The profound and subtle impacts of Black designers and designers of color decorating homes.
 | | Hamed Ouattara transforms metal gasoline drums into furniture at his studio in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.Sophie Garcia |
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The Changing Look of Design |
For all of the ink — and its digital equivalent — spilled on articles about decorating trends, the fact is that things change very slowly in home design. |
The midcentury-modern furniture revival? It's been going on since at least the 1990s. Beige appears to be the new gray when it comes to wall paint; we'll know for sure in the next few years. Kitchens will remain white for as long as homeowners are convinced that any other color will bring down their resale value. |
But there is a revolution in design happening right now that is bringing real change to the domestic landscape. Page through home design magazines, walk the floors of contemporary housewares exhibitions, poke your head into furniture showrooms and you will see more of what used to be a rarity: the work of Black designers and designers of color. |
 | | Charles O. Job and his Assemblage chair in stained hardwood.Dominic Buettner |
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A recent special design report from The New York Times celebrates such efforts, highlighting creators of furniture, textiles, objects and buildings. It also asks: What is the effect of these voices on the look of contemporary homes? |
No change this important happens overnight, and this special section was one way to follow up on our article in 2020 — in the wake of Black Lives Matter and social justice protests that summer — about the surge of interest in diversifying the design industries. One of the subjects of that story was an Ethiopian American furniture designer and data scientist named Jomo Tariku, who had counted the number of designers featured on the websites of international furniture companies and discovered that only 0.3 percent were Black. |
 | | From left, "Zulu Renaissance Writing Table for a Lady" by Cheryl Riley, and Mr. Ouattara's cabinet made from cut up and reassembled gasoline drums.From left: Cheryl Riley Design, Christian Tuempling |
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When we were planning this special section, our first goal was to ask Mr. Tariku who else he thought should have been on those websites. He put together a list of more than 80 of his peers throughout the world, which he winnowed down to nine for our cover story. The group included artists with work in museum collections, masters of material innovation, extraordinary craftspeople and next-generation wonders, and yet none of them could be called a household name. We wanted to change that. |
We also looked around and noticed that major textile and wallpaper companies were now collaborating with Black designers and designers of color, and that the results communicated both profound and subtle changes to the ornamental patterns that historically decorated homes. |
A botanical print showcased the flowers that had grown on a Mississippi plantation where the young textile artist Hera Ford's grandmother had been raised. A toile alluded to the fashion designer Victor Glemaud's lush homeland in Haiti at the time of the revolution led by Toussaint Louverture. (Read about these and other examples in a feature about décor as a kind of Trojan Horse of enlightenment.) |
 | | Ms. Riley, a furniture designer based in New Jersey.via Cheryl Riley |
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We asked: Who is cultivating the tastes and shaping the experiences of people who appreciate works by Black artists and designers? Three answers: Tione Trice, an antiques dealer in New York; Jenna Fletcher, an influencer in London; and Ajiri Aki, a lifestyle maven in Paris. |
We explored how historians, archivists and writers are focusing on ideas of Black shelter in "The Interior Lives of Black Homes." We addressed how creative forces are influenced by geographical and cultural displacement in a conversation between Teresa Rivera, a Black Dominican American designer in London, and Jean Lee, a Korean American designer who divides her time between Seattle and Brooklyn. |
 | | Chris Cornelius, chairman of the school of architecture and planning at the University of New Mexico and founder of design firm studio: Indigenous.Adria Malcolm for The New York Times |
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Finally, we profiled two very different architects who have embedded their heritages into their projects and made them relevant to all: Chris Cornelius, a member of the Oneida Indian Nation, who designs buildings that are respectful of their environments; and Joshua Ashish Dawson, who was born in India and now lives in Los Angeles, who creates digital worlds that are cautionary tales of the future toll of climate change. |
| DESIGN: A SPECIAL SECTION How the recent push for diversity in design is changing the way the world looks. | | | | | | |
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