"It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized.
It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck"
~ Michelle Obama

We created Butterfly Voyage to encourage diversity of all types; to bring together real estate development collaborators that come to the table with different ideas + perspectives, and deliver memorable new developments. We prided ourselves in not seeing color; we now realize that to not see color is not good enough.

Instead, we must commit to seeing color, to actively speak up when we don’t see enough of it, and to go above and beyond to share when we see beautiful work done by collaborators of color. Today that begins with a focus on the color black.

BV is highlighting twenty Black-led companies + collaborators in new development and adjacent spaces that your team should know about right now. We chose to focus on our Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture + Green Spaces, Art, Creative Design + Branding, and Public Relations disciplines.

Editor’s note: Some language has been adapted from each collaborator’s website or the web to ensure transparency + accuracy. All contributors have been noted and credited.

Architecture

Elizabeth Graziolo | image by Sara Fox Photography — Elizabeth Graziolo | image by Sara Fox Photography

Yellow House Architects : Elizabeth Graziolo, Principal ➤
Yellow House Architects is a fellowship of design creatives with diverse voices, working collaboratively to realize their clients’ architectural vision. YHA was founded in early 2020, by Graziolo, a former partner at the renowned, AD100 classical architecture practice Peter Pennoyer Associates. The YHA website will debut later in 2020, please send inquiries to liz@yellowhousearchitects.com

BV Insight: Liz is a true unicorn in the new development industry. Her love of modern architecture coupled with her extensive experience in classical architecture enables her to blend the best of both worlds, and create buildings that will truly endure.

Jaklitsch / Gardner Associates : Mark Gardner, Principal ➤
Founded in 1998, and led by firm principals Stephan Jaklitsch and Mark Gardner who believe that design possesses the ability to communicate collective values, provide relevance and create meaning with attention to context, materiality, form, and sustainability. Jaklitsch / Gardner has received (9) the American Institute of Architecture Awards including a National Honor Award, been awarded by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture & Design, Architizer, and been honored by the Japan Institute of Architecture.

BV Insight: Gardner shares insightful ideas about what design may look like in the coming decade.

David Adjaye | image by Pari Dukovic | via Apeture.org

Adjaye Associates : Sir David Adjaye OBE, Founder + Principal Architect ➤
Adjaye Associates was established in June 2000. The practice has studios in London, New York and Accra and completed work in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. Two of the practice’s largest commissions to date are the design of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington D.C. and the Moscow School of Management (SKOLKOVO). Further projects range in scale from private houses, exhibitions, and temporary pavilions to major arts centres, civic buildings, and master plans.

BV Insight: The practice’s very memorable grapefruit colored design for The Webster L.A. is not to be missed.

Greg Minott + Troy Depeiza | via DREAM Collaborative

DREAM Collaborative : Greg Minott, Managing Principal + Troy Depeiza, Principal ➤
DREAM Collaborative is a diverse and minority-owned architecture firm committed to bringing a broader perspective to the design process to better understand and serve the needs of their clients. They believe that a symphony of voices leads to more innovative thinking and ultimately to better business outcomes.

BV Insight: This piece about multigenerational living by DREAM approaches a topic we may see more often, as our industry reacts to our new COVID-19 world.

BrandNu Design : Michael Ford, Principal ➤
Madison-based BrandNu Design focuses on community engagement, pre-development strategies, and capital campaigns for new developments. Michael Ford, Associate AIA is a designer, born and raised in the city of Detroit. Ford received his Masters of Architecture degree from the University of Detroit Mercy (UDM), where he completed his graduate thesis titled “Hip Hop Inspired Architecture and Design.”

BV Insight: Ford recently resigned from his position to focus on ways to diversify the architecture industry. Check out his initiative, The Hip Hop Architecture Camp.

Interior Design

Kesha Franklin | image by Rayon Richards

Halden Interiors : Kesha Franklin, Principal ➤
Kesha Franklin’s intuitive sense of style, creativity, and harmony goes back to her formative years, where she was introduced to the world of beauty and design. Franklin established her New York-based design firm in 2018 and is a Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses alumna; has been named Designer to Watch by the Black Interior Designer’s Network; has been featured on ElleDecor’s House Tour, Dwell Magazine, NBC’s Open House, Architectural Digest Pro, Business of Home, and ARRAY Magazine to name a few.

BV Insight: A self-taught designer with a roster of high-profile clients—including Colin Kaepernick—Franklin is best known for her work on residential and hospitality spaces. She spoke very frankly to Architectural Digest in 2019 about her experiences as a Black interior designer.

Romanek Design Studio : Brigette Romanek, Founder ➤
One of the few Black interior designers ever to be recognized to the AD100 (2019). In recent achievements, RDS recently designed the Los Angeles outpost of AllBright, the first United States location of the international women’s social club.

