I was recently in Los Angeles for work, and while there, I had the opportunity to do a live show with AIGA Los Angeles and interview renowned architect Roland A. Wiley.
Roland spoke to a packed house about his day-to-day work through his firm, RAW International, including the Crenshaw/LAX Transit Project, Destination Crenshaw, and other projects in the Leimert Park and Baldwin Hills neighborhoods.
He also spoke about how his faith helps inform his work, gave his thoughts on gentrification and afrofuturism, and also had some great tips for those who are looking to use their skills for helping out their community. Roland is a true urban visionary, and Los Angeles is lucky he is there to help transform the city for Black folks!
Links
Transcript
May de Castro:
How this is going to take place is Maurice is actually going to be interviewing Roland Wiley. Maurice Cherry works as a creative strategist at Glitch. He is also the host and founder of Revision Path, the award-winning podcast that he launched in 2013 and what we’re about to witness tonight live. His in-depth interviews, showcasing black creatives all over the world, has the honor of being the first podcast to be added to the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American… Yes… of African history and culture.
May de Castro:
Other projects Maurice has provided to the world include the Black Weblog Award and 28 Days of the Web to name a few. Maurice is the recipient of the 2018 Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, was named one of Graphic Design USA’s 2018 People to Watch and included in the Root 100, the annual list of the most influential African Americans ages 25 to 45. His projects and overall design work and advocacy have been recognized by Apple, Adobe, AIGA and NPR.
May de Castro:
Let me now introduce Roland A. Wiley. He considers himself an urban visionary, whose ultimate goal as an architect is to build cities from the people up. He has over 37 years of experience and is founding partner of the LA-based architectural affirm, RAW International, a nationally-recognized, award-winning studio whose projects range from transit planning to sanctuary design.
May de Castro:
He has passionately advocated for the sustainable revitalization of urban communities through both professional and civic activities. Notable projects have included the Union Station Gateway East Portal Building, Motown headquarters in LA and more recently on the planning and design of transformational projects here in the Crenshaw community such as the Crenshaw LAX Transit Project, Leimert Park master planning and Destination Crenshaw. His firm has served in a leadership role in all of these projects with a consistent goal of transforming the physical environment while empowering and preserving the culture of the existing residents. Please help me welcome Maurice Cherry and Roland A. Wiley.
Maurice Cherry:
Thank you, May, for that introduction. And thank you all for coming out tonight for this live recording of Revision Path. Roland Wiley, do you prefer Roland Wiley or Roland A. Wiley?
Roland A. Wiley:
Well, let’s see, Roland Wiley just because it’s easier to say, but I like Roland A. Wiley, because those are the initials of our company, RAW.
Maurice Cherry:
RAW International. Gotcha.
Roland A. Wiley:
Right.
Maurice Cherry:
Okay. All right. We’ll start things off. Roland, tell us who you are and what you do.
Roland A. Wiley:
My goodness, Maurice, this is a tough one. That would last all hours if… Let me see where I start. I would start with I’m a man of God. I’m a husband, a family man. I have a beautiful wife who’s here, Andrea. Let’s give a hand for Andy, my wife. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her. I have two sons, Randall, who’s 21, and Roland, who’s 23. I’m an architect, and being an architect, that is something that is really my passion. I truly enjoy it and it’s a very tough profession for anybody, but particularly a black man. It’s a very hard profession.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, we’ll get into that certainly throughout the rest of the interview, but for starters, just tell me about your day-to-day work.
Roland A. Wiley:
Oh man. We’ll just start with today.
Maurice Cherry:
Okay.
Roland A. Wiley:
Get to the office at 6:00. I had a large presentation at the Veterans Affair in Westwood. It’s for a 800-car parking structure. Now, you may think, “What’s a parking structure?”, but a 800-car parking structure is a big deal. There’s like a room of 12 people, everybody with a different opinion, from administrative to safety, to psychology, to architecture, to landscape architecture. Everybody has an idea, and we are the ones, we are the leaders. We have to direct all of these interests, all of these varying interests into a project that’s safe, cost-effective, and beautiful. As an architect, that’s the challenge.
Roland A. Wiley:
So after that, I get to the office, and we’re working on the Beverly Hills City Hall. We’re renovating the tower at Beverly Hills City Hall. I just find out we get our plan check corrections from Beverly Hills City Hall, and they’re voluminous, so then I got to wonder, “Okay, I got to deal with that.” I’m leaving town tomorrow, so then I have to plan all of staff to make sure staff is assigned and they know what they’re going to be doing while I’m away. In addition to that, there was an employee issue that a long email went out, and I had to be the peacemaker to mitigate whatever feelings were hurt from that email that went out. Then after that, before I got out the door, my CFO made sure I went through all the invoices that had to go out and determine how much we were going to get paid for the month. So it just goes… Every day is intense. Every day is something. That’s what keeps you in it.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. So some of your current projects that were mentioned in the intro, Destination Crenshaw, Crenshaw LAX Transit Line, can you talk just a little bit about your involvement in those, how those came about?
Roland A. Wiley:
Yeah, I’ll go chronologically because the Crenshaw LAX Transit Line, which most of you know, should be opening this year, outstanding the delays. That was somewhat the catalyst to what really energized me as an architect and urban visionary. That was in 1993. We started planning this project in 1993.
Maurice Cherry:
Wow.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s right. So that’s how long it takes for a transit project to come to reality. That is not an exaggeration. From concept to planning to funding to construction can easily take 20 years. But from that I started to get to understand, to start to envision how transit can transform a community because Crenshaw… I live in the Crenshaw Corridor. I live in View Park, and I’ve always been disappointed about the Crenshaw Corridor. The commercial retail infrastructure is so great, but yet the investment is so small.
