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In a context in which just 1% of UK architects are black, Elsie Owusu stands out as a leading light. The 66-year-old architect, who was born in Ghana, co-led the refurbishment of the UK Supreme Court and London’s Green Park tube station, and is currently working on a house in Lagos for the British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare. Here she meets Shawn Adams, 26, an architecture student at the Royal College of Art in London and co-founder of POoR (Power Out of Restriction) Collective, a social enterprise dedicated to engaging young under-represented groups with the built environment.
What obstacles did you encounter when you were starting out?
Elsie Owusu: I remember being given advice for my interview at the Architectural Association (AA) in the 1970s. I had a wonderful mentor who said: “They will ask you what you’re going to do once you’ve qualified, and you must reply: ‘I’m going home to Africa to help my people.’” I said: “You know I live in Brixton? That’s my home.” And he said: “If they think you want to stay here as a qualified black architect and work in the UK, they’ll be less likely to give you a place, because they’ll think you’re going to be competing with ‘home students’.” I took his advice and now, looking back on it, he knew what he was talking about. It’s strange, because the AA was actually very international and cosmopolitan, with a big contingent of Caribbean students on government scholarships, but there were only two of us black students from the UK.
Shawn Adams: It feels like the racism isn’t so overt now, but it is still embedded in the way we are taught about architecture – only studying the Le Corbusiers and Frank Lloyd Wrights, never the black architects, such as Paul R Williams [the trailblazing African-American architect who designed 3,000 buildings in his 50-year career]. The indigenous vernacular architecture of black and ethnic minorities has always been seen as primitive and undeveloped, but now we’re realising that it can be much more sustainable than the way we use materials in the western world. But when you try to have a high-level intellectual conversation about African or Caribbean architecture, it’s still dismissed by most tutors.
Have you experienced racism in the workplace?
SA: You don’t see black people in higher positions. You go into it assuming that the sky’s the limit, but there’s this glass ceiling. If you go beyond and try to do too much, you’re seen as a problem. If you conform to the norm and try not to be the best, you’ll be fine.
EO: The glass ceiling is the least of our problems, because above that is a concrete ceiling. Looking back over 40 years, I’d say every three to five years I have come across some kind of obstacle which, in retrospect, I can see as institutional discrimination. You have to make the choice between having a big fight, leaving, or having to navigate your way around it. The alternative is to make yourself smaller in order to fit in with the structure. Ultimately, architecture is all about submission. If you’re not submissive, whether you’re black or a woman, you don’t fit.
SA: Yeah, there’s a culture of keeping your head down. You feel that if you make a problem public, it might have an impact on your career. I feel like if I want to get to a certain level, then I’m better off keeping my mouth shut.
EO: I feel quite lucky in the sense that I’m not employed. What I’ve tried to do over the past five years, since I’ve been unemployed or unemployable, is to leave a trail of situations in the public domain, like leaving a series of pebbles. So that when people find themselves in similar situations, they can see what happened. Social media is great for that. In the past, people would be browbeaten and they would just go away.
What effect might the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests have on architecture?
SA: It’s the final straw that was needed to make everyone take notice. This momentum is allowing us to look at every industry. Before, it was like “racism doesn’t happen in our industry”, but now people are starting to listen. Awareness isn’t enough – we need to see physical change.
EO: I totally agree. I was really inspired by watching George Floyd’s brother, Philonise, speak to US Congress. How do you grow up in the projects and end up being able to challenge a judiciary committee so eloquently? He comes from an extraordinary culture that has survived 400 years of oppression. We’re seeing that you can move from being perceived as a supplicant to being a leader very fast, but we’ve got to keep those doors open and let people through. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance – this is not going to be the moment of change, unless people decide to make it the moment of change.
Who have been your role models?
SA: There are very few famous black architects, such as David Adjaye and Francis Kéré, but I don’t look at “starchitects” now. I look at people like Elsie, and Lanre and Tara Gbolade, and the rising stars in the Black Females in Architecture network – people I can contact and who are willing to give me advice. I see that, in the future, I could get to where they are at, as opposed to following the careers of the famous white names.
EO: Shawn, I want to ask you a question. Since I saw those white police officers with George Floyd, I started thinking a bit more about masculinity in the public domain. There was something about that white man feeling that he needed to subjugate a black man. If you see a group of white lads out and they see a black man, there is a certain kind of physical response. What’s your experience of being a young black man in the public domain in this country?
SA: Growing up in Mitcham, south London, I’d always get stopped and searched by the police, without any particular reason. When I act proud or strong-willed, people don’t feel comfortable. It’s the same in architecture – I can’t come across as this foolhardy, strong black man. If I wasn’t to act humble then I’d get challenged. People get intimidated. They think my voice is too powerful, when I’m just speaking normally. I suppose it’s part of the media portrayal of the black man as being a gangster, or someone who’s always up for fights.
EO: If you look at the latest statistics, you see a big increase in the number of white women in architecture, and the number of black women is also increasing, while the number of black men seems to be going backwards. I think there’s something about masculinity in architecture, and that sense of a threat. There’s a sense of: “Who does this man think he is?”
SA: That’s partly why we set up the POoR Collective. We all grew up in working-class homes in London and saw young and marginalised voices being dismissed in discussions about the built environment. You rarely see young people at community consultations for planning applications, but it’s those people who are going to inherit the city. We wanted to help empower young, marginalised people and get them involved, otherwise we’ll just get the older generation of the same demographic making decisions for our communities.
What piece of advice would you give each other?
EO: The best advice I was ever given was: never work for people you don’t like. The other was to always have a resignation letter ready – as Richard Rogers was reputed to have when he was working on the Pompidou Centre. If they say they don’t like it, you say: “I don’t need this job.” As Obama put it, follow your north star.
SA: All of the challenges you’ve faced, Elsie, we as young architects see these struggles. Everything you speak out on, every battle and hurdle, that’s allowing us to have an easier path. When I finally get to the same point, I want to do the same. You’ve opened 10 doors, I want to open another 10 doors, and so on. Then, at some point, those barriers won’t be there.
Following the recent toppling of statues, who would you erect a statue of instead?
SA: I don’t think we should have any statues of a single person. Everyone has positive aspects and vices. I think abstract monuments are more powerful – something that reflects the collective Black Lives Matter movement and represents this moment in time of fighting to erase racism.
EO: I agree. We should be making a statement about our collective aspiration as a community, rather than identifying individuals that embody that. It’s really time that commissioners of public art moved on from making statues. Why don’t we have a moratorium on statues? We should give people space to think about other ways that we can represent our collective consciousness in the public domain.
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