MANUFACTURED MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES IDENTITIES
MANUFACTUR MANUFACTUR
RED RED IDENTITIES IDENTITIES ALLIE WARD
“Citizenship [identity] is indissociable from the built environment, which is the source for generating new forms of belonging. These may be more mutable and ephemeral, but no less meaningful and even, perhaps, ultimately more equitable.” -Dimensions of Citizenship [Niall Atkinson, Ann Lui, Mimi Zeiger]
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CONTENTS CONTENTS
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POSITION FRAMEWORK ALLIES METHODOLOGY SITE PROPOSAL REFLECTIONS APPENDIX
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“HOPE FOR THE HOOD”
TULANE
“BLACK AND BLUE” “ZOOT SUIT”
MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES montage - Allie Ward
“DESTANDARDIZATION OF UNIFORM”
POSITION POSITION MAN·U·FAC·TURE verb: make or produce in a merely mechanical way // to invent or fabricate As bodies inhabit space, there exists a strong correlation between the manufacturing of space and the perception of oneself. The way we communicate our bodies and spaces to the public is a manufactured identity - one that is mechanically orchestrated to communicate who we are, or how we hope to be seen
I·DEN·TI·TY noun: the characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is.
Identity is the distinguishing character or of an individual or group, a psychological sameness amongst beings or spaces - often reflected outwardly through personal garment distinction, spatial manipulation, and the adaptation of the urban fabric. Garments surrounding the body provide a public shell for individual or collective expression. Fleshy persona can be concealed or displayed, repressed or exaggerated, all by the construction or manimulation of garment. The existence of the garment is the boundary between one’s internal identity & it’s desired expression within the public realm. A step above the scale of the body is spatial manipulation - where an individual or collective identity can be portrayed through use or transformation of a space. This is often more discreet, concealed within spaces that lack ownership - the unregulated and umonitored corners of a local fabric. This is where community identity is critical - revealing some of the most inward rooted beliefs.
KEY QUESTIONS
This thesis seeks to understand the way identity can be completely manufactured through the portrayal of self in varying forms - from the scale of the garment, to the scale of unowned spaces in disenfranchised neighborhoods. This study reveals reappropriated spaces from the perspective of the body and the neighborhood - dissecting the creatively manufactured identities within the urban fabric.
- How can one’s identity inform the manufacturing of space at the scale of the body? - How can the identity of a community be portrayed through the adaptation of “unowned” urban spaces? - What is the deconstructed role of the architect in fascilitating such adaptations without formalization?
02 02 the Abloh designed black and white two-piece ‘fit with matching cape was covered in words synonymous with empowerment, “Mother,” “Champion,” “Queen,” “Goddess,” translated into French. - Highsnobiety, Heather Snowden
CLOTHING AS EMPOWERMENT montage - Allie Ward
FRAMEWORK FRAMEWORK CLOTHING AS EMPOWERMENT
“Though no one was saying anything explicitly about Serena’s black body, you are not the only viewer who thought it was getting in the way of Alves’s sight line…..A year later that match would be credited for demonstrating the need for the speedy installation of Hawk-Eye, the line calling technology that took the seeing away from the beholder. In any case, it is difficult not to think that if Serena lost context by abandoning all rules of civility, it could be because her body, trapped in a racial imaginary, trapped in disbelief – code for being black in America – is being governed not by the tennis match she is participating in but by a collapsed relationship that had promised to play by the rules.” - Citizen : An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine
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Flourishing Singularity / physcial collage - Allie Ward
FRAMEWORK FRAMEWORK FLOURISHING SINGULARITY
The framework of this thesis begins to identify the perception of public interiorities and how those can be falsely manufactured to present an identity that is curated to impact perception. This thesis questions the role of the “architect,” and how this normally top down approach to design, can lie in the hands of the public. Seen in the portfolio of matches by Serena Williams, mechanical, unbiased technology has become a necessity to take the role of biased calls historically made by an umpire. Following the government of her body as opposed to her skills and performance, Virgil Abloh designed a tennis dress for her to wear in her matches - one that screamed words of empowerment across the body - “MOTHER,,” CHAMPION,” “QUEEN,” AND “GODDESS,” were plastered across
her body to remind herself and those governing her body, who she really is - a public portrayal of identity, impacting the psychological realm of viewers. This calls attention to the fact that our skin, our bodies, our garments, play a role in the way we are perceived by the public. This same philosphy can be applied to a variety of scales - the home, the porch, the neighborhood, the market, and the spaces that lack ownership. According to the studies of Liz Teston in her lecture “Interiorities,” all of these spaces can be classified as the public interiority - an interior condition classified by the psychology of those who inhabit the space - whether it be a garment, a sidewalk, or an interstitial alley way. What role does the “architect” play in manufacturing public identities?
02 02 originally associated with AfroAmerican musicians in Harlem, a creation to allow free movement in dance, the zoot suit was a symbol of wealth. the suit quickly moved into Mexican-American hipster culture and embraced as the flamboyant oversized style of dress to express a desire for freedom from discrimination and racism as an underclass.
