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Ifeoma Ebo

She // Her // Hers

Architect, Artist, and Community-Designer

Brooklyn, New York

A woman of African descent smiles. She has copper-colored locs past her shoulders and is wearing red lipstick and a blouse with a pink-and-white Ankara print.

Photo by Neville Simpson.

“My work as a transdisciplinary designer, artist, and urbanist has been rooted in dynamic diasporic understandings of the Black experience, and I have used my craft to advocate for, design, plan with, and visually showcase the stories of communities of color.”

Ifeoma Ebo is a Nigerian-American, Brooklyn-based Urban Designer, Planning Strategist, Artist and experienced Architect. Ebo is Principal of Creative Urban Alchemy, an award-winning studio working at the intersection of art, architecture, urban design, and planning centering cultural heritage in praxis.

With a career spanning two decades, she is renowned for her transformative work in urban landscapes, with a keen focus on equity and design excellence. She has significantly impacted urban design and development projects, partnering with prestigious institutions like the United Nations, FIFA, and the NYC Mayor's Office. She is an Assistant Professor for Design & Sustainability at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York where she engages in research and teaches trans disciplinary courses exploring cultural, climate, and environmental justice.

As a creative, Ebo explores her passion for visual storytelling to craft engaging design workshops and to capture her global explorations of cultural urbanism — the intersection of space, place, people, and culture. She has received awards and fellowships from the Black Artists & Designers Guild, Cornell School of Architecture, Cornell Council for the Arts, Cooper Union, Council for the Arts at MIT, NYS Council for the Arts, NYC Urban Design Forum, Next City, Graham Foundation, the Architectural League, Architecture for Humanity, Pratt Institute School of Architecture and Columbia GSAPP. She has exhibited her work at the Cornell University Willard Straight Gallery, MIT Rotch Library Gallery, and the Oakland Museum exhibition on Afro-futurism. She has also exhibited her work as a part of the Architectural League Shifting Ground visual archive capturing the relationship between society and the built environment during the pandemic. Ebo holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and a Master of City Design & Development from MIT.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity.

This artist page was last updated on: 08.13.2024

Architecture & Design
A grayscale digital rendering of an industrial interior. The interior is long and rectangular and empty except for a few figures milling about. Hundreds of light-colored boxes line the ceiling in a grid formation, indicating some sort of light source.

Museum / Memorial of the African Burial Ground Lower Manhattan. Undergraduate architecture thesis project by Ifeoma Ebo.

Image courtesy of the artist.

A digital rendering of a wooden sculpture superimposed over a wild garden of lush greens.

Christie Street African Burial Ground. Submission by Ifeoma Ebo for the Christie Street African Burial Ground Memorial call for Artists by FABNYC.

Image courtesy of the artist

A digital collage. In the foreground are three cut-out figures from a black-and-white photo. The three people are Black, dressed up, and pose with their hands folded neatly in their laps. They sit in front of a yellow circle. Overlapping the three people and yellow circle is a small green sprout growing from dark brown soil. In the background is a mosaic with brown tiles with orange stripes and x marks.

Owuwa Anyanwu collage series by Ifeoma Ebo. Documenting the narratives of community resilience during the Nigerian Biafran War.

Image courtesy of the artist.