JEROME HAFERD Studio
ARCHITECTURE
PUBLIC ART
RESEARCH
COLLABORATIONS
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JEROME HAFERD Studio, D.P.C. is an architecture, art, and design practice based in Harlem, NY.
The studio works with diverse constituents, public, and private clients locally, nationally, and internatioanally on projects including urban design, buildings, interiors, exhibitions, and artworks.
TEAM
Jerome Haferd, founder
Gabriel Moyer-Perez
Violet Greenberg
Pedro Cruz Cruz
Tiffany Gonzalez
Moe Djieng
OFFICE
345 E. 104th St, Ste.3
New York, NY 10029 jerome@jeromehaferd.com
Jerome W Haferd is a licensed architect, public artist, and educator based in Harlem, NYC. He is principal of the award winning JEROME HAFERD Studio. Haferd is assistant professor of architecture at City College’s Spitzer School of Architecture where he co-directs the new Place, Memory, and Culture Incubator. He is a 2025 United States Artist Fellow. Haferd serves on the Board of Directors of The Architectural League of New York.
Jerome Haferd Studio, D.P.C. critically engages built environment projects at the intersection of preservation and design, often looking to marginalized histories to unlock a new imaginary for architecture, art, and cultural infrastructure. Haferd and his team’s work on complex sites includes collaborations with the Harlem African Burial Ground, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), The Park Avenue Armory, and the National Black Theatre. Haferd is lead architect and designer for the 2023-24 Culture, Creativity, and Care Initiative with the Mellon Foundation and Harlem Grown. The studio is a first prize recipient for the International Africatown Design Competition and is working on a permanent public artwork and plaza for the East River Esplanade with NYCEDC, Marvel Architects and Stantec. Jerome Haferd Studio will be exhibiting in the U.S. Pavilion at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale.
The team’s recent projects include the Sankofa installation in Harlem, their winning Africatown Competition Proposal “In the Wake”, and Bombodromo, a culture and performance campus with Caá Porá Arquitectura. Others include the BLK BOX experimental arts venue and Beautiful Browns, awarded second prize in the 2021 OnOlive emerging Black architect housing competition. Haferd co-led the DMU “Constellation'' exhibit at the 2022 Lisbon Architecture Trienale : Terra.
Haferd is a core initiator of Dark Matter U, a BIPOC led trans-disciplinary network geared towards new models of design pedagogy and practice. He received the 2022 #BlackVisionaries award as part of a DMU cohort. He also co-founded BRANDT : HAFERD, and has worked for internationally recognized firms including OMA/Rem Koolhaas and Bernard Tschumi Architects, where he was project leader on numerous institutional, planning, and exhibition projects worldwide.
The Block, The Stoop
PORCH : An Architecture of Generosity
19th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
interview 01 - Pupa Francis (click for video)
interview 02 - Thomas Campbell (click for video)
Harlem is known for its porch - or stoop - culture. This is a geography of layered Black and other diasporas and migrations. Here, stairs, benches, cars, and the like participate in a concentrated zone that serves as a public yard : one which facilitates social life and absorbs critical needs for the marginalized and ‘designed destitute’. The porch is a living part of Harlem’s culture and care.
The Block; The Stoop window display for the 2025 U.S. Pavilion uses the same architectural language to distill these two protagonists - the Sankofa pavilion and the iconic Harlem Stoop - into a synthetic armature that echoes the canopy (above) and the stoop (below). Printed mesh strands are woven through the steel frame to enclose the window volume, offering glimpses to a photograph of Sankofa’s “porch in the round”.
Printed on the mesh strips are frames taken from two interviews. The first is filmed on Pupa’s stoop, a gathering place for people on the Block where Haferd also lives. The second is a walking interview of Tommy, who recounts the social landscape of the neighborhood, the Block, and the Park - and how the Sankofa project fits into the spatial legacy of social life in the Park and its adjacent neighborhood.
In The Wake : Africatown
First Prize, Site 2
Africatown International Design Competition
Mobile, AL, 2023