Roland A. Wiley:
The history of that goes back to the white flight in the early ’60s after the Watts riots, where the major commercial retail base disinvested from Crenshaw and moved to the Valley. Then what moved into the Crenshaw Corridor were smaller mom and pop stores, barber shops, hair salons and that kind of thing, but it wasn’t commensurate to the income of the folks that lived in View Park, Windsor Hills, Baldwin Hills. They had just as much or more income than the people that then moved down into the Valley, so I couldn’t understand why don’t we have the same level of goods and services that were there prior.
Roland A. Wiley:
Then you look at transit investment. A typical transit station probably costs I’d say about 50 to $75 million just for the station. The entire transit system from Exposition to the airport costs about $2 billion. That’s a major investment in our community, and at those stations you’ve spent almost $100 million. You know they ain’t going to keep a barber shop or a hair salon. You know they’re going to make some kind of investment. That’s when the term urban visionary came to me. I started to see, “Well, this could be so much more than what it is.” Some of those renderings show what we envision, what our firm envision of how transit can transform a community.
Roland A. Wiley:
That went on for from ’93 all the way until today. There are several steps. You have a feasibility study. Then you have a major investment study, then you have a route refinement study, then you have a draft environmental impact study, and then you start to get into preliminary engineering and design and construction. That takes 20 years, and here we are today, 20 something years later, and Crenshaw is about to open.
Roland A. Wiley:
But from there you just start to… Then there’s spinoff projects, development around the station areas. Then from there, you look at Destination Crenshaw. That’s how Destination Crenshaw was born. For those of you who don’t know, Destination Crenshaw is a unapologetically black art program that goes from Crenshaw-Slauson to Leimert Park that was born by Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson. He came to my office or he called our office. By the way, he specifically looked for a black architect. Although you think that might be usual, it is not usual. It’s disappointingly not usual. He wanted a black architect who knew this corridor, and so we worked with Marqueece and Joanne Kim, his deputy. He wanted to make lemon out of lemonade. In other words, that section from Slauson to Crenshaw is at grade and everybody feels they got the short changed by having an at-grade train as opposed to everywhere else is subway. So there was a lot of contention about that.
Roland A. Wiley:
The Councilman wanted to make lemonade out of a lemon, and we thought, “Well look, this is the only place that somebody coming from the airport would see any part of Crenshaw, that section. Everything else is subway. So what can we do to talk about Crenshaw? What can we do to talk about who we are?” That’s how we came up with the idea of this lineal art gallery that celebrated black culture, black culture in Los Angeles. There’s so many people that grew up, that worked, that lived, that learned in the Crenshaw Corridor who are famous, Marvin Gaye, Tina Turner. It just goes on and on, and they’re not celebrated. They’re celebrated everywhere else, but not here.
Maurice Cherry:
In our community.
Roland A. Wiley:
Yeah. So that was the idea to represent us in a way that celebrated our culture and people coming from around the world would see it because it would be at grade, people were looking out of the train and they said, “Well, wait a minute. Why don’t I get out of here? Why not check it out?” That’s, in a quick story, how I became so passionate about transformation.
Maurice Cherry:
Okay. Well we’ll definitely dive a little bit more into those projects as we keep talking, but I’m curious to know where the spark came from. Where did you first get the notion of like, “Architecture is a thing that I want to do. I can see the vision of things”? I want to take it back. Tell me about where you grew up.
Roland A. Wiley:
Oh man. I’m going there tomorrow. Indianapolis, Indiana.
Maurice Cherry:
Okay.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s right. That’s my hometown. It’s a great place to grow up. I’m a proud product of a public schools, public grade school, a public high school. I got a state scholarship that paid my tuition. Ball State University was the only accredited school of architecture in the state. Graduated from Ball State University and came out to Los Angeles immediately after graduation. I always wanted to be an architect. I love buildings even as a child and ironically I still remember the day I discovered I wanted to be an architect.
Maurice Cherry:
Tell us about it.
Roland A. Wiley:
I was with my mom and we had a little Volkswagen. I was about five or six years old. I don’t know if you guys remember the Volkswagens on the dash had this little rubber handle that you grab onto. I remember I would grab onto the handle and kind of chew on it. I was a kid. I was a kid. I’d to chew on it and look out the window. I’d be downtown looking up at the buildings, and I asked my mom… I said, “Mom, who makes the most money?”
Roland A. Wiley:
She said, “Well, doctors.” Even then, I knew, “I don’t like blood, not going to be a doctor.” “And lawyers.” I was like, “Well, that sounds kind of boring.” Then she said, “Architects.” I said, “Architects? What’s an architect?” She said, “Well, they build buildings.” That was it. At that point, I knew I wanted to be an architect because I love buildings. I love the built environment. I love just the energy of a building, just looking at a building and seeing the dialogue it has with you. Every building is saying something. It’s many times negative, but they’re all saying something. That’s where I went.
Maurice Cherry:
Roland and I was driving around LA yesterday and we passed by… I think it was a police station.
Roland A. Wiley:
Right, yeah.
Maurice Cherry:
It had all of these really sharp, jagged, amber rocks outside, sort of like how you would normally see shrubbery or topiaries or something. These were rocks, as if to say, “Don’t come here, don’t sit here,” or whatever. It was really a odd bit of defensive design.
Roland A. Wiley:
Like I said, every building, it says something to you. That was in Skid Row by the way. That was, “Don’t even think about laying down around here.” I think that’s really unfortunate, but that’s the language. Architecture does have that ability to speak. From that point, I wanted to be an architect, and I was very fortunate to have role models or to see architects who looked like me at a very early age. That was a blessing.
Maurice Cherry:
So that was in Indianapolis, you were able to see those role models there?
Roland A. Wiley:
Yes, I was about fourth grade. We went on a field trip to an architect’s office. His name was Walter Blackburn. I didn’t know anything about anything except, “He’s an architect and he’s black and I want to be an architect, so I guess I’m going to be architect just like him.” That was a blessing. It really was. I didn’t know at that time that you don’t really get to see those role models. That was a very fortunate set of events because in my mind I wanted to be an architect. “I saw a black architect. I saw his office so what’s the problem?”, although there were plenty of people who didn’t think I could be an architect.
