HXD Week: Africatown: Monument and Wound

“Africatown: Monument and Wound — Student Proposals for Remembrance and Repair,” would present a curated exhibition and short public talk based on student work from my senior Interior Architecture capstone studio at the University of Houston. The session begins from the premise that Africatown is both a monument to survival and an ongoing site of rupture, where design must engage memory not as a completed narrative, but as an active condition. Founded by survivors of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to reach American shores, Africatown carries a history shaped by an illegal voyage, deliberate erasure, oral tradition, and ongoing environmental and industrial pressures. The studio, Africatown: Remembrance and Repair, asks students to design a floating interpretive installation that responds to this layered history and contemporary context. For HXD, the session would combine a brief introductory talk with a guided walkthrough of student drawings, models, and visual research. Students would participate as presenters, contributing to a broader conversation about memory, repair, environmental justice, and interior architecture.

Light bites and beverages will be provided.

Presenter:

Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez
Associate Professor
University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design
Interior Architecture

Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez is an architect, educator, and Associate Professor at the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, where she directs the Interior Architecture program. A licensed architect in Texas, her teaching and research focus on adaptive reuse, cultural memory, material practice, and the role of interior architecture in addressing social and environmental conditions.

She served as an architectural collaborator with artist Rick Lowe in the development of Project Row Houses, a landmark community-based art and architecture initiative in Houston’s Third Ward. Her current research project, The Hair Salon: Black Hair as Architecture, examines Black hair practices as systems of pattern, structure, environmental intelligence, and spatial knowledge, and has received support from the Graham Foundation.

At UH, she teaches studios that ask students to engage history, place, and repair through rigorous design proposals.

Parking: Guests may park in the Elgin Street Garage, 4224 Elgin Street, Houston, TX 77204. Paid visitor parking is available in the garage. The Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design is located nearby at 4200 Elgin Street.