Ang Li’s projects, Place of Assembly: The Material Afterlives of Buildings is a forthcoming architectural installation that addresses a set of themes at the intersection of architecture, preservation and public art practices. The project takes the form of a temporary, monumental landscape constructed out of reclaimed building materials that explores the history and geographical networks of masonry construction in the New England. Working in collaboration with the non-profit public art organization Now+There and a number of building material reuse and recycling centers, the installation deploys salvaged fragments from demolished buildings and sites in the Boston area to raise questions around our established monument-making practices and the future of material stewardship.

Jay Cephas’s project, the Black Architects Archive serves to collect and display the work of Black architects across history in an effort to bring to light under-represented practitioners in architecture. As an interactive repository of architectural practice that maps the genealogy of Black architects from the nineteenth century to the present, the Black Architects Archive seeks to make the works of Black architects easily accessible and publicly available by foregrounding architects who have otherwise been overlooked in history and, as such, opening their lives and works to greater scholarly inquiry. The Archive will help to change the kinds of research into architectural history that is done and, by extension, contribute to changing the curricula within architectural education.