The 2020 AIA Baltimore & BAF Spring Lecture Series will explore unbuilt architecture and design work. Speakers will showcase and discuss their unbuilt, speculative, and/or dismantled work, including competitions, explorations, and research. The series will explore why projects go unrealized and create a dialogue about what could have been, what is, and what can be.

See the full calendar of lectures

Continue the conversation after the lecture at the Brass Tap, located around the corner at 1205 W. Mt. Royal Ave. at the Fitzgerald. Drinks available for purchase. Light appetizers provided by AIA Baltimore.

Lecture 3: Building and Unbuilding

1. Yolande Daniels, studioSUMO
   Jennifer Goold, Neighborhood Design Center

The design of space, objects, and environments requires an exploration of the impact of architecture beyond surfaces and objects. The spaces and environments we inhabit are all constructed, and social constructs are formalized in architecture and urban planning.

Yolande Daniels will discuss Building and Unbuilding—two areas of research and production that explore architecture at multiple scales ranging from the macro-scale of societal patterns that inform the design of objects and spaces, to the mezzo-scale of institutional buildings and dwellings, to the micro-scale of the patterning of surfaces.

Jennifer Goold will discuss the relationship between 20th century Urban Renewal projects and Black Baltimore’s historic centers of cultural and commercial strength. By unbuilding the places where Black Baltimoreans socialized and shopped, Urban Renewal projects destroyed the spaces that supported Black social and financial capital, as well as identity, in our city. The destabilizing power of destroying Black communities through Urban Renewal can be seen in the built environment along Pennsylvania Avenue, but is perhaps most viscerally experienced through catastrophic events such as the 2015 Uprising that was centered at Pennsylvania and North Avenues. Despite powerful forces that unbuilt significant portions of the Avenue, the strength and beauty of the corridor remains evident in the recent designation of Pennsylvania Avenue as the city’s first Black Arts & Entertainment District.