Book Launch: On Solitude, by Darell Wayne Fields

Princeton University School of Architecture announces the launch of Darell Wayne Fields’s newest book On Solitude (Princeton SoA, 2021). Based on his 2020 Kassler Lecture and an associated solo retrospective, Fields builds upon his ongoing project of Black aesthetics, providing the reader with thoughtful insights on racial theory in architecture. The publication features known works, such as the House for Kara Walker, and recent built work, like the Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon, along with original graphics and drawings. Corresponding with the namesake exhibition, the book features a magnetic cover, and an introduction by Dean Mónica Ponce de León. Softcover, color, 96 pages; On Solitude is available on Amazon (ISBN: 978-0-9642641-7-5).

Author Bio

Darell Wayne Fields, PhD is an accomplished teacher, designer, and scholar. He has taught design, urbanism, and theory at several universities, including Harvard Graduate School of Design, California College of the Arts (San Francisco), the University of California Berkeley, and currently teaches at Princeton University, where he is a 2021-2022 Visiting Presidential Scholar. He received his Master of Architecture from Harvard GSD and PhD from Harvard University.

Fields’s design/artistic work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the August Wilson Center for African American Culture (Pittsburgh), CentralTrak (Dallas), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and Princeton University’s School of Architecture.

Fields is also an accomplished author. His book, Architecture in Black, is described by the philosopher, Cornel West, as “… the first theoretical treatment of race in architectural discourse.” Fields is a founding editor of the journal Appendx: Culture, Theory, Praxis. Fields’s professional work includes the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University (Hutchins Center) and most recently, the Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon where Fields contemplates Black aesthetic principles in built form.