Emanuel Admassu

Emanuel Admassu is an architect and assistant professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York City, NY. His architectural practice WO-AD, which he co-founded with partner and architect Jen Wood is based in Providence, Rhode Island. Admassu was previously an assistant professor within the architecture department at the Rhode Island School of Design and has also taught design studios at Harvard Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is co-founder and member of the Black Reconstitution Collective. As a collective they exhibited first show on Black architects and race in MoMA's Architecture and Design department’s 89-year history.
Early life and education
Emanuel Admassu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and moved to Atlanta, GA during his early childhood. He received a Bachelor of Architecture at Southern Polytechnic State University, and holds a Master of Advanced Architectural Design and Advanced Architectural Research degree from Columbia University.
Career
His practice AD—WO has received the Rice Design Alliance Spotlight Award in 2021 for their contribution to the discipline of architecture. Their projects include work across the globe in Africa, Asia, Europe and the United States while challenging typologies of social housing, residential design and civic infrastructure. Most recent includes the analysis of constructed identities of two urban marketplaces: Kariakoo in Dar es Salaam, and Merkato in Addis Ababa. His essay 'Mengeg Merkato' was published in 2015 in the ARPA Journal, Issue 3 where he makes a reflection between European and African urban settlements. He also contributed to Issue 14 of 'Manual' the official RISD Museum Journal.
Admassu is part of the 2021 'Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America' exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition was co-curated by Mabel O. Wilson Sean Anderson and featured 10 architects, designers and artists whose work engages with the history and future of African-American culture in relationship to architecture and the built environment within the United States. It was the first ever MoMA exhibition including only African-American creatives. Jay Cephas of the contemporary art magazine Artforum writes about the exhibition: " “Reconstructions” includes a fourteen-hour online course on how race and racism have shaped the built environment, bearing witness to not just the work of ten artists, architects, and designers, but also to the ordinary spatial practices of Black folk. As much as the exhibition is about space, it’s even more about time—about the present moment, and about the urgent need for change."
In 2020, Admassu and the Black Reconstruction Collective received a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the fine art as part of their mission to 'foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.'

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu