The Hair Salon
Black Hair as Architecture
“The Hair Salon draws upon the unique Black texture to create an installation that centers Blackness as a cultural and technological force in the world.”
Who We Are
Our Mission
Fewer than 1.2% of architects in the U.S. are Black women, with even fewer globally. The Hair Salon harnesses Black feminist energy to encourage more Black women to join design professionals in reimagining the built environment in their own image, amidst climate change and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape worldwide. Inspired by the hairstyles documented by J.D. Ojeikere in the Hair Styles Series from the 1960s, when Nigerian women returned to traditional hairstyles in celebration of Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain, The Hair Salon highlights a high level of spatial understanding beyond traditional architectural disciplines. This understanding can be leveraged to create more expansive and imaginative built environments—ones that can do more than traditional buildings to heal and repair communities. These new architectures can help alleviate suffering from poor infrastructural systems, climate change, food insecurity, and social inequities, fostering resilience and empowerment through culturally resonant and innovative design solutions.
The platform has resulted in two Houston exhibitions in 2023 and has been featured in multiple professional and hair salon journals. The Hair Salon plans a traveling exhibition, complete with community workshops, to all U.S. historically Black schools of architecture between 2025-27, aiming to encourage more Black women to consider architecture and related design disciplines as career paths.
Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez, founder (left) with collaborator, Maise Munoz.
Our Team
Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez
Founder
Maise Munoz
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What We Do
Featured
Latest Works
The Strongest Signifier of Blackness: The Mission of the Hair Salon
“Black [hair] is the Crown of the Head.” — Yoruba proverb Like most Black women, I too have a “hair story.” When I was around eleven or twelve in the mid-seventies, I attended a Girl Scout camp in Citronelle, Alabama – a rural community just outside of Mobile, Alabama. During the school year, my hair…
Taxonomy of Black Hair
The Taxonomy of Black Hair graphically tracks Black hair from its geographic origins in which it evolved to protect the scalp from the intense heat of the sun through its dissemination throughout the world in the wake of slavery. The unique materiality of Black hair allowed it to be sculpted into a myriad of forms. Overtime, elaborate practices of hair care developed, including the integration of fractals used in African design practices from textiles to the layout of villages.
The Hair Salon: Black Hair as Architecture
The Hair Salon draws upon the unique Black texture to create an installation that centers Blackness as a cultural and technological force in the world.