New Transitions: studio SUMO's Yolande Daniels on Design Research, the Context for Form, and Expanding Boundaries

By Julia Gamolina

Yolande Daniels is the co-founder of studio SUMO, an innovative design practice with an approach that is grounded in research, formal exploration, and material invention. Often working in the public realm, studio SUMO’s built work includes the Josai University School of Business Management, Sakado, Japan; the Museum of African Diaspora Art, Brooklyn; Leaney Harlem Duplex, Harlem; and interior space for the Museum of African Art in Long Island City.

Yolande Daniels received her B.Arch from City College and her M.Arch from Columbia GSAPP. In her interview with Julia, Yolande talks about all kinds of transitions and the cultural issues that serve as the context for form, advising those just starting their careers not to discount their true interests and desires.

JG: How did your interest in architecture and design first develop?

YD: I did not grow up in an environment with architects and I came to architecture in a roundabout way. My initial interest was in art; I grew up making things, drawing, and painting. I first wanted to be an artist or a writer, but those weren’t professions that my parents approved of [laughs] - they didn’t see how I was going to be able to make a living. So in college, I studied all the things I was interested in - philosophy, even botany - I took a broad array of classes my first year, just exploring things.

Then my sister, who’s eighteen months younger than me, graduated [from high school] and went to college, and my father and I helped her move to Howard University. She knew what she wanted to study - engineering. When we moved her in, the architecture school was next to the engineering school and I visited the architecture school. That was my first exposure to architecture. Then I started looking into the field more. My father had a paint contracting business, so we all worked summers with him on construction sites, and I met a young guy who was an architect and talked to him. Visiting Howard and seeing the architecture school, I just started thinking that this is a career that combines my artistic and theoretical interests, and then it was something that my parents approved of!

Josai International University, I-House Dormitory

I likewise suggested a few professions to my parents that they didn’t approve of, and we also came to architecture. What did you learn both about architecture and about yourself in studying it?

I remember as an undergraduate student in architecture at City College, similar to generations of students now, I wanted to be in a profession to make a difference in the world, to help make cities and neighborhoods better. When I went to graduate school at Columbia University, I was excited by the world of ideas that opened up. I was happy with what I was getting in the field of architecture, but then, there were areas that weren’t covered - we didn’t really talk about the places where Black people lived. We didn’t really talk about parts of society that weren’t within a certain place in the canon. I wanted to address those places.

After graduate school, I received two fellowships in a program called the Independent Study Program through the Whitney Museum of American Art. I took it upon myself to see how architecture could address those areas, first as a studio fellow, and then, as a critical studies fellow. Things started to click for me and I began to determine how to work in the field in a way that combined all of my interests and critical concerns. I learned that cultural issues—the context for form—could be considered as part of architectural discourse by applying methodologies from other disciplines.

How did you get your start in the profession?

My first job in an architecture office was while I was still at City College - I worked for an architecture firm that did corporate interiors. When I was in graduate school and during the summers, I continued to work for interior firms - they actually paid better than architecture firms. I decided I wanted to work in small firms where there was more room to be accepted as an individual — as a black female — and to get responsibility.

When I graduated from Columbia in 1990, I started working for Smith-Miller Hawkinson Architects. My first teaching job was in 1992 at City College. I was uncertain about doing it and I asked the Laurie Hawkinson for advice. Despite that it cut into my hours, she and Henry Smith-Miller were supportive. Once I started teaching, I began working more as a consultant, for firms including Annabelle Selldorf and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, gaining skills in detailing custom environments and furnishings. Meanwhile, I also worked for myself on the side drawing, painting, and doing competitions. My first project that is notable was a proposal for a female urinal that I did in 1992 after work hours and on weekends.

“I was happy with what I was getting in the field of architecture, but then, there were areas that weren’t covered - we didn’t really talk about the places where Black people lived.”

How did studio SUMO come about?

I always had the idea that I would have my own business, and part of that was from my father, who had his own as well. From college forward, I considered myself having a studio - so everything that I made was done through my studio, whatever it was [laughs]. After graduate school, I sat at my desk in my studio, and that morphed into my practice actually, even as I started to work with other people, I brought my studio practice with me into my idea of what the office would be.

Starting with competitions, and then going into the Independent Study Program, cemented my idea of having a studio-based practice. I started to figure out how to look at things like race in the city, or gender and architecture. I started teaching full time in 1999 at the University of Michigan, and in 2000, I started at Columbia and taught there for ten years. In 2000, Sunil Bald and I who had been working together since 1995, officially registered our business as a partnership.

Our first projects were competitions and included my studio projects with the idea of making things on our own, for example, a live-work space that we built out of found objects and custom parts using the services of friends who had a wood and metal shop to build specialty parts. Eventually, the business started to have clients - museum clients first, then a university client, and also residential clients. Our practice continued that way with projects in these areas from buildings and interiors to exhibitions and design-research installations simultaneously.

You are now based in LA. What does the move to LA signify for you and your practice?

