The DEI initiatives, which aim to cultivate an institutional culture at the intersection of diversity, inclusivity, and equity, have permeated every corner of public life. One can trace these initiatives to the rise of multiculturalism in the 1960s civil rights and other emancipatory movements that demanded the recognition of differences in general and ethnic, gender, religion, and cultural differences in particular. In architecture, however, the discourse of intersectionality arrived late and only in a fragmentary fashion. While Edward Soja, Saskia Sassen, David Harvey, Henri Lefebvre, among others, have underlined different dimensions of the relationship between space and politics, the intersection of race and gender remained particularly underdeveloped. This paper opens a window onto the complexities of architectural pluralist and inclusive intervention in the context of Historically Black Colleges and Institutions (HBCUs). Examining the site and adjacent neighborhood of an HBCU-serving college in Atlanta, Clark Atlanta University, this research explores how physical traces of spatial segregation can be appropriated for a more pluralist integration of the campus into the urban life of downtown Atlanta.
Assistant Professor of Architecture, College of Architecture and Construction Management.