Container / Contained

PHIL FREELON: DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR TELLING AFRICAN AMERICAN STORIES

Faculty: Emily Makas (Architecture) and Greg Snyder (Architecture)

Students: Kyra Sykes (MS Arch – Crticial Heritage), Faith Tootle (MS Arch – Sustainability), Mo Pirela (BA Architecture)

Partners: Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture (Charlotte, NC), North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC), School of Architecture at Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, FL), and Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History (Atlanta, GA)

photo: Noah Willman, Phil Freelon, Courtesy of Perkins&Will (c) Noah Willman

About the Project

North Carolina architect Philip G. Freelon (1953–2019) had a remarkable career of over four decades designing public buildings with his firm, The Freelon Group, and later as design director of Perkins & Will North Carolina.

The Container / Contained series of exhibitions critically examines Freelon’s work, which includes museums, libraries, cultural centers, and public parks, with a focus on his projects that foreground African American communities and identities. Freelon often noted that architecture should be more than a container—it should help tell the story of and be integral to the content of public institutions. To explore the relationship between the container and the contained in Freelon’s architecture, this exhibition analyzes connections between the forms, materials, and meanings of his projects and the histories and cultures they celebrate.

Freelon and his team drew on histories of neighborhoods, connections to African American communities, and African pasts to create designs rooted firmly in place and time. Activism and celebration of heritage are subtly present in Freelon’s work. He was a master of formal symbolism and design metaphors that are thoughtful and thought-provoking and reference culture and history. Freelon’s work, for example, examines the multiple functions and meanings of skin—as both a protective covering and a visual form of identification. In his designs for African American communities and institutions, he expanded the idea of skin with complex building envelopes that explore the use of color, pattern, and material.

To date, this research has been exhibited at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts+Culture (Charlotte, NC), the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, NC), and the School of Architecture at Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, FL). It will be on display at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in Atlanta, GA from March through May of 2025.

Team & Support

This series of exhibitions has been researched, curated, and designed by a team of faculty and students led by Associate Professor Dr. Emily Makas from the School of Architecture. The production team has been led by Associate Professor Greg Snyder, a craftsman and scholar, who focuses his research on the processes of making and constructing, along with the meanings and phenomena that arise from these acts.

Graduate Research Assistants who have served as project managers or leaders for this exhibition have included Fernando Claudio Rodriguez, Sierra Grant, and Kyra Sykes. Additional students that contributed to the exhibition include:

In addition to support from CHArt, this work has been made possible by support from UNC Charlotte’s School of Architecture, College of Arts and Architecture, Chancellor’s Diversity Grant Program, and Office of Undergraduate Research, as well as from Perkins & Will.

Contact: Dr. Emily Makas at emakas@charlotte.edu

Media

J. Micheal Welton, “In Raleigh, an Exhibition Pays Tribute to Phil Freelon’s Prolific Career,” Metropolis, March 3, 2022.

Emily Makas, “From Ideas to Buildings,” North Carolina Museum of Art, February 17, 2022