As Principal at New York City-based Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects, Mark Gardner has led many of the firm?s design initiatives and works to understand the role of design as social practice. Gardner takes a serious interest in the crossroads of architecture and art, both subjects of the utmost importance to his professional practice as well as to his teaching and writings. Mark is committed to practicing architecture as a socially beneficial art form. He’s engaged in all aspects of each of the studio?s projects, and leads the firm?s quality-control review process, having taught Professional Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Mark is currently the Director of the Master of Architecture program at Parsons. Today Mark joins us for Friday Five! Photo via Smithsonian Magazine
1. W.E.B. Du Bois Mapping Diagrams

In 1897, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate was equal. W.E.B. Du Bois, the prominent African-American intellectual, was documenting the African-American Community at the same time as the case. He presented a mixed picture about the state of racial progress in the country. African-Americans faced the failure of Reconstruction to be brought to completion and the coming decades of Jim Crow. Despite discrimination, a new generation of African-Americans found ways to uplift themselves, through grassroots efforts in education and business.
?It is not one problem,? as Du Bois wrote in 1898, ?but rather a plexus of social proble...