Roland A. Wiley:
When I was in high school graduating, my guidance counselor, I told him I wanted to go to architecture school. At that time I had a work-study program where I’d work. I’d go to school in the morning. I worked at the city hall in Indianapolis on the 20th floor. My counselor said, “You got a great job with benefits. What do you want to go to architecture school for?” I just looked at him. I was like, “Ah, you know… But on the serious tip, just think how many young black men have been discouraged from following their dream because they didn’t see a role model and they had a person of authority that told them they couldn’t do it. That’s what’s disturbing.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. You had asked me this yesterday during our drive. No, it wasn’t during our drive. We were here in Leimert Park. I don’t remember what the name of the coffee shop was.
Roland A. Wiley:
Hot and Cool.
Maurice Cherry:
Hot and Cool. Okay, we were at Hot and Cool. You were asking me out of the 300 plus people I’ve talked to, what’s one of the common things, and I was telling you it’s that, that like lack of a role model or a person that they can see that’s in some position of authority or whatever when they’re a child or when they’re in their formative years to say, “Okay, this is something that I can do myself.” That seemed to be a very sort of common thread. So that’s interesting that you were able to kind of have that as an early influence for you. Was it like that also at Ball State when you were studying architecture?
Roland A. Wiley:
No.
Maurice Cherry:
Okay.
Roland A. Wiley:
Architecture is… That’s where I started to learn it’s a… Back then and today, it is a white male elitist profession. The curriculum, you get indoctrinated into the white male elitists and you don’t even know it. It’s just defacto. The architects, the classical architects, the modern architects, the cutting edge architects, they were all white male with no exception at that time. That’s something that to this day disturbs me in terms of the architectural curriculum and how one is indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking where you don’t see yourself, you don’t see your culture. You don’t see a way to express who you are. You have to find a way to fit in and to speak that language when your language is just as relevant, if not more relevant, if given the chance and given the venue to express and to practice it.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. It reminds me of… It’s an essay by the late Sylvia Harris. It’s in this anthology from Steven Heller called the Education of a Graphic Designer. She has an essay in there titled Searching for an African-American Design Aesthetic, or I think it’s a black design aesthetic, but she talks in there mostly about education and how black design students are often learning out of imitation as opposed to kind of like what their culture is about. They learn about Swiss styles and German styles and Dutch styles, etc. But then it’s like, “Well, if I’m a black design student, are we learning about Nigerian styles or Botswanan styles or South African styles?” And the answer is no.
Roland A. Wiley:
Is no. I wonder why is that still today when we have access to the internet. We start to know… Our history is available, but yet we still don’t know who we are. When I was at Ball State… And I don’t know how or why I did it. I researched the pyramids and the construction of the pyramids and what’s crazy, I didn’t realize they were black, the Egyptians were black, because the illustrations that I researched, they were all just… People drew illustrations of how they were built with white-looking Egyptians. I knew it was in Africa, but it wasn’t until far after I graduated and I went to Egypt that I saw those folk look like me. They look just like me. We designed those pyramids. Folks that look like me designed structures that far exceed what the classical Greek temples were, that far exceed any monuments that have been built to this day… Were designed and built by people like me, that looked like me.
Roland A. Wiley:
So that opened up a door to me to explore more about, “Well, what else do I don’t know? What else have I been indoctrinated and that is not true?” That’s the journey I’m on to this day to discover who we are as a people so that we can express our design aesthetic that comes from our spirit, not that comes from some discipline that you’ve been given and that you’ve been taught, but it comes from your spirit. We are very spiritual people, and I think that we are in danger of losing that spiritual connection because we are so busy trying to adapt, adopt and fit in to what popular culture is, which is not us.
Maurice Cherry:
When did you end up moving to LA? Was it right after Ball State?
Roland A. Wiley:
Yep. People ask, “Well, why did you come to LA?” I’ll say, “You ever been to Indianapolis?” Hey, anybody from Indy… It’s a great place to raise a family. It really is, but in terms of a career in architecture, I can imagine what pigeonhole I might have fallen into in Indianapolis. I just wanted some to be someplace that had warm weather. It was extremely cold.
Maurice Cherry:
That’s fair.
Roland A. Wiley:
In Indianapolis. That was just, again, another blessing. I just feel that God has been very good in my life. I had a lot of interviews right out of school. Then a nice little resume and had interviews set up. One of the interviews, it was at Gruen Associates. They’re an internationally-known architectural firms. They’re known for inventing the shopping center. I was in the lobby, this great international-style lobby, and this silver-head, caramel-skin woman walks up to me. I thought, “Oh, that’s the secretary of the guy who I’m going to interview with,” and she introduces herself, “I’m Norma Sklarek, and I’m going to interview you,” Norma-
Roland A. Wiley:
… Sklarek, and I’m going to interview you. Norma Sklarek is the first black licensed architect in America.
Maurice Cherry:
Wow.
Roland A. Wiley:
It was history from there. I mean, of course I was terribly intimidated. She had a New York accent, very nice-looking woman, and she took me back to the studio, a sea of white shirts and white men, and she’s the boss over them. She walks me down the row, because I did well in the interview. She made an offer.
Roland A. Wiley:
The first person she stopped to introduced me to was this young black man named Steve Lott. Steve Lott was just Mr. Cool LA. He was just real cool. I was Mr. Polyester-wearing Country. We became very good friends. He taught me the ways of LA and we became business partners, and we’re business partners to this day.
Maurice Cherry:
Nice, nice. What was LA like back then, when you first got here?
Roland A. Wiley:
Oh, man. I’ve got to look at Andy. That was before Andy and I got married. LA was live. Back in the late ’70s, ’80s, LA was live, and it was a new experience for me. There was just so much action, so much activity, so much to explore. People, black people, upwardly mobile, interesting, had layers of experience and travel, and the party scene, all of that. It was just happening back then, that back then they had clubs. The Speakeasy, Jackie O’s, Red Onion, places you could just go. Some of y’all know what I’m talking about, but just places you could go and just experience LA.
