COLUMBUS, Ind. — Architect Taylor Staten faces more than a responsibility to help build structures. The 30-year-old Chicago native and resident feels a deep responsibility to build an awareness of her profession especially among minority youngsters and students.
Part of the reason: Only 2.5 percent of all licensed architects in the country are Black, according to the directory of African American Architects. Furthermore, Black women make up only three-tenths of a percent of designers nationally.
As one way to help the cause, Staten will be the first speaker Dec. 10 in a new, three-part series “Women Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs – Working & Living in Full Color,” presented by the Columbus Area Arts Council in collaboration with the African American Fund of Bartholomew County and the IUPUC Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.
“There still are a lot of Black people who are not very aware of architecture as a career path,” Staten said, speaking by phone from her TnS Studio, the architectural firm she launched in 2018, primarily serving communities on the South Side of Chicago while working to save abandoned buildings. “We know things like art and math. But we don’t always realize that architecture is kind of the marriage of those two things.”
She herself credits her mom for encouraging her at age 12 to find a career that would be a good fit for her. So Staten Googled careers with art and math, and up popped design work in the top spot on the screen.
But she quickly acknowledged her path hardly was easy or simple.
“I didn’t know any architects, white or Black,” she said. “It’s probably always hard to break into a mostly all-white profession, and then be immersed in a career where there are so few Black people. There was definitely a sense of culture shock.”
Who: Chicago architect Taylor Staten, telling part of her professional story of being a minority architect in a field with few of them nationwide. The presentation is part of the series “Women Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs – Working & Living in Full Color.”
About the series: Focusing on women of color whose work is centered around creativity and social justice
When: 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Dec. 10
Where: Zoom, with signup at change-by-design-taylor-staten.eventbrite.com
Information: Columbus Area Arts Council at artsincolumbus.org
For more on this story, see Tuesday’s Republic.
