Ngozi “Nome” Brown is an assistant professor of practice in architecture at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Brown, AIA, ASID, NOMA, NCARB, NCIDQ, M.Ed., LEED AP ND, EDAC, GPCP, is a licensed architect and an NCIDQ-certified interior designer. She is the owner and principal of NOB A+D, PLC, an architecture and interior design firm in central and northwest Arkansas. Her firm has been honored as a finalist for Minority Business of the Year and Emerging Minority Business of the Year by the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. Her expertise includes learning environment design, environmental psychology and evidence-based design.
Brown is a previous inductee into the Arkansas Business 40 Under 40 class as well as Building Design + Construction magazine’s nationwide 40 Under 40 class. In 2019, Brown was honored as a National ASID Ones to Watch Scholar — one of only eight inductees in the country. Brown has served on the AIA Arkansas Board of Directors as the AIA Central Section Chair; in this capacity, she worked on several committees, including the Women in Architecture (WIA) committee and the Diversity committee. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Tuskegee University and a Master of Education from Concordia University.
What brought you to the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design?
I was practicing in Little Rock, and I happened to be at a board retreat with John Folan (Department of Architecture head and professor) and Lisa Skiles, and she introduced us. I told him I’d be interested in teaching, and we stayed in touch. I was living three and a half hours away, and I didn’t know how comfortable I would be with college students. But my master’s degree focus was on curriculum and instruction, and I homeschooled my kids, so I knew that I liked to teach. But it’s different with your (younger, at the time) kids; I didn’t know how it would be with other people’s (college-aged) kids.
Because of remote teaching during the pandemic, I was brought on virtually while still living in North Little Rock. I taught a third-year studio online, coordinated by Brian Holland (assistant professor of architecture). I just taught that one studio, as an instructor part time. I did that twice virtually; and I would come up to Northwest Arkansas on Fridays for studios in person.
What difficulties do you experience teaching at the college level?
Assessment. The way I motivate my own children is I don’t assign grades. I see if they got something right, but the focus is not on checking boxes. I keep records, but the goal is mastery, and we don’t leave a topic until we master it.
But with college students, there’s just a different level of accountability. I don’t use grades to punish. It’s really to give a student feedback, help them answer the questions of: “How do I improve?” and “What do I need to change?” But design is subjective. There’s no clear right or wrong, and I personally have very broad taste aesthetically — so much beauty can be found in so many design proposals. What I’ve done in the past several semesters is create a rubric that is strict on the deliverables and less focused on aesthetic critique. I like to evaluate the rigor of the process success of achieving intended and stated concepts and goals. It’s not always fun to be so rubric-oriented, but it is fairer because every student that does what I asked them to do earns their grade, which is standardized across the section. A potential problem arises when a student will work towards that rubric and hit the bar but loses the aesthetic. So, I ask for a concept early on and check how well the student delivered the proposed concept.
How do you challenge your students to not just strive towards a grade?
I’m very intentional about connecting on a personal level and trying to motivate from the heart. I really want them to love their work and love the people who will subsequently be impacted by their work; and that’s why I spend so much time discussing morality in my electives (Archageddon: Architecture as Described through the Lens of Dystopian Literature and Spaces of Confinement: The Architects’ Dilemma). I try to hold the students accountable, asking: “Why did you choose architecture?” “Do you like hard work?” “Do you understand the impact that design has on your fellow man?” “How passionate about this are you?” There are a lot of other careers that don’t require wholeheartedness — but architecture demands wholeheartedness and passion. I try to get students to understand that.
How do you navigate difficult topics that are important as an architect?
It is important for us to have conversations about the wide-reaching impact of design — and the ways that it shapes the social landscape. I don’t ask the students to have a political view as an architect, but just to understand that, because architecture can be political, good architects need to know what their core values are. There aren’t always hard and fast rules, but I want them to think about why they’re designing what they’re designing. I try to bring that into discussion. I want students to care about this work because they can create spaces that are lifetime prisons, tucked away in the middle of nowhere (we deep dive into this topic in my Spaces of Confinement elective). We sometimes don’t think of spaces like prisons or forensic psychiatric hospital facilities as design, but someone is going to live 30 to 40 years in a room drawn and designed by an architect. I ask my students, “Does that matter to you as an architect?” “Where do you draw the line?”
