At the 10th anniversary of the Black in Design Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Black Student Union and AfricaGSD presents BLACK ROOTS, A CHRONO-CONSTELLATION & FAMILY TREE — a multi-part exhibition honoring a decade of design, dialogue, and collective imagination. Reflecting and expanding upon the many ways in which Black communities navigate injustice, forge independence, and cultivate solidarity, the exhibition triangulates the theologies, ecologies, and geographies that sustain survival and creative flourishing.
BLACK ROOTS traces the socio-ancestral lineages of design practice within the Black and African diaspora. Inspired by the emerging format of the “chronogram,” the exhibit unfolds with a chrono-constellation, which studies how resistance methods, cultural innovations, and realms of consciousness operate as spatial practices- informing the act of making place, memory, and future all at once.
Across the summer leading into the fall conference, BiD organizers solicited an open call for designers to contribute works, stories, and artifacts that were then mapped and formally archived into a catalog of major social themes, categories of practice, and methods of making in Black design traditions. These submissions, and their metadata form the CHRONO-CONSTELLATION, a graphic timeline of the evolution of these histories and material practices, layered onto a cartography of the Black Atlantic. As a visual archive tracing migration, exchange, and innovation, the CHRONO-CONSTELLATION highlights the continuous remaking of what influences and shapes “design” through the diasporic world.
Complementing the CHRONO-CONSTELLATION, the FAMILY TREE begins with interviews gathered from past organizers, documenting the conference’s pivotal impact and evolution through the lives it has changed, alongside the collaborations and community it has inspired and nurtured. The FAMILY TREE honors all who have built and sustained this gathering, offering an intergenerational record of creative lineage that has often been denied to Black families of the Black and African diaspora.
Through these collective acts of remembrance and weaving, BLACK ROOTS asks what persists, what is possible, and what remains to be designed differently. In turn, we invite you to reflect on how all of us grow to resist, reimagine, and cultivate sustainable, just futures.
“Reflective observations from my experiences of visiting various sites that reflect current and past historical frameworks.”
Public ArtPublic ArtPlacekeepingFoliageBlack Cemetary
Vanessa Morrison
“I’d like to provide a series of photos from the South of 8th: A Community Vision masterplan, which has heavily influenced and inspired me as practitioner in understanding the deeper connection between the built environment, design, culture, legacy, and the Black lived experience in Oklahoma City – and how those experiences can translate into the revitalization strategies necessary to rebuild the community.”
ResidentsCommunity EngagementEldersCultural MapJewel Plaza
“This chair reinterprets Alvar Aalto’s cantilevered forms for contemporary global application, designed for lightweight efficiency and digital fabrication. Two chairs can be produced from a single 48”x96” plywood sheet, with modular Japanese joinery enabling flat-pack distribution, easy repair, and accessibility across contexts.
Crafted from locally sourced wood, its flowing curves embrace Kengo Kuma’s philosophy of mindful living while also drawing inspiration from Ethiopian traditions of adaptive building and community craft. By prioritizing waste reduction and replicable construction, the piece resists extractive models of design and instead honors ancestry, shared knowledge, and collective care. Recognized at both the Harvard Coop and MIT Coop, the work reflects a pursuit of functionality and creativity while envisioning furniture as both an artifact of cultural continuity and a tool for resilient, equitable futures.”
“Recreated plan of my great parents’ home and community, which served as inspiration for designing my own home and community work in Alabama.”
Ancestral Influences
Alula Hunsen
“Fortunately [Magazine] is a post-capitalist lifestyle [print and digital] publication with a participatory lens, lifting up how communities practice liberation in the present-day through restructuring how we relate to the arts, to culture, and to economies. Issue 0: The Pro-Testing Print considers iteration, reflection, daydreaming, and re/vision as sites of radical potentiality and luxurious practice in the solidarity economy.
Words Worth Working Toward is a poetry zine uplifting Boston’s creative wordsmiths in their dreams, their frustrations, and their miring’s; composed of a series of works originally published in the Ujima WIRE, WWWT presents a body of work worth wrestling with and aspiring within.“
Page 01-02 of Fortunately Magazine, Fall 2023 IssueWords Worth Working Toward
“Ethiopian plant geneticist Dr. Melaku Worede – is celebrated for establishing the first seed and plant gene bank in Africa, bringing together traditional farmers and scientists.“
Tyler White: Co-Designer, Co-Curator Celina Abba: Co-Designer Kiki Cooper: Co-Designer, Co-Curator, Project Manager Michael Anthony Bryan II: Interview Coordinator, Co-Designer Lawrence Stephen Early IV: Co-Designer Darius A.L. Bottorff: Co-Designer Jabari Canada: Filmmaker, Editor Milaun Brown: Archivist
Research Contributors: Donald Olunrotoba, Grant Stokes, Kiki Cooper, Lawrence Stephen Early IV, Mica Caine, Milena Almetica, Tyler White, Celina Abba
Artifact Contributors: Michele Y. Washington, Vanessa Morrison, Inumidun Obikoya, Alula Hunsen, Afomia Hunde, Pierce Gordon
Interview Contributors: Courtney Jacobovits, Dana McKinney White, Megan Echols, Natasha Hicks, Cara Michell, Breanna Taylor, Tosin Odugbemi, Kai Walcott, Dora Mugerwa, & Oluwatobiloba Fagbule
Installation: Kiki Cooper, Michael Anthony Bryan II, Donald Olunrotoba, Ibiebele Opuso-Jama, Darius A.L. Bottorff
Collaborators: Howard University – Moorland Spingarn Research Center