BV Insight: This tour of her 1925 Mediterranean-style Los Angeles home via Jenni Kayne is serious eye candy.

Rayman Boozer | image by Kelly Marshall | via TheCut.com

Apartment 48 : Rayman Boozer, Principal ➤
The Color Guru. Apartment 48 has been featured in Instyle, Vogue, New York Magazine, Elle Décor, and Architectural Digest. Boozer has a colorful, vibrant sense of style and believes that every interior has a story. For over two decades, Apartment 48 has worked with clients on a multitude of projects: modern lofts, television studios, summer homes, and commercial offices. Over the years Apartment 48 has embraced that distinction - specializing in combining vibrant colors, exotic materials, and contemporary furnishings to create spaces that feel optimistic, relaxed and effortless.

BV Insight: We love this piece from The Cut about the renowned color guru’s New York apartment.

Nicole Gibbons | image via DesignSponge.com

Nicole Gibbons Studio: Nicole Gibbons, Principal ➤
Nicole’s distinctive design sensibility is eclectic and multi-layered, blending classic with modern, old with new, high with low and boldly mixing together rich color, pattern, and texture in fresh ways that excite. A unique set of influences has helped shape her aesthetic and continue to inform her point-of-view. She grew up both the daughter of a decorator and a child of the MTV Generation and spent more than a decade working in the fashion industry before embarking on a full-time career in design. A highly sought after expert, Nicole has been featured in top media outlets such as HGTV, TLC, The Rachael Ray Show, InStyle, House Beautiful, Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, Better Homes & Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Apartment Therapy, Domino, People Magazine, Elle Decor and more.

BV Insight: Gibbons is the founder of Clare, a whole new paint shopping experience with designer-curated colors, technology to guide you, mess-free paint swatches, and the highest-quality paint and supplies, delivered to your front door.

Joy Street Design : Kelly Finley, Founder + Principal Designer ➤
The Joy Street Design team is comprised of interior designers with an extensive background in both commercial + residential design. Their skilled team manages the interior design process from conception to the finalized installation. As a former lawyer, Kelly is no stranger to managing large, complex projects. Her signature style fuses vibrant colors and contemporary designs. When she isn’t designing, you can find Kelly traveling the world with her family, and gaining inspiration for her projects, or working on her non-profit, Joy Street Initiative.

BV Insight: Finley proves that you can mix colors + patterns in a super-stylish way. House Beautiful highlights a recent JSD residence in the Oakland Hills.

Landscape Architecture + Green Spaces

Walter Hood | via the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Hood Design Studio : Walter Hood, Creative Director + Founder ➤
Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, and 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

BV Insight: Hood’s 2018 TED Talk on how urban spaces can preserve history and build community is highly insightful + a must-watch.

Things by HC: Hilton Carter, Founder ➤
Hilton Carter is a plant and interior stylist and fine artist, who loves making things with his hands. He is passionate about plants--his apartment and studio are filled with over 300--and has a loyal following on Instagram (@hiltoncarter) where he shares his knowledge of plant care and green interiors.

BV Insight: Carter’s Instagram will make you infatuated with plants too.

Ron Finley Project : Ron Finley aka the Gangsta Gardener ➤
“Growing your own food is like printing your own money” Meet Ron Finley, a man who will not sit still and watch a problem take root. Having grown up in the South Central Los Angeles food prison, Ron is familiar with the area’s lack of fresh produce. He knew what it’s like to drive 45 minutes just to get a fresh tomato. In 2010, he set out to fix the problem. Outside his front door, that is. Ron planted vegetables in the curbside dirt strip next to his home. And quietly, carefully, tenderly started a revolution.

BV Insight: This man is going to democratize how we approach urban gardening. Per The Guardian, “This is no damn hobby.”

Art

Karen Jenkins-Johnson | via University of Puget Sound

Jenkins Johnson Gallery : Karen Jenkins-Johnson, Founder ➤
The Jenkins Johnson Gallery, founded in 1996, is a dealer of contemporary art, representing international artists working across disciplines and has galleries in New York + San Francisco. Gallerist Karen Jenkins-Johnson was featured in The New York Times Style Magazine as part of a small but influential group of black gallerists correcting history and was interviewed on art world diversity by AIPADexposure. She is a Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco advisor, and in 2018, was named the MoADSF Patron of the Arts. Gallery artists have artworks in institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Our artists have participated in the Venice Biennale, Prospect, and other invitationals.

BV Insight: This article “A Place at the Table” is not to be missed.

Mariane Ibrahim | image by Philip Newton | via ArtNet

Mariane Ibrahim Gallery : Mariane Ibrahim, Founder ➤
As a young dealer, Ibrahim is enjoying a precocious, meteoric rise in the international art scene. She’s built her reputation with a roster of trailblazing contemporary artists, predominantly from the African diaspora. Since 2012, when she opened the doors of what was then M.I.A. gallery—an acronym for “Missing in Art” and her birth name, Mariane Ibrahim Abdi—Ibrahim has championed Black artists, often through solo shows. (via artsy.net)

BV Insight: Ibrahim is a gallerist whose star will continue to rise. This Financial Times profile piece is a must-read.

