A beacon of hope with Melvalean McLemore

 There are those types of attitudes out there about who's deserving of quality. And one of the things I really love about Moody Nolan is how much we adhere to our core values and our responsibility as designers to ensure that we're putting out work that's equitable. That is, you know, caring and about community and fostering that sense of community and understanding that we have responsibility as a designers to add value, right?

And not to go in with this assumption that only certain groups deserve. 

Welcome to Tangible Remnants. I'm Nikita Reed. And this is my show where I explore the interconnectedness of architecture, preservation, sustainability, race, and gender. I'm excited that you're here. So let's get into it.  Welcome back.  This week's episode features a fun conversation with Melvalean McLemore.

As you'll hear, we are at similar points in our careers, and I was so excited to be talking with her since she's one of the black women architects I didn't know well before this episode, we shout out a number of black women architects and designers that have influenced our careers as well as talk about her journey into the profession. 

Some of the biases and design challenges that we've seen as black women in the profession, as well as the frustration we feel when people try to approach black architects to just serve the role of checking a minority box.  Also, during our conversation, I referred to the federal HUBZone program as HUB.

And HUB stands for Historically Underutilized Businesses. And there are certain zones around the country where the certification can apply. So I just wanted to clear that up so it'll make more sense once you get to that point in the episode.  Melvalean works at a firm called Moody Nolan, which we'll hear about more in her bio in just a second.

Be sure to head over to the podcast, Instagram page at tangible remnants to see images of some of my favorite Moody Nolan projects. You can also check out the show notes for links to some of the various resources we touch on in the episode.  All right, well, to give you a little bit more context about who Melvalean is, let's get into her bio.

So  Melvalean McLemore. AIA Noma Lide P is a senior associate project manager and Texas studio design leader at Moody Nolan, the country's largest African American owned and operated architecture firm.  She was one of the first 500 licensed black woman architects in the U S and is the 16th licensed black woman architect in the state of Texas. 

She is a champion for diversity in the profession, including co-founding AIA Houston's Women in Architecture Committee and NOMA National's HBCU Professional Development Program, PDP.  Melvalean is the recipient of multiple awards. including both the Texas Society of Architects Claudio Young Architect Award and the AIA Houston's Ben Brewer Young Architect Award.

In addition to those two in the state of Texas, she also was recently awarded one of the 2024 Young Architects Awards from AIA National, which is a huge achievement. Her achievements mark a progressive milestone within the architectural community.  She was honored by the city of Houston for historic achievement as the first black female president of the AIA Houston chapter within the chapter's history. 

And this prompted the mayor to officially proclaim November 28th, Melvalean McLemore Day, which I think is super cool.  Melvaline was so fun to talk to, and I'm super excited to welcome her into the club of fellow AIA National Young Architects winners.  So in addition to getting to know Movilene a little bit more, one of the things I really enjoyed about our conversation is that we were able to reframe some of the conversations that we've had around access to quality design and various conversations of who's considered worthy of having quality design.

This is another fun one. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation between me and Melvalean McLemore.  Very excited that we connected because I didn't know that you existed. And I feel like we are very kindred spirits and very much at similar points in our career journey. So I would love to learn more about what got you into the profession. 

Oh, that is one of those unusual stories. I actually got into the profession accidentally. It's not one of those I wanted to be an architect since I was two kind of things, which is one of those ones I heard all throughout school. So it's definitely an outlier in that sense.  I really truly got into architecture accidentally by just checking the wrong box on the Texas Common Application.

I don't know what other states have a similar application process, but I,  chose to fill out the Texas common application because it was my way of mass applying to a bunch of schools without paying the application fees and I could not afford to pay all those different fees. So I  took that approach and looking back and I've really been trying to figure out like what went wrong when I built this thing out.

But I know there was a category called interest and I remember seeing architecture on there. So the best I can come up with is I checked architecture as something I was interested in, not to declare a major. But to my surprise, I got a bunch of letters back that said, Congratulations, you've been accepted to the College of Architecture.

And I was 18, and I said, Alright, I guess you'll give this a shot, and if you don't like it, you could always try something else. So that's how I found it. First got introduced to architecture prior to architecture. I was in engineering. I was that kid who loved everything about school, every subject, math, science, English.

I love, obviously love math and science because I really was moving toward the engineering deal, but I also loved art and I was in orchestra and I had like,  I'm a middle child. So everything school was my thing of how I stood out. And I really, really just love learning. So I guess I was pretty open to what I would discover in the College of Architecture.

And I didn't really know what to expect other than when I got all those letters back, I was kind of trying to choose which one to go to. And I narrowed it down to three schools based on my friends having selected their school. And I ultimately chose the University of Houston. And at the time, University of Houston was described as the most diverse school in the country.

And that was a big deal for me because I had been the black girl in my class for most of my school years. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, this is going to be a great new experience. And we had freshmen orientation. We had a couple of hundred students in this large atrium. I remember looking around and being like, Oh wow.

There's like less than 10 black people in this entire room. And it was shocking to me because it was like, I felt bamboozled. I was like, Oh, they said this is the most diverse school in the country. And it didn't look that way at all. But in retrospect, it looked a lot more like the profession than I had known at the time.

