The UT School of Architecture is pleased to announce the appointments of three new faculty members this academic year. Charles Davis and Ria Bravo will join the faculty in tenure/tenure-track positions, and Tyler Swingle will serve a two-year appointment as the school’s Emerging Scholar. Ria and Tyler will begin teaching this fall and Charles will begin teaching in the spring. Join us in welcoming them to the school, and stay tuned for in-depth interviews with each of them published later this semester.

Charles L. Davis II joins our faculty as a tenured associate professor of architectural history and criticism. Before coming to the school, he served as an associate professor at the University of Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning. Davis received his Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and M.Arch and B.P.S. degrees from the University of Buffalo. His academic research excavates the role of racial identity and race thinking in architectural history and contemporary design culture. His current book project, tentatively titled “Black by Design: An Interdisciplinary History of Making in Modern America,” recovers the overlooked contributions of black artists and architects in shaping the built environment from the Harlem Renaissance to Black Lives Matter. Charles is co-editor of Race and Modern Architecture (University of Pittsburgh, 2020) and author of Building Character: The Racial Politics of Modern Architectural Style (University of Pittsburgh, 2019), which traces the historical integrations of race and style theory in paradigms of “architectural organicism,” or movements that modeled design on the generative principles of nature.

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Charles L. Davis II initially joined SAH in 2009. He has served on the SAH Board, the HABS-SAH Sally Kress Tompkins Fellowship Committee and the SAH IDEAS Committee. He currently co-chairs the SAH Race and Architectural History Affiliate Group.