This social networking event follows an association forum (AF8) on challenges /solutions in the design industry during this economic downturn. Meet the presenters and discuss new strategies for developing your business or career. Light hors d’oeuvres and complimentary white wines will be served. Entry is free for AF8 forum attendees, or $5.00 at the door.



To register contact Gwen Williams, board member, Project Osmosis eclecticdzinr@yahoo.com. Registration also accepted at the door.

A thought provoking forum on Haitii with some experts from the fields of design, planning, international development and cultural anthropology. The forum will involve critical thinking about shelter and disaster with a focus on planning, cause and effect, and risk management after a disaster. 



This session will be followed by an interactive discussion and networking hour for potential collaborations and partnerships from 4–5 p.m. Sponsored by IIDA, FocusOnDesign, Designers for the 21st Century (D421), Project Osmosis, and The Black Design News Network

Speakers:  Kerl LaJeune - architect, founder and principal, Atelier AzaraRenee Kemp-Rotan - urban designer and co-founder, Black Design News Network; Atim Annette Oton, architectural designer and co-founder, Black Design News Network; Bryan Hudson, architect, principal, SOMA Design Consultants Inc.; and Lee Bey, writer and architectural critic, African American writer/architectural critic. 



To register contact Atim Oton, director of the Black Design News Network atimoton@yahoo.com. Registration also accepted at the door.

Most of what is studied is looking at constructs and how they’re nested in social contexts. Asking how did this come to be? Why? How? Where is it going? When applying these same questions to Blackamericans and web design, I am left feeling puzzled and bewildered at the absence of one prominent black web designer. It could very well be that the talented black web designers are all too busy making beautiful web sites and not taking public credit for their work or maybe it’s something else.

When we look around at other sectors of society as to why there is a woeful absence of black folks in participation, that conditions are usually fairly clear. And let me say here that the follow is a hypothesis, a best guest, a starting point of looking at this issue.

It is not believed that black folks are absent from web design due to a conscious effort to disengage from it. Most likely it may have to do with socio-economic issues. For blacks who are hailing from deprived urban centers, web design may simply not be on their radar. Not having the money to invest in computers, Internet access [preferably high-speed], and an education that would point them in the direction of design [web or otherwise], all lead me to think that this may be part of the problem. So, when philanthropic organizations are looking to invest money in these depressed areas, are they thinking to encourage blacks to take part of the digital revolution and get involved in the web or is this too off the radar.

With that being sad, I did come across a posting on a website regarding a web summit/conference, where on the advertising poster, it featured a caricature of a black man along with the words, “Pimp’d“.

This is a curiosity as it featured a stereotypical portrayal of an African-American, playing as a pimp, with a fedora hat and a drink in his hand. My immediate thought was not that it was inherently racist, but that how many black web designers would be attending this event? My best guess would be not many, and yet they have chosen a sort of “black mascot” to represent the coolness factor of the event. My second thought was that it was inherently racist.

At first glance, Los Angeles might seem like the last place anyone would visit for architectural inspiration: Patchwork quilts of parking lots and strip malls alternate with vast carpets of matching faux-Mediterranean subdivisions, all knit together by a web of eight-lane freeways. But look closely and you’ll see daring architecture dotting the scrubby hillsides. There are Frank Lloyd Wright homes that resemble Mayan temples, John Lautner’s UFO-inspired residences from the space-obsessed 1960s, and turn-of-the-millennium deconstructions, such as Frank Gehry’s luminous Walt Disney Concert Hall. “In Los Angeles, there is always a chance,” says Richard Weinstein, a transplanted New Yorker who serves as the vice chair of architecture and urban design at UCLA. “The place is so full of holes and so badly governed,” he adds dryly, “that you can occasionally drive a great building into the gaps.”

That drive is, more and more, coming from the other side of the Pacific. Last year, both UCLA and its crosstown rival, the University of Southern California, named new directors to their architecture programs — and both come from Asia. Hitoshi Abe, UCLA’s new chair, hails from Sendai, Japan, while USC’s dean, Qingyun Ma, keeps offices in his native Xi’an, China, and in Shanghai. The appointments represent an intriguing turn at a time when dynamic new architecture, wrestling with questions of history and urbanization, sprouts all over Asia — and as U.S. architectural programs come under fire from figures such as Rem Koolhaas, who told the Los Angeles Times that they were “shamefully focused on the West.” Says Abe: “Urban design has been Western-centric. Asia has a lot of energy right now, so we have to look there.”

One of Ma’s core ideas — the impermanence of architecture — has particular appeal for anyone who would be happy to see Los Angeles’ relentless sprawl bulldozed. Ma, 43, views today’s Western architecture as a descendant of the Greco-Roman tradition, which is all about building in stone and erecting things that are intended to last forever. (Which makes it all the more amusing that he’s an occasional collaborator of Koolhaas, creating mind-bending buildings, such as Beijing’s CCTV headquarters, that look as if they might fall down.) Clearly a son of modern China, he questions the West’s preservationist reflex. “Everything has a life cycle, as should buildings,” he says. “Preservation is an action in sacrifice of future possibilities. The future needs its own space.”

