Designing for racial inclusion

In the 1940s, Paul Revere Williams was a well-established architect to the stars in Los Angeles when he turned his sights on humbler, more American, fare.

“An eager generation of young people coming out of the war is filled with the desire to have homes of their own — and homes of their own planning and building,” he wrote in his 1945 volume, The Small Home of Tomorrow. A futurist and optimist, he offered detailed advice on building the “Kitchen of Tomorrow” and “Bathroom of Tomorrow,” explaining how to accommodate the new life-changing technologies still to come: “An electronic oven which will cook a roast in less than five minutes — a unit independent of the stove with a glass door and built into the wall.” And: “A completely independent laundry which operates by simply pressing a button.”

Williams was an unlikely voice of the American home-owning future and an even more unlikely design choice for the rich and powerful. (He’s responsible for over 3,000 homes and buildings; famous clients included Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, and Barbara Stanwyck, parts of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and Shrine Auditorium.) His parents migrated from Memphis in the late 1890s; by age four, both had died from tuberculosis, sending Williams and his brother into separate foster care. Dissuaded by caregivers from seeking an ambitious profession, Williams pursued architecture anyway, becoming one of California’s most enduring design influences you’ve likely never heard of.

Despite his accolades as the first African American AIA member, he had been forced to sketch drawings upside down to avoid forcing nervous white clients to sit beside him. “I came to realize that I was being condemned, not by a lack of ability, but by my color. I passed through successive stages of bewilderment, inarticulate protest, resentment, and, finally, reconciliation to the status of my race,” he wrote in a 1937 American Magazine essay called ‘I Am a Negro.’ “I wanted to acquire new abilities. I wanted to prove that I, as an individual, deserved a place in the world.”

Williams’s book and life story raise an important question the design community still grapples with: how would full racial inclusion have shaped the world differently?

In honor of Black History Month, we look to authors who are addressing these persistent issues in the modern era, using frameworks that may currently be under political attack, but that still tackle the problem head on. As always, proceeds from book sales support local booksellers and our editorial programs.

Kevin Bethune

Reimagining Design: Unlocking Strategic Innovation (MIT Press, 2022)

A first-person navigation of design, engineering, and corporate America — from Westinghouse to Nike to founding his own consultancy. Bethune, a familiar figure to the Design Observer audience, recounts his journey as a Black professional navigating predominantly white institutions and how his embrace of design became both a tool and a philosophy.

Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction (MIT Press, February 2025)

Bethune’s follow-up work is equally unflinching, while offering a compelling argument for embracing the messy, non-sequential nature of creative and professional life in the pursuit of breakthrough innovation delivered by happier teams leading happier lives.

Charlene Prempeh

Now You See Me: An Introduction to 100 Years of Black Design — (Prestel, 2024)

Prempeh, founder of the UK-based creative agency A Vibe Called Tech and a contributor to Gucci, Frieze, and others, surveys a century of Black design across fashion, architecture, and graphic design — recovering figures who have been systematically erased from the dominant narratives of design history.

Kaleena Sales

Centered: People and Ideas Diversifying Design  (Princeton Architectural Press, 2023)

A rich, inclusive, contemporary, and global look at design diversity, past and present, through essays, interviews, and images curated by design educator and advocate Kaleena Sales. Centered advocates for highlighting and giving a voice to the people, places, methods, ideas, and beliefs that have been eclipsed or excluded by dominant design movements. The thirteen essays and interviews in this volume feature important and underrepresented design work and projects, both historical and present-day.

Omari Souza

Design Against Racism: Creating Work That Transforms Communities — Omari Souza (Princeton Architectural Press, 2025)

Omari Souza is the founder of the State of Black Design Conference and a longtime Design Observer collaborator. This debut book builds a case for “restorative design” — borrowing from restorative justice to help practitioners examine the harm embedded in designed objects, services, and spaces and move toward accountability and healing.

An Anthology of Blackness: The State of Black Design — Edited by Terresa Moses and Omari Souza, foreword by Dori Tunstall (MIT Press, 2023)

A collection of 21 essential essays from a range of Black designers, educators, and activists. It spans the design industry, pedagogy, and activism — and serves as a kind of blueprint for the world that Black designers, whose names we may not know, have been building through their work.

Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall

Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook — (MIT Press, 2023, updated 2026)

A landmark field-shaper from OCAD University’s dean — the first Black person to hold a design school deanship anywhere in the world. Weaving memoir, manifesto, and practical framework, Tunstall dismantles the colonial foundations of modernist design and offers a reorientation around Indigenous and Global South knowledge systems. The New York Times Book Review called it essential; Bethune himself called it “a critical addition to the canon.”

Ellen McGirt
Editor-in-Chief

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This edition of The Observatory was edited by Rachel Paese.

This is the web version of The Observatory, our (now weekly) dispatch from the editors and contributors at Design Observer. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here. While you’re at it, come say hi on YouTube, Reddit, or Bluesky — and don’t miss the latest gigs on our Job Board.

Podcasts

Explore more from the authors:

Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction | A Design Observer Live Conversation. Kevin Bethune joins Ellen McGirt for an inspiring conversation on breaking traditional design boundaries.

Design of Business | Business of Design

Dana Arnett|Audio

S10E11: Dori Tunstall

Dr. Elizabeth “Dori” Tunstall is the Dean of the Faculty of Design at Ontario College of Art and Design.

Design of Business | Business of Design

Kaleena Sales|Audio

S10E11.5: Minisode

Kaleena Sales and Omari Souza discuss past episodes featuring Kunal Kapoor and Dori Tunstall.

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End marks

Revisit why Black joy means innovation:

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This is the web version of The Observatory, our (now weekly) dispatch from the editors and contributors at Design Observer. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here. While you’re at it, come say hi on YouTube, Reddit, or Bluesky — and don’t miss the latest gigs on our Job Board.