The Black School has created The Black Schoolhouse, a 185.8-square-meter community arts center in New Orleans’ historic Seventh Ward that brings creative education, cultural exchange, and neighborhood resources together under one roof. Located at 1660 N. Roman Street, the center is shaped by an 18-month design process with local residents and incorporates climate-resilient strategies alongside references to Black architectural traditions and local cultural memory. The Schoolhouse is scheduled to open to the public on October 10th, 2026, marking The Black School’s 10th anniversary.
The Black School developed the project through door-to-door surveys, imagination workshops, and community design charrettes. Residents identified access to creative skills, technology, youth and family gathering spaces, wellness resources, and architecture that reflected the identity of the Seventh Ward as priorities. The building includes a gallery, classrooms, computer lab, makerspace, library and meditation room, community kitchen, and garden.
all images by Neil Alexander
Community design shapes the Schoolhouse’s program
Founded in New York City in 2016 by artists and educators Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters Cuillier, The Black School relocated to New Orleans in 2021, eventually purchasing land in the Seventh Ward, where Cuillier’s family has lived for more than a century.
Before construction began, The Black School used the site for a community garden and Garden School workshop series, healing circles led by local teaching artists, and public programs including Black Love Fest and the Creative Change Trip. The building consolidates these activities while adding facilities for making, learning, exhibitions, and professional development.
The organization has also developed a model that connects education with pathways into creative work. Through The Black School: Design Studio, it has graduated 39 Design Apprentices and employed 35 Junior Designers. The new building provides a physical base for those education and apprenticeship programs while expanding the capacity of the organization for creative production and neighborhood programming.
openings in the upper shipping containers create shaded, operable facades across
Climate resilience meets Black architectural memory
The Schoolhouse also places environmental performance alongside cultural identity. Its design incorporates repurposed shipping containers, solar energy systems, and rainwater-management infrastructure, although the supplied project material does not specify the individual systems or their performance figures. These elements position climate resilience as part of the building’s everyday infrastructure rather than as a separate technical layer.
The cultural dimension is equally important. The Black School places the Schoolhouse within a lineage of Black-led educational infrastructure that includes Rosenwald Schools, Freedom Schools, and the Black Panther Liberation Schools. Those precedents combined education with community organization and self-determination; here, that lineage is adapted to a contemporary arts and design context.
This makes the project particularly relevant to a broader question around community infrastructure: what happens when cultural buildings are conceived not simply as places to display or consume culture, but as places where skills, relationships, resources, and collective memory are produced?
The Schoolhouse represents approximately $1.7 million in investment, including major support from the Mellon Foundation alongside community supporters, philanthropic partners, and donors. Its opening marks a shift in The Black School’s work from temporary programming and design research toward a permanent physical presence in the Seventh Ward.
the 185.8-square-meter building sits within the residential fabric of New Orleans’ Seventh Ward
a network of ramps provides access around the community arts center
The Black Schoolhouse brings repurposed shipping containers together
a central entrance opens between two stacked shipping containers
the entrance courtyard is framed by timber planters
the building’s corrugated steel containers are paired with timber decking, railings, and planted areas
elevated terraces and sheltered outdoor spaces
a community arts center in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward
project info:
name: The Black Schoolhouse
organization/design lead: The Black School | @theblackschool
location: 1660 N. Roman Street, New Orleans, Louisiana
area: 185.8 square meters (2,000 square feet)
opening: October 10th, 2026
founders: Joseph Cuillier and Shani Peters Cuillier
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