Shantell Martin | image by Connie Tsang | via The Female Gaze

Shantell Martin : Shantell Martin, Founder ➤
Known for her signature black and white drawings is an artists’ inquiry into the role of artist and viewer, where a work of art is more than an object of admiration disconnected from its inception. Exploring themes such as intersectionality, identity and play, Martin is a cultural facilitator, forging new connections between fine art, education, design, philosophy and technology. A fashion and design icon in her own right, Martin has collaborated with iconic brands such as Nike, Vitra, Max Mara, Tiffany & Co., and in 2018, Puma launched a global capsule collection featuring her drawings. Martin has collaborated with legendary artists such as Pulitzer Prize winning performance artist Kendrick Lamar and acclaimed designer Kelly Wearstler. In late 2018, she was asked to collaborate with the prestigious New York City Ballet, where she created large scale drawings in the performance hall and foyer of the Lincoln Center for the company’s celebrated Art Series.

BV Insight: How unique would it be to have Martin design a signature piece for a development, and then use pieces of the art as marketing collateral? Inspired by an eyeglass collection she designed for MaxMara in 2017.

Creative Design + Branding

Pentagram : Eddie Opara, Partner ➤
Opara is a multi-faceted designer whose work encompasses strategy, design, and technology. His projects have included the design of brand identity, publications, packaging, environments, exhibitions, interactive installations, websites, user interfaces, and software, with many of his projects ranging across multiple media. His clients have included Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Grace Farms, the Menil Foundation, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Queens Museum, Santander, St. Regis Hotels, the Corcoran Group, Morgan Stanley, New York University, UCLA Architecture and Urban Design, Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM), Grimshaw Architects, (ARO) Architecture Research Office, Harry N. Abrams and Princeton Architectural Press.

BV Insight: We love this piece from Adobe 99U about the designer (Opara) with one foot in America and one in Europe, what it takes to be a Pentagram partner, the poor design of US passports, and why we must pay more attention to graphic design.

Cebo Campbell | image by Michael | via WorkingnotWorking.com

Spherical : Cebo Campbell, VP of Creative ➤
Spherical is one of the world’s premier digital marketing agencies for luxury and lifestyle brands in hospitality and travel. Campbell is both an author and a Creative Director. “I write on the train. I write on planes. I write waiting in lines. I feel I have to write. The reason is simple: representation…I often tell the story of Ferris Bueller; a kid who decides to skip school and, on charm alone, steals a car, impersonates a cop, drinks underage, tampers with computers, and at every step exposes his best friends to peril, only to go home and fall asleep with his mother to kiss him into sweet dreams. I asked myself if Ferris were Trayvon Martin, how might that story end I know the answer. So do you. And this is why representation is so important. I aim to contribute more stories into the world that diversely feature regular (but beautiful) lives made extraordinary. Art, I believe, is the only way to accomplish this. All my creative work is inspired by and aims to add to all the great work in the world.”

BV Insight: Check out this insightful piece Campbell wrote on web design’s inherent rhythm and how it all comes together.

Public Relations

Pembroke PR : Temi Adamolekun, Principal ➤
Pembroke PR is a lifestyle PR agency that helps great brands create awareness by telling their story in the right voice, to the right audience, through the right medium. The firm has worked with a wide range of publications including Vogue, Elle Decor, ABC News, Good Morning America, NBC, Fox News, KQED, SF Chronicle, House Beautiful, Architectural Digest, Bon Appetit, Dwell, Forbes, Sunset Magazine.

BV Insight: Pembroke understands the nuances of good design; the firm’s visual vocabulary is authentic + elevated, yet highly approachable. Modern luxury at its best.

Jennefer Witter | via The Boreland Group

The Boreland Group : Jennefer Witter, CEO + Founder ➤
The Boreland Group Inc. (TBG) is a boutique public relations agency. Founded in 2002 by Jennefer Witter, an industry veteran with more than 28 years of experience, the firm is industry-neutral with accounts in New York City and Washington, D.C. TBG produces strategic, customized public relations campaigns that raise its clients’ visibility to their specific target audiences.

BV Insight: In this Tedx piece Witter discusses recognizing and combating unconscious bias.

These Black-led companies + collaborators are just a few of the many talented firms out there. Butterfly Voyage hopes that this post inspires and encourages you to learn about them. We will continue to discover and share.

P.S. Please send us feedback about what you loved, and want to see more of to curious@butterflyvoyage.com

A thank you to Butterfly Voyage contributor Basma Rajper. Her valuable research, insights discussion, and support were a key part of making this piece come to life.