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When Kimberly Dowdell becomes president of the American Institute of Architects next month, her promotion will be noteworthy. Ms. Dowdell, a black female architect in a profession that is predominantly white and male, is the first woman to hold the position in the organization’s 166-year history.
African Americans make up 13.6% of the U.S. population, but only 1.8% of licensed architects nationwide are black, according to the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards. Of the nearly 120,000 practicing architects in the United States, less than a quarter are women, and even less than one-half of 1% of architects are black women.
Black female architects are so rare in number, and being licensed is such a point of pride for them that many take pains to note their place in the chronology of the field’s progress — Ms. Dowdell, 40, Said in 2013, she became the 295th living black woman to be licensed in the United States.
There are some small signs of change: Nearly 3% of architects licensed last year were black, and 43% of new architects were women.
“We’re trying to make progress, but it’s going to take at least a decade,” said Ms. Dowdell, director of strategic relations at Chicago-based design firm HOK. She noted that it can take 10 years or more to earn an architecture degree, meet work experience requirements and pass the licensing exam to become a registered architect.
However, the industry’s progress toward racial and gender equality is by no means guaranteed, especially now that the Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action in college admissions. Some say the company’s much-vaunted diversity efforts have backpedaled in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests.
“Black progress has always been met with backlash,” said Sharon Egretta Sutton, 82, a distinguished visiting professor at Parsons School of Design in New York and the 12th U.S. Licensed black female architect.
Still, the presence of a black woman at the top of the AIA, which has more than 96,000 members, is an achievement in itself and perhaps an inspiration to others, Ms. Dowdell said. “Representation is important,” she added.
The design profession helps shape architecture in this country, and architecture isn’t the only field lacking diversity.
Matt Miller, chief executive of the board that administers the landscape architect registration exam, said only 0.8% of licensed landscape architects are black and 0.3% are black women. Thirty-nine percent of landscape architects are women.
Interior design has the opposite gender gap: women far outnumber men in the field, in part because for decades women were not considered capable of meeting the rigorous demands of architecture and were instead steered toward interior design. Cheryl S. Durst, CEO of the International Association of Interior Designers, said only about 1.5 percent of those working in the industry are black.
The proportion of black architects is significantly lower than the proportion of black professionals in other fields that require intensive study and rigorous examinations. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, more than 6% of lawyers in the United States are black.
Experts say the lack of black architects means the buildings where many of America’s minorities live, work and play are often designed by people who may not fit their cultural reference points. When decisions don’t take multiple perspectives into account, the design of all spaces, regardless of who uses them, suffers. Even the country’s monuments to enslaved Africans may have been designed by non-black people.
But black industry observers say the scarcity of black architects could be self-perpetuating. If there are no architects in the community, young people may not learn about the profession. Furthermore, black parents may also be wary of the profession if architecture enters their lives only as a threat, much like the arrival of luxury housing that displaced neighborhood residents.
“When you see architecture as the enemy, it’s hard to get kids to say, ‘I want to do that,’” said Craig Wilkins, associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan.
Considering that the median salary (less than $83,000) lags behind neighboring fields like engineering, parents may not be willing to take on debt to pay for their child’s architecture degree—which requires thousands of dollars in supplies on top of tuition.
License fees are another reason why architecture is considered a privileged profession. Candidates must pass the six tests of the Architectural Registration Examination – which total more than $1,400 – and candidates often need to take the exam multiple times to pass. The practice materials alone are expensive.
Black architects have been making a mark in the field for decades. After the civil rights movement, many people started their own companies. “At that time, their progress in most companies was limited,” said Steven Lewis, a principal at ZGF, a majority-owned design firm.
In 1971, black architects co-founded the National Organization of Minority Architects. “It gives us a safe space where we can discuss issues but also share our work and celebrate our work,” said Mr. Lewis, the group’s former president.
In the 1980s, two NOMA members began searching for licensed black architects to create what they called a directory of African American architects. “We would go to meetings and ask around,” said Bradford Grant, one of the catalog’s creators and interim chair of Howard University’s architecture department.
Their first edition was printed in 1991 and had 870 names. Today, NOMA maintains the catalog online. Current total: 2,535 (1,942 men, 593 women).
Richie Hands, 34, was one of the newly registered architects recognized at a ceremony at NOMA’s annual meeting last month. “Now I can say I’m an architect, which is great,” he said.
Black women support each other. Kathryn T. Prigmore, the Washington-based director of operations for Moody Nolan, a black firm, organizes presentations at conferences where women share their adversity and accomplishments s story. Katherine Williams, an architect in Falls Church, Virginia, founded the Black Women in Architecture Network to bring colleagues together for brunch and raise funds to help get Candidates for licensure pay examination fees.
There are also programs to expose young black people to architecture. NOMA chapters offer summer camps. Michael Ford, an architect and founding partner of BrandNu design studio, said he invites rappers to his hip-hop architecture camp classes to make the profession “more culturally relevant.”
Professor Grant, who has conducted research on the subject, said Howard has produced more black architects than any other historically black college and university, and more than all predominantly white institutions combined. He added that Howard has significantly more female architecture students than male students.
Despite widespread efforts, the most significant gains for people of color since 2018 have been among those who identify as Latinx, with Black women appearing to make more progress than Black men. The lack of progress has frustrated some.
“Building pipelines—I’ve been hearing about that for 50 years,” Dr. Sutton said. She writes about being recruited into Columbia University’s architecture program after the 1968 campus uprising and about students’ efforts to improve conditions in the slums near the school.
“Working outside the system may offer the best hope right now,” she said. “Maybe change needs to start from scratch.”
Some black architects have recently been able to gain promotions at majority-white firms. Others advocate community-centered design processes and call themselves “design justice practitioners.” Peter Robinson, assistant professor at Cornell University, encourages students to study and help protect the spaces Black people have made for themselves. He recently launched a design studio dedicated to community gardens created by Brooklyn residents on abandoned lots.
Ms. Williams, of the Black Women in Architecture Network, said there was only so much she and others could achieve in a society that insists “on the idea that non-white men are less qualified.”
“What is needed most is a change in culture,” she added.
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