Some of designer C Jacob Payne's projects showcase recent, futuristic products – similar to zero-gravity shoes for astronauts and electronically embedded ceramics – using technological tools and processes of digital manufacturing, material innovation and interactive interfaces. Other projects travel back in time and consider the challenge of preserving and reconstructing Black architectural heritage.
Payne graduated from Yale University with a bachelor's degree in architecture and environmental studies after which worked briefly at architectural firms in New York and Los Angeles. He decided to check professionally to turn out to be an authorized architect and check out out various kinds of design. He began with that MIT Master of Architecture (MArch) program in 2023 and goals to graduate in January 2027.
“I particularly appreciated the educational freedom to follow my very own path,” says Payne. “Although the MArch program requires specific courses each semester, I used to be capable of discover a strategy to tailor the degree to really reflect my interests.”
Payne says he appreciates how his experiences in this system have allowed him to work on design projects at a wide range of scales – from smaller scales in industrial and product design courses to larger scales in classes within the Department of Urban Development and Urban Planning. He is an worker on the Design Intelligence Lab and has worked as a teaching assistant in MIT's architectural woodshop, helping students mix digital design techniques with hands-on fabrication. Payne says he appreciates the off-campus opportunities he has had, including working at a furniture and product design company in Barcelona MIXED and spent a summer working on the experience design firm 2×4 in New York.
Rediscover the architecture of the past
Through his graduate courses, Payne became particularly concerned about researching various kinds of vernacular architecture in America, particularly within the American South. During his second semester, he took course 4.182 (Brick x Brick: Drawing a Particular Survey), taught by Assistant Professor Carrie Norman, director of majors and minors within the Architecture Department. As a part of the curriculum, the category traveled to Tuskegee University to research the history and works of Robert R. Taylor, the primary black graduate of MIT (in 1892) and likewise the primary licensed black architect in America.
Following the category, Payne continued working on models and drawings that reconstructed some necessary Tuskegee architecture. He created Models of Taylor's original 1896 Tuskegee University chapel, which was destroyed by fire in 1957, and the next chapel built as an alternative in 1969, designed by Paul Rudolph in collaboration with Tuskegee University. He also produced a series of speculative drawings reconstructing Taylor's 1896 chapel, making use of the very sparse remaining archival material (including a number of photographs and a drawing), Historic American Buildings Survey standards, and derived details.
“Quite a lot of the work was determining how we are able to higher understand and reconstruct historic spaces with very limited information,” Payne says. “I feel it’s necessary not to think about the past as something static or fixed – because there’s a lot that we don’t know that continues to be unexplored.”
Payne received the 2025-26 L. Dennis Shapiro (1955) Graduate Fellowship within the History of African American Experience of Technology. He currently studies various typologies of architecture within the American South, with a selected give attention to “juke joints,” structures that emerged in the course of the Jim Crow era. These were intended as secret social spaces for black people to assemble, dance, sing and play blues music at a time once they were often barred from many establishments. Since there could be very little documentation left for this research, Payne says the challenge is to work out what current architectural and design techniques might be used to raised understand and visualize these spaces.
“As his advisor, I actually have watched Jacob develop a body of labor that treats architectural representation as each record and repair, revisiting lost and missed traditions of Black buildings as a living expression of Black spatial agency,” says Norman. “Through drawings, models and speculative reconstructions, he expands the tools of the discipline to interact with the history of cultural identity and heritage.”
Embracing AI to design for the longer term
While much of Payne's research is rooted prior to now, he can also be concerned about artificial intelligence and its impact on future innovation. Last spring, he took course 4.154 (Space Architecture) and learned the right way to design for the unique challenges of working in space. Together together with his team he designed one Shoe system for astronauts that may very well be anchored to spacecraft structures with a mechanical, rotating sole and inflatable bladders across the ankle for support.
Additionally, Payne took a course on large language objects taught by Associate Professor of the Practice Marcelo Coelho, head of the Design Intelligence Lab. “Developing products that integrate large language models requires fascinated by how people can interact with AI within the physical world,” says Payne. “We are capable of create recent experiences that challenge the way in which people take into consideration what AI will appear to be in the longer term.”
For the course, Payne and his team worked on a project using AI within the kitchen and developed a countertop device called Kitchen Cosmo. A camera at the highest scans the ingredients placed in front of it. The user can enter information similar to how many individuals can be eating the meal and the way much time is obtainable to arrange the meal, and the device will print a recipe.
Payne also worked on a project with Coelho for the Venice Biennale: a lamp that used geopolymers – a more sustainable alternative to concrete or other castable materials. Since this ceramic material doesn’t must be fired in an oven to cure, it could actually have electronics embedded in it. Payne now continues to work on AI research and product design within the Design Intelligence Lab.
“Jacob is an exceptional designer who deeply embodies MIT's 'mens et manus' ('mind and hand') ethos, approaching product and interaction design with an exciting combination of mental rigor and high-quality, practical manufacturing,” says Coelho. “He equally thinks conceptually concerning the cultural implications of artificial intelligence and works on the technical and craft details required to bring his ideas to life.”
