ALTER [ COLLECTIVE SPATIAL AGENCY ] VOLUME 02 // ALLIE WARD NATIVE URBANISM
ALTERNATIVE
ALTERNATIVEURBANISM [ COLLECTIVE SPATIAL AGENCY ] “The status quo depends on a backward concept, which is that architecture is expensive, luxurious, elite and (pseudo) avant-garde - whereas I think architecture can be cheap, temporary and flexible.” -V. Mitch [RECONSTRUCTIONSMcEwen / Architecture and Blackness in America]
05030201CONTENTSPOSITIONALLIESPROJECTPORTFOLIOREFERENCES
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- What is the deconstructed role of the architect in fascilitating such adaptations without formalization?
COL·LEC·TIVE adjective: done by people acting as a group.
KEY QUESTIONS
This project identifies crucial aspects of cultural, social, and historical implications on the built environment through understanding how identity can be curated at a variety of scales – from the garment to the urban fabric. This thesis questions the traditional role of the “Architect,” and how this normative topdown approach to design could be more beneficial in the hands of the community, or grassroots approach. With a primary focus in the Knoxville neighborhood of Burlington, the research of this project predominantly takes a “boots on the ground” approach, consisting of in-person interviews, digital surveys within the neighborhood, localized observation, and a deep understanding of local history.
- What could be the new framework for the “Architect” in communities?
A·GEN·CY noun: the ability to take action or to choose what action to take // the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power
UR·BAN·ISM noun: existing or functioning outside the established cultural, social, or economic system // the study of the physical needs of urban societies
POSITION
A once thriving urban core of the Burlington neighborhood, the historic retail strip on Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., currently lies in abandonment. Beginning with historical research, this project understands the events that led up to abandonment, including Urban Renewal in East Knoxville, and a lack of local ownership. This then leads to observation, asking the question “how are community members reappropriating urban spaces to meet local needs?” Through diagram and collage, tangible observations are made that document reappropriation of urban spaces and adaptation of abandoned spaces within the realm of the neighborhood. This forms a set of localized tactics, methodologies, programs and materials that seek to inform the process of learning from the community.
AL·TER·NA·TIVE adjective: different from the usual or conventional // existing or functioning outside the established cultural, social, or economic system
- How can the identity or needs of a community be portrayed through the adaptation of “unowned” spaces?
It is imperative that this project creates a framework that questions and restructures the role of the Architect within marginalized communities. This project seeks to understand how flipping Architecture to maintain a grassroots activism approach could create more beneficial, desired, and equitable built environments for the future.
02SOURCES https://germanebarnes.com/Made-in-Opa-lockalocka-urban-planninggermane-barnes-curbed-young-gun-miami-opa-https://archive.curbed.com/2015/11/9/9902874/
ALLIESGERMANEBARNES
“MADE IN OPA-LOCKA”
After developing a thesis project about gentrification in predominately black neighborhoods, and how a black school could consume the resouces from a white school, Germane Barnes received a grant to work on “revitalizing” the neighborhood of Opa-Locka just outside of Miami. In order to do this successfully, Germane believed in critical to live within the neighborhood, understand the people & develop relationships for at least a year before designing and understanding what could be done in the neighborhood. From there he used grant money to build a public park on land that was seemingly “unowned.” Him and his team created an open space for community events, art exhibits, and spoken word. This brought people together, and allowed the community to affrodably operate it in a way they saw best fit. With Opa-Locka also being a food desert, they planted a community garden to help feed the neighborhood as well. Germane operates within the framework that my thesis seeks to establish.
02SOURCES watch?v=xDd5ESonhM4&t=268sUTKhttps://www.hourdetroit.com/community/art-house/LECTURE-https://www.youtube.com/
Mitch McEwen studied the abandonment of the housing market in Detroit, understanding that Urban Renewal and lack of investment in the predominately black neighborhood. She purchased a house for less than $3,000 with a hope to create a community space that seeks to create a public space for the neighborhood to gather. She studied the typology of balloon framing and began to remove certain parts of the housecreating a stage and open public space. With this typology, they studied the neighborhood’s intervention of repurposing abandoned or unowned spaces. They used the common material of tyvek to recover the house in outward facing artwork. Creating an alternative performance space at a very low cost. This tangible produced the idea that “houses can operate for the public, rather than trying to push them back into this private market idea of an individual house for an individual family.” The project is “concerned with how architecture can help realize emerging social practices.”
V. MITCH MCEWEN “HOUSE OPERA”
02SOURCES https://future-firm.org/Rebel-Garages
The ethos of the rebel garage is more than a secondary use: it reflects and produces a completely different and unique way of seeing architecture in Chicago, one that depends on both the physical parameters of a building but also the specifics of time, use, and engagement with its surroundings. It is a space where the activities that cannot take place in the house, the office, or the street, but require certain conditions of both privacy and publicness, begin to flourish. It’s a space which allows those activities—a side business, a private hobby, or a dream of an alternate lifestyle—to grow. It is a space whose openings and closings are precisely orchestrated by the closing of the garage door and the illumination of a single overhead light.
