Bria Miller
Howard University
Department of Architecture
“Junkanoo Pavilion,” rendering. © Bria Miller.
Jury
Paola Aguirre
Ojay Obinani
Robert L. Wesley (Chair)
Jia Yi Gu
I am beyond humbled and grateful to be a recipient of the Robert L. Wesley Award. I am eager to carry on the legacy of Robert. L. Wesley by being a voice for underserved communities and helping them actualize their desires and aspirations.
“Howard Microliving,” collage. This project imagines a housing design for Howard University students. The collage illustrates four ideas central to my design concept: preservation, context, routine, and community. Because the site is located at the historic McMillan Sand Filtration Site, I was confronted with how I could “preserve” and rehabilitate the site’s infrastructure and respond to present-day community concerns over the privatization and demolition of public parkland. My design is inspired by the site’s “context,” where eclectic rowhouses add character and individuality to the streetscape. Its spatial arrangement attempts to respond to the daily “routine” of students. Photographs from ordinary days on “The Yard” are stitched together in order to illustrate how the idea of “community” is integral to the social fabric at Howard. © Bria Miller.
Bria's talent and passion for culturally appropriate design to drive positive change was evident in her work and well deserving of her unanimous recommendation for this fellowship.
Ojay Obinani, Juror
“Howard Microliving,” section elevation. Each unit consists of a living space on the bottom and flex space on top. The flex space allows students to walk out onto rooftop terraces. This shared exterior space creates a COVID-safe response to social engagement. © Bria Miller.
Throughout my interactions, Bria has shown great leadership qualities. She has been vocal about systemic injustices in society and the design profession. In a recent essay, Bria expressed the need to reimagine the architecture profession, including decolonizing design practices and centering community-engaged design and the voices and design practices of historically marginalized communities
Dahlia Nduom, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture College of Engineering and Architecture, Howard University
“Junkanoo Pavilion,” drawings and diagrams. The pavilion serves as both a gathering space and place for reflection. Analysis of the relationship between body and costume brought about the conception of a cantilevered form, suspended in the air and creating a sense of weightlessness and movement. © Bria Miller.
“Junkanoo Pavilion,” rendering. In this project I explored how spatial form could be given to ritual. I addressed this in the context of Bahamian Junkanoo, the national festival of The Bahamas. Junkanoo is a space of community celebration, cultural expression, resistance, and ancestral remembrance. The heterogeneous collection of pavilions pull from the exuberant wardrobe worn in the festival. The composition of these pavilions not only disrupt the neoclassical order of the site but also reflect the ecstatic experience of Junkanoo. In essence, this project memorializes the resistance and resilience of the Bahamian people and promotes an alternative spatial narrative. © Bria Miller.
Bria Miller
Howard University
Department of Architecture
Bria Miller
is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Howard University pursuing a Master of Architecture. Her first experience with architecture—although she didn’t know at the time—was as a young child. Growing up between the Bahamas and the United States, she enjoyed reimagining household items, turning cardboard boxes into play spaces, and building forts out of blankets. Years later, she took a chance on architecture school and ended up falling in love with architecture and design. Alongside her academic endeavors, Miller is a self-taught graphic designer for the Howard Black Liberation Coalition, a collective of student-led radical organizations seeking to support each other in the struggle toward Black liberation by serving the needs of the diaspora in her school community and beyond. In her free time, Miller enjoys film photography and incorporating captured moments into collages. As an aspiring architect and designer, her goal is to take up the question of how architecture can be in alignment with the Black radical tradition and act as a vehicle for liberation and joy. She hopes to one day hold a practice that produces equitable and resilient environments in the two places that she calls home.