Some of designer C. Jacob Payne’s projects present new, futuristic products – such as zero-gravity shoes for astronauts, and electronic-embedded ceramics – using the technical tools and processes of digital fabrication, materials innovation and interactive interfaces. Other projects go back in time to past centuries, considering the challenge of preserving and reconstructing black architectural heritage.
Payne graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and Environmental Studies, and then worked for a time in architecture firms in New York and Los Angeles. He decided to pursue a professional degree to become a licensed architect and try different types of designs. He begins the MIT Master of Architecture (March) program in 2023 and aims to graduate in January 2027.
“I particularly valued the academic freedom to forge my own path,” Payne says. “Although the MARCH program requires certain classes each semester, I have been able to find a way to structure the degree in a way that really reflects my interests.”
Payne says he appreciates how his experiences in the program have allowed him to work on design projects at a variety of levels – from small-scale in industrial and product design classes to large-scale in classes in the urban studies and planning department. She is an associate in the Design Intelligence Lab and has worked as a teaching assistant in MIT’s Architecture Wood Shop, helping students bring together digital design techniques with hands-on construction. Payne says he values the off-campus opportunities he’s had, including working at a furniture and product design company in Barcelona through MISTI and a summer at experience design firm 2×4 in New York.
Rediscovering the architecture of the past
Through his graduate classes, Payne became interested in researching different types of vernacular architecture in America, particularly the American South. During his second semester, he took the class 4.182 (Brick x Brick: Drawing a Particular Survey), taught by Assistant Professor Carrie Norman, graduate head of the Department of Architecture and director of minor programs. As part of the curriculum, the class studied the work of Robert R. Lewis, MIT’s first black graduate (in 1892) and America’s first licensed black architect. Traveled to Tuskegee University to research Taylor’s history and works.
After class, Payne continued to work on models and drawings reconstructing some of the important Tuskegee architecture. They created models of Taylor’s original 1896 Tuskegee University Chapel, which was destroyed in a fire in 1957, and the chapel built in its place in 1969, designed by Paul Rudolph in collaboration with Tuskegee University. He also prepared a set of projected drawings for the reconstruction of Taylor’s 1896 chapel, using very little remaining archival material (including a few photographs and one drawing), Historic American Buildings Survey standards, and estimated details.
“A lot of the work was to figure out how we could better understand and reconstruct historic places with very limited information,” Payne says. “I think it’s important not to treat the past as a static or stable thing – because there’s a lot that we don’t know, that is unknown.”
Payne received the 2025-26 L. Dennis Shapiro (1955) Graduate Fellowship in the History of the African American Experience of Technology. He is currently looking at the different types of architecture present in the American South, with a particular focus on “juke joints”, structures that were built during the Jim Crow era. These were created as secret social spaces for black people to gather, dance, sing and play blues music – at a time when they were often banned from many establishments. Since there are still very few documents left to use in this research, Payne says, the challenge is to identify which current techniques of architecture and design can be used to better understand and visualize these places.
Norman says, “As his advisor, I have watched Jacob develop a body of work that treats architectural representation as both record and repair, recovering lost and overlooked Black-built traditions as vital expressions of Black spatial agency.” “Through drawings, models, and speculative reconstructions, he expands the discipline’s tools to engage the history of cultural identity and heritage.”
Incorporating AI to design for the future
While much of Payne’s research is rooted in the past, he is also interested in artificial intelligence and its implications for future innovations. Last spring, he took class 4.154 (Space Architecture) and learned how to design for the special challenges of working in space. With his team, he designed a footwear system for astronauts that could attach to spacecraft structures with a mechanical, rotating sole and an inflatable bladder around the ankle for support.
In addition, Payne took a class about large language objects taught by Associate Professor of Practice Marcelo Coelho, director of the Design Intelligence Lab. “Designing products that integrate large language models involves thinking about how people might interact with AI in the physical world,” Payne says. “We are able to create new experiences that challenge the way people think about what AI will look like in the future.”
For the class, Payne and his team worked on a project using AI in the kitchen, developing a countertop device called Kitchen Cosmo. A camera at the top scans the material placed in front of it. The user can input information such as how many people will be eating the food and how much time is available to prepare the meal, and the device prints a recipe.
Payne also worked on a project with Coelho for the Venice Biennale: a lamp that uses geopolymer – a more sustainable alternative to concrete or other castable materials. Because this ceramic material does not require firing in a furnace to harden, it can contain electronics. Payne now continues to work on AI research and product design in the Design Intelligence Lab.
“Jacob is an extraordinary designer who deeply embraces MIT’s ‘Mens et Manus’.” [‘mind and hand’] “The ethos by infusing product and interaction design with an exciting combination of intellectual rigor and high-quality, hands-on making,” says Coelho. She is equally comfortable thinking conceptually about the cultural implications of artificial intelligence and working on the technical and craft details required to bring her ideas to life.”
