Making Home with HISTORY Lecture WITH la vaughn belle and germane barnes on afro-diasporic caribBean architectures

The Making Home lecture series at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union presents four free public lectures featuring Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial exhibition participants paired with designers, artists, professionals, and Cooper Union faculty discussing the exhibition’s exploration of home and its relation to design, data, justice, history, and building.

For the third event in the lecture series, Making Home with History, multidisciplinary artist La Vaughn Belle and architect Germane Barnes will discuss cultural and environmental heritage in relation to their ongoing work and Triennial commissions. Both Belle and Barnes investigate Afro-diasporic social and historical narratives influencing contemporary art, architecture, and design.

Belle’s work focuses on the often-forgotten colonial narratives embedded in the architecture and material culture of contemporary society. Her Triennial installation, The House That Freedoms Built, presents three fretwork-adorned structures inspired by the shapes of 18th-century houses built by formerly enslaved people on Saint Croix, set in dialogue with the Georgian Revival exterior of the Carnegie Mansion.

Barnes’ research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity. For the Triennial, he designed sound stations inspired by the craft of Gullah sweetgrass baskets as part of the Artists in Residence in Everglades’ (AIRIE) Ebb and Flow installation in the museum’s conservatory. The installation articulates the cultural and environmental heritage of the subtropical ecosystem of the Everglades, which is under threat from urban development and the climate crisis.

During the conversation, we will hear more about how they each approach structure, form, and research to examine these histories.

The conversation will be moderated by Kayla Montes de Oca, Associate Professor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. Barnes will be joining the program virtually.

Please note: This program is located offsite at the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union. See address and location information below.

SPEAKERS 

A woman with short blonde curly hair faces poses in front of a color background. She wears blue earrings and a bright pink blouse.La Vaughn Belle (Born 1974, Tobago, Trinidad and Tobago; active Saint Croix, United States Virgin Islands) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work focuses on the often-forgotten colonial narratives embedded in the architecture and material culture of contemporary society. Her practice frequently centers on the Caribbean island of Saint Croix—long claimed as a territory by various European nations, including nearly 200 years as a colony of Denmark, before being sold to the US in 1916.

A man in a white collared button-up shirt looks to the left, smiling. The background is light gray with blue specks.Germane Barnes is the Principal of Studio Barnes, and Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture Graduate Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture. Barnes’ practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. His work has recently been exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, and the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He is a winner of the Architectural League Prize and is a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. He was selected in the inaugural cohort of The Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab created by Theaster Gates and sponsored by Prada. His work has also been featured and acquired to the permanent collections of international institutions most notably San Francisco MoMA, LACMA, The New York Times, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture. His project, Griot was widely published, as a participant in Biennale Architettura 2023, Laboratory of the Future.

A woman with dark curly hair wearing a black turtleneck and dark framed glasses smiles. The image is in black and white, and the background is dark gray. Kayla Montes de Oca (moderator) is a design researcher and educator from Miami, Florida, based in New York City. Her research examines how policy and design shape communities over time, focusing on how individuals sustain tradition, build legacy, and navigate the power of place in collective memory and identity. Kayla is currently an Associate Professor at The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. She has a background in architecture with a Bachelor’s in Architecture from The Cooper Union and a Master’s in Design Studies from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

AccessibiliTy & What to Expect

  • Format: The program will begin with a brief welcome, then the speakers will engage in a moderated conversation. It will end with an optional Q&A with the audience. 
  • About the space: This program will take place offsite at the at The Frederick P. Rose Auditorium at The Cooper Union, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003. It is wheelchair accessible (via elevators and ramps).
  • Accommodations: For any questions about accessibility, please email Mauricio Higuera at mauricio.higuera@cooper.edu.
  • Recording: The program will be recorded and posted on Cooper Hewitt’s YouTube channel within three weeks.

Support 

Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial is presented in collaboration with Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. This project received federal support from the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative Pool, administered by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum; the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the National Museum of the American Latino; the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Generous support is provided by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Support is also provided by the Lily Auchincloss Foundation; Edward and Helen Hintz; re:arc institute; the Keith Haring Foundation; the Lemberg Foundation; Maharam; and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

 

Image: Installation of “The House That Freedoms Built” by La Vaughn Belle in “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Photo: Elliot Goldstein © Smithsonian Institution