Darell Fields

Darell Fields is an accomplished teacher, designer and scholar. He has taught design, urbanism and theory at several universities, including Harvard Graduate School of Design, California College of the Arts (San Francisco), and the University of California Berkeley. His design/artistic work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture (Pittsburgh), CentralTrak (Dallas), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and Princeton University’s School of Architecture.

Fields is also an accomplished author and inventor. His book, Architecture in Black, is described by the philosopher, Cornel West, as “… the first theoretical treatment of race in architectural discourse.” Fields has extensive editorial experience in academic publications. He has edited traditional monographs on architects (e.g. Carlos Jimenez and Tadao Ando), served as editor of Harvard GSD’s Studio Works catalogue, and is a founding editor of Appendx: Culture, Theory, Praxis.

As an inventor Fields launched an innovative research and development company (Superbia) using cutting edge digital production and rapid prototyping techniques to design, manufacture, and test sustainable building technologies. Products originating from the process were patented (e.g. Frameless Window Module, US App. 10/255,058), licensed, and marketed by the business entity, Superbia LLC. Superbia offered direct engagement with the public via a custom products gallery and one-on-one design consultation. Fields’s most recent venture, The Maxine Studio, is formed on a similar design/business model. Maxine offers vertically integrated design services, including traditional design, visualization/production (BIM), information technology, academic consulting, urban design, and branding.

Fields’s professional work includes the 18,000 sf. conceptualization and design of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research (aka the Hutchins Center) at Harvard University. The center contains the Image of the Black in Western Art Archive, Visiting Fellows Program, host incubator research projects and a substantial collection of African and African American Art. Included is the Neil L. and Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery—the only exhibition space at Harvard devoted

to works by and about people of African descent. Most recently, the Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon tests Fields’s Black aesthetic principles in built form. The 3,500 sf. project opened fall 2019.

Fields gave the 2020 Kassler Lecture, On Solitude, at Princeton University’s School of Architecture. An associated solo retrospective and publication are planned for 2021. He is one of Princeton’s Visiting Presidential Scholars for 2021-2022.