Ohio State News has published a feature on the Missing Masses symposium and highlighted the keynote address delivered by 2023–24 Trott Distinguished Visiting Professor Germane Barnes and the conversation that followed with Architecture Section Head Phu Hoang. 

Barnes keynote describes a history of the porch that originates in the West African tikay.

In order to understand the porch, I had to go all the way back to West Africa,” Barnes said. “The first version of the linear hut was there, and that was called the tikay. And during this search, it became an anthropological quest.”

Barnes found that a version of the tikay made its way to Haiti, where it was called a kombet. The kombet was eventually replicated in the southeast United States, where it was called a “shotgun house.” Many of these houses had front porches where inhabitants fostered a sense of community while seeking a breeze in muggy climates, Barnes said.

“You very clearly begin to see the lineage of this space. When we think about the porch, we think about how important it is for a sense of belonging,” he said. “A porch can be a hair salon. It can be a place for therapy. It can be a place that has a lot of books out front and it becomes your library. … It has so many different multiplicities.” 

Read more at Ohio State News