Jerome Haferd, Visiting Guest Artist Fellow

“As a Black, mixed race, and LGBTQ+, my practice of architectural and urban design, teaching, research, and advocacy seeks the transformation of design practice through the lens of Land, Blackness, Indigeneity, and other historically marginalized subjects and modes of cultural and spatial production. This expanded practice includes innovative collaborations and curricular engagements in sites and with communities outside the mainstream 'canon' of architecture.”

Jerome Haferd is an architect, public artist, activist, and educator based in Harlem, New York. He is co-founder of the award-winning design and research practice BRANDT : HAFERD. His work focuses on how architecture establishes a dialogue between contemporary phenomena and non-hegemonic users and spaces. Haferd has led design projects and community engagement in sites of Black, indigenous, and other marginalized histories including Marcus Garvey Park, and the Harlem and Pine Street African Burial Grounds. He is also a core initiator of Dark Matter University, an inter-disciplinary BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color)-led design network transforming the space of practice and knowledge production which has grown to over 150 members and conducted courses, teach-ins, and community partnerships nationwide.

Haferd's collaborative studio with K Brandt Knapp, BRANDT : HAFERD, were winners of the first annual 2012 Folly competition held by The Architectural League of New York. Dedicated to experimental forms of public space from the workplace to the domestic to the urban, the studio has engaged a range of projects, diverse communities, and sites of civic disinvestment in New York, Newburgh, Cleveland, and elsewhere. The practice was awarded the grand prize for the 2019 ZeroThreshold competition with a multi-abled, intergenerational housing prototype. The studio is one of the 2020 winners of the AIA New Practices New York award. They recently completed an outdoor parklet, “Migrate,” in collaboration with artist Thomas Heath and the Harlem Renaissance Pavilion project with WXY and others. Haferd is currently a substitute assistant professor at City College’s Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, and adjunct faculty at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and Yale University. Prior to starting his own practice, Haferd had worked in the offices of OMA/Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi Architects, and received his Master’s in Architecture at Yale University and his Bachelor’s in Architecture from The Ohio State University.