Architecture education needs "decolonisation and decarbonisation" says London School of Architecture head Neal Shasore

At just 32, the self-proclaimed "outspoken" historian Neal Shasore has become the head of the London School of Architecture. In this exclusive interview, he told Dezeen of his plans to make the school a beacon of inclusivity.

"Decarbonisation goes hand-in-hand with decolonising," said Shasore. "It means encouraging students to think about their projects in terms of sustainable and regenerative design solutions."

Shasore, who was appointed the London School of Architecture (LSA) head and chief executive officer in June 2021, believes that architecture education needs to respond better to today's social and political climate.

Changing with the times

He argues that "decolonising" the study of architecture – a contested term which broadly means separating it from the legacy of European colonialism – can pave the way for a more diverse industry.

"We need to look for radical territory and the new frontiers," the 32-year-old told Dezeen from the top floor of the LSA's east London base.

"Decolonialsim is an incredibly creative, stimulating and radical critique of the world," he added.

The LSA was founded in 2015 as an independent school of architecture – the first to open in England since the Architectural Association was established in 1847. Shasore is the first Black head of the school.

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"One of the founding objectives of the school was to broaden access and make more affordable architectural education," said Shasore, who is a historian of Nigerian and Indian descent.

"But the LSA's vision was written before Black Lives Matter, before the declaration of a climate emergency, before Rhodes Must Fall and before George Floyd," he continued.

Shasore argues that the LSA's ethos must now adapt in line with recent political events such as the furore over the statue of 19th-century imperialist Cecil Rhodes and the wave of Black Lives Matter protests following the 2020 murder of African American George Floyd at the hands of police.

"I think that making more prominent those calls for racial equity and spatial justice need to be front and centre in that vision," he continued.

Racial reckoning in architecture

His call for such a shift comes at a moment of racial and social reckoning within the architecture industry.

Progressive steps such as Scottish-Ghanaian architect Lesley Lokko becoming the first Black architect to curate the Venice Architecture Biennale are broadening diversity within the field.

At the same time however, allegations of sexist and racist treatment in the industry have become more widespread, as in the case of The Bartlett School of Architecture.

The LSA provides students with a two-year postgraduate programme on subjects including designing cities and critical theory. In their second year, students embark on a practical course in which they are supported in seeking placements in London.

It has a reputation for taking an ambitious and innovative approach to teaching, with an emphasis on student empowerment.

"Diversity and inclusion is hard"

Shasore plans to use his previous experience as a visiting lecturer at the University of Cambridge's architecture school and as a course tutor for the MArch professional practice studio at the Royal College of Art to overcome some of the potential pitfalls that architecture institutions fall into when trying to become more inclusive.

"What I've learned over the last few years is you have to be in the room and you have to be outspoken," he said. "Sometimes that can be very uncomfortable."

"Diversity and inclusion is hard: it requires people to think harder, to be braver and to make less convenient decisions," he added.

Shasore cites listening to marginalised voices and broadening access to higher education as key ways to achieve "spatial justice".

He draws on his plans for fire and safety regulation training at the school, which will involve the 100 LSA students undergoing lessons about the Grenfell Tower fire as a more concrete example of how to decolonise education and the importance of recentering the voices of those who have historically been ignored.

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Grenfell Tower was a council-owned high-rise block in west London which was destroyed in a terrible blaze in 2017 as flames spread across its recently installed cladding system, claiming 72 lives.

A failure to listen to the voices of residents at Grenfell Tower − many of whom were from ethnic minority backgrounds − during its refurbishment has been repeatedly touted as a reason the building became so unsafe.

"One of the ways I would like us to teach that which is arguably quite technical and regulatory is not to lose that frame of the kind of broader picture of, in that case, racial and class inequality.

"The tragedy of Grenfell only reinforces that the ability to listen to and engage with diverse voices in the production of the built environment is vital," Shasore stressed.

Elsie Owusu, Doreen Lawrence, two recipients of the Open Up bursary and Neal Shasore

Currently, he claims, "social housing, affordable housing is done onto people rather than enabling them to do for themselves."

As part of his plans for the school, Shasore also launched Open Up, a fundraising campaign designed to support prospective LSA students from underrepresented groups.

"We want to start to open up a conversation," he explained. "Open Up is also a call to action: it's a demand, as I see it, from those underrepresented groups, telling the professions to open up."

Campaign to support students from minority backgrounds

The Open Up campaign has already secured £30,000 from a collaboration with the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation (SLDF) to develop a programme to combat the profession's "systemic barriers to diversity". Bursaries for two current students of colour have been funded using the money.

