"Studying to Be Visionaries" Nina Cooke John, Andrés Hernandez, Cornell Experiment | Black Architect

What does it take to create a generation of extraordinary Black architects — and what happens when those conditions disappear? In this conversation, architect and installation artist Nina Cooke John and interdisciplinary artist and educator Andrés L. Hernandez join Sekou Cooke to reflect on their time at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning in the 1990s — a rare and unrepeatable moment when a critical mass of Black students, a visionary administrator, and a culturally explosive era converged to produce something that has shaped American architecture ever since. Nina Cooke John is the founding principal of Studio Cooke John Architecture and Design, based in New York. Her work spans intimate residential spaces to major public installations, most notably Shadow of a Face, the Harriet Tubman monument unveiled in Newark, New Jersey in 2023. She is a 2022 United States Artists Fellow, the 2024 AIANY New Perspectives honoree, and has taught at Syracuse University, Parsons School of Design, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Andrés L. Hernandez is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator. He is an Associate Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, co-founder of the Revival Arts Collective, founder and director of the Urban Vacancy Research Institute, and a former exhibition design team member for the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center. His public commissions include work for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. This conversation is drawn from Sekou Cooke's new book BLACK ARCHITECT: Conversations from Deep Inside a Misunderstood Profession (Park Books, 2026), featuring fourteen conversations with leading Black architects, historians, and advocates. Topics covered in this conversation: — Why both Nina and Andrés came to architecture sideways — and what that reveals about how Black students find the profession — The particular alchemy of Cornell's AAP program in the 1990s and why it has never been replicated — What MOAAP (the Minority Organization of Architecture, Art, and Planning) meant to a generation of Black students — The role of Ray Dalton and the OMEA office in creating conditions for Black students to thrive — Hip-hop, the post-Reagan culture war, and why the nineties were a uniquely charged moment to be Black in architecture school — How the Blackitects network has sustained itself for thirty years — and what it produced — Why architecture school can be a backdoor into art, community design, and cultural practice — What it means to be "from" an institution without being "of" it 🔗 Presale — BLACK ARCHITECT (Park Books, 2026): https://shorturl.at/BUaIk 🔗 Website: www.black-architect.com 🔗 Previous episode — Jack Travis FAIA:    • "The First Architect Was Black" — Jack Tra...   Subscribe for upcoming conversations with David Adjaye, Lesley Lokko, Germane Barnes, Kimberly Dowdell, Pascale Sablan, and more. #BlackArchitect #NinaChookeJohn #CornellArchitecture #BlackArchitects #Architecture #BuiltEnvironment #BlackDesign #DesignJustice #NOMA #AfricanAmericanArchitects #BlackExcellence #ArchitectureEducation #BlackArtists #CommunityDesign #HipHopArchitecture