Roland A. Wiley:
Then on the other hand, I had friends from all spectrums, so I’d go backpacking up to Sequoia National Park. I’d race. I had a friend that had a Porsche, and we’d go Porsche racing. It’s just there were so many opportunities that I had no clue about in Indiana, that just this whole wide world was opening up for me, and it was just every day was an adventure.
Roland A. Wiley:
Then at work, just getting tremendous opportunities. Norma, I think I was a pretty good architect, so if you’re good, she’s going to give you a shot. She’s going to open up some doors for you. Professionally, Norma opened up doors for me and gave me opportunities to work on really good projects, really high-profile projects, and I got a chance to work closely with one of the partners, Allen Rubinstein, and he just opened up more doors for me. I started to make personal relationships with some of his clients, who they just talked to me because I got the job done, and Allen was happy.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. What was it like being a black architect then, versus now?
Roland A. Wiley:
Again, I was blessed because I saw Norma. I was like, “Okay, I can do this.” Then in Los Angeles at that time, there were several successful black architectural firms. Bob Kennard, Harold Williams, John Williams, Jack Haywood, Vince Proby, just it went on and on. They were successful because they had political leadership that would advocate for them, that they would tell a developer, “You are hiring this black architect, end of story.” There ain’t no minority or small business.
Maurice Cherry:
No MBE kind of thing?
Roland A. Wiley:
Yeah. “You’re hiring a black architect.” That enabled black architects to build a really good body of work. They got major county projects, they got major institutional projects, they got major educational projects, because the leadership would advocate for them. Once again, I was very fortunate to see examples of success, examples of black architects who were successful.
Roland A. Wiley:
Then also, to give honor to Paul Williams, he died the year after I got here. He died in 1980, and I remember the day at Gruen. Somebody walked up to my desk and said, “Paul Williams just died.” I said, “Well, who’s Paul Williams?” They looked at me like I had three eyes. I didn’t know, and a lot of people didn’t know. People are only now starting to understand his legacy and his greatness.
Roland A. Wiley:
There was always a glass ceiling for black architects, always. However, that glass ceiling was substantially higher than the ceiling for black architects is today, for black architectural firms today. I mentioned that earlier. There are two statistics we need to know about black architects. One is that nationwide, there’s only 2% of all licensed architects are black. That’s been the same for 50 years. It’s stayed at 2% … is that right, Steve? It’s for 50 years, 52 years.
Roland A. Wiley:
Two percent of all licensed architects are black. That is a sobering statistic, but it speaks to the lack of nurturing, the lack of opportunities for black architects. I might go a little further, Maurice, to say that I don’t blame white society for that. Actually, I blame more black society. We don’t need white folks to hire us. If black folks would hire us, we’d be just fine. I believe that situation goes across the board.
Roland A. Wiley:
We’re at this crossroads right now. We’ve got to turn around and start helping each other. We’ve got to start reaching back. We’ve got to start trusting one another. We have to start loving one another, but that’s all connected to knowing who you are and whose you are and where you come from. That’s the spiritual aspect that I believe is continually being pushed out of our culture that is essential to our culture, and essential to us being able to come together.
Maurice Cherry:
Now, early on, when you introduced yourself, that was the first thing you said. You’re like, “I’m a man of God.” How does your faith influence your work and the projects that you take on?
Roland A. Wiley:
Well, number one, it influences me to keep getting up and coming to work, believing that the vision I have for myself, my profession, my career, will happen. It may not happen in my time, but it’s going to happen as long as I stay under this umbrella of faith, stay under this belief in God, this God-centered life where God is at the top of my life.
Roland A. Wiley:
It’s like a pyramid, where God’s at the top. My family and my community is at the base, and everything else fits inside that pyramid. As long as I stay within … I call it an integrity box … I believe that I will achieve what God has set for me. It’s a journey of obedience, it’s a journey of humility, and it’s a journey of discernment.
Maurice Cherry:
Something that’s big right now I think in LA, probably in many other urban areas, is gentrification. Something interesting you said in our earlier conversation we had was that you see gentrification as a catalyst to Afrofuturism. Can you expound on that a bit?
Roland A. Wiley:
It goes back to the point I said about a crossroads. We’re at a very critical point in our society and in our country, and I believe it’s really dependent upon all of us, especially black people, to break out of this chain we have around our brains and to express ourselves. We are getting pushed out, pushed around, oppressed, and yet you’ve got the talented tenth that they’re always going to get theirs, but then you got 90% that aren’t. This is what’s happening.
Roland A. Wiley:
I think “gentrification” isn’t a fair word … but that’s the word … because it’s a negative. There are positive things about gentrification, and Steve talked about good things can happen, but you have to have ways to ensure that we are not displaced from our communities. This right here, Leimert Park, View Park, Baldwin Hills, Windsor Hills, this is one of the last intact black communities in urban America, and we are threatened.
Roland A. Wiley:
This, we’ve seen what happened in Harlem. We’ve seen what happened in U Street. We need to understand that, and come together with our unlimited creativity and work together to make statements that help to mitigate this term called “gentrification,” so that we can have this balance. We can stay in our communities, and other demographics are welcome to come in our community, but this is our community, and we should have a culture that speaks to our community.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s why Leimert Park is so important. It’s so important to amplify what Leimert Park is. It is the cultural capital of black Los Angeles, and I believe it will set an example to be the cultural capital of black America. There’s so much potential here in Leimert Park, and it’s a matter of catalyzing all the potential.
Roland A. Wiley:
We have this building here, owned by a black man. Now I’m getting old. I forgot. Calloway, Fred Calloway. Thank you, Damien. Across the street, Community Build is owned by a black organization. You’ve got Ben Caldwell and KAOS, black-owned. Then you’ve got the anchor of Art + Practice. They own about three buildings. Mark Bradford, the internationally-known artist, a black man.
