Germane Barnes: Ukhamba

Germane Barnes: Ukhamba is the second in a series of annual commissioned MOAD Pavilions, curated by Isabela Villanueva, MOAD Consulting Curator. On view at Building 1 Plaza on the MDC Wolfson Campus at 300 NE Second Avenue in Downtown Miami from November 12, 2023, to Februrary 24, 2024, it will travel to the MDC North Campus from March 11 to May 26, 2024. In this video, Barnes speaks about the pavilion, its inspiration, and its meaning.
Germane Barnes is the Principal of Studio Barnes and an Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture Graduate Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture, where his is also the Director of the Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL). Barnes’s practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Born in Chicago, Barnes received a Bachelor's of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University, where he was awarded the Thesis Prize for his project Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.
His work was included in The Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 2021 exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America and in the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He won the 2021 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, was a 2021-22 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and was a member of the inaugural cohort of The Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab created by Theaster Gates and sponsored by Prada. His work has been featured MAS Context, Milan Design Week, The New York Times, and Architect Magazine, and acquired for the permanent collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. His widely published project Griot was included in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, The Laboratory of the Future.
Barnes’ award-winning research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences Black domesticity.
Germane Barnes: Ukhamba is realized in collaboration with Studio Barnes and the following individuals: Andrea Martinez, Isabella Adelsohn, George Elliott, and Noelle Davis.
MOAD's programs are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. They are sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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