J. Max Bond Jr., Architect

J. Max Bond Jr. was long the most influential African-American architect in New York and one of a few black architects of national prominence. He died at 73 on Feb. 18, 2009.
Mr. Bond had been the partner in charge of the museum portion of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center. His firm,Davis Brody Bond Aedas, is also the associate architect for the memorial.
Mr. Bond led the Architects Renewal Committee of Harlem before founding the firm Bond Ryder & Associates in 1970, with Donald P. Ryder. Foremost among its projects were the Martin Luther King Jr.Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, which includes Dr. King's tomb; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem; and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama.

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Mr. Bond also questioned the premise of new skyscrapers. ''There's a macho thing that keeps coming out: we should build a building that tall to show them,'' he said. ''Not everyone shares that sensibility. It's a particularly male, Western sensibility.

''I'm not saying people of color are wiser. But women, people of color, gays, immigrants have all had to look at themselves. They have experienced the underside of society in a much more profound way.

''Architecture inevitably involves all the larger issues of society.''

 Architectural Record
At the time of his death, Bond was overseeing the museum component of the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Davis also notes that Bond was particularly excited about a forthcoming submission in the Smithsonian’s competition to design the National Museum of African American History and Culture, calling the project “the culmination of everything he had done professionally.”


“Architecture inevitably involves all the larger issues of society”.
 J. Max Bond, Jr. 

The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, in Alabama, is one of Bond’s many notable projects.