Three years after BlackLivesMatter, the architectural profession has made notable strides towards becoming a more inclusive profession says one of Ontario’s most visible Black woman architects Farida Abu-Bakare. BlackHistoryMonth
Farida Abu-Bakare, a frequent guest on diversity and inclusion panels and supporter of such groups as the Black Architects and Interior Designers Association, Black Students in Design and RISE for Architecture, is the director of global practice at the urban design firm WXY based in New York.
“Underrepresentation, racial discrimination and combating negative racial stereotypes about intellectual inferiority can really cause Black women to feel like impostors despite having remarkable resumes and important perspectives,” she said at the time.“As soon as that happened in June 2020, with George Floyd, every firm was scrambling, how do I make sure that my workplace is diverse and equitable? How do I make sure that my recruitment is inclusive?” she said.
By the time she left graduate architectural school with a masters degree in 2012 and joined the working world, she was eager to get to work on community-building as well as volunteering in aligned projects. The management at HOK fully supported her as a Black woman architect but there was no escaping that the numbers were stacked against her.
COURTESY FARIDA ABU-BAKARE – Farida Abu-Bakare showcases a structure she designed for an artist installation in Kew Gardens in Richmond, England in May 2022. Now with WXY she has worked closely with the firm’s founding principal Claire Weitz on projects in Abu-Bakare’s nation of birth, Nigeria, in London and in Toronto.
As a mentor of young Black architects, Abu-Bakare said she urges her mentees to avoid using race as a catalyst to gain favour but rather to focus on building technical prowess.
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