NEGATIVE SPACE

Increasing the level of diversity in architecture has been a focus of the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) and many other professional organizations. It is an open secret that architecture as a field has had historical difficulty attracting minority students and practitioners (Caulfield, 2016). There is a considerable amount of research in the area of Black students in higher education; however, there is a significant lack of architecture research, with students of color and the specific aspects of the Black students’ experience remaining largely unexplored.

This study seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge on architecture education and best places to incite change concerning the paradigm of stakeholders in architecture education. The goal of this research is to include recommendations from this study that will bring diversity sensitivity to the forefront of the conversation in architecture education as students of all identities transition into the workplace culture and take everything they’ve learned— explicit and implicit—with them into practice.

This study plans to examine how the physical environment of studio and its auxiliary spaces interact with the social environment for Black students. The aim of data collection is to find the link between physical, social environment, and Black students’ architecture identity and sense of belonging in the studio setting.