Roland A. Wiley:
You’ve got all of these black ownerships. There’s a housing project was owned … well, he sold it, but he’s a black man, and some of those buildings on 43rd Place are owned by … black-owned. Well, Fred Calloway owns this whole block, so you’ve got this opportunity. Across the street, across the street, this parking lot should be black-owned.
Roland A. Wiley:
It’s going to go out for a developer RFP. I’m going to be the developer. I’m telling you all that right now. I’m going to be the developer for this site across the street, and it’s going to be an African American cultural and conference center that celebrates our culture, that talks about our history. From whether you want to know the Hebrew history, the African history, the Moorish history, all of the rich history that we have that we don’t celebrate, that many of us don’t even know.
Roland A. Wiley:
We don’t even know our roots before slavery, which are deep and important, that define us, but we don’t know. Once we do know, I tell you, that’s when we’re going to have our power. When we know who we are, when God reveals to us who we are and whose we are, that’s when the power’s going to happen, and that’s when you’re going to see tremendous change.
Maurice Cherry:
Right. Right. Absolutely. We’ve been seeing some of your projects here, cycling behind us as we’ve been talking. When you look back at the portfolio of work that you’ve done, is there one project in particular that really stands out to you as being your signature project?
Roland A. Wiley:
Not yet.
Maurice Cherry:
Not yet?
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s easy to say. That’s one of my biggest struggles, is my body of work, and the only comfort I have is that architects don’t really reach their stride until they get in their sixties and seventies. That’s my comfort, is, as you know, the best is yet to come, and that cultural conference center across the street. I feel very good about the future, my experience and my body of work. I’ve had a lot of great projects. Destination Crenshaw was a great experience.
Roland A. Wiley:
I got to work with Nipsey Hussle. I was there the night that the name Destination Crenshaw was born. View Park Prep, the new school, the middle school. We had a community meeting, and Nipsey Hussle had agreed to be there. The whole school showed up, and then more people. There ain’t never been no kids show up at a community meeting. The whole school showed up. We had captured them, and we got some great ideas from them about what this project could be.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s why it’s so important for us to build that bridge with our young people. They’re the ones that came up with the idea to call it #DestinationCrenshaw, because they wanted to make it a … again, I’m not a social media person, but they wanted to have it as social media, and it was born out of their vision, out of their understanding of where we are today.
Roland A. Wiley:
They had that kind of vision, that creative vision of social media, and we have that knowledge of architecture, planning, infrastructure. That’s where I think that the power is going to be, when we come together, the two generations.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Let’s shift gears a little bit. There’s an anecdote that you told me yesterday while we were riding around about Muhammad Ali. You can share the anecdote if you want to, but as a lead-in to that, who have been some of the people that have really inspired you throughout your career?
Roland A. Wiley:
Norma Sklarek. She was one of the first people that I was just in awe of. Actually, my two business partners, Steve Lott and Steve Lewis. Steve Lott is one of the most talented men I know, and Steve Lewis is one of the nicest men that I know, and talented. Between the two, I grab something from both of them and try to be who I am.
Roland A. Wiley:
There have been men. My dad played the most, the influence in my life of being a good man and being honest. He got up, he went to work every day. He took care of his family and never failed. I got the benefit of seeing that, seeing how a man models manhood. No matter how he was discriminated against … he came from the South … even in his job, he still kept doing what he did. That inspired me to just keep getting up. There’s always going to be disappointment. There’s always going to be discrimination.
Roland A. Wiley:
Then Muhammad Ali, Muhammad Ali, as a young man I observed him, and I was so impressed by how you couldn’t stop him. He was so confident and so arrogant, to a point, but he believed in himself. You have to be that way in order to win, to fight that fight. Even though they took away his belt, he kept fighting. Even though they prosecuted him and tried to hold him down, he kept fighting. He sacrificed. He sacrificed his life for what he believed in. He sacrificed his livelihood for what he believed in. That’s something that’s very important to me.
Roland A. Wiley:
I think as all of us get into the business world, you have to be careful not to compromise, because your integrity is so important. As you get older and you start to maybe enjoy some success, you want to have that success with some integrity. That’s what I saw in Muhammad Ali. That’s what I saw in some of the older athletes, but particularly Muhammad Ali, and it’s just always stayed with me.
Maurice Cherry:
Do your sons want to follow in your footsteps?
Roland A. Wiley:
No. They want to follow in my footsteps in terms of being a businessman, but they see how hard I work, and they see that, “Hey, where’s the money?” The kids, they’re about getting paid. They’re about getting paid and not working hard and having fun.
Maurice Cherry:
Sounds about right.
Roland A. Wiley:
It’s a whole nother kind of value system that the millennials and the … whatever the other generations, you call them, but it’s very digitally based, and they just work from a different paradigm. Both of my sons definitely have high ambitions and they want to do well in life, and they would be interested in working with me if I’m able to turn the corner and turn an architectural firm, a traditional architectural firm, into something that is nontraditional, that speaks to some of the community-building that I’m talking about.
Maurice Cherry:
Okay. That’s interesting to hear. We have a lot of designers here in the room, of course. This is AIGA, American Institute of Graphic Arts, all that jazz. What advice would you give to designers that are looking to use their skills and their gifts for I want to say community activism? Because I feel like a lot of the work that you’re doing is putting back into the community. You’re making and creating these built spaces that not only celebrate the community, but also it gives it a place. It gives it a marker of some sort. What advice would you give for someone that wants to follow in that same fashion?
Roland A. Wiley:
The first thing I would say is believe in yourself. Whatever it is that’s in your heart that you’re passionate about, you’ve got to believe in yourself, because the world is going to try to tell you different. The world is going to try to make you conform to what they think you should be, whatever demographic you fit in. Believing in yourself is number one, and give back. You’ve got to give back. It’s so important to give back. To share your gifts is so important.