FUTURE FIRM “REBEL GARAGES” 01 / visiting urban garages 02 / understand garage as “rebel” 03business/personal-space / neighbor-space / 04city-space/reworking city code & “unrebeling” the garage
02SOURCES detroit/akoaki-blending-design-disciplines-https://www.archpaper.com/2019/07/urban-farm.htmlhttp://www.akoaki.com/oakland-av-
Throughout the work of Akoaki, they design urban interventions that are rethinking urban neighborhoods, abandoned spaces, and reclaiming unowned spaces. Throughout the One Mile and Detroit Cultivator projects, they are helping the public to converse and reimagine the spaces that are being used, through the scale of the intervention or installation. Through staging exhibits, pop ups, and cultural events, Akoaki is facilitating the dialogue around architecture, public space, and intervention with the public of the localized communities. Specifically through their inhabitation and studies of Detroit, the partners began to understand and break down the comlex landscapes and narratives of the city over the time of four years. They break down the once thriving black community and it’s development of the arts and jazz, and begin to reimagine the ways it can contribute to the current community members, reclaiming the abandoned landscapes.
“ONE MILE / DETROIT CULTIVATOR”
AKOAKI ARCHITECTURE
02SOURCES detroit/akoaki-blending-design-disciplines-https://www.archpaper.com/2019/07/urban-farm.htmlhttp://www.akoaki.com/oakland-av-
ATELIER D’ARCHITECTURE AUTOGÉRÉE “TACTICS FOR A TRANSGRESSIVE PRACTICE” 01 / informal occupation 02 / community input and observation 03 / participative construction 04 / temporal architecture In the last decade, Internet access and social media have reshaped the possibilities for experimental practice in terms of reach and immediacy. Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) describe a collective platform in Paris that acts as a catalyst for community engagement in the urban realm and particularly the reappropriation of vacant plots of land in the city. The practice defines its work as ‘urban tactics’, referring to our engaged activity in the urban realm that encourages inhabitants to reappropriate vacant land in the city and transform it into selfmanaged space. Spaces that are used for farming, trading, income, community gatherings, etc. - all seeking to create a more hollistic and self-sustaining body of people.
02SOURCES detroit/akoaki-blending-design-disciplines-https://www.archpaper.com/2019/07/urban-farm.htmlhttp://www.akoaki.com/oakland-av-
“Elaborate designs for personal communication instruments and survival vehicles are central to Wodiczko’s work, exploring social and political marginalization through creating solutions for alienated and excluded communities to “develop their shattered abilities to communicate” and share their experiences with others.” Through some of his early work of controversial art, Wodiczko used his work of instruments and vehicles, and turned his focus to the use for others. His concepts and realizations sough to visualize world problems. He developed a series of tools and constructs to exist as urban interventions. From the scale of the body, and the scale of the shopping cart, to the scale of the neighborhood and city - his interventions seek to assign design practices to political problems of his time. Specifically within physical object and large scale projection - able to impact the city at large.
KRYSZTOF WODICZKO
“PHYSICAL INTERVENTIONS”
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“MAPPINGPROJECTTRAJECTORIES”
Acting as the “road map” or table of contents for the entire development of the project, mapping trajectories outlines the multi-faceted approach to the designing of this framework.
From the scale of fashion methodologies, including labor practices in the garment industry and histories of garment production, to the scale of localized urban reappropriation including observations within Burlington - this diagram operates with both juncture of time and scale of project.
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HISTORIES OF PLACE
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IDENTITY // GARMENT [re]CONSTRUCTION
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Beginning with observation, the framework takes place in the Knoxville neighborhood of Burlington. A theory that frames this framework is this: one can not design for a community without first being a neighbor, and observing the way the neighborhood reappropriates spaces. This series of observations begins to document the ways in which the community is currently operating & diagramming the ways that “unowned” or “abandoned” spaces are being occupied.
LOCALIZED OBSERVATIONS
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LOCALIZED OBSERVATIONS
03 printed on three 8.5 x 11” black and white copies - bounded with a 30 second stitch on the sewing machine. The total cost of each field guide is $0.12, creating a format that is accessible and affordable to the community at large
This collaborative field guide was birthed through a localized observation of urban entrepreneurial takeover in public spaces. Within the fabric of the Burlington neighborhood - nodes of urban reappropriation appear in spaces deemed necessary by the participants. As the desire for ownership has increased, and the accessibility to ownership decreased, we see a transition of use and physical transformations of “unowned” or abandoned spaces.
