Sara is a Detroit-based architectural designer, educator, mentor and theorist. She currently works at Quinn Evans, an architectural firm where she works at the intersection of design, planning, and community engagement in order to bring her clients’ visions to life and collaborate with project communities.
Outside of her professional pursuits, she is the Youth Outreach chair for NOMA National, where she has led Project Pipeline – a free, five-day youth architecture camp – for the past 4 years. She is also engaged with her research “Call and Response: Speculation of a Future Typology for the Black Church”, which aims to clarify a design language to the historic American Black Church, while proposing a building typology for the Black Church in this current moment.
5 favorite projects
- Woodbridge Neighborhood & Design Guidelines – Woodbridge, Detroit, MI [Quinn Evans]
- Allied Media LOVE Building – Woodbridge, Detroit, MI [Quinn Evans]
- Mosaic Eastern Market – Eastern Market, Detroit, MI [Quinn Evans]
- Michigan Architecture Prep Program – Detroit, MI [UM TCAUP/Michigan-Mellon Fellowship]
- Dyett High School – Washington Park, Chicago, IL [Brook Architecture]
Detroit City of Design Spotlight
20th Century Civil Rights Sites (Michigan)
Second Baptist Church – Detroit
African Methodist Episcopal Church (denomination)
Shrine of the Black Madonna – Detroit
New Bethel Baptist Church – Detroit
The Black Church, PBS
Donald White, Michigan’s first licensed black architect, broke new ground – Michigan Radio
Show Topic Links
National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) and NOMA: Baseline On Belonging
University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
NOMAS Student Design Competition
University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign
Devil in a White City by Erik Larson
Ramona Westbrook, Brook Architecture
NOMA Project Pipeline – Detroit and National
Michigan-Mellon Detroit Fellowship for Egalitarianism in the Metropolis
University of Michigan ARC Prep
Museum of Science and Industry Chicago
St. Stephen AME Church – Detroit
Sara Timberlake’s 5 Tenets of Black Church Design
- The church must respond.
- The church must use light and passive design for gathering spaces.
- The church must be layered.
- The church must be intentional about the procession.
- The church must have a clear ceremonial threshold.
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