A recent partnership with the Zaha Hadid Foundation will provide a further two bursaries for prospective students from low-income backgrounds.

For Shasore, the collaboration with the SLDF holds great personal significance and as a consequence, he takes the responsibility to make it a success very seriously.

The SLDF foundation was set up in response to the racially motivated 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence, a Black British teenager and budding architect.

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"I feel privileged enough being appointed to run the school and even more privileged that one of the first big initiatives that I'm able to champion is in Stephen Lawrence's name," Shasore added. "That means something to a Black man."

Alongside the Open Up campaign, the LSA has recruited Afterparti's Thomas Aquilina to join the school in a special fellowship position called the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation Fellow.

The role will see Aquilina lead the school's access and participation plan, including "conversations around curriculum reform", as well as providing a "visible role model" for students from underrepresented groups.

Shasore hopes that this approach will enable the school to become "a truly civic institution" with a focus on community-centric built environments.

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"We'll be graduating smart, caring, compassionate activist students" says new head of Pratt undergrad programme

Architect Stephen Slaughter was recently named as the chair of undergraduate architecture at the Pratt Institute. In this exclusive interview, he explains how he aims to bring his ethos of activism and inclusion to the school.

"Our student body is the most important thing and the change they can make in the profession," he told Dezeen. "The change they can make in the world is what I consider paramount."

As chair of the programme, Slaughter will lead the department of 180 faculty and 700 students as one of the most high-profile Black academics in US architectural education.

At the Pratt Institute School of Architecture, he aims to continue his work pushing for diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI], which has been a core element of his time in academia, he said.

"DEI has been an integral part of who I am," he explained.

"My role as an educator and my role as a private citizen, and my role as designer, has always been to leverage my talents and my position to somehow bring benefit and value through design to the community I'm a part of and represent," he continued.

"These are the things that I'd like to be able to impart on Pratt."

Change students can make is "paramount"

Slaughter, who will take up the role in July, currently teaches at the University of Kentucky and the University of Cincinnati, and formerly at the Pratt Institute, where he was a visiting professor on the Graduate Architecture and Urban Design (GAUD) program.

While Slaughter will be focused on helping to enact change within the school, he believes the greatest impact he can have is through the change his students can make.

"I am a servant of the institute, and I'm the servant of the students and the faculty," he said.

"It takes one's own activism to make change"

His community-focused work has seen him collaborate with not-for-profits including Watts House Project and Elementz Hip Hop Cultural Art Center and he hopes that graduates from the Pratt Institute will contribute to improving communities.

"Academia is part of a larger social, civic, societal, cultural system and I think the larger system has issues that hopefully, we as educators can address through the education of the next citizens," said Slaughter.

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"It's a bigger problem than could be solved specifically through academia alone. It takes one's own activism to make change within culture and society," he continued.

"I hope that we'll be graduating smart, intelligent, caring, compassionate activist students."

"I'd like to have a Pratt grad building shiny new opera houses"

However, this does not mean that Slaughter expects all his students to end up designing solely community-focused projects. He hopes that graduates from the Pratt Institute will be able to bring his ethos of inclusivity to all projects they work on.

"I also like the idea that students will be interested in building the next shiny new opera house, it's just that that opera house will be different," he explained.

"I'd like to have a Pratt grad building shiny new opera houses and leveraging the experiences and the perspective to make that opera house inclusive and sustainable."

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Slaughter was previously diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator for GAUD where he contributed to the Pratt's DEI strategic master plan. As head of the school's undergrad programme, Slaughter will have a key role in enacting many elements within the plan.

"One of the planks of the DEI strategic master plan is hiring and recruitment, as well as creating a welcoming environment," he said.

"These are the things I understand and want to set forward, as part of the mission for the school. And these are the things that I'll be following up on and expanding in my role as undergraduate chair."

"I was taught by a diverse array of professors"

Slaughter has a wide and geographically diverse career. A first-generation university graduate, he completed his undergraduate and masters at Ohio State University, where both his parents worked "as a way of affording me an education".

His experience at Ohio set the course for how he developed his career to focus on community and inclusion.

"I was taught by a diverse array of professors that influenced my opinion and my position in architecture today," he said.

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"Mabel Wilson, who's an amazing educator and writer was one of my professors, as were Jeff Kipnis, Peter Eisenman and Nathaniel Belcher," he added. "I had a wide variety of educators and academic perspectives."

