ARTIST 002 SEASON 6

Germane Barnes

Germane Barnes is the Principal of Studio Barnes and an Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Architecture Graduate Program at the University of Miami School of Architecture, where he is also the Director of the Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL). His practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation.

Born in Chicago, Germane received a Bachelor's of Science in Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Architecture from Woodbury University, where he was awarded the Thesis Prize for his project Symbiotic Territories: Architectural Investigations of Race, Identity, and Community. His work has been included in The Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 2021 exhibition Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America and in the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He won the 2021 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers, was a 2021–22 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, and was a member of the inaugural cohort of The Dorchester Industries Experimental Design Lab created by Theaster Gates and sponsored by Prada.

Germane’s work has also been featured MAS Context, Milan Design Week, The New York Times, and Architect Magazine, and acquired for the permanent collections of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

His widely published project Griot was included in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, The Laboratory of the Future. In the same year, the public work Ukhamba was commissioned for Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) Pavilions, curated by Isabela Villanueva, at Miami-Dade College. Informed by Germane’s time living in South Africa as well as Miami, the installation responds to Miami’s sub-tropical climate and unites architectural elements typical of Diasporic communities of African and Caribbean origin.

Learn more about Germane’s expansive practice on his website here.