Dennis Alan Mann was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 8, 1940. He is married to Garda Sommer Mann who has had a long career in Cincinnati as an Interior Designer. They have a married daughter, Akira, (Political Science UC1991) and two grand daughters living in Portland, OR and a married son, Nicholas, and two grand sons living in Cincinnati. Garda is an UC grad (Interior Design 1965) and Nicholas is also a UC grad (Industrial Design 1994). Dennis went to public school in Cincinnati, received his B Arch degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M Architecture degree from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied under Louis I. Kahn. He is an emeritus architect in Ohio and New Mexico.
He taught at the University of Cincinnati from 1967 and until he retired as an Emeritus Professor in 2009. He had three careers while at UC. His first career revolved around practice including a large volunteer project in Lincoln Heights (multi-service center) with five faculty colleagues. This project won a Cincinnati AIA Design Award. Later he joined Smith Stevens Architects and worked with them until they closed their practice. He was involved in the Downtown Senior Citizens Center project which also won a local AIA Design Award. His second career centered around writing numerous published articles about the relationship between architecture and popular culture as well as design process pedagogy. His most recent career (since the early 1990’s) has focused on research (with colleague Professor Brad Grant at Howard University) in tracking licensed African American Architects. Their web site http://blackarch.uc.edu is the most popular site when searching for African American Architects. Their work in this venue garnered them a National AIA Award in 2007 for Collaborative Achievement.
He now lives in Taos, New Mexico building the Mann Family Compound, an off-the-grid 1650sf straw bale house on the mesa (elev. +7400). He spends his time as a design/builder adding on to the family dream while he continues to update the African American Architects web site. He has attended 15 NOMA National Conferences and stays in touch with many of his friends that he has met through NOMA.
