Milan Outlaw in front of UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
When she was eight, Milan Outlaw wanted to be an architect and build her mom a fancier house.
“We had a nice house. I just wanted to build her one of those fancy Builder Showcase ones she was always looking at.”
Now Outlaw is going to graduate school for a master’s degree in architecture and has set her sights even higher – to earn a doctorate and use her talents to build a better Milwaukee.
Outlaw, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 17, will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall.
Her focus will be urbanism – using architecture to work with residents in cities and neighborhoods to improve the spaces and environments around them.
“As I progressed in my studies at UWM, I wanted to use architecture as a means to empower marginalized individuals,” she says.
An example would be turning vacant lots into pocket parks – places in which people can gather and get to know each other.
“Architects and designers are the ones who create the ways people interact within spaces.
Once you work alongside communities using architecture as a means of empowerment, just through that one act, so many people are impacted.”
Outlaw grew up in Milwaukee, first at 38th and Capitol and then in the Harambee neighborhood.
At UWM, she worked with Arijit Sen, associate professor of architecture, to create design proposals in Washington Park, giving her experience in empowering residents to use what they have to make their communities better.
“A lot of times architects go into neighborhoods and say ‘this is what I’m going to do because that’s what the developer told me,’” Outlaw says.
A better approach is to look at what exists in a neighborhood and ask residents about what they want, as well as how they interact within spaces.
Outlaw chose UWM because it has the only architecture school in Wisconsin, and she wanted to stay close to home.
Her older sister, Epiphany, and her brother, JZ, graduated from UWM, and her younger sister, Yasmine, is a student.
UWM expanded her horizons. She studied in France and was in the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate program, which encouraged her to do research and presentations.
“It helped me see the importance of minority students, faculty and staff within higher education.”
Her mother, who grew up in Watts in Los Angeles, and raised seven children, has been a major influence in her life, says Outlaw. “If it wasn’t for my mom, I don’t think I would have gone to college.
Knowledge is one of the many gifts she has given me. She wanted us to have the life she didn’t have.”
Carolyn Outlaw also taught her daughter about feminism, and introduced her to authors such as Angela Davis.
Outlaw minored in women’s studies.
Carolyn Outlaw had her first child at 17, and didn’t have a college education, but she continues to set an example for her children. She is attending MATC, studying early childhood education and development.
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