Principal
ROBERTA WASHINGTON ARCHITECTS, PC
Roberta Washington holds a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from Howard University and a Master of Science in Architecture degree in Health Facility Design from Columbia University. For four years, Roberta designed health facilities and schools in Maputo, Mozambique before returning to New York and establishing her Harlem-based architectural firm in 1983. Since then, Roberta has designed new and restored existing residential, educational, health care and mixed-use projects in four states. Her projects include the 2010 design of the National Parks Service’s African Burial Ground Interpretive Center in downtown Manhattan and new public schools in Brooklyn, New Haven, and Mt. Vernon, New York.
Since 2001, Roberta has also researched, written and lectured about the history of New York State’s earliest African American architects and the nation’s first black women architects. Biographies by Roberta appear in print in Henry Louis Gates, Jr’s African American National Biography series and online on at BWAF’s Pioneering Women of American Architecture site. Roberta has served as a Commissioner on the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, President of the New York AIA Foundation, Chairperson of the NYS Board of Architecture and President of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). A Fellow of the AIA and a member of the NOMA Council, Roberta currently serves on the boards of the NOMA Foundation and Save Harlem Now! — a local historic preservation organization.