Germane Barnes Talks Race and Space

Germane Barnes has been in my studio for less than five minutes and we’re already deep into one of my favorite activities: talking shit about the design community. He’s just flown in from Miami where he’s currently a tenured professor, but his roots are all Chicago. We know a lot of the same people, issues, and challenges that attempt to suffocate progressive voices in design, and specifically architecture.

“Architecture has not been nice to people of color. Historically it’s always been for white men, so it’s not nice to women either,” Germane says with a quizzically optimistic tone.

Less than 2% of registered architects in America are Black. It’s a field that remains powerfully gated and encumbered by multiple levels of -isms. Despite indulging me with a healthy dose of industry gossip, Germane is powerfully hopeful about the field—an outlook I spend most of our morning together questioning.

Tell me a little bit about who you were as a kid. How did you end up on this unusual trajectory?

I’ve wanted to be an architect since I was 4 years old. I’m one of those dorks.

I grew up in the Austin neighborhood in Chicago. If you keep going west down Chicago Avenue, you end up in a neighborhood called Oak Park. There were much better places to eat there and much nicer parks than in Austin, so we’d get in the car, drive out to Oak Park, and my siblings and I would play a game called That’s My House. The first one to spot a house they thought was beautiful would scream, “That’s my house!”

That’s where I saw my first Frank Lloyd Wright house, but I didn’t know it at the time. All I remember is playing that game as a kid and my parents were like, “Well, you know, architects build houses.”

I’d draw all the time, and before you knew it I was like, “I’m going to be an architect.” My parents wanted me to be a lawyer, but I was always drawing, sketching, and sculpting. After I finished my PSATs, recruitment letters started coming in—I scored insanely high on them. We went to big recruitment dinners at both Princeton and Stanford. There aren’t that many Black people at these schools, so when they saw my potential, they jumped on it.

Then one day I came home to the worst conversation. I walk into my house and my sister is sitting on the couch. At the time she went to Howard University in DC, and she was supposed to be at school. She says, “I have to tell you something. I’m at home because I have Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I have to start doing chemo.” After that my life took a turn.

We eventually found out she wouldn’t be able to go back to college. I decided to stay close to home and go to the University of Illinois at Champaign, which was only two hours away. I applied listing architecture as my major instead of law, but I didn’t tell my parents I did that.

On September 9, 2004, just a few days into the semester, I got a call from my dad. He told me my sister didn’t make it. That day changed everything for me. I kept asking myself, “Why does school even matter if someone I loved so much, someone so young, was taken from me?”

Eventually my academic record was in shambles. I had Fs on my transcript. I wasn’t comfortable explaining to anyone that I had lost my sister. I didn’t know I could take a leave of absence. I just kept pushing through, thinking I needed to get my degree and move on.

Then came the 2008 recession. No architecture jobs were available, and with my GPA below a 3.0, no graduate schools would touch me. That’s when I decided to try something completely different. I told my parents, “I want to move to Cape Town, South Africa for an unpaid internship.”

I found the opportunity through my school’s Career Services office. They had a program called Connect 123, which organized internships abroad. I hit them up and I remember using Skype to talk with a recruiter. By the end of the conversation he offered me the internship.

The internship totally reinvigorated me. It was the first time I’d ever seen architecture that had been done to help communities. We were doing work in impoverished towns for free. We worked in a township called Khayelitsha. Out there I realized there’s a lot of communities that deserve nice things, too. People deserve to have cool shit in their neighborhood. They shouldn’t have to go to other neighborhoods like I did. That’s where my entire practice came from.

So you find some direction during your internship. Do you begin thinking about going back to school after?

Yeah, I started applying to grad school for the second time. This time around I had some work experience and was more willing to talk about what happened with my sister.

I got waitlisted for two schools and a third school, Woodbury University in LA, asked me to come out for an interview. As soon as I got there Barbara Bestor, the chair of the program—and who is one of the biggest female architects in the country—opens my dossier and asks me to explain what happened during the semesters where I was failing.

The other parts of my dossier were exceptional. I told her if she picked me, she’d be getting that student—not the one who was dealing with a bunch of trauma. She just got it; from that point I was in. I went on to win every single award and graduated at the top of the class. I immediately got job offers at big firms as well.

Everyone always asks me how I ended up at that school. I always say they were the only school that actually showed me compassion. The rest just looked at my dossier and didn’t care. It’s funny, though. Now that I’ve had all this success, they come running back. Some have asked me if I wanted to come teach there.

It seems like the world was sort of pushing you away from architecture at several pivotal points in your life. What’s the thread that kept you holding on?

This is going to sound cheesy, but it’s the honest truth; I read a lot of comic books and have watched anime since I was a kid. I was always tied to those stories of the underdog kid who proves everyone wrong. That stubbornness has served me so well. Almost all the things people find me deficient in, I take as a challenge.

I used to have a bad stutter as a kid and went through nine years of speech therapy. I had to put in so much time to get past that—and architecture was no different. My freshman year one of my professors told me I wasn’t a good fit for architecture in the most condescending tone possible. I was just like, “Alright, challenge accepted.”

If you tell me I can’t do something, you’ve just given me fuel to prove you wrong.

How could architecture, or your vision for architecture, help develop poorer Chicago neighborhoods that have so few resources? Do you think you’d have to reinvent the economy to do it?

Not necessarily. The history of Black people in the United States is we’ve been given scraps. When it comes to food they take all the best parts of the chicken, give us the rest. Housing? The smallest lots. We’re always having to make more with less.

Look at hip-hop. We didn’t have all the tools, all the best equipment, but we made it cool as hell. That’s what we do. We innovate. It’s embedded in our DNA. We make something fly out of very little. The challenge is—how do we do that without it getting commodified?

