The Knowlton School is pleased to announce that Germane Barnes will be the 2023–24 Trott Distinguished Visiting Professor. Throughout the academic year, Barnes will conduct workshops and field research with architecture students. The Trott experience will also culminate in a symposium in spring 2024. 

Germane Barnes is the Principal of Studio Barnes and Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture Graduate Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture as well as the Director of the Community Housing & Identity Lab. Barnes’ practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Believing strongly in design as a process, he approaches each condition imposed on a project as an opportunity for transformation.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Barnes received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University, where he was awarded the Thesis Prize for his project Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community.

His work has recently been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art’s 2021 exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, and the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He was a winner of the 2021 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, and is a 2021–22 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Barnes was selected in the inaugural cohort of The Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab created by Theaster Gates and sponsored by Prada.

Barnes’ work has been acquired for the permanent collections of MAS Context, Milan Design Week, San Francisco MoMA, LACMA, The Art Institute of Chicago, and more. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Architect Magazine, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture, where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise. His project, Griot, was included in Biennale Architettura 2023, the Laboratory of the Future and was widely published.

The Trott Distinguished Visiting Professorship Program brings internationally acclaimed architects, landscape architects, and planners to the Knowlton School each year. Trott Professors teach design studios, conduct seminars and lecture courses, and interact with faculty and students.