Roland A. Wiley:
I think if you do those two things, things will start happening, because when you’re giving back, things happen. Doors open, opportunities come. I mean, this opportunity, Terry Scott, because I’m in Leimert Park giving, and Terry just said, “Hey, talk to Roland,” and here I am.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. I mean, we were around here yesterday again. We were at the coffee shop, and I got to see it in action. I mean, every person out here came and shook your hand and you talked with them. I think you even talked someone down that was having a bad day and everything. It’s amazing how much you’re a part of this community and how much you give back to it. It really establishes you as being, I mean, well, one of the community, but also someone that cares about where the community goes in the future.
Roland A. Wiley:
Yeah. Well, I just think that’s important, and everybody … I can see you asked me for that advice. Everybody, everybody, has a way of giving back. Your way may not be coming to Leimert Park, dealing with homeless people and stuff like that, but everybody can give back. Everybody has a way, has a gift to share and to give back.
Maurice Cherry:
What’s been the most important lesson of your career?
Roland A. Wiley:
Man. My goodness. I think that’s very interesting. The most important part of my career I think is my constitution of integrity, because there have been some tough decisions, and I’ve made the decision based on integrity although it was extremely tempting to go the other way, and I chose integrity. Now, it certainly didn’t help my bank account, but I chose integrity, and I have peace. I think peace is the most important thing that a man or a woman can have in their life.
Maurice Cherry:
Now, all of your projects, at least from the ones that are cycling behind us and Destination Crenshaw and the others that you mentioned, they have these very long timelines, so maybe this question might not apply, but I’ll ask anyway. Where do you see yourself in the next five years? It’s 2025. What do you see yourself working on?
Roland A. Wiley:
I see this cultural conference center just being completed. It’s a five-year plan. We’re in the second month of that five-year plan. I see two years spent getting financing and getting the right financial proforma funders, partners, all of that lined up, and then a three-year construction project. Our offices are downtown. My lease expires in five years. I plan on having my office on the top floor … it’s going to be a five-story structure … of this cultural conference center.
Roland A. Wiley:
I plan on using that as an example to encourage communities across the country on how to pool their resources together, and not trust or depend on government or any charitable venues, but to be self-supporting and have a level of self-determination. My wife doesn’t like that, that term “self-determination,” but the fact of putting it all together with your own resources.
Roland A. Wiley:
I use Booker T. Washington as an example. Back in the day, there was this clash, if you will. They like to divide us. Back then it was Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. Then it was Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Booker T. Washington started the first architectural school at Tuskegee, and his whole curriculum was designing, construction, maintaining, building, making the bricks, understanding the whole cycle of building construction. That’s when an architect was a master builder. That was the first black architectural school.
Roland A. Wiley:
The second school was Howard University, and Howard University, one of the leaders was W.E.B. Du Bois. Howard University needed federal funding to fund the school, so they had to act like the traditional white architect, who is don’t roll up your sleeves, white shirt. Don’t get your hands dirty, just design. Unfortunately, that school of thought became prevalent in all of the black schools of architecture. We melded in with the traditional white male elitist form of practicing, and that’s not who we are. Emulating. We wanted to so much be like them, and so here we are, 2%.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s what we want to do with this cultural conference center, is build it, manage it, maintain it. There’ll be a catering kitchen. Partner with LA Trade Tech. Build jobs. Have people having a sense of ownership to this project, and offer public shares. The community can buy shares into it, because it’s not a charity. It’s a profit. There’s revenue streams.
Roland A. Wiley:
We want to make something that people can feel they own, people can feel that they’re getting paid, and it’s being a source of jobs. We just didn’t get that. Architecture school just teaches you how to build pretty buildings. Then on top of that, only 10% get to do that.
Roland A. Wiley:
And then on top of that, only 10% get to do that. I think the whole education, architecture education process particularly for black architects needs to change.
Maurice Cherry:
Do you think black architects can design like white architects?
Roland A. Wiley:
We try and you see where that’s getting us.
Maurice Cherry:
What do you mean by that?
Roland A. Wiley:
Well, okay, look around. Somebody point out a building that was designed by a black architect and that’s probably a nice building. My point is there ain’t a whole lot. And if you look around the city scape today, you drive up and down Crenshaw, all these new buildings going up. I’m a be safe to say one of them was designed by a black architect. I don’t know if it was, but I’ll just be safe. I would say none. Now that’s a horrible statement. But we’re trying so hard to be like them and sometimes I think they just laughing at us because we’re not moving forward.
Roland A. Wiley:
We’ve got to come together and understand it’s about us.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah.
Roland A. Wiley:
And we don’t need them, it’s everybody else is all good. But we need to start supporting us. We need to start loving us. But then it goes right back to we don’t know who we are and that’s what this cultural conference center, the concept of it is to teach us who we are. This is a place of learning. We are broken people. We have 400 years of slavery, oppression, affliction. We’re traumatized and we’re sitting around here not recognizing it. The end result is where we are. And so to understand that and it’s biblically based. If you read the Bible and not look at it as a myth, but look at it as a history book and don’t allow society to marginalize it because the moral trends of society today think the Bible is old fashioned and you should just do what you want to do.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s very dangerous because the Bible is our history and that’s a paradigm that many of us don’t know. It’s not just Jesus was black, it’s all of them was black in the Bible. If you go back to biblical times and look at what did people look like-
Maurice Cherry:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Roland A. Wiley:
… thousands of years ago in Israel, in Persia, in Syria, they look like us. When you read the Bible, you reading about people that look like us. We don’t recognize that. If we knew that, that’s where the power is and that’s why I have peace. My wife, she’s much more aggressive about it. I don’t have time, the people I started talking about it, eyes started glazing over. I like, “God’s might have to touch you because I am going to drop the seed and I’m moving on. I got to get paid. I got work to do.” I know that’s selfish. I’m sorry.
Maurice Cherry:
No.
Roland A. Wiley:
I’ll do better, my wife’s going to make me do better.
Maurice Cherry:
Oh, bro this has been a great conversation. Again, I want to thank you for just sharing about your work and about your life. Where can people find out more about you and about your projects and what you’re doing?
