Gather and reflect on PORCH: An Architecture of Generosity with a culminating event that brings together architects, designers, and American Academy in Rome Fellows and Residents for a weekend of festivities and artistic expression—music, dance, readings, a display of PORCH Moves (storytelling from afar), and embroidery from the PORCH Fest workshops—a farewell salute to this place of welcome, discovery, and transformation.

American Academy in Rome participants:

Susan Chin, 2025-26 American Academy in Rome Resident
Tameka Baba, 2025-26 American Academy in Rome Fellow
Akima Bracken, 2025-26 American Academy in Rome Fellow
Lex Brown, 2024-25 American Academy in Rome Fellow

See schedule of events here.

For more information, please visit www.porchusavenice2025.org

For PORCH Fest, Akima Brackeen will present Words on Water: Venice, a participatory program, as part 2 of a project called Water Lines in Chicago, which studies the lack of access to water in majority Black neighborhoods across the city—and the struggles residents face because of it.

“Water symbolizes power, a tangible reminder of the link between race and economic disparities,” says Brackeen. “Water access in predominantly Black and Brown communities has long histories of structural and environmental racism that have restricted—and in many ways continues to restrict—people from accessing clean drinking water, control where people can live and own property, and even engage in places of leisure and recreation.”

Akima Brackeen is an educator, designer, and researcher dedicated to promoting justice within the built environment. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Community Design Director at Architecture for Public Benefit, and a member of the leadership team for the Equity in Architecture Education Consortium (EAEC). Her research focuses on water access and challenging racial perceptions and values of waterscapes aiming to transform engagement with contested sites through speculative interventions, narrative generation, and community activations.

For PORCH Fest, Tameka Baba will present Site Unscreened, a play on the phrase “sight unseen.” This interactive installation invites visitors to engage in a collective act of making — to begin a weaving or continue one left behind by another participant. It prompts reflection on how we perceive and shape landscapes without full knowledge of their pasts.

The act of weaving serves as a metaphor for the practice of landscape architecture — an ongoing negotiation between individual agency and collective inheritance. During the closing ceremony, Tameka will work to reconcile the differences between individual weavings, bringing them together into one connected landscape that acknowledges both celebrated and erased narratives.

Tameka Baba is currently serving as an Assistant Professor of Practice and the Undergraduate Chair in Landscape Architecture at Ohio State University's Knowlton School. Her work focuses on the reclamation and transformation of underutilized or abandoned urban spaces, particularly those impacted by the decline of retail industries. She is passionate about creating spaces of commoning for underserved communities and rethinking the traditional concept of community gardens and public spaces. By incorporating traditional textile crafts such as weaving and sewing into her design process, she bridges the gap between art, public engagement, and ecological design. This approach underscores her commitment to innovative, community-driven landscape interventions prioritizing ongoing stewardship and care.

For PORCH Fest, Alexis ‘Lex’ Brown will present The Tower: Drawing from the Tarot in Times of Entropy. Artist and writer Lex Brown has been a private practitioner of Tarot for 20 years, providing personal readings to friends and weaving its allegories into her multimedia practice. She will give a brief talk on the formation of the Tarot, its archetypes, and how to access its rich symbology during times of instability. Interested visitors are invited to receive a personal, one-card reading.

Lex Brown is a multimedia artist who creates allegorical narratives about the Information Age. Working fluidly between installation, film, opera, painting, and sculpture, her work speaks to a spiritual experience beyond contemporary social and political structures. Brown has exhibited work at the Kennedy Center, MIT List Center, New Museum, the High Line, The Kitchen, The Baltimore Museum of Art, the Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Art, the International Center of Photography, and the Munch Museum. Her films have been presented at e-flux Screening Room, New York; Transmediale, Berlin; and the East End Film Festival, London.