Architect Sekou Cooke uses personal narratives and interviews to examine the challenges that Black architects face in the United States and their vision for the future.
Black Architect is a provocative and deeply personal investigation into the intersection of race, identity, and the built environment. Written by architect and educator Sekou Cooke, author of Hip-Hop Architecture, this book blends memoir, cultural critique, and a series of candid conversations with leading Black practitioners to explore what it truly means to be a Black architect in America.
Cooke traces his journey from a childhood in Jamaica and an early fascination with architecture to Ivy League institutions and into a professional field shaped by Eurocentric ideals, confronting readers with an uncomfortable reality: architecture in the United States continues to be constructed—both literally and conceptually—through a predominantly white lens. But what happens when Blackness enters that space, not just as identity but as a mode of thinking, designing, and living?
Through a compelling mix of personal narrative and interviews with some of today’s most influential Black designers and thinkers, Black Architect offers answers to that question. The book charts the historical marginalization of Black voices in architecture, the structural and cultural obstacles they face, and the alternative visions they bring to the discipline. It offers both a critical reckoning with architecture’s exclusionary past and a hopeful blueprint for a more inclusive future. Most importantly, it highlights why the subject matters to everyone, including those who are neither Black nor architects.
