drop!🎤 We celebrate this 100th episode with the recipients of The DVC Memorial Scholarship. The 2025 recipients are Taylor Latimer (Harrisburg Memorial Award), Cheryl Dixon (DC Memorial Award), Makenzie Anane Elam (NOMA Award), and Leslie Aileen Ponce-Diaz (Honorable Mention) I’m @cherylddesign, originally from Atlanta, Georgia. I currently live and work in Washington, DC so @districtnoma @bmorenomaorg and then @va.noma chapters there always was talk of like, oh, you have to go to this brunch supporting bwa. Oh, there’s scholarship opportunities. Got to the point of like, okay, let’s, let’s really stick with these exams. Let’s, let’s kind of get serious. Very. Encouraging to know that there was support financially in doing this. So there’s, there’s plenty of resources and study groups, but then this also is a very large financial undertaking. So it was very great to know that there was a resource there to also support fiscally.#dvcarescholarships by @archispolly

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a year ago

Sports stadiums have always fascinated me. But can you imagine flights being rerouted on game days? Affecting communities who never had planes flying over their homes before. by @archispolly

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a year ago

🎤Mic Drop!🎤 In this episode, @melisaangelein shares her path to becoming an architect in St. Louis, Missouri and the importance of involving community voices in the design process. Melisa talks about her career trajectory, from her experiences in various firms to founding her own practice, @blackarc.design which centers on community-driven design. She shares insights from her involvement in panels and fellowships, emphasizing her design philosophy’s global inspirations. Melissa also reveals her teaching methods at Washington University in St. Louis which focuses on collaborative and contextual learning. “I don’t hang out with a ton of architects. My friends and family are all outside of architecture and I’ve found that architects sometimes get stuck in this moment of let’s hang out with other architects who are speaking the exact same thing that we’re speaking. Where I find that the work gets rich and deep and wonderful for me is when I’m pulling in a voice that is not a formal architect but is doing all of the architect things. They’re already designing, they’re already building. And that’s actually how I modeled my company. Every time we enter a project, we look for the people who are building already and have that knowledge.And then we hire them as the team. And that’s purely to give us a very specific knowledge of place and space and systems that we aren’t going to see as a fly in architect. This is how I’ve learned these particular things by working with developers. This is how you ask for it. How you advocate for it. How it could show up in the built environment. I find that people sometimes need the ability to dream big. And I didn’t dream big until I really got into architecture. There’s all these different precedents that I can tap into. And that’s not available to people who are not in architecture. They don’t know that those things exist. And so it’s part of like giving a little window into some other really cool things that we can do so that they have the ability to dream big outside of a circumstance that we’re designing for.” by @archispolly

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a year ago

🎤Mic Drop!🎤 What if your home wasn’t just an investment but part of a shared future? In Homes for Living, urban planner and oral historian @jonathantarleton explores two NYC co-ops caught in a high-stakes debate: privatize and profit, or protect housing as a public good. The things that brought these two communities together St. James and Southbridge is two senators. So if you could just talk about Mitchell-Llama and how these two senators created this. #MitchellLlama, New York state legislators who were the sponsors of the bill which is technically called the Limited Profit housing Companies Act of 1955. This program was a response to a housing crisis post-war. There was a deep concern that there were plenty of people who were not poor enough to qualify for public housing. So this program which built both rental and co-op units was intended to fill that gap. It was also intended to try to keep particularly middle income white folks in the city at a time of growing suburbs. This program built almost 140,000 apartments in #NewYorkCity alone. Half of those were co-ops. Half of those were rental apartments. This was also a time of new #FairHousing law in the us And for the first time, a lot of black New Yorkers and, and other New Yorkers of color were able to access this housing in a way that was less restrictive than in previous years.So that’s one way in which, you know, St. #JamesTowers becomes like a very thriving, black middle income community when the actual creators of the program never intended that by @archispolly

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🎤Mic Drop!🎤 Andria Chatmon, a community organizer from @empower_dc , and East Peterson-Trujillo, campaign director at the @gnd4dc , discuss strategies to address DC’s affordable housing crisis. #Socialhousing may be the alternative solution that includes mixed-income government-owned properties with a focus on environmental sustainability and tenant empowerment.————Social housing as we know it is most closely tied to the city of Vienna, Austria. Which invested a ton of resources in housing. About 50 percent of the population of Vienna lives in social housing and those folks pay like a third of what comparable cities in London or Dublin pay in their rent. Our vision in D. C. is that we would construct or remodel buildings to really high environmental standards, which is also really good and important for public health. And hopefully undo some of the harm that we’ve seen disrepair of our government housing. And then these units are rented to folks with various income levels. Incorporate direct services or community organizations or grocery stores or childcare into like the ground floor of development and then also prioritize residents being hired for things like building maintenance or landscaping, repairs, leasing and all of that.————-Both public housing and social housing, they're publicly funded and operated. They're designed to meet affordability needs of low income households. That's the center core. But public housing is administered by the D.C. Housing Authority. It's subject to all of those guidelines by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. And it has that deep affordability for extremely low income households. Whereas social housing would have a new agency. We envision the new agency being the office of social housing development that would be responsible for maintaining the properties. So it wouldn't be under HUD or under DCHA and it would be mixed income. There would be some market rate units on the property and then the others would be that split between extremely low income and low income. For social housing, there's that intentional focus on the buildings being green, the buildings being near public transit. by @archispolly

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🎤Mic Drop!🎤 @teethearchitect85 shares her journey from Ohio to DC, her experiences in the #architecture industry, and her vision for the future of @DCNOMA. She talks about her passion for #HealthcareArchitecture, the challenges of navigating professional spaces as a #BlackWoman, and the importance of giving back to the community. We also discuss the need for honesty, the importance of mental health, and how advocating for change within the industry can empower younger generations of #BlackArchitects. by @archispolly

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#housingcrisis by @archispolly

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a year ago