This field guide was dispersed throughout Burlington for collaborative feedback. It documents tactics, materials, and programs within the neighborhood, and seeks additional input from community members. Through absorbtion of the information provided, collaboration of offering new ideas, and making individual spaces - the field guide was the first step in activating community engagement and beginning dialogues.
Is this something architects can learn from? How do these observations transform the way Architecture designs? How can the community inform the impacts of Architecture? What are the common methodologies used to manipulate urban spaces? Which common objects can be transformed to form an accessible urban architecture?
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDERCOMMONS
0301|FRAMEWORK02|TACTICS
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDERCOMMONS 02 | TACTICS 02 | TACTICS
0303|PROGRAM03|PROGRAM
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDERCOMMONS 04 | MATERIALS 04 | MATERIALS
0304|MATERIALS05|COLLABORATION
A FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNDERCOMMONS
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The Community Engagement drawing begins to diagram and understand a series of surveys & interviews and arrange them in terms of length of inhabitation with sentiment on the conditions of the neighborhood. Findings from this understand that the longer a person or family has inhabited the neighborhood, the more likely they are to be disappointed in the current state and condition of the public spaces. On the other hand, inhabitants who have lived in Burlington for the shortest amount of time are more optimistic.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
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DIGITAL SURVEYS
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DIGITAL SURVEYS
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DIGITAL SURVEYS
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This in-person interview with Mrs. Charlotte and her sons begins to combine an understanding of history, current sentiments, and hope for the abandoned spaces within the Burlington urban fabric. This, combined with the digital surveys, are a critical part of community engagement and grassroots activism in architecture.
IN-PERSON INTERVIEWS
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CONCEPTUALIZED PHARMACY
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SPATIALIZING INTERVIEWS
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THEORETICAL SITE MAPPING
This in-person interview with Mrs. Charlotte and her sons begins to combine an understanding of history, current sentiments, and hope for the abandoned spaces within the Burlington urban This,fabric.combined with the digital surveys, are a critical part of community engagement and grassroots activism in architecture.
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The second, Public Archive, seeks to share the collected information with the neighborhood, while also beautifying a boarded up former business.
Each of these connects with the community in different ways, deploying the observed tactics of camouflage, beautification, memorialization, declaration, and occupation
Each of these exhibits was installed, with the help of community members, friends, and partners, within the abandoned framework of Burlington. They each sought to interact with people, start dialogues and share information in different ways.
“NEIGHBORHOOD EXHIBIT”
The first, Shadowed Vestige, seeks to project the words “COLLECTIVE SPATIAL AGENCY” on the ground below, and adjacent Cal Johnson mural, moving with the sun throughout the day.
The third, Propunded Pharmacy, projects renders of a collective pharmacy concept on the plywood of a boarded up builidng, hoping to beautify and share beautiful potentials for the abandoned spaces.
NEIGHBORHOOD INTERVENTIONS
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SHADOWED VESTIGE
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PROPOUNDED PHARMACY
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PUBLIC ARCHIVE
04 A Brief History of the Zoot Suit history-zoot-suit-180958507/smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-https://www. Camille Walala - The O’DonnellMessegewandLawrenceKrzysztofHenningFutureFramlabDimensionshttps://www.camillewalala.comTwinsofCitizenshiphttp://dimensionsofcitizenship.orgVerticalFarmhttps://www.framlab.comFirm-RebelGarageshttps://future-firm.org/Rebel-GaragesStummelArchitects-FlatPackFurniturehttp://henningstummelarchitects.comWodiczkoWorkhttps://www.krzysztofwodiczko.comLek-WoodenPavilionhttps://lawrencelek.comWasteFurniturehttps://www.dezeen.com/2020/03/12/messgewand-makes-maximalist-furniture-from-waste-and-found-objects/BrownCommunityClassroomhttps://www.dezeen.com/2020/04/12/community-classroom-odonnellbrown-outdoor-learning/
REFERENCES Paola Calzada Arquitectos - Recycled http://www.paolacalzada.comFurniture Petrescu, P. (2013). Tactics for a Transgressive Practice. Architectural Design, 83(6), 58–65. https://doi.org/10.1002/ ad.1675 Rankine, Claudia, 1963- author. Citizen : An American Lyric. Minneapolis, Minnesota :Graywolf Press, 2014. “SERENA WILLIAMS SENDS A MESSAGE TO HATERS WITH OFF-WHITE FRENCH OPEN williams-french-open-outfit-off-white/https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/serena-‘FIT” Teston, Liz.design-events-fall-2018catalogs/college-of-architecture-and-http://mediasite.utk.edu/UTK/Catalog/“Interiorities” T Sakhi Installationhttps://www.tsakhi.com “What Were the Zoot Suit Riots?” suit-riotshistory.com/news/what-were-the-zoot-https://www. Wilson, Mabel. Mine Not Yours. of-citizenship/178292/mine-not-yourswww.e-flux.com/architecturedimensions-https://
