Germane Barnes

Germane Barnes (b. Chicago) is 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 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.

Barnes received a Bachelor 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 2021–2022 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.

His widely published project Griot was included in the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, The Laboratory of the Future. The same year, the public work Ukhamba was commissioned by the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College as the second in its annual series of MOAD Pavilions, curated by Isabela Villanueva. Informed by Barnes’ time working in South Africa as well as Miami, the installation responds to Miami’s subtropical climate and unites architectural elements typical of diasporic communities of African and Caribbean origin.

Barnes’ work has been presented at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, LACMA, the Denver Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., where he was identified as one of the future designers on the rise. His work has also appeared in MAS Context, The New York Times, Metropolis and Domus and has been featured in Design Miami/ and Art Basel, among many others.

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

Commissioned Work