A conversation hosted by Professor Marlon Davis that challenges us to live a life of the mind and body, to move collectively with a sense of community, shared resources, and a commitment to giving back through critical engagement with the past, present, and future.
The ultimate aim of the discussion is to encourage a holistic approach to design practice that promotes healing, curiosity, responsibility, & purpose allowing for fulfillment and ecstasy in our daily life through a framework of freedom.
Come join us at Williams Somoma B2B Offices in Dumbo on Wednesday, June 15th! Libations are provided by our friends over at Ten To One, a Black owned Rum brand! Come early to try one of our curated cocktails for happy hour @ 6pm!
This link up is a dsgnrswrkshp series curated to provide resources and dialogue to challenge our design processes. To discuss, we've tapped into the community for some artistic perspective, stay tuned for more bios below!
Pratt Institute School of Architecture Visiting Assistant Professor Marlon Davis is an American architectural designer, landscape designer, + VFX artist.
Davis is a graduate of Rutgers University School of Environmental and Biological Sciences B.S. Landscape Architecture program, as well as Pratt School of Architecture Graduate Architecture & Urban Design (GAUD) M. Arch program.
Multidisciplinary in his professional approach Davis utilizes advanced 3D representation + visualization software to develop a fluidity across the design
disciplines, allowing him to apply architectural thinking to any design project. Previously an architectural designer at creative studio DE-YAN, working on a range of projects in fashion, experiential design, + set design, Marlon worked on a stage for Alicia Keys at The Shed at Hudson Yards, and a Virtual
House Party for the launch of Rhianna’s Fenty Skin. He has also contributed as a designer for a number of creative agencies + studios such as MATTE
Projects, DeepLocal, Manual Photo Company, and more recently Black Architects and Designers (BADG) virtual concept house Obsidian, where he was
responsible for the landscape design for the collaborative project re-imagining the black family home in the year 2030.
Education, the foundation of Davis’s practice, attempts to combine a meta disciplinary attitude towards representation with a radical rethinking of
architectural visual possibilities through the appropriation of 3D technologies and VFX tools, critically engaging with the built environment to encourage
a misuse of creative tech by students to inspire more progressive ends. His research has led to positions at Rutgers University’s Landscape Architecture
Program teaching advanced visualization to undergraduate and graduate students. As a former Critic-Architecture at Rhode Island School of Design
(RISD) Marlon taught Architectural Projections examining foundational drawing techniques in architectural discourse. Davis is also slated to teach a seminar in the Visual Studies Department of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) titled Virtual Disruption in the fall of 2022.
Davis frequently presents lectures on his research on buildings and spaces that have been erased from the history of Black American experience with
an emphasis on the Osage Avenue Bombing of the Black Liberation organization MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia (1985). His work explores creative paths for reclamations of these spaces, renewing art, architecture, and design’s relation to social justice, BIPOC communities, the environment and
history. Davis’s teaching and research practice is rooted in investigating architecture’s role in the built environment through VFX tools that allow for a reinvention of how we “see” the city, peeling back the layers that determine the social, economic, and visual material of our world.
This collective caters to the creators of 3-dimensional spaces, transitional spaces, and tactile elements — things we sit on, turn on, interact with & wear.
These fields include but are not limited to: Architecture, Interior Design, Exhibition Design, Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Scenic Design, Accessory Design, Packaging Design & Textile Design.
Photo Cred: BODE
