Akiel Allen
Architecture and Environmental Design
Baltimore, MD
Akiel’s experience since he’s been in Baltimore for school, is that the communities are run down due to a lack of community pride. He believes his work can help positively impact the community by showing value to those that live there so that they may take pride in their area. Akiel hopes to restructure the communities in a way that supports local commerce without leading to gentrification.
At Morgan State, Akiel was among six students to join the inaugural “Preservation in Practice”, a program meant to address both the lack of African American monuments and African American monument preservation in Baltimore, a.k.a. the Monumental City. In partnership with the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park Service, the school launched the program this summer. The students — all architecture majors — have traveled to historic sites in Baltimore and Wyoming, studied alongside architecture experts and even learned to lay bricks — all in an effort to increase the number of African Americans in historic preservation, architecture and urban planning.