Roland A. Wiley:
Www.rawinternational.com. It’s a very outdated website that needs help. I’m happy to get your coWww.rawinternational.com.mments. We have the Leimert Park Village, Terry, www.leimertparkvillage.org , we’ll talk about the cultural conference center. But that’s one of the things, my goal is to get better with social media and understand the digital age a lot more, I need to do better with that.
Maurice Cherry:
Well, I mean I think certainly with this work that you’re doing that’s making these big public spaces and everything, the word will get out there. So being ahead of it will help a lot I think.
Roland A. Wiley:
Yeah.
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah. Well I mean that’s the conversation I want to thank you Roland so much for coming on the show for sharing your story. When you were introduced as an urban visionary, I really saw it yesterday when we rode around for people that are listening. We rode around LA and you showed me View Park and I think it was the view coming down towards St. Bernadette’s Church, I believe-
Roland A. Wiley:
The Catholic school on Stock, not Don Philippe, Don Philippe, and I forgot the cross street-
Maurice Cherry:
I’ve never seen a view like that. And when I think of the term urban visionary, it makes me think for you that you probably see so many spaces, you see the possibility. You can look at the empty lot and see what can come up there. You can look at maybe the blighted building and see what it should be. And I feel more of that is what’s needed as we progressed into the future. Because certainly, LA is a big city, LA is a overpopulated city and so there’s going to be a need to have more spaces that are not just for us, but also to help make sure that we have an equitable future. And I think it’s really great that you’re one of the Vanguards of helping to make that happen. So thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it.
Roland A. Wiley:
Well thank you Maurice. And I do want to also congratulate you on your achievement with the Smithsonian and I know your mom is very proud of you.
Maurice Cherry:
Oh, thank you.
Maurice Cherry:
All right, so where’s my, I think we have-
May de Castro:
Time for Q and A, if anybody has any questions, if you can just come up here please.
Speaker 2:
Two things real quick. One, just to clarify a point of correction about Norma. She was the first black licensed female architect in California. The other thing is the constant return to how we have been victims of miseducation or under education. How important do you feel inculcating our true histories authentically told by us today into curriculum would be in freeing, just providing that knowledge that you feel is essential for particularly our young people to go beyond where they’ve been able to go so far?
Roland A. Wiley:
Well, I have a simple theory about imagery, and television, and education. It’s all about inspiring people. And I think the majority demographics get inspired all day long, reading history about their history and their achievements and they’re just all good. But it’s rare that we, and particularly in architecture, read about our success, our journey, our knowledge. So I think just by showing and illustrating those kinds of success stories, even something about Norma, something about Paul Williams, that’s in our curriculum, that it starts to, young people will just be automatically have that kind of impression that, “Oh, okay, somebody like me is doing it. I want, I know I could do that.” So that’s where I see that need in education.
Speaker 3:
First, I’m going to give you props in your shoes with some sick shoes.
Maurice Cherry:
They are some nice shoes.
Roland A. Wiley:
My son gave them to me for Christmas, I was like, “These are bad.”
Speaker 3:
He has good taste. You mentioned earlier about how building will speak different things to you and [inaudible 00:57:31] project would take years and years. How do you maintain keeping your vision along with not getting lost with politics or things like that on during a project?
Roland A. Wiley:
One of the things that keeps me motivated on these long projects is to have in the queue more projects. Crenshaw is opening this year, hopefully. We’re working on the West Side extension, which is a subway to the C under Wilshire Boulevard, that’s not going to open for another six years, but see that’s in the queue and you think the Crenshaw project is going to be transformative, watch this Wilshire project. The Wilshire Corridor is going to just explode. You’re going to see high rises. It’s going to be like New York. Now it may take 10, 20 years, but you look 20 years from now, the Wilshire Corridor between say LaBrea and Beverly Hills, it’s going to look like New York. It is going to look like New York. And so those are the kinds of things that keep me motivated. We’re also doing the planning for the Crenshaw North project, which means it’s going, the Crenshaw line will extend from Exposition all the way up into Hollywood. That’s going to be transformative. So to have the opportunity to be a vision and all of this transformation, that just gives me, 10 years goes by and it just keeps going.
Alison:
Thank you so much for being here. When I first went to school, I went to Columbia in Chicago and I was going for interior architecture and I didn’t see anybody who looked like me. So I wound up being a project manager for eight years. So I was burned out and pushed out by the ivory tower of it all. And now that I’m doing my own thing, how do you see people like me who are not necessarily of this neighborhood but are of this people I want to be able to give back, but how do we stop thinking that blackness is this one monolith because I don’t fit in, or I don’t look like you, or I don’t have your experience for us to be able to come together and be accepted into these neighborhoods which maybe we haven’t been from originally but are a part of because of our culture.
Roland A. Wiley:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). The first, I’m sorry, what is your name?
Alison:
Alison.
Roland A. Wiley:
Alison. One thing I would recommend is to be active in organizations, cultural organizations, professional organizations and I stress the word active.NOMA, the National Organization of Minority Architects, every year we have a project pipeline, it’s a summer camp to introduce young kids to architecture. To just be involved in that and then it’s just doors start to open, you start to meet people, you start to network. Leimert Park has, we love Leimert Park, and that’s young people like you that are promoting Leimert Park. You have to search, but once you get in, then you start to see this network, but that’s what I would really, really encourage you to do. Even if you just start with NOMA, that it just branches from there. LA has a tremendous network of black folks who are actively trying to make a difference in a positive boy.
Speaker 4:
Okay.
Roland A. Wiley:
Here’s Shaw.
Speaker 4:
Here is the next question. Based on all of your years of studying architecture, what life philosophies, understandings about life, about people have you gained over time? What have you created? What else ideas do you share with people based on the ideas of architecture?
