Meet the inaugural JAE Fellows ready to bring their perspectives as BIPOC writers and designers to the architectural discourse

The Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) have announced the inaugural class of the new JAE Fellows program.

Four academics were selected to form the initial cohort of an initiative meant to “help shift conversations and systems around conventional forms of review and assessment, and to productively unsettle exclusive systems and platforms of scholarship, design, research, and creative practice.”

The fellowships were created to support BIPOC writers and designers not currently supported by universities in a full-time capacity and are enhanced by a mentorship program with one of the JAE’s Fellow Advocates — an international network of scholars making their own unique contributions to the field of architectural education. 

The ACSA has planned an extensive suite of programming to coincide with the new fellowship program and will publish each Fellow’s work on their website jaeonline.org. Scroll down to find out more about the first class of JAE Fellows.

Dele Adeyemo 

Bio: "Dele Adeyemo is an architect, creative director and critical urban theorist. His practice, research and pedagogy interrogate the underlying drivers of architectural development and urbanization, locating them in racialized logistical processes that orchestrate everyday patterns of life. Dele’s most recent projects include Black Horizon (2019) presented at the 2nd Edition of the Lagos Biennial; The Cosmogony of (Racial) Capitalism (2020) commissioned for the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial; and the temporary solo exhibition titled Making Black Horizons (2021) at Camden Art Centre, London. Dele is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, a recipient of the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Andrew Mellon research grant and teaches an Architecture Design Studio with Ibiye Camp and Dámaso Randulfe at the Royal College of Art in London."

Ella den Elzen

Bio: "Ella den Elzen is a researcher, curator, and artist. She holds a MArch from McGill University. Coming from a background in architecture, her practice engages with exploratory modes of architectural representation to explore the role of the built environment in society. Her research examines topics linked to migration, extraction and settler-colonial infrastructures. Through the use of archival material and oral histories, she aims to reveal the narratives that architectural drawing and model-making do not always show. Ella has exhibited work internationally at ACUD Galerie in Berlin and her writing has been published by the Journal of Architectural Education, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and Public Parking Journal. Ella has publicly lectured on her projects at Fondation Phi in Montréal, QC and Galérie UQO in Gatineau, QC. Previously, she co-instructed Architectural Theory at the University of Waterloo with a focus on subjectivity and modern property."

Curry J. Hackett

Bio: "Curry J. Hackett is a transdisciplinary designer, public artist, and educator. His practice, Wayside, synthesizes cultural and ecological narratives to envision meaningful work in the public realm. Noteworthy projects include the Howard Theatre Walk of Fame, the DC High Water Mark project, and his ongoing research project, Drylongso, which explores relationships between Black material culture and land. Curry began his academic career in 2019 at his alma mater Howard University in Washington, DC where he studied architecture. He has since taught at Yale University in New Haven, CT, Carleton University in Ottawa, ON, and City College of New York in partnership with the anti-racist design justice school Dark Matter University."

Bz Zhang

Bio: "Bz Zhang is an architect, artist, organizer, and educator based on unceded Tongva land (Los Angeles). They are a core organizer with the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University and a licensed architect in California. In their design and research practice, they investigate physical and cultural construction as entangled processes and use disciplinary tools of architecture to imagine futures beyond settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. As a queer trans non-binary Chinese-diasporic artist, they construct new narratives through intentional misuse, misreading, misalignment, hiding in plain sight, and an extreme attachment to certain objects. Previously, they were the 2021—2022 Citizen Architect Fellow at the University of Southern California, and they have taught at California College of the Arts, University of Michigan, University at Buffalo, University of California, Berkeley, Jefferson University, and Brown University. Bz received a Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Visual Arts from Brown University. In their free time, they look for birds and trash in the Los Angeles River."