Lourenzo Giple has spent his professional life at what was sometimes an awkward three-way intersection between architecture, community and real estate. He didn’t fit neatly into any one box, and it created a bit of an identity crisis.
“For the longest time it drove me crazy,” he said, “and in the last five years I’ve started to lean more heavily into it.”
Embracing his various interests and areas of expertise brought Giple to a place where they all come together, as the new deputy director of preservation, planning and urban design for the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development. He is the first Black person to hold that title.
Giple will help oversee long-range planning, current planning, historic preservation, transportation planning and urban design. He’ll also be involved with the Metropolitan Development Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals, among other boards and commissions. That’s all to say Giple will have his hand in a little bit of everything — just the way he prefers.
One of the most pressing issues Giple will be tasked with is gentrification. It’s a big topic that requires a lot of context, he said, and he slows his speaking pace when he talks about it, choosing words carefully.
On one hand, neighborhoods can’t be stagnant, he said. Without investment, a neighborhood that’s in decline will continue to decline. The challenge is investing in neighborhoods without tearing apart the cultural fabric. This is where Giple sees himself making contributions that are too rare when it comes to city planning.
What do the people in Martindale-Brightwood want? What about Haughville? Giple has no problem admitting he doesn’t know everything about each pocket of Indianapolis, but odds are he knows someone who does. That’s why his layered background — from architecture to working with communities — is important.
“I know the No. 1 piece for me is figuring out a way to preserve historically Black and brown communities,” he said.
Before joining the Department of Metropolitan Development, Giple was a project director at Blackline Studio, an architecture firm. He has a bachelor’s degree in architecture and two master’s degrees, one in urban design and another in architecture, from Ball State University.
Giple interned at the department during college and helped collect data that he’ll likely use now as a deputy director.
“Lourenzo really stuck out for his qualifications, for his experience in the field, what he brings in terms of perspective to this position,” DMD Director Scarlett Martin said.
Giple prefers the 30,000-feet view of his job, but go even higher, above the day-to-day responsibilities, and there are other aspects of being a Black man involved in city planning, preservation and design that he wants to take advantage of.
Giple, who came to America from Liberia as a child, wants kids who look him to see themselves projected up there — as an architect, a planner, a leader — which he hopes then leads to a more equitable city.
It wasn’t until his junior year of college that Giple was exposed to Black architects. Not that he didn’t know they existed; there was just so little exposure. Giple went to a conference with other Ball State students in San Francisco and learned about the National Organization of Minority Architects, which he’s a part of now.
“There are more of us here,” he said of that experience. “And not only that, but we’re doing cool stuff.”
Now 36 years old, Giple hasn’t stopped doing the cool stuff — even when he struggled to figure out exactly where he fit in before finally just embracing what he loved doing.
Contact staff writer Tyler Fenwick at 317-762-7853. Follow him on Twitter @Ty_Fenwick.
