mabel o. wilson and mario gooden for friedman benda's design in dialogue

on april 1, 2020, new york gallery friedman benda initiated a series of online interviews aimed at connecting individuals across the world with leading voices in the creative field. design in dialogue is a conversational program hosted alternately by curator and historian glenn adamson and designer stephen burks that engages with designers, makers, critics, and curators as they reflect on their careers and creative processes. against the backdrop of COVID-19 and global lockdowns, the conversations are held virtually on zoom for 1 hour for anyone in the world to tune in to, and include a participatory Q&A with the audience in attendance. friedman benda has since presented more than 90 episodes, and will continue with a lineup of future guests, each offering unparalleled insight into the sensibilities, musings, and memories of today’s creative protagonists. see our recent feature of amanda williams on space and social systems, and dorte mandrup on designing ‘irreplaceable places’.

on june 2, 2021 design in dialogue welcomed mabel o. wilson, co-curator of the landmark exhibition at MoMA, reconstructions: architecture and blackness in america, and mario gooden, founder and principal of huff + gooden architects and one of the 11 practitioners featured in the show. gooden’s work seeks to reimagine the legacies of race-based dispossession and celebrate the ways african-americans have mobilized black cultural spaces, forms, and practices as sites of imagination, liberation, resistance, care, and refusal. in conversation with stephen burks, mabel and mario discussed the ways in which race informs collective architectural history and structures american cities.

watch the full video interview at the top of the page and stay tuned as designboom continues to share design in dialogue features. see all past episodes — and RSVP for upcoming ones — here.

cover of the exhibition catalogue reconstructions: architecture and blackness in america
published by the museum of modern art, 2021

the conversation between mabel o. wilson and mario gooden centered around the genesis of, participation in, and reflections on reconstructions: architecture and blackness in america, an exhibition at MoMA that ran from february 27 – may 31, 2021. featuring 11 newly commissioned works by architects, designers, and artists, the exhibition marked MoMA’s first to explore the relationship between architecture and the spaces of african american and african diaspora communities. each project proposed an intervention in one of 10 cities, from the front porches of miami to the bayous of new orleans. for his participation, mario gooden presented ‘the refusal of space’, a dynamic ‘protest machine’ that visualized — through video and sound — the experiences of protestors, from civil rights to black lives matter. the project embodies gooden’s belief that ‘liberation is an action and liberation demands action. liberation is spatial. to be really free is to be spatially free.’

mario gooden, refusal of space, 2020 | photograph | 40 x 30″ (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
photo by kris graves, image courtesy of the artist, the museum of modern art, new york

‘it’s really been 30 years’, wilson says on the starting point of the exhibition. ‘this has really shaped an intellectual journey — a journey of practice, of how you engage. how do you engage blackness in these disciplines and institutions in which we work, whether they be academic or professional? at every point, you see absence, you see lack, especially in design. what I found, in order to do this work, was that collaboration is vital. there’s so much work to construct a history of backstory to understanding black spatial practices, black space and what that would mean, because the primary sources that you would have engaged in, in your own education, would be completely negligent and absent. if you take on this question, it’s not like you’re going to be able to go to giedion’s ‘space, time and architecture’ and find what you’re looking for. you have to create it yourself — and that’s really been a 30 year journey. I think MoMA — and engaging an institution of that stature with its own absences — it shows the degree to which the presence of black designers and architects and thinkers are absent from the canons that get passed on and shape our respective fields.’

installation view of reconstructions: architecture and blackness in america, the museum of modern art, new york
february 27, 2021 – may 31, 2021 © 2021 the museum of modern art | photo by robert gerhardt

‘this show is not simply about the discipline of architecture,’ gooden shares about the trans-disciplinary investigations the exhibition probed. ‘it doesn’t confine itself to strictures of aesthetics and form-making, but to larger social, cultural issues, and questions of critical race theory. for most of us [in the exhibition], what we thought we might be doing initially just totally changed, because we realized that it was a much different and much larger conversation, then, let’s say thinking about the way that architects and designers usually think — which is about the making of the object, the making of a thing. this required a much broader examination of blackness and speciality than the architecture discipline allows. but hopefully now, the discipline can be expanded to these discursive spaces, and not only be about what the professionals tend to think of as being architecture.’

portrait of mabel o. wilson, courtesy of friedman benda

portrait of mario gooden, courtesy of friedman benda

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design in dialogue is a series of online interviews presented by new york-based gallery friedman benda that highlights leading voices from the field — designers, makers, critics, and curators — as they discuss their work and ideas. hosted alternately by curator and historian glenn adamson and designer stephen burks, the conversations are held on zoom for 1 hour and include a participatory Q&A.

watch the full video interview with mabel o. wilson and mario gooden at the top of the page and stay tuned as designboom continues to share design in dialogue features. see all past episodes — and RSVP for upcoming ones — here.

mabel o. wilson and mario gooden on 'reconstructions' for friedman benda's design in dialogue

design in dialogue (32)

friedman benda (66)

MoMA (33)

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