How have these topics impacted the courses you have developed?
For all my courses, I like to have an element that is current and active. With the Spaces of Confinement course, the idea came to me after I worked on a juvenile detention facility, and I couldn’t sleep at night. I knew I had to talk about this topic. With the Archageddon course, I watched a film (Equals), and I noticed how the lighting and architecture very powerfully, and silently, provided a suitable backdrop that supported the dystopian ideas and behaviors in the plot. I saw that tension between how laypeople versus architects perceive architecture; and how design supports (or discourages) relationships and community.
I want my courses to be based in history, because they deal with architectural history, but also relevant for today.
Can you explain how you incorporate literature into your classes?
I rely heavily on dystopian literature in my Archageddon elective — classic dystopian literature is the foundation of the course. First, I do an inaugural lecture, and we cover utopian thought and the history of utopia in both literature and architecture. Then we read and analyze the dystopian works chronologically, with a focus on how the places, conditions and architecture are described. We focus on how the authors use architecture to reinforce the plot.
All the books talk about architecture, and that’s the point I make to them. We read these books which can’t be told without the architecture. Most of the horrific things in the stories couldn’t happen without architecture.
I’ve set up an analysis tool which we use to organize the prose of the books — prose relating to architecture and place. Students analyze the prose, describing things such as the materials, changes in scale, etc.; then they generate original sketches of the spaces based on how the author described them. I always make the back-and-forth comparison — a lot of these authors did the inverse, they saw architecture and wrote about it, but we see the writing and draw it.
What is your experience being a black woman in this position?
I’ve been very fortunate in that I just feel comfortable as a woman and as a Black person. I was raised by very capable adults, surrounded by siblings that I loved, and I was encouraged to pursue my interest — which was design. Private practice and academia are different; there are unique challenges related to race and gender. In my experience, the academic setting allows more room for open dialogue than does private practice. There’s a unique experience for Black women because Black American culture, in my observation, has more matriarchal undertones than does white American culture. There’s never been a period in America where Black women didn’t work, that we were not expected to work. After slavery, there’s always been this expectation of career for the Black woman. I suspect this is why my perception of the patriarchy seems to be different than perhaps the perception that non-Black women in architecture typically have.
Are there parts that are difficult?
Being asked to comment on race as though I know everything about it — that can be tricky. Black thought is not monolithic — and my experience as a Black woman raised in central Arkansas and having attended a historically Black college for undergrad, these experiences have shaped me in ways that are nuanced. This is, of course, true for all people, Black or otherwise. If people look to me as an expert on the topic of race, it concerns me. There are so many opposing views in Black culture about everything — I don’t want to invalidate or wrongly represent Black people who see the world differently than I do.
I think we all want to be taken seriously as unique human beings, and not be reduced to just a race or skin tone. That’s a problem because so many opportunities are available to you as a Black person if you’re willing to focus on race. Black people make up only 12% of the U.S. population, and we make up one-half of 1% of architects. There’s just not a lot of Black voices being heard in the profession, and if you are one of those voices, you may be compelled to speak often about race.
Similarly, in academia, there is pressure to be the role model. You know that minority students are not going to see another person like you, probably ever, so you feel such a burden to make sure you connect with every single student, so they don’t feel completely alone. It becomes a very heavy and sobering load because you’re one, and there’s 40 to 60 students that you are going to encounter in a two- or three-year span.
What accomplishment are you proudest of?
This is such an obvious and generic answer, but of course my kids. Nothing else matters in comparison to them.
Career wise, what I am proud of is when my students say that I make them think about how architecture hurts people and helps people. That is exactly what I’m trying to do. Architecture and design have the potential to be enormous forces for good.
And a moment I just recently enjoyed in May was when the students in the first classes I taught graduated. To see them graduate, that was amazing. Now I look forward to when they come back with their licenses; that will be amazing. I already know those will be huge moments seeing those accomplishments.
What is something you wish students knew about you?
That I really care about them. All of them. I believe that if you love everybody, sometimes people assume your love won’t stretch far enough. But love is infinite. I love all my students, and they all are very special to me. I like to work with them in person because, when I see them, it’s a reminder that this is somebody’s little person, the apple of someone’s eye, just like when I leave my kids with people. I consider it an honor to help them as they pursue this noble profession.