It was just really shocking for me that I had read something and I saw something else and it just didn't align. So yeah, that was how I got into architecture. That's awesome. And I'm curious on those stats. Was it like racially diverse or like most diverse? That I can't tell you other than I think racially diverse, at least the brochure that I received was racially diverse.

Got you, got you. So maybe, maybe they were, you know, being a little tricky there, but I think their diversity in whether it was racial, gender or anything else, you know, I connected my own dots and invented what I thought it was based on some graphic brochure they put together, but they could have made campus wide.

That's fair. Yeah, that's fair. In architecture, we kind of, you know, we know what the reality of this industry is now, but then I just had no idea of what I was getting myself into. And I had a real interest of seeing more people who look like me. So that was a first little disappointment of like, Oh no, this isn't what I thought it was.

I know exactly what you mean. I had a similar experience at UVA thinking it was going to be More. And I'm like, Oh,  okay. Well,  all right. And so then I know that you are super involved in the Texas AIA and various other organizations. I'm super curious how volunteering has kind of shaped how you're seeing architects having impact in the world.

Oh, well, that, that has been. Um, volunteerism has been a huge part of my career. I'm currently the president of AIA Houston, the first Black woman to lead this chapter, and we're one of the largest in the country, so that's a big thing. Wow! Congratulations! That's amazing. Thank you! Yeah, I didn't quite plan for that, but I have what, um, there's one of my mentors, Connie Revere.

She gave, introduced me to a term called helium hand, which is like your hand just floats up whenever there's a volunteer opportunity and you can't resist saying no. So I'm like, ah, sometimes I should be pulling it back down. But, um, I Wait, what was it called? I missed it. You said it's a human hand? Helium hand, helium hand, like a balloon.

Oh my gosh. Yes. Helium hand. Oh, yep. You know, in my head, I'm like, someone volunteer. Okay, I'll do it. It's like two seconds, but I feel an eternity. No one raised their hand. So I am that person. So I've been volunteering for a really long time. And I got to see the way, um, architects were able to make impact in the world through one of my very early volunteer exercises, which was the Women in Architecture exhibit we did in Houston. 

And this exhibit was a response to the Missing 32 percent project that came from California. And my first-year professor was encouraged by one of my other mentors. She became my mentor later in life, but Donna Kaffemar encouraged my first-year professor. to turn her thesis into an exhibit. And she had to go back to school to get her master's because that became the new requirement for the employees of the university at the time.

So she recruited several of us to help her do this thing. And what was supposed to, in my head, a quick little volunteer thing turned into two years of research and production. So I was, I did, I would have never imagined I would have been brought into this thing, but it was so rewarding and fulfilling, and that most of us didn't know how few of us there were in the profession in terms of women and leadership and all these different things.

So this endeavor turned into an opportunity to expose the underrepresented in terms of gender. While working on this exhibit, this is how I first got introduced to how few of us there were that licensed Black women in architecture. So we were working on this really, we ended up, one of the contributions to the exhibition was this 88-foot long, four-foot high displayed.

It was a timeline about relevant history of architecture and the contributions different women had made. So we had hundreds of women because these were just four by-four pixels we had created.  And on this entire timeline, there were three black women. And I said, there's no way there's no way this is true.

And I thought like, we must have made a mistake. There's no way we only have a three out of hundreds and hundreds of women. And it was true that the notable impacting Black women in architecture had come up as three Black women.  And I remember realizing I had never met a Black woman architect in my life.

And here I am working on this exhibit about Black women in architecture. So, Googling led me to meeting my first Black woman architect, Dena Griffin. Yay, Dena! I read about her. I reached out to her and I was Hi, you don't know me, but I don't know any Black women architects.  And I would love to meet you.

And she was so gracious, and she said, and I to this day don't know, because Dina, she's been wonderful to me over the years.  I don't know if she's just been nice, or Whatever the case is. But she said, if ever you're in Chicago,  you should stop by. I bought a ticket the same day. I was in Chicago like the very next weekend and I was like, I need to see you. 

That is amazing. You, you took action immediately. I love it. Immediately. I needed to see it because I was in like a kind of a low at that point of my career. I was in my first firm. Thank you. And at that moment, it was kind of being realized that  in not so subtle ways and sometimes subtle ways, it's being emphasized that you're not supposed to be here very specifically you.

And I was like, how do we endure? How do we move forward? And why are there so few of us? So I met Dina. She was fabulous. And I remember asking her, like, how did you persevere? There's only 0. 2 percent of us licensed in this country. And she said something that I share whenever I get an opportunity to do so.

She said, my hope is that one day there will be so many of us, the numbers won't matter.  And I said, all right, I got to be on the right side of the statistic. And that is what motivated me to get my license. That changed so much for me. And I have been out of school for about two years at that point. And from there, I buckled down and got my license because I needed to be on the right side, whether we were 2.

2%, 0. 5%, whatever the number could have been, I needed to be a part of that just to say, I did my part. So meeting her and I will say the individual impact she had on me, and that was a by-product of volunteering, you know, it's just one of those examples. And I will also say. Many of the women I worked with on this effort, we all were motivated to get licensed and, you know, learning all the stories of these unsung heroes.