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s deep. Number one, philosophy. Number one, you never give up. You never give up. Number two, I see the humanity of everybody. I see the human person first and I think that’s important, whether white, black, brown, yellow, whatever. I look for the humanity in a person. I’m from, I think it’s a Midwestern thing where you give people the benefit of the doubt. Just because you’re white, I’m not thinking, “Oh, you’re a bad person,” or anything like that. I look at their eyes, I feel their spirit and then I listen. So I think that’s, and it gives me a sense of confidence in any place that I go, that I look for the humanity in a person and then I go from there. It’s really simple. I don’t have a complex set of rules or, I really base my life on biblical principle. I follow my passion. There’s something in everybody that you know, you know, that’s what you want to do and it doesn’t matter that well maybe it’s not going to make a lot of money or maybe everybody else isn’t doing it. If that’s what you want to do, if that’s where your passion is driving you, you should continue to pursue it.
Speaker 5:
How you doing Roland? Thank you so much for you both doing this and for the center for doing this. I have two questions. One is short, one requires detail. The first one, what pushback, if any, have you experienced when it comes to using more sustainable materials? And things like containers, shipping containers or recycled materials when it comes to actually contributing to that structure. Because I know there is pushback. And then the second part of the question is what push back have you experienced when it comes to making our cities look futuristic? You know what I’m talking about? So can you speak to that for a little bit?
Roland A. Wiley:
Yeah. The first question, sustainable materials, two things, cost and logistics. Costs is simple but with sustainable materials, there’s a brother here today, Richard Tim, and he has a system of glass. It’s not solar panels, but this glass can transform into electric energy. And so I was immediately intrigued and interested however my question is cost. And so he gave me the answer that it can pay for itself and plus tax incentives. And then the second question is logistics. Logistics from an architectural perspective is UL rating, ICBO number, research report number, has it been used before? What are some of the drawbacks that you don’t know about yet? So those are the two major push backs, if you will. It takes innovation and courage to take that step. I definitely want to follow up with Tim, number one, because he’s a brother and I… Anyway, I can help a brother who’s, and that’s another thing. If you see a brother or sister is about something positive, y’all got to open up a door.
Maurice Cherry:
Amen to that. Absolutely.
Roland A. Wiley:
That’s just what we should be doing. Now, the second question, repeat that second question again.
Speaker 5:
I feel like our cities are not looking how they should look in a 2020 vision, right? Promised flying cars in year 2000 right? We have those, but they’re not readily available.
Roland A. Wiley:
Okay. So great.You laugh about flying cars, but I’m, I’m going to go back to what I’ve been talking about since 1989 and that’s autonomous vehicles.
Speaker 5:
There it is.
Roland A. Wiley:
These autonomous vehicle technology has been in place since 1989. You know why we don’t see it yet besides people being scared, but that’s not the reason.
Speaker 5:
It’s money.
Roland A. Wiley:
Insurance companies can’t get paid, auto mechanics, can’t get paid, taxi drivers can’t get paid. All these people, drivers unions don’t get paid. All these people to stand in line, not to get paid are blocking. And that’s what happens with technology. Now when a crisis happens, then people start getting out of the way. But right now that kind of technology, futuristic technology is here, it’s just there are competing interests that stand, they ain’t going to get paid. So what I’m figuring is they’re making deals with the insurance companies now, they’re making deals with the truck drivers union so they can share and somehow these can move forward.
Michael:
Well thank you for doing this tonight, man. It’s always a pleasure to listen to you and you sharing your passion and your knowledge is really important. I had a question that goes to something where your notion of your community center and the fact that you’ve talked about having it be a sustainable operation. What do you think? And you can look forward maybe another 10 years, what do you think is going to happen in terms of ownership in the broader community here? Because you see it changing right now and how does this community look like it does today if you don’t own it?
Roland A. Wiley:
Well, the truth is Michael, that this place is going to look different 10 years from now. But that doesn’t mean that our culture should not be the predominant culture. I’m a true believer in an open society and I am very, very pro-black, but that doesn’t mean I’m anti anything. I’m just unapologetically black. I think that if we continue to promote our culture and we continue to ensure that projects like Destination Crenshaw are implemented, projects like that Cultural Conference Center are implemented, that we patronize our black businesses to sustain them. I think ]that we’re going to be fine. I just think it’s going to be different. But to me that’s a good thing.
Alison:
So I guess to follow up with that question of what does the future look like, sustainable materials, how do we get young black people to understand urban planning, and transit, and things like community land trusts? How do we get us to get together to understand all of these things and to understand parking is a huge issue when we’re talking about housing for the one-to-one? For every unit that needs to be built, there needs to be a parking space for it. How do we do that? How do we put that education into our landscape?
Roland A. Wiley:
Community activism is very important. You talked about [inaudible 01:07:54] community land trust. The owner of this space, Mr. Damian Goodman is one of the largest voices about community land trust and advocating for our community. We have to rally around leaders who are willing to be a voice. And I think one thing that we have to know that there’s power in numbers. Our electeds, they pay attention when they see numbers. If they just see Damien’s voice, that’s Damien, but if they see Damien and 2000 other people, then they’re going to start listening. I think it’s very important that we do rally around folks like Damien who have a vision, who have a true heart to improve our communities, and we be a voice. We sign the petitions, we make the phone calls, we show up at the meetings and this is just community 101. You go to any other community in it, I can promise you that’s what’s going on and it’s just that we need to adopt that culture. Again, that comes to that whole realization or that revelation if you will, of who we are.
May de Castro:
We’re going to wrap it up on, on behalf of AIG LA, I want to thank you all for being here tonight and to our wonderful, amazing guests, Maurice Cherry and Roland A. Wiley. Another round of applause please.
Roland A. Wiley:
All right, Maurice, can I do a shout out?
Maurice Cherry:
Yeah, go ahead.
Roland A. Wiley:
All right, I get to shout out! Shout out to my folks in Indianapolis. My mom, my sister, my cousins, my boys, Greg and Tommy. Shout out to my folks at RAW International. Shout out to my two sons. Shout out to Steve Lewis who’s right here and last but certainly not least, shout out to my lovely wife Andy.
Maurice Cherry:
Thank you everybody for coming out.
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