I used to call it high-res versus low-res. High-res is that $100 million budget, $50 million budget—of course you’re going to make something fly with that. There are no parameters. But can you make something just as fly with a shoestring budget? Can you cook a meal for 12 people with $50 at Walmart instead of spending $100 at Whole Foods for two?

I built my career on making fly stuff out of low-res materials, flipping it, manipulating it, and stretching the limits of what I have.

There’s still a whole legal and licensing system in place that makes sure the “low-res” project stays limited. How do you navigate that?

There are always rules and regulations. They’ll tell you it’s for safety, for health, for fire codes, or structural stability. The people writing them all have the same background and the same narrow view of what’s possible, so they’re not going to know how to build outside of that.

The challenge comes in when you try to break out of that system. You have to go through a ton of meetings convincing people what you’re proposing works, even if it doesn’t fit their narrow vision of what’s allowed.

I had a project in Miami—a massive pavilion made out of wood and steel, prefabricated so it could go up fast and be reused. The code enforcement was on my case constantly saying, “This isn’t right. This isn’t how we do things.” But everything was designed to meet hurricane codes.

After a long back-and-forth with the engineer, they finally gave us the green light. But it took a lot of extra steps just to get them to understand something different.

How does this translate to your bigger vision? It sounds like you have a plan beyond just architectural projects.

My vision goes way beyond buildings. It’s about changing the whole field, breaking down barriers around race, gender, and class in architecture. The biggest platform I have for that isn’t actually as a designer; it’s as a professor. As an educator I can recruit more Black and brown students, secure scholarships for them, and put them into the field. I’ve already helped some of my students become professors themselves.

Representation is crucial. When students see someone who looks like them they’re more likely to stick it out, stay in school, and thrive in the field.

Tell me a little bit about your upcoming show at the Art Institute of Chicago, “Columnar Disorder.”

Everything goes back to when I was 16 and got arrested on my front porch. I got arrested for mistaken identity—whatever that means.

Fast-forward a few years, I finished college, became a professor, and applied for a Graham Foundation grant. The grant was for a proposal I called “Sacred Stoops,” where I wanted to travel to five cities and explore the significance of porches in different communities. I get the grant, started getting a bunch of press, and my work was featured in major shows like MoMA and the Chicago Architecture Biennial—all based on my porch work.

Then I get an email from the American Academy in Rome saying, “Hey, your name has been nominated for a prize. We’d love for you to put together an application.” I was confused. None of my work had anything to do with classical architecture, antiquity, or Rome. I told a friend about it, and they said, “If they sent you that email, they’re looking for you. Just put something together.”

I responded to the email saying I wanted to research the history of porches, columns, and the contested history between Africa and Italy. Surprisingly they were into it, and I ended up winning their Rome Prize.

Once I got to Rome I started diving into archeology, learning about North Africa and how things like opus sectile and opus africanum—techniques that originated in Africa—were later adopted by the Italians.

That’s when everything clicked. I began making drawings on Roman paper, sketching out these concepts. Then I get an email from the Venice Biennale inviting me to participate in the 2023 show “Laboratory of the Future”—the first-ever show curated by a Black person, Lesley Lokko. I was excited. Leslie reached out and asked, “What do you want to present?” I replied, “I want to create a brand-new column,” and they said yes.

That’s when it hit me—now I actually had to design the column. I began thinking about the classical orders of columns—Doric, Ionic, Corinthian—the big three everyone knows. I decided to create my own column order based on three themes: identity, migration, and labor—concepts that reflect the experiences of the African diaspora. I submitted it for the Venice Biennale and everyone loved it.

The chair of design and architecture at the Art Institute saw the column at the Biennale. She suggested I bring the column and drawings from Venice and transfer them to the gallery for a solo show. I told her, “No, I want to create all-new work for this. I’m not taking it lightly. If I get this opportunity I’m going all out.”

From then on I was determined to make three columns and present them in multiple materials, showcasing not just the final versions but also what inspired them. For example, the”Migration Column” was inspired by wood, specifically slave ships. The “Identity Column” was based on hair—dreadlocks, cornrows, and braids. The “Labor Column” was rooted in our history with the soil, from sharecropping to slavery.

Even the exhibition design was inspired by my childhood memories of playing basketball tournaments at the Golden Dome in Garfield Park. When visitors step into the gallery they aren’t just in the middle of the AIC—they’re in the middle of the Golden Dome surrounded by my work.

The name “Columnar Disorder” is a nod to the three columns I created but is also my way of shaking up architectural status quo.

When people from your childhood come through—the non-architecture view—what are they going to see?

First they’ll see their little cousin, brother, or neighbor—someone they’ve known for years—on one of the biggest stages possible.

When they walk into the gallery I’m sure they’ll head straight to the “Identity Column” first. They’ll see the barrettes that remind them of what my nieces and nephews used to wear when they were little.

After that they’ll see the drawings. They might be a bit confused because they don’t know how to read architectural plans or sections, but then they’ll spot the drawing of Howard University—a tribute to my sister who passed away. That’s when it’ll hit them. They’ll immediately connect with that, no question.

Beyond that they’ll just appreciate being in the space. They’ll recognize that these beautiful pieces were created by someone they know—someone they can call, text, or pick on because they’ve known me since I was a kid. I think that’s the part I’m most excited about.

They’re stepping into a space where they don’t usually find themselves, and they’ll be able to say, “My little brother made that. My cousin made that. My uncle made that.” That’s really what I’m looking forward to.

germanebarnes.com

 

A version of this article originally appeared in Sixtysix Issue 13.