The Nexus

Justin Garrett Moore shares the history of Urban Patch and its origins in Flanner House, a locus for self-help services started by his grandfather, Albert Allen Moore, for Black people in 1940s Indianapolis. Through this project, we explore the importance of expanding the archive of Architectural history to include the records of marginalized communities.

Image of Flanner House – Fall Creek Homes Project. Courtesy of Urban Patch via the Indiana Historical Society. 

Justin Garrett Moore shares the history of Urban Patch and its origins in Flanner House, a locus for self-help services started by his grandfather, Albert Allen Moore, for Black people in 1940s Indianapolis. Through this project, we explore the importance of expanding the archive of Architectural history to include the records of marginalized communities.

Full Transcript

Justin Garrett Moore is a transdisciplinary designer and urbanist and is the program officer for the Humanities in Place program at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. He has extensive planning and design experience—from regional and urban systems, policies, and projects to grassroots and community-focused planning, design, public realm, and arts initiatives. At the Mellon Foundation, his work focuses on advancing equity, inclusion, and social justice through place-based initiatives, built environments, cultural heritage projects, digital and ephemeral programs, and commemorative spaces and landscapes.

In his fifteen-year career in public service, Justin has led several complex planning and design projects, including the Greenpoint and Williamsburg Waterfront, Hunter’s Point South, and the Brooklyn Cultural District. His work spans housing and community development, place and open space design, historic preservation, public art and monuments, and civic engagement and participation. He is also the co-founder of Urban Patch—a family-run social enterprise focused on sustainable design and development projects in the United States and Rwanda.

You can listen to all available episodes and find program notes here on our website, or subscribe to the series via one of these providers: iTunes, Google, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher.

Developed by the African American Design Nexus at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, The Nexus is a podcast that explores the intersection of design, identity, and practice through conversations with Black designers, writers and educators. The Nexus is produced in conjunction with a commitment by the Frances Loeb Library to acquire and create an open-access bibliography of various media suggested by the GSD community on the intersection between race and design.

The Nexus Season 2 is hosted by Tara Oluwafemi, a student in the Master of Architecture program at Harvard Graduate School of Design. The show is recorded and edited by Maggie Janik, and the theme music is produced by DJ Eway.

For all inquiries, please email [email protected].

Image from .break .dance by Marisa Parham, 2019.

Today’s episode is going to take the shape of a slightly different format. It will be a conversation between me (Tara Oluwafemi), Amir Hall, and Dr. Marisa Parham. We discuss identity as expressed through our engagement with various digital media. The conversation takes a look at how digital technology has allowed us to transcend time and space and reinvent ourselves in virtual worlds.

Full Transcript

Amir Hall feels freest, when dancing, writing or dreaming up stories to tell, they tell them in whichever form they ask, always, always with the intention of sharing the feeling of freedom. They consider all their works to be love offerings to their people; themselves and their people: the poor, the black, the queer and the Creole. These days you can catch them reading and writing books for their MFA in Fiction at NYU. When their not studying, they work closely with artist Sonya Clark on the Solidarity Book Project. 

Marisa Parham is Visiting Professor of English at the University of Maryland, where she serves as director for the African American Digital Humanities initiative (AADHUM), and is the associate director for the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH). She also co-directs the Immersive Realities Lab for the Humanities, which is an independent workgroup for digital and experimental humanities (irLhumanities).

Parham’s current teaching and research projects focus on texts and technologies that problematize assumptions about time, space, and bodily materiality. She is currently developing Black Haints in the Anthropocene, a book-length interactive project that focuses on memory, haunting, digitality, and Black environmental experience.

Parham holds a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. From 2001–2020 she served as Professor of English, Faculty Diversity and Inclusion officer, and Mellon Mays program advisor at Amherst College. From 2013–2017, she was the director (2013-2017) of Five College Digital Humanities, serving Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, and Smith Colleges, and University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

You can listen to all available episodes and find program notes here on our website, or subscribe to the series via one of these providers: iTunes, Google, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher.

Developed by the African American Design Nexus at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, The Nexus is a podcast that explores the intersection of design, identity, and practice through conversations with Black designers, writers and educators. The Nexus is produced in conjunction with a commitment by the Frances Loeb Library to acquire and create an open-access bibliography of various media suggested by the GSD community on the intersection between race and design.

The Nexus Season 2 is hosted by Tara Oluwafemi, a student in the Master of Architecture program at Harvard Graduate School of Design. The show is recorded and edited by Maggie Janik, and the theme music is produced by DJ Eway.

For all inquiries, please email [email protected].

Today’s episode is going to take the shape of a slightly different format. It will be a conversation between myself, Amir Hall, and Dr. Marisa Parham. We discuss identity as expressed through our engagement with various digital media. The conversation takes a look at how digital technology has allowed us to transcend time and space and reinvent ourselves in virtual worlds.

In this episode, we talk to Isabel Strauss, a Master of Architecture student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in her thesis year. Strauss discusses her thesis project which takes the shape of a Request for Proposals to address paths to reparati...