A few of designer C Jacob Payne’s projects present latest, futuristic products — similar to zero-gravity footwear for astronauts, and electronic-embedded ceramics — using technological tools and processes of digital fabrication, material innovation, and interactive interfaces. Other projects travel 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, after which worked briefly at architecture firms in Recent York and Los Angeles. He decided to pursue knowledgeable degree as a way to develop into a licensed architect and to check out several types of design. He began the MIT Master of Architecture (MArch) program in 2023, and is aiming to graduate in January 2027.
“I even have especially valued the educational freedom to make my very own path,” says Payne. “Although the MArch program requires certain classes each semester, I’ve been capable of discover a technique to tailor the degree in a way that actually reflects 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 the smaller scale in industrial and product design classes, to the larger scale in classes within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He’s a collaborator on the Design Intelligence Lab and has served as a teaching assistant in MIT’s architecture wood shop, helping students to bring together digital design techniques with hands-on fabrication. Payne says he values the off-campus opportunities he has had, including working at a furniture and product design company in Barcelona through MISTI and spending a summer working on the experience design firm 2×4 in Recent York.
Rediscovering the architecture of the past
Through his graduate classes, Payne became especially considering research into several types of vernacular architecture in America, especially within the American South. During his second semester, he took the category 4.182 (Brick x Brick: Drawing a Particular Survey), taught by Assistant Professor Carrie Norman, director of the architecture department’s undergraduate major and minor programs. 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 reconstructing some necessary Tuskegee architecture. He created models of Taylor’s original 1896 Tuskegee University Chapel, lost to fireside in 1957, and the next chapel built as a replacement in 1969, designed by Paul Rudolph in collaboration with Tuskegee University. He also produced a set of speculative drawings reconstructing Taylor’s 1896 chapel, using the very sparse remaining archival materials (including just a few photographs and one drawing), the standards of the Historic American Buildings Survey, and inferred details.
“Quite a lot of the work was determining how we will higher understand and reconstruct historic spaces with very limited information,” says Payne. “I feel it’s necessary to not treat the past as something static or fixed — because there’s a lot that we don’t know, that has been unexplored.”
Payne received the 2025-26 L. Dennis Shapiro (1955) Graduate Fellowship within the History of African American Experience of Technology. He’s currently looking into different typologies of architecture that were within the American South, with a specific give attention to “juke joints,” structures that got here about throughout the Jim Crow era. These were intended as secret social spaces for Black people to congregate, dance, sing, and play blues music — at a time after they were often barred from many establishments. Since there could be very little documentation still remaining to make use of on this research, Payne says, the challenge is identifying which current techniques of architecture and design may be used to raised understand and visualize these spaces.
“As his advisor, I even have watched Jacob develop a body of labor that treats architectural representation as each record and repair, recovering lost and neglected Black-built traditions as vital expressions of Black spatial agency,” says Norman. “Through drawings, models, and speculative reconstructions, he expands the tools of the discipline to interact histories of cultural identity and heritage.”
Incorporating AI to design for the long run
While much of Payne’s research is rooted previously, he can also be considering artificial intelligence and its implications for future innovations. Last spring, he took the category 4.154 (Space Architecture) and learned methods to design for the actual challenges of working in space. Along along with his team, he designed a footwear system for astronauts that would anchor to spacecraft structures with a mechanical, rotating sole, and inflatable bladders across the ankle for support.
As well as, Payne took a category about large language objects taught by associate professor of the practice Marcelo Coelho, director of the Design Intelligence Lab. “Designing products that integrate large language models involves desirous about how people can interact with AI within the physical world,” says Payne. “We’re able create latest experiences that challenge the ways that individuals take into consideration how AI will look in the long run.”
For the category, Payne and his team worked on a project using AI within the kitchen, developing a countertop device called the Kitchen Cosmo. A camera at the highest scans the ingredients placed in front of it. The user can input information similar to how many individuals shall be eating the meal and the way much time is obtainable to arrange the meal, and the device prints out 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. Because this ceramic material doesn’t must be fired in a kiln to harden, it may have electronics embedded inside 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 by approaching product and interaction design with an exciting combination of mental rigor and high-quality, hands-on making,” says Coelho. “He’s equally comfortable pondering conceptually concerning the cultural implications of artificial intelligence and dealing on the technical and craft detailing needed to bring his ideas to life.”