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 presents Words on Water: Venice, a participatory program and the second installment in an ongoing series that traces the deep connections between people and water. First activated in the Resource Room of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago earlier this year, this iteration expands the communal archive by gathering new voices and reflections carried by water in Venice. 

Rooted in the themes of Ritual, Memory, Place, Identity, Healing, and Joy, Words on Water: Venice invites participants to engage in a collective act of storytelling — to write, to remember, to offer their experiences in ways that embody the spirit of generosity at the heart of PORCH Fest.

Akima Brackeen is a designer, educator and researcher and director of Exhibit A. Her design practice blends architecture,digital media, and sound to investigate the social, political, and ecological dimensions of water access. This work exposes the systems of power and care and the material traces that shape perceptions and values within the built environment. Akima Brackeen is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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, 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.