Darius Somers is a New York State licensed architect with over 16 years of experience in domestic and international projects.
His extensive professional practice encompasses leadership roles on diverse projects, from private residences and luxury retail to significant cultural institutions like a $56M museum expansion and a $335M public performance park, alongside large-scale mixed-use developments. This breadth of experience has cultivated a deep understanding of design's profound impact and its capacity for social impact and equity, values that guide his approach to every project. This commitment to impactful design is further explored through his award-winning research on reimagining urban spaces for cultural resilience and his dedication to fostering diverse talent in academia.
He has worked under the leadership of distinguished architects and educators, including David Adjaye at Adjaye Associates, Mario Gooden at Huff + Gooden Architects, Annabelle Selldorf at Selldorf Architects, and the late Charles Gwathmey at Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. Presently, he is working on The Metropolitan Museum of Art Ancient Near East and Cypriot Galleries renovation and the Lincoln Center West Outdoor Performance Park, and has recently formed his eponymous design practice, Somersworks.
Darius has received several prestigious awards for his academic excellence. Notably, he was a Grant Recipient for "Roots and Rhythms," awarded by The Architectural League of New York & The New York State Council on the Arts, a design research project focused on Buffalo's Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor. He also received a Grant for "Presence of the Absence," awarded by Pratt Institute, a research project investigating the same corridor through historical analysis. He has been an invited juror at Columbia University GSAPP, Pratt Institute School of Architecture, Yale University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Parsons School of Design. He also led an intensive graduate-level design workshop at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture.
He serves as an Editorial Advisory Board Member of The Architect’s Newspaper and as the Co-President of The Black Alumni of Pratt, an organization that advances scholastic and professional opportunities for students and alumni of African and Latino descent, with an endowed scholarship fund exceeding $2.5 million. Darius is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt’s Department of Interior Design, where he leads undergraduate and graduate design studios.
He earned his Bachelor’s in Architecture with High Honors Distinction from Pratt Institute and a Master’s in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, where he was also a recipient of the William Kinne Fellows Travel Prize.