The late black architect J. Max Bond Jr. should be remembered as one of the nation’s leading black architects and an influential social activist, panelists said at a symposium at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design on Friday.
The symposium honored Harvard alumnus Bond, who died of cancer at age of 73 in February in New York. Experts in the field discussed Bond’s accomplishments, activism and legacy as part of the Graduate School of Design’s annual Alumni Weekend.
“He carved the path for so many in our profession,” Harvard Graduate School Dean Mohsen Mostafavi said. “His determination, wisdom and guidance will continue to inspire all who knew him.”
Peter Cook, an architect who spent several years working for Bond, said Bond was not only a talented designer but also an outstanding leader for others in his profession.
“His career was really about bringing people together,” Cook said. “He always said to me, ‘Two minds are better than one.’”
After extensive experience in different parts of the world such as France and Ghana, Bond founded the firm Bond Ryder & Associates in 1970 with Donald Ryder, according to a Feb. 19th New York Times obituary. Their projects included the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala.
He also led the Architects Renewal Committee of Harlem, which designed Harlem’s famous Studio Museum.
According to The Times, Bond and his firm were selected in 2004 to be the architects of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center site. The memorial, entitled “Reflecting Absence” is scheduled to be completed on Sept. 11, 2011.
The panel discussed Bond’s sensitivity to modern architecture, expressed in his sleek, contemporary addition to the Harvard Club in New York City, as well as his sense of global responsibility and extensive activism.
“He had a concern for social uplift,” Cook said. “He was concerned about who worked on the buildings and how economic responsibility was shared throughout the community.”
Bond always sought to preserve the intrinsic value of the land and buildings he worked with, according to The Times. In his redevelopment of Manhattan’s historic Audubon Ballroom for Columbia University’s Audubon Business and Technology Center, his design left the facade of the Ballroom untouched.
“I think of Max as a cultural preservationist,” Craig Barton, the University of Virginia department of architecture and landscape architecture chairman, said.
Anthony Schuman, the graduate program director for the School of Architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said Bond stood for architecture’s “social vocation,” a means through which the artist could connect the community.
For example, Bond’s design also dedicated a portion of the Audubon Ballroom to a museum honoring civil rights activist Malcolm X, who was assassinated there in 1965.
“The simple choice of bricks maximized economic participation of African-Americans in the community,” Cook said.
Prominent black architect was social activist, panelists say
Published: Monday, October 5, 2009
Updated: Monday, October 5, 2009
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