Dwayne Smith Alexander

Dwayne Smith-Alexander is an architectural designer, urban theorist, singer/songwriter and real estate investor. He has designed affordable housing, civic and cultural structures.

As a design lead and architectural designer for Urban Architectural Initiatives for the past 10 years, Dwayne has designed and led construction through to completion for 8 separate affordable housing structures, with an emphasis on “designing for context” where including features and an architectural layout geared towards the experience of minorities in predominant Caribbean areas including Brooklyn, The Bronx, Westchester and Manhattan was paramount. In this design approach Dwayne found a way to gain furthered perspective with the lifestyle of minority families living here in America and design residential facilities specifically according to their needs.

Dwayne’s commitment not only towards inclusive design, but also designing specifically for the various sub-cultures of the African American community and the Caribbean diaspora afforded him the opportunity to design the new minority youth cultural and creative afterschool center for The Brotherhood Sistersol located in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem. The now completed “Bro Sis Center” is the new home for the organization which is focused on the development of minority youth. A program which has trained and sent over 1000 African American and Caribbean youth to college with a high school graduation rate of 95%. The structure was designed to celebrate the unification of black youth everywhere, thus becoming a symbol of Pan Africanism both in the architecture as well as the organization’s program. This structure was completed in April of 2022.

In his spare time Dwayne gives architectural lectures to art students at The New School & John Jay College with a focus on what it’s like to be an architectural designer in the Greater New York region. He is an avid real estate investor having purchased lands in the St. Mary area of Jamaica where he will be building a small hotel in the near future with the use of local contractors. With his brother he began LOEM (League of Exemplary Men) A mastermind group focused on providing education on financial literacy and direct guidance to black men and women on how to save and invest through the medium of creative real estate, e-commerce and social media.

Dwayne is a graduate of Howard University and is a proud member of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA).

He is a proud first-generation Jamaican American based between New York City and the Caribbean region.