 Hi everyone. Welcome. I'm really really thrilled today to be speaking with Amina Blackshear, who teaches at GSAP and has been teaching for some time as an adjunct faculty. She's been very much embedded in the core of the Master of Architecture program, but also leading Advanced Studio 4. And so kind of has a very interesting peak in the beginning and the middle of a kind of trajectory in the student's life in the MR program as they start and then as they start to shape their position and kind of expand their scale. And I know Amina, you've really pushed issues of representation, boundaries of the discipline in terms of what are the tools we engage in and how we hybridize and how we have agency. And so I wanted you to talk about that and then expand into your office and your practice and ideas about practice. Sure, sure. Well, thank you, Dina Andros, for having me. It's lovely to have this one-on-one chance to have this collaborative conversation. And it's pretty rare to just be able to unpack one issue at a time. It's been a joy to teach Core One and Advanced Four. This year I'm lucky to have the repetition that this is the third time that I've taught Core One and so I've seen when we first brought in this new syllabus of dissecting Broadway in eight segments across the eight studios. And then last year I really took on a region of Broadway that overlaps with some of my own research. It's from Houston to 30th Street. And so that we've looked at going all the way back using a lens of historical criticality and what was known as Land of the Blacks during New Amsterdam and really used the section to cut through history. So literally the ground, the surface, and then the air. And students have selected really provocative sites to build their concepts around public space. So I really am, I celebrate that students come with architecture backgrounds and from other backgrounds and that everyone has something valuable to bring no matter what their background is. And so sometimes with Core One it's like unpacking this like I need to catch up mentality and it's not really the case. It's maybe learning conventions and representation. But if you come from anthropology, physics, finance, there's many different kind of points of entry. And so I really like the collaboration that happens amongst the students in Core One. And I start with the brilliance of the student and then kind of pull out what is their expression and how can we execute that. So it's really a kind of way of recognizing that everyone has a voice. And what are the tools, modeling, different drawing techniques, animation, one-to-one mockups that you can express yourself. So I think the diversity of projects in Core One is just like there's 11 students, there's 11 unique projects. So that's been really exciting. I'm always, it's always, I mean it's very interesting to hear you speak about both that kind of diversity of backgrounds and different voices that get woven together in a studio and have a real kind of conversation around this line, you know, Broadway that gets cut and critically. But at the same time, the fact that the students are able to develop their own voice, which is something that I think we try to really support at the school. And I was curious to tie that to when you meet them again, like three semesters later, and what, you know, what is your sense of, you know, that kind of flattening of difference in terms of skill, but maybe more difference in terms of position or, you know, kind of that. Yeah. Yeah, I think Advanced Four is perfectly suited as like a hinge point between you've completed the core three semesters and then it's the in between of going off on like a completely individual path of Advanced Five and Six. And so I think it's great to see the students have a site and go deeper into a discursive position on what, for example, last year we looked at the arts and the academy, what that meant to meld and what kind of high art and low art means when you're putting it in terms of the context of an institution. And so we looked at the Newberg Performing Arts Center as our kind of pseudo client in Newberg and that takes high school students and dance. And the students came up with really provocative ways of thinking about how architecture serves as a liaison or a kind of in between and really got to know in their site visits, like walking around talking to people and meeting with the director of the academy. So it's like sometimes astonished to see the progress that these are the same students that you really can't tell the difference between who had a background and who didn't, like you said, the kind of flattening of that skill set. And then when they have a more defined point of entry, this is kind of the, it's almost more in a realistic client budget model of a project. And so that was really gratifying to see still very different projects across the studio, but they're really operating at a high level of sophistication in terms of a building proposal with awareness of how it fits into the context. And I know kind of connecting high and low and idealists. I mean, the kind of very large care aspirations about an, you know, sort of very embedded practice. When did you talk about your practice at the Lier Office with Mitch McEwen and some of the ideas that are, that you're working on. You know, I know you're in your own work. You've pushed the boundaries of architecture and performance and again, the kind of the digital and issues of visualization and technology is this kind of incredible, incredibly rich set of sort of tools that you're kind of appropriating and wanted to hear a little bit more about where you are taking the practice and where you're taking architecture through that. Sure. Thank you. So we right now have, I guess we'll start with our merger came because we really have an overlapping interest in kind of the mechanic in the body, the analog and the digital. Mitch had hosted a conference, Black Imagination Matters at Princeton and I contributed a project, Robot Double Dutch, trying to take the precision spatially, the spatial precision that robots have and imbue them with a rhythmic precision. So kind of time as well as space precision and showing that the games Black girls play four, five, six years old or actually there's a nuance and quite a lot of sophistication. And so this idea of kinetic intelligence was born into how can we reimagine drawing that it might not start initially from the machine from the computer, the laptop, but that you can draw in three dimensional space and then translate that into digital and then combining with an urban and computational tools. It's been really exciting to, we were finalists for the Miami Design District and created a pavilion of sorts, two pavilions using sequins to capture solar energy and emit light at night. And we're really looking at it as ironically ramping up in this time. We see that like our existence is resistance, that even to be who we are and be like joy is kind of counter everything that says. And so it's like the seed coming up out of concrete. And so we see it, we're based in New York, but we're really taking advantage of our international kind of reach. And we are working very early stages, but on a media village in East Africa and a theater project. And it's kind of reimagining the face of the theater in the back of house in New Jersey. And it's been really great. So far with this time, we've been really inventive of how we work. I was in Brazil, really started to merge our business model and start to work. And so we've been really productive in this remote time. So I think that's a good kind of foundation to have that whether we're block away or, you know, a couple of states away, it's like we're on the same page. That's amazing that you, I mean, I remember seeing the video of the launch of Atelier Office in the middle of the pandemic and, you know, upheaval. And I was like, there is hope. There is optimism, there is hope. It was so energizing. And I really do hear when you say your existence is resistance and the sense of joyfulness, just kind of being an architect on your own terms and wanted to open that up even a little further. You mentioned before that, you know, it's not enough today to be anti-racist. We have to be pro-black as architects and support, you know, what it means to be black and to be an architect in America today. And so I'm sure your practice is pushing all those boundaries to hear more about that as well. That discussion was great because it was a kind of way of recognizing that when we talk about anti, anything anti-black racism, that's almost like waiting for something to happen, waiting for an offense to happen and then countering it. But if we start with the recognition of the profound value of a person, then it doesn't have to wait until the insult is incurred. And so that's really where I think to not be so define oneself in relation to a larger context or in relation to, but it's kind of a self-referential definition. And so just starting with, it may not even have to, I think, being pro-black recognizes that you can just be who you are, that it doesn't have to be that you even refer to your race, but it's almost the recognition of the inherent value of everyone, which seems revolutionary in some context. But if that's just a given, then so I think it might be like steering to one side in order to compensate. But I think I wanted to emphasize the pro, like the proactiveness of saying what you're for rather than saying what you're countering. Well, certainly, Amina, your model and inspiration for so many of our students and myself and, you know, I mean, just kind of pioneering on your own terms, what it means to be an architect today in the world, really inspiring. And I'm so happy to have you at the school. So thank you. That means so much. Thank you, De'Anne Drow since I really celebrate the creativity that's here throughout the school and that the school attracts and the students and the way that you're running the school. It's really kind of a jog or not. It's the place to be. Togetherness for a better world. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Amina. This was fantastic and just so eager to see your work just flourish. Thank you very much. That really means a lot.