by Stephen A. Kliment, FAIA
Contributing Editor

How do you . . . entice talented persons of color to become architects?

Summary: This month’s diversity column features two successful black-owned firms situated on opposite ends of the country. In Atlanta, William J. Stanley, III, FAIA, and Ivenue Love-Stanley, FAIA, are the principals in Stanley-Love Stanley, PC. In Seattle, Donald I. King, FAIA, founded DKA. Both firms have acknowledged prevailing neo-Modernist influences in their work, though they have largely eschewed the high-tech vocabulary of blobs, folds, and boxes common in the work of some younger-generation firms. Each has focused on using and transforming non-European historic influences—King from the tropics and the world of the Mayas, Stanley and Love-Stanley from Africa. Both firms boast tight links to their social and religious communities.

Below is a synopsis of the article. Follow this link for the full text.

Profile: William J. Stanley III, FAIA and Ivenue Love-Stanley, FAIA
Stanley Love-Stanley, PC, Atlanta
William Stanley founded his practice in 1977 with his wife Ivenue Love-Stanley. Stanley graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1972, and Ivenue in 1977. Each has a record for breaking barriers. Bill was Georgia Tech’s first black architecture graduate; Ivenue was its first black woman graduate. In 1975, Bill became the youngest African American to be registered in the South. Ivenue was the first black woman to receive a license in a Southeastern state. In 2001, she became only the fourth African-American woman in the 144 years of the AIA to be elevated to fellowship.

These “firsts” identify the founders of a firm that has become one of the nation’s largest African-American practices, and includes such work as the landmark Ebenezer Baptist Church New Horizon Sanctuary (where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father was pastor), Lyke House, Turner Chapel AME Church, Fort Valley (Ga.) State University Health and Physical Education Building.

Profile: Donald I. King, FAIA
DKA, Seattle
A major player in the Pacific Northwest, Donald King designs elegantly but has never lost the common touch. For King, the community reigns, and his design track record reveals an array of humanly scaled structures, with many features traceable to non-European influences.

For example, his Sea-Mar Community Care Center, which reminds one of the most sophisticated indigenous architecture of Mayan Mexico and Central America with design elements found in the Mayan ruins of Mita, Palenque, and the Governor’s Palace and Nunnery at Uxmal.

King deliberately designs “outside the European model.” He looks instead to Africa, tropical, and other examples of Pre-Columbian architecture “because their climate-responsive site planning, decorative facades, and day-lit and ventilated spaces represent natural responses.” In his search for a definition of non-European-derived architecture, King has created a design vocabulary in which modern building methods and non-Western design motifs co-exist amicably to form some of the few examples of a genuine pre-colonial style of architecture.

In light of the hurdles he and other black architects have had to overcome, what gives him the most satisfaction is the fact that he is a good designer with a successful practice—despite the fact that he hasn’t always played up the trendy architectural design features that win awards.

Three role models speak out
In the full-text story, the three architects offer candid, sometimes blunt answers to questions about how schools of architecture, firms, and clients might endeavor to draw talented people into the profession, as the medical and law professions have.