SELWYN Q. BACHUS II
SAY IT LOUD - Arkansas Exhibitor
Arkansas Based Designer
Who or what inspires you professionally?
My grandparents. Their dedication to education and self-assertion has taken our family lineage from the cotton fields of Hernando, MS to the gates of Harvard and Yale. I owe it to them to pursue what I love and pour back into the black community.
SELWYN Q. BACHUS II
Bio:
The Great designer, Selwyn Q Bachus II is a current master’s student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a 2019 graduate of the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design at the University of Arkansas. After Harvard, I want to develop a teaching, working, speculative and philanthropic model of practice and pedagogy. A design collective based on alliances with minority communities, and an educational model that inspires young minority designers through appropriate representation at the university level.
How did you first learn about architecture and when did you decide that built environment profession was an area of interest for you?
My parents built 3 homes in my lifetime. Commanding their own physical domain was powerful to my young mind. Once I understood there was an art to building, innate desire for liberation mixed with love for art, and the path to architecture was set.
What do you do?
I postulate on what it means/what it takes to make Black Space. Using the tools of architecture, I believe we can create spaces that encourage expressive freedom, liberation, and repose. To actively combat the social chaos that attempts to engulf us.
What excites you in the work you do?
What excites me is the opportunity to participate in the concrete aspect of Black space-making along with the social. Black Space relies on community to be successful, providing the forms where the space can develop into community excites me.
Who or what inspires you professionally?
My grandparents. Their dedication to education and self-assertion has taken our family lineage from the cotton fields of Hernando, MS to the gates of Harvard and Yale. I owe it to them to pursue what I love and pour back into the black community.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment or achievement?
Presenting some of my contribution to the discourse on Black space-making to Darrell Wayne Fields at the final review for “Cancel Architecture”. His comments will always stick with me as affirmation to continue work on the Black Architecture project.
Featured Project Name:
Reconstructing History
Featured Project Location:
Fayetteville, AR
Featured Project Completion Date:
Fall 2020
Role in Featured Project:
Designer
Featured Project Description:
“Reconstructing History” is placed in the confederate cemetery and aims to highlight and sift through the oppositions between the constructed narrative of the confederacy and the reality of it’s defeat, while foregrounding black heritage. The form and program surround and belittle the monument by referencing the major battles in Arkansas’ civil war history (all Union victories) and the history of Black Arkansans since their liberation in 1865.
Photography Credit:
Selwyn Q. Bachus II
Featured Project Name:
A House of OUR Time
Featured Project Location:
Boston, MA
Featured Project Completion Date:
Fall 2020
Role in Featured Project:
Designer
Featured Project Description:
Cornell West asks us, if death is “the only Black space (home), place (roots), and face (name) safe from a pervasive white supremacy?” In response to the murder of George Floyd and the summer of protests for racial justice that ensued, Toshiko Mori asked the question what a “House of Our Time” could be. My project responds to the prompt by positioning the space of “home” (family + lineage) as that safe space for the living. The project re-envision’s the site of Philip Johnson’s thesis house.
