A broadly encompassing account of the International African American Museum's Ancestors' Garden designed by Walter Hood and its profoundly site-oriented development, and the museum's mission to illuminate the histories of the Africans forced into slavery. Memorial to Our Ancestors documents one of the twenty-first century's most remarkable sites devoted to social justice, American history, and cultural memory: the Ancestors' Garden at the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. Located on the former site of Gadsden's Wharf, the point at which nearly half of all enslaved Africans arrived in North America, the site is not only integral to the museum's mission to share the stories of the African diaspora, but also makes palpable the history of the location and the legacy of those who disembarked there through a multifaceted exploration of the landscape. Designed by acclaimed landscape architect Walter Hood, a 2019 MacArthur Fellow and newly named to the AD100, the development of the Ancestors' Garden came forth from an immersion in some of the most uncomfortable facts of American history. Drawing from the stories of sites in and around Charleston significant to the history of slavery and African Americans--starting with Sullivan's Island, where slave ships were held in quarantine before proceeding to Gadsden's Wharf, and ending at Mother Emanuel Church, the site of a 2015 mass shooting--Hood developed the key concepts to structure the museum grounds and this book. Published in partnership with the International African American Museum just ahead of its early 2022 opening, Memorial to Our Ancestors will not only serve as an important volume providing insight into the conceptualization and creation of a remarkable and deeply meaningful landscape, but also exemplifies Hood's cutting-edge practice of designing public spaces and cultural institutions that embody the African American experience.

The first in-depth analysis of the stunning designs of one of the world's most captivating and prominent architects Born in Tanzania, David Adjaye (b. 1966) is rapidly emerging as a major international figure in architecture and design-and this stunning catalogue serves only to cement his role as one of the most important architects of our time. His expanding portfolio of important civic architecture, public buildings, and urban planning commissions spans Europe, the United States, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He transforms complex ideas and concepts into approachable and innovative structures that respond to the geographical, ecological, technological, engineering, economic, and cultural systems that shape the practice of global architecture. The publication of this compendium of work and essays coincides with the scheduled opening of Adjaye's National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Adjaye's completed work in the United States includes the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, a pair of public libraries in D.C., and several private residences. He is also known for his collaborations with artists, most recently with the British painter Chris Ofili (b. 1968). Following an introduction by Zoe Ryan, Adjaye writes on his current and future work, with subsequent essays by an extraordinary cadre of architectural scholars on Adjaye's master plans and urban planning, transnational architecture, monuments and memorials, and, finally, the forthcoming museum in D.C. Portfolios of Adjaye's work thread throughout this comprehensive volume. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago and Haus der Kunst Exhibition Schedule: Haus der Kunst, Munich (01/30/15-06/28/15) The Art Institute of Chicago (09/19/15-01/03/16)

Although race - a concept of human difference that establishes hierarchies of power and domination - has played a critical role in the development of modern architectural discourse and practice since the Enlightenment, its influence on the discipline remains largely underexplored. This volume offers a welcome and long-awaited intervention for the field by shining a spotlight on constructions of race and their impact on architecture and theory in Europe and North America and across various global contexts since the eighteenth century. Challenging us to write race back into architectural history, contributors confront how racial thinking has intimately shaped some of the key concepts of modern architecture and culture over time, including freedom, revolution, character, national and indigenous style, progress, hybridity, climate, representation, and radicalism. By analyzing how architecture has intersected with histories of slavery, colonialism, and inequality - from eighteenth-century neoclassical governmental buildings to present-day housing projects for immigrants - Race and Modern Architecture challenges, complicates, and revises the standard association of modern architecture with a universal project of emancipation and progress.

Focusing on black Americans' participation in world's fairs, Emancipation expositions, and early black grassroots museums, "Negro Building" traces the evolution of black public history from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mabel O. Wilson gives voice to the figures that conceived the curatorial content - Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Horace Cayton and Margaret Burroughs. As the 2015 opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., approaches, the book reveals why the black cities of Chicago and Detroit became the sites of major black historical museums rather than the nation's capital - until now.

Focusing on Black Americans' participation in world's fairs, Emancipation expositions, and early Black grassroots museums, Negro Building traces the evolution of Black public history from the Civil War through the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mabel O. Wilson gives voice to the figures who conceived the curatorial content: Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Horace Cayton, and Margaret Burroughs. Originally published in 2012, the book reveals why the Black cities of Chicago and Detroit became the sites of major Black historical museums rather than the nation's capital, which would eventually become home for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016.