NICOLE HOLLANT-DENIS, FAIA, NOMA, NCARB, Principal
Award-winning architect and designer Nicole Hollant-Denis FAIA, NOMA, NCARB has a reputation for creating distinctive living and environmental spaces. The founder and principal of Aaris Design Architects, PLLC in New York City, Nicole’s 30 year career in architecture and design has ranged developing the historic African Burial Ground Memorial and designing Harlem’s first indoor plant living wall for Columbia University to renovating Met Life’s Fifth Avenue offices and building a permanent hurricane and earthquake safe house community in Haiti.
Considered one of America’s most notable African American women architects, Nicole, a licensed architect, holds a Master in Design Studies (MDes) from Harvard University and a B.Arch. degree in architecture from Cornell University. According to the 2020 Survey of Architectural Registration Boards there are 116,000 architects licensed in the U.S. However, the Directory of African American Architects notes there are currently 2,738 licensed African American architects, which includes 502 African American women. Only 0.5 percent of licensed architects are Black women.
Nicole has built structures and smashed glass ceilings to create influential projects of different architectural types throughout the New York metro area and beyond. Some of her most high-profile projects include the Port Authority Beautification project, which features six miles of hardscape and landscaping décor along the Air Train route of the Van Wyke Expressway leading the JFK Airport. Her corporate and institution projects include the Met Life’s Fifth Avenue $3.5 million renovation, which involved office space and 160 workstations on two floors. She conducted partial conservation and preservation of existing Long Island Rail Road Building to accommodate the installation of a new canopy at Air Train connection to airports. Private residents have included a Sag Harbor beach house. In Haiti, she designed a Haiti House for Life, a structure made for a lifetime, which was part of a competition funded by the Haitian government and the Clinton Foundation. Nicole has also lead projects on designs for affordable housing and multiple dwelling structures.
In 2004, the Aaris team, won the commission for the historical African Burial Ground Memorial in Lower Manhattan. The unique memorial design concepts were originated in Hollant-Denis’s thesis at Cornell University which explored Afrocentric forms in architecture using organic elements like earth, air and water. During the African Burial Ground Memorial dedications, Maya Angelou, Sidney Poitier, Cicely Tyson, Wyclef Jean, Ossie and Rubie Davis and Mayor Bloomberg and other dignitaries celebrated the memorial.
Recently, Aaris Design Architects, PLLC was named Associate Architect of the Columbia Business School’s $500 million contract for Columbia University’s Manhattanville campus, that’s a 17 acre, 450,000 square foot expansion. Aaris joins a team lead by DS+R the design architects and executive architects FXCollaborative. In addition, Aaris completed designs for Columbia University’s McBain Residential Hall, Carman Hall, Ruggles Residential Hall and Shapiro Residential Hall and others including work at East Campus. These projects all feature some of Harlem’s first living walls, a large-scale backdrop of fresh greenery.
Right now, Nicole is helping Harlem. Her recent design projects are being completed include an seven-story gut renovation for NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies offices at Columbia University. For Harlem’s Shiloh Church of Christ on 128th Street, she’s heading major renovations for the congregation’s sanctuary, exterior and community hall. In East Harlem, she redesigned the popular La Marqueta Plaza, a vibrant open-air marketplace featuring food vendors, shops, cultural events & live music.
A first generation American, Nicole was one of the first in her family to graduate from college. Her parents immigrated from Haiti and Martinique to seek economic stability and safety for their family. Growing up in an economically marginalized neighborhood, she knew what it meant to have limited resources and not to have immediate access to the American Dream. While her undergraduate study program at Cornell University, included travel study to Japan and Italy, Nicole, on her own initiative, created an independent thesis exploring Afro-Centric forms in architecture. Her personal study trips to Haiti inspired her to develop an understanding a West African Architecture. The majority of the Haitian population were brought from the west African shore to Haiti during the transatlantic slave trade. It was the development this design thesis that became the African Burial Ground Memorial.
Nicole has an office in New York. She balances home and career with her husband and two young daughters.