From Ohio, Slaughter moved to California to work for Thom Mayne at Morphosis and lived in Los Angeles for several years, before returning to Columbus, Ohio, to help look after his sick father.

During this time he taught at the University of Cincinnati, which he said: "turned into a tenure track position and launched me as a dedicated educator".

"I feel like there's a commitment from the school"

Based in New York, the Pratt Institute is one of the best-known architecture schools in the US. It is led by British architect Harriet Harriss, who was made dean in 2019.

Slaughter took the role at the school as he believes that there is an appetite to tackle many of the issues surrounding the lack of diversity in both academia and the wider architectural profession.

"It's going to take commitment and I feel like there's a commitment from the school, from administration to the students," he said.

"Unfortunately, in both professional and academic career, I've been a part of more than a few initiatives that spin wheels and actually aren't interested in making a substantial difference," he continued.

"At Pratt, my colleagues in this effort were committed and that was the first time I've seen anything like that. It was more than invigorating to know that administration, staff, students, and faculty were committed."

In the US, as in many western countries, architecture is largely a white profession with Black architects making up only two per cent of the profession, compared to 14 per cent of the population.

American architect Tiara Hughes recently launched a website called First 500 to showcase the work of Black women architects working in the country.

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Crystal Williams named first Black president of Rhode Island School of Design

Teacher and poet Crystal Williams has been appointed president of Rhode Island School of Design, becoming the private US art and design school's first Black president.

Williams, who is currently vice president and associate provost for community and inclusion at Boston University (BU), will become the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)'s 18th president and its first Black president.

The news comes following the school's former president Rosanne Somerson, who retired at the end of June, announcement of a plan to tackle "multiple racist issues" at the school.

"I believe in the value of art and design"

Williams' appointment is the culmination of RISD's search for a leader "with the global vision to guide RISD's role in helping to create a more just, fair and sustainable society".

"I entered this search because I believe in the value of art and design to elevate and amplify the human experience, and to narrate who we have been and who we can become," Williams said.

Crystal Williams is the 18th president of the Rhode Island School of Design

"As a matter of fundamental principle, I believe in the power of art and design to not only, as bell hooks wrote '...tell it like it is' but to also, '...imagine what is possible,'" Williams told Dezeen.

"In this way, artists, designers, and creatives step into the world with courage and love for our collective human endeavor and dare to see and say: here is a new way, a different path," she added.

"To lead an institution dedicated to amplifying that and the creatives with the vision and courage to enact that vision, is to have an essential opportunity to help be part of and catalyze positive change in our world."

Williams' work has focused on inclusivity

Raised in Detroit, USA, and Madrid, Spain, Williams began her academic career at Reed College as a professor of English and was its dean from 2011-13.

She was then associate vice president for strategic initiatives and professor of English at Bates College from 2013-17.

Her previous work has focused on promoting diversity and inclusivity and at BU, she led a number of initiatives including the Inclusive Pedagogy Initiative and the LGBTQIA+ Task Force.

Williams told Dezeen that being appointed to the role at RISD matters because it creates new narratives.

"There is power in multiplicity," she said. "Diversity of experience and perspective catalyzes deeper, richer conversations and therefore stronger, more creative and innovative decisions and outcomes. It also matters because the narratives about who adds value and who should be in the room are derived from who has been in the room."

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"That I am a Black woman now leading this august institution matters because, yes, I bring a series of experiences and points of view to the table, and, because behind me are a series of people who look like me who now have a new narrative that affirms: I can be there too!" she added.

"And, importantly, we often miss this but I think we shouldn’t, because behind and beside me are also a series of people who do not look like me who now also have a new narrative which is that people who look like me can be here and should be here too. Both of these new narratives change the course of history."

RISD on path to hire more diverse faculty

Williams will take up the role at RISD on 1 April 2022.

"Crystal shares our strong conviction in the critical role art and design play in shaping our world, and she has the expertise and qualities of leadership needed to meet the urgency of this moment and take RISD into the future," RISD Board of Trustees chair Michael Spalter said.

"We are thrilled that she has accepted our invitation to be our next president."

Last year, previous president Somerson announced plans to tackle racism at the school in an open letter.

"Unfortunately, these issues are not new; they have pervaded systems and structures at RISD for decades, largely unchanged," she said.

"As the leader of RISD, I take responsibility for having allowed a culture to continue to exist that does not fully live up to our values."

In November 2020 RISD launched its Race in Art and Design cluster-hire initiative to hire 10 faculty members who specialise in issues of race and decoloniality in the arts.

The photography is by Jo Sittenfeld unless stated otherwise.

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