Æðµã´«Ã½

Robert Alexander Clarke is a scholar, educator, and design theorist whose interest resides at the intersection of memory, identity, and aesthetics. His work is driven by the recovery and reimagination of Black Design Narratives, transforming them into new visual and spatial languages that challenge the limits of contemporary design discourse and practice. Through both critique and speculative inquiry, his work interrogates dominant methodologies in architecture and design, asking how suppressed narratives might meaningfully reshape present-day aesthetics, forms, and functions.

As the co-founder of Black Aesthetic Studio, established in collaboration with Social Construct artist Cleo Davis, his practice explores design expressions deeply rooted in African American culture, experience, and identity. The studio’s work seeks to cultivate aesthetic frameworks that emerge from, rather than merely reference, Black cultural specificity, expanding the canon of what is seen, valued, and possible within the built environment.

Before joining the faculty at Æðµã´«Ã½, Clarke served as the Wilson Smith III Design in Spatial Justice Fellow at the University of Oregon’s College of Design and as a Research Fellow at Newlab under architect and NYU Associate Professor of Practice Mitchell Joachim. His professional trajectory also includes years of practice at global architecture firms such as HOK, Terreform ONE, Gensler, and Archi-Union, experiences that broadened his commitment to socially engaged, experimental and culturally attuned approaches to design.