The wisdom of razing and rebuilding depends largely on context and execution, of course. Urban renewal failed in some U.S. cities, for instance, and won’t Beijing suffer by replacing its centuries-old hutongs with generic apartment buildings? Yet Ma doesn’t argue that we should jettison the past. His Thumb Island project near Shanghai modernizes the ancient Chinese reverence for landscape. Grass-carpeted knolls created by the undulating roof over a community center pair with a nearby lake, paying homage to the traditional coupling of mountain and water. Japanese architects have long had to figure out how to build attractive, functional living spaces on the most microscopic slices of land; it’s not uncommon for family homes to occupy just 300 square feet of earth.

“The elites from other cultures have been educated in the United Sates, but American leaders are never educated in other places,” Ma says. “If America wants to maintain its position, it has to shift. It can’t just be about muscle, but about leadership in the arts and the humanities.”

Barry Bergdoll, curator of architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, adds that L.A. “takes much greater risks than most East Coast cities. There’s a less conservative business climate.” That makes L.A. perfect for the kind of cross-cultural dialogue that Abe and Ma believe can help transform American architectural thinking. “Los Angeles is constantly making community. [People] are constantly cross-pollinating,” Ma says. Abe’s motivations are similar: “This city allows people to test ideas,” he says. “You can see so many different experiences.” And after a century of experimental architectural perspectives, L.A. now has two more.

Call it change sans the blue donkey or red elephant.

Actually, strike that. Call it change on wheels.

No, better yet, call it style noir on wheels.

Black car designers are being tapped to handle critical auto products, and in the famous words of Martha Stewart, that’s a good thing. Lucas designed the exterior body of the reborn Taurus. Judging from accolades received at the 2009 North American International Auto Show, the vehicle is off to a promising start.

“When you look at the Taurus, it’s gorgeous,” one analyst said. “It’s the complete package.”

The marquee was once the best-selling car, eventually nixed, then brought back from the dead after Ford decided killing it in the first place was probably not such a hot idea. Ford hopes the Taurus, an American staple, and Ford Fusion cars will help lift sales.

“It’s one thing to do a good-looking car,” Lucas said. “It’s another to do a car that’s iconic.”

No. Arguments. Here.

I asked Lucas to explain why auto makers appear to be putting more black designers at the forefront of major design projects. It’s about talent and hardwork, he said.

And of course, there’s that other factor. “African Americans really have a sense of style,” he said, pointing to a shiny red Taurus rotating on display at the auto show.

Among those in this exclusive club are Ed Wellburn, General Motors Corp.’s vice president of global design; Crystal Windham, responsible for the interior design of the acclaimed Chevrolet Malibu mid-size sedan and director of North American passenger car design for GM; Michael Burton, GM director of exterior design for front-wheel-drive trucks and luxury crossovers, which are sport utility-esque vehicles that ride like cars.

Burton was lead interior designer for the Buick Enclave and GMC Acadia. Ralph Gilles, Chrysler L.L.C.’s chief designer, gained notoriety for designing the bejeweled Chrysler 300C large sedan, a hit that was nicknamed the “Hip Hop Car” and caused automakers to ornate vehicles with chrome accent galore.

And so the story goes, blacks continue to redefine the arts, including car and truck sketches.
Designers, like other artsy folks, tend to pour their experiences into their work. The black factor, being an experience within itself, is no different.

“We’re an embellished people,” Burton said.

The auto industry is certainly paying greater attention. And quite frankly, on the backdrop of a global and, ahem, diverse economy, it can’t afford not to tap into all its resources. It’s about finding out what sticks.

And Ford is attempting to do that for a vehicle crucial to its comeback.

French Vogue has found itself in hot water after publishing a 14-page spread featuring a white supermodel in blackface. The model, Lara Stone, is featured on all 14 pages in blackface, which is historically known as a form of racism. It began in the United States in 1830 and would be an acceptable form of entertainment for white people for the next 100 years. It also became popular in other countries in Europe.

According to an article in the New York Daily News, the reason French Vogue did the spread was to celebrate the fact that Stone did not fit the typical, frail image that supermodels possess. However, Stone is a size 4, much smaller than the average women in the United States.

A similar incident occurred last week on a variety show in Australia when a group performed a song by Jackson Five in blackface.
Harry Connick Jr., a judge for the show, spoke out against the performance and gave the group a score of zero for the act.
The show later apologized. The popular sitcom, “Mad Men”, also used blackface in one of their recent episodes.
The show, which is set in the 1960s, featured on e of the actors of the sitcom entertaining guests in blackface.

Many people have taken to the Web to discuss the latest controversy. Some news sources, such as ABC News, have opened up a blog about it while others have published opinion articles on French Vogue’s use of blackface.

This is certainly not the kind of attention she’s used to getting.

Barbie, with her legs for miles, perfect (yet perfectly impossible) measurements and glittering, shimmering presence doesn’t seem to be wowing her critics with her latest incarnation: black Barbie.

The three new Mattel Barbies — Grace, Kara and Trichelle — were conceived with features more in keeping with African American females (fuller lips, curlier hair) to give young girls Barbies they could more readily identify with. The misstep, some detractors say, is that the new Barbies aren’t black enough. The hair is largely straight and long, and not styled in afros or braids, but isn’t that just par for the modern day course? White kids have dreadlocks and African American girls bleach their hair. (Where’s that Barbie, actually?) And, ultimately, black Barbie’s creator, Stacy McBride-Irby, who is black, would have faced a multitude of opinions no matter how her plasticized girls looked.

Let’s face it: there’s nobody — black, white or in between, that could really ever identify with Barbie, and that, we think, is a good thing. After all, she’s plastic.