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A Black man with a Caesar haircut sits in front of a stack of newspapers. He wears a green long-sleeved button-down shirt and denim jeans.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artists

Bryan C. Lee Jr

He // Him // His

Design Justice Architect

New Orleans, Louisiana

“This year has opened me up to new ways of collaborative creation and has deepened my appreciation for the exercise of design, art, architecture, and making as an act of trust-building in culture and community.”
Bryan C. Lee Jr is an architect, artist, writer, and design justice advocate working out of New Orleans. Lee is the Founder and Director of Colloqate Design, a nonprofit design practice focused on expanding the field toward Design Justice through organizing, advocacy, and design. He established the contemporary Design Justice Movement and was a founder of both the Design As Protest Collective and Dark Matter University. He is currently a design critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. As an educator, he produced and led two award-winning high school architecture and design programs. He has served as the 2025–26 President-elect and the current South region Vice President for the National Organization of Minority Architects. Over the years, he has received many awards and fellowships — most recently, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices Award in 2019 and the 2021 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award.

Donor -This award was generously supported by The Rockefeller Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 07.11.2024

Architecture & Design
Tall vertical panels are affixed to an iron gate creating the illusion of one long rectangular banner. On the banner are collaged photographic and graphic images of an overpass, hands reaching up to the sky holding houses, and a portrait of a faceless woman with medium-brown skin and a hibiscus flower in her hair.

Remember When. Remember Then. Digital collage on ACM, dimensions 10 × 40 feet. New Orleans African American Museum.

Photo by John Ludlam.

A digital architectural rendering of a bustling marketplace underneath an overpass. The computer-generated people tend to their booths, shop, socialize, and skateboard. Faint text reads "Down in the Treme."

Claiborne Innovation District rendering.

Image by Colloqate Design.

An outdoor space where dozens of medium-sized protest signs are stacked to create a mass of colorful cardboard resembling a jungle gym. Each individual poster has imagery printed in primary colors and white text with messages such as "Justice for Freddie Gray."

Tactical protest sign sculpture. Digital print on ACM, dimensions 10 × 10 × 8 feet. Multiple locations. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Photo courtesy of the artist.