For 35-year old Germane Barnes, winning Harvard Graduate School of Design’s prestigious Wheelwright Prize is just one of many achievements to celebrate in 2021. The Miami-based architectural designer, urban planner, and educator’s winning proposal, Anatomical Transformations in Classical Architecture, also earned him the 2021 Rome Prize in Architecture and the Architectural League Prize. Barnes’s previous research on the significance of American porches gave birth to the proposal, which examines the African diaspora’s contributions to classical Roman and Italian porticos as a lens for viewing racism, classicism, criminalization, and colonization. Ultimately, Barnes will create an index of porticoes in Rome and Northern Africa and create new categories of columns “that provide clear authorship to Black building methodologies.” But the Chicago-born designer can’t slow down just yet—he is also a contributor to the Chicago Architecture Biennial in September. RECORD caught up with Barnes to discuss what led to his auspicious year.
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