"HIGHER CALLING" - Sara Timberlake

Sara is a Detroit-based architectural designer, educator, mentor and theorist. She currently works at Quinn Evans, an architectural firm where she works at the intersection of design, planning, and community engagement in order to bring her clients’ visions to life and collaborate with project communities.

Outside of her professional pursuits, she is the Youth Outreach chair for NOMA National, where she has led Project Pipeline - a free, five-day youth architecture camp - for the past 4 years. She is also engaged with her research “Call and Response: Speculation of a Future Typology for the Black Church”, which aims to clarify a design language to the historic American Black Church, while proposing a building typology for the Black Church in this current moment.

5 favorite projects

• Woodbridge Neighborhood & Design Guidelines - Woodbridge, Detroit, MI [Quinn Evans]
• Allied Media LOVE Building - Woodbridge, Detroit, MI [Quinn Evans]
• Mosaic Eastern Market - Eastern Market, Detroit, MI [Quinn Evans]
• Michigan Architecture Prep Program - Detroit, MI [UM TCAUP/Michigan-Mellon Fellowship]
• Dyett High School - Washington Park, Chicago, IL [Brook Architecture]

Detroit City of Design Spotlight

20th Century Civil Rights Sites (Michigan)

Second Baptist Church – Detroit

Bethel AME Church – Detroit

African Methodist Episcopal Church (denomination)

Shrine of the Black Madonna – Detroit

New Bethel Baptist Church - Detroit

The Black Church, PBS

Nation of Islam Mosque No. 1

Donald White, Michigan's first licensed black architect, broke new ground – Michigan Radio

Show Topic Links

National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and NOMA: Baseline On Belonging

University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

NOMAS Student Design...