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When Kimberly Dowdell becomes president of the American Institute of Architects next month, her ascent will be remarkable. Ms. Dowdell, an architect in a profession that is overwhelmingly white and male, is a Black woman and the first to hold the position in the group’s 166-year history.
African Americans make up 13.6 percent of the U.S. population, but only 1.8 percent of the country’s licensed architects are black, according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Less than a quarter of the nearly 120,000 licensed architects in the United States are women, and less than half of 1 percent of architects are black women.
There are so few black women architects, and getting licensed is such a point of pride among them, that many take pains to note their place in the chronology of progress in the field — Ms. Dowdell, 40, said that in 2013: She became the 295th living black woman to be licensed in the United States.
There are small signs of change: Nearly 3 percent of architects licensed last year were black, and 43 percent of new architects were women.
“We are working on moving the needle, but it will take at least a decade,” said Ms. Dowdell, director of strategic relations at design firm HOK and based in Chicago. She pointed out that it can take ten years or more to earn an architecture degree, meet a work experience requirement and pass licensing exams to become a registered architect.
Yet progress toward racial and gender equality in the profession is by no means guaranteed, especially now that the Supreme Court has reversed affirmative action in college admissions. Some say there has been a decline in the diversity efforts companies have trumpeted in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
“There has always been a backlash against black progress,” says Sharon Egretta Sutton, 82, a distinguished visiting professor at the Parsons School of Design in New York – and the twelfth black female certified American architect.
Still, the visible presence of a black woman at the top of the AIA, which has more than 96,000 members, is an achievement in itself and perhaps an inspiration to others, Ms. Dowdell said. “Representation matters,” she added.
The design professions help shape what’s built in this country, and architecture isn’t the only one lacking diversity.
Of licensed landscape architects, only 0.8 percent are black and 0.3 percent are black women, said Matt Miller, chief executive of the board that administers the landscape architect registration exam. Thirty-nine percent of landscape architects are women.
Interior design has an inverse gender gap: there are far more women than men in the field, in part because for decades women were unable to cope with the rigors of architecture and were instead consigned to interior design. Only about 1.5 percent of practitioners are black, says Cheryl S. Durst, the CEO of the International Interior Design Association.
The share of black architects is significantly lower than the share of black professionals in other fields that require intensive study and rigorous exams. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 6 percent of lawyers in the United States are black.
The lack of Black architects means that the buildings where many U.S. minority groups live, work and play are often designed by people who may not be attuned to their cultural reference points, experts say. And the design of all spaces, regardless of who uses them, can suffer if decisions don’t include a diversity of perspectives. Even memorials to enslaved Africans in this country can be designed by people who are not black.
But the scarcity of black architects could be self-perpetuating, black industry observers say. Young people may not learn the profession if there are no architects in their community. Black parents may also be wary of the profession if architecture only comes as a threat to their lives, such as with the arrival of luxury homes that displace local residents.
“If you see architecture as the enemy, it’s hard to get kids to say, ‘I want to do that,’” says Craig Wilkins, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan.
And parents may be reluctant to take on debt to pay for a child’s architectural education — which can require thousands of dollars in materials in addition to tuition — given that the average salary (less than $83,000) lags behind that in adjacent fields such as technology.
The cost of licensure is another reason that architecture is considered a privileged profession. Candidates must pass six tests of the architecture registration exam – totaling more than $1,400 – and it is common for candidates to take tests multiple times to pass. Only practice material is expensive.
For decades, black architects have worked to make their way in the field. Following the civil rights movement, many started their own businesses. “At the time, they were limited in how much they could make progress at majority-owned companies,” says Steven Lewis, director at ZGF, a majority-owned design firm.
In 1971, black architects united to form the National Organization of Minority Architects. “It gave us a safe space where we could discuss issues, but also share our work and celebrate our work,” said Mr. Lewis, a former president of the organization.
In the 1980s, two NOMA members began searching for recognized black architects for what they would call the Directory of African American Architects. “We went to conferences and asked around,” says Bradford Grant, one of the directory creators and interim chairman of Howard University’s architecture department.
Their first edition, printed in 1991, had 870 names. Today, NOMA maintains the directory online. Current total: 2,535 (1,942 men, 593 women).
Richie Hands, 34, was among the newly recognized architects recognized at a ceremony at NOMA’s annual conference last month. “Now I can say I’m an architect, which is great,” he said.
Black women have rooted each other. Kathryn T. Prigmore, director of operations in Washington for Black-owned company Moody Nolan, has organized presentations at conferences in which women share their stories of adversity and achievement. Katherine Williams, an architect in Falls Church, Virginia, founded the Black Women in Architecture Network to bring colleagues together for brunches and raise money to help licensing candidates with exam costs.
And there are programs to introduce black youth to architecture. NOMA chapters offer summer camps. Michael Ford, an architect and founder of BrandNu Design Studio, has invited rappers to his Hip Hop Architecture Camp sessions in an effort to make the profession “more culturally relevant,” he said.
Howard University has trained more black architects than all other historically black colleges and universities, and more than all predominantly white institutions combined, said professor Grant, who has done research on the subject. Howard has significantly more female architecture students than male ones, he added.
Despite large-scale efforts, the greatest progress for people of color since 2018 has been made by those who identify as Latino, and Black women appear to be making more progress than Black men. The lack of progress has discouraged some.
“Build the pipeline – I’ve been hearing that for fifty years,” says Dr. Sutton, who has written about her experiences being recruited into Columbia’s architecture program after a campus uprising in 1968 and the students’ drive to improve conditions in the slums near the school. .
“Working outside the system may offer the most hope right now,” she said. “Maybe change has to come from the ground up.”
Some black architects have recently been able to advance at predominantly white firms. Others advocate a community-centered design process and call themselves “design justice practitioners.” Peter Robinson, an assistant professor at Cornell, encourages students to learn from and help preserve the spaces Black people have created for themselves. He recently devoted a design studio to the community gardens that Brooklyn residents had created on abandoned lots.
Ms. Williams of the Black Women in Architecture Network said she and others could only accomplish so much in a society that persisted in “seeing people who are not white men as less qualified.”
“What is needed most is a changing culture,” she added.