Last year, in 2019, I moved to Los Angeles to teach at USC and start a West Coast branch of the office. I am definitely in transition. Everyone is in now transition as a result of the pandemic! But my move here is a big transitional move. Any move is scary and has difficulties but it’s also very exciting to be in a new place that’s very different from New York, which is where I am from. LA still has a city aspect to it, but the logic is very different than New York - things are more spread out, it’s not pedestrian-oriented, but nature is more present. That makes it interesting.

FEMME™pissoire: female urinal and pants prototype

Looking back at everything, what have been the biggest challenges for you in building a practice?

The first thing that comes to my mind is my perfectionism. It’s my biggest challenge in terms of producing - in architecture, you’re always producing things, and I think for me, not wanting to let go of things until they’re perfectly in place has been something that I’ve been challenging myself on.

Another challenge is that, our business grew organically which is very different from making a business plan and a model for how you want to do business. When a business grows organically, there’s a point when it has to change. There is eventually a need for a business plan, and to clarify roles. In our case as we grew into a more established business, we had to become more conscientious. So I think that was something for us - that was not a challenge, but it was a transition that we went through as part of a phase of growth as a business.

On the flipside, what have been the biggest highlights and what are you most proud of?

One highlight looking back is that I have had the opportunity to travel, live and work in several cities: Rome, Italy; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and, in Tokyo, Japan. In each city, I studied the language, and developed a body of design research and a project.

The central highlight for me is that I have been doing design research and projects that expand the boundaries of what is valued as an architectural subject and practice by addressing social subordination and spatial hierarchies— for example, examining the possibility of domesticity for enslaved African-Americans or examining remnants of spaces that subjugation of enslaved Afro-Brazilians—or the gendered construction of bathroom practices.

“I am admiring our African-American ancestors...I hope that the once neglected histories of African-American community building and re-building, in the face of constant malignment, can be part of filling out the historical record.”

While architecture is founded on concrete objects, cultural subjects generally lack concrete artifacts to study. When looking at subjects like race and gender, I have looked for spatial traces and used narratives (ex. slave narratives), other texts (ex. laws), and timelines of events to situate the spaces and secondary artifacts to shed light on spatial practices. In this work, I’ve been able to combine my interests in art, writing, and architecture, and crafted a career doing what interests me while addressing needed areas. It is a highlight for me that I’ve been able to focus on this in my career even though there was not a lot of support for it in our field.

What would you say your mission is? What’s the core impact you’d like to have on the world and on the field of architecture?

Architecture is a social and spatial construct, a discipline and set of ideas, and a form-making practice. My creative practice is rooted in this foundation. It provides a foundation for my research on how the construction of spaces, places, buildings, and cities are products of the social systems that produce them and it guides my approach to practice in academia, architecture and design.

In general, my practice is about using both research and design as a way to impact society. Most of our clients are institutions, so it’s not as much about someone’s personal issues as a public good - that’s the area I’m working on.

Who are you admiring right now? Who’s out there in the world doing really impactful work?

I am admiring our African-American ancestors. During a visit to the history galleries of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, DC, I was struck by the dignity and perseverance in the longstanding tradition of African-Americans protesting and demanding freedom and equal rights in this country and how this struggle advanced freedoms for all Americans. In my current research on Black settlement in Los Angeles — which began with the Spanish settlers who founded the puebla de Los Angeles and included people of African heritage, as well as, the settlers at the time of US statehood — I hope that the once neglected histories of African-American community building and re-building, in the face of constant malignment, can be part of filling out the historical record.

I am also inspired by the many impactful practices and approaches to architecture, cities, and society that exist now—many started by young practitioners like I once was who want to see society develop in a more just way. In crafting an approach to architectural research and practice that addresses how the relationships of society inform place-making, I draw from multiple sources—many from fields outside of architecture. I am inspired by so many things and I am very project oriented, so I think ideas and practices, but also materiality—objects and places—inspire me.

The current research project that I am working on as one of the exhibitors in the upcoming MoMA NY Issues in Contemporary Architecture exhibition, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, is an opportunity for me to revisit a broad spectrum of critical practices and production that I admire ranging from works critiquing society through architecture, to works critiquing race, to works that explore unique forms of representation.

“It is important to find a way to have an impact on the world that is individual. It’s like being true to yourself but also acting outside of yourself.”

Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their careers in the field today? Would your advice be any different for women?

The first thing is to not discount your own desires. It is important to find a way to have an impact on the world that is individual. It’s like being true to yourself but also acting outside of yourself—and it may not look like something you’ve seen before.

I think, especially at this time, there are different models for practice. The field has been expanding. Despite that restrictive core beliefs remain, this can be a source of inspiration.

One piece of advice to young women is to recognize their value and to have confidence in themselves as a leader—as thought leaders and as leaders in creativity, production and management. As someone who brought an independent practice to a collective practice, I would like to encourage young women today to explore and determine what is critical as an architectural practice for themselves. Then however they decide to approach practice, they will have security in what they bring to it.