ZOOT SUIT montage - Allie Ward
FRAMEWORK FRAMEWORK GARMENT AS IDENTIFIER
One way we see garments playing a role in classifying specific idenity is through the Zoot Suit (zuit soot), a men’s suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tightcuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide padded trousers. This style originated around the time of the Harlem Renaissance in AfricanAmerican swing culture. It enabled free movement and expression through dance with jazz music. The Zoot Suit became quickly associated with freedom for groups who had been widely oppressed and marginalized. The suit then took off with the Latin American culture in Los Angeles, seeking an apparely to help represent freedom and redemption. As the white population, and people in power began to recognize the freedom associated with the wearing of a particular suit - their dominance felt threatened. The Zoot Suit was then associated with negative behavior, criminalization, and fighting. The Zoot Suit Riots started in Los Angeles in 1943 when white people identified hispanic men in the flowing suit as criminals.
The suit was then used as a target inticing young white men to attack any of the young men wearing the suit, which then became outlawed in June of 1943 following the riots. The simple garment of a Zoot Suit and it’s historical impacts, is a critical study in the realm of identity being displayed through garments and how the “other” associats garment choices with identity. On one hand the suit was used by marginalized communities to express freedom and movement throughout times of poverty in the Great Depression. On the other hand is a group of people identifying the suit as a threat to power and dominance - leading to a legal ban on garment choices. This speaks to the broader concept addressed in this thesis - portraying an individual identity to the public through a strategically crafted identity, and in this case, at the scale of the body. Manufactured Identities seeks to explore historical connotations of identity in terms of apparel and public interventions to understand ways of displaying one’s identity in the public realm.
02 02 “White possession & occupation of land was validated & privileged as the basis for property rights, which are rooted in racial discrimination. when the growing of privatization of public spaces & hyper surveillance of public spaces is overlaid onto the historical racialization of citizenship and property in the US, black citizens continue to feel the pain and violence of exclusion.� - Mabel Wilson, Mine Not Yours The framework of this thesis is built upon observation and intervention of the portrayal of identity throughout the public realm. Manufactured Identities relates to a variety of scales - from that of the individual body, to that of the community space, seeking ways to intervene, dissect, and depict these ideas to the public at large. The work is built upon a collection of allies who are exploring similar work whether through writing, garment construction, or built works. Manufactured Identities takes global observations and theories and applies them to a hyper local scale of the urban neighborhood. The following pages and work throughout this thesis begin to analyze local interventions through the lens of allies that are practicing, restructuring, and writing on their observations and practices of identity.
FRAMEWORK FRAMEWORK EXCLUSIVE OWNERSHIP
ZOOT SUIT montage - Allie Ward
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Tactics For A Transgressive Practice seeks to transform informal occupation in the urban realm, work within community input and observation, create a participative construction process and develop a temporal architecture to serve community needs. Facilitated by Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou with atelier d’architecture autogeree (aaa), Tacts For A Transgressive Practice is a catalyst for community engagement, working to reappropriate vacant plots of land in the city that have been informally occupied. With an ability to formalize the space to need the community needs, they transform land to be a space that is “self-managed� by the community. Working around city codes, typical funding processes, and perceptions of the spaces, they deconstruct the typically top down approach to architecture to operate as a grassroots process.
ALLIES ALLIES TACTICS FOR A TRANSGRESSIVE PRACTICE
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REBEL GARAGES
Future Firm’s research on Rebel Garages takes a deep investigation into the alternate use of “garage” in the urban enighborhoods of Chicago. This use is often in the realm of entrepreneurship or “side gigs.” Future Firm begins to map and disgram the uses of the urban garage based on time and circulation use, while also interviewing locals in the neighborhood to gain a deeper knowledge of the context of the use. Titled “Rebel Garage,” this project takes a structure of ordinary use and applies a sense of an underground, or grassroots system developing within urban neighborhoods. They propose a methodology that maintains it’s discreetness, while orchestrating space and policy to encourage more of it. This methodology applies to my studies on the urban neighborhood of Burlington, and the ways in which it is shaped and “rebelized,” to be used for entrepreneurial gain and adapted in the ways the community seems fit. Abandoned parking lots turned market, overhangs turned restaurant, guest bedrooms turned studio, and interstitial spaces turned gathering.
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“Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos,� explores the depths of identity and belonging at varying scales. Originating as a pavilion for the Venice Biennale, followed by an in depth publication, this project explores belonging shaped by topdown legislature and bottom-up grassroots organization. This exploration begins to understand the architectural and spatial forms that develop through ideas of citizenship and belonging and ultimately - identity. Dimensions of Citizenship questions belonging - who belongs where? What are the architectural consequences of belonging? What is citizenship and to whom? and so forth. Diving into this reading has shaped and informed the way Manufactured Identities views belonging, identity, and citizenship in the realm of fashion, politics, installations, policies and the urban fabric.
DIMENSIONS OF CITIZENSHIP
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“Citizen : An American Lyric,” explores the identity of a black experience through short essays and poetry documenting life and its experience in race. Including both personal accounts and documenting observed accounts, Rankine develops a very cohesive account that allows readers to understand and empathize with the black experience in America. An account that this thesis focuses on and draws concepts from is the account of Serena Williams’ black experience with prejudice in the very white sport of tennis. This short essay focuses on the match where many calls were made against Serena by the umpire Alves - eventually leading the need for a technology within a sport that makes calls without bias - with the belief that Serena’s skin color was getting in the way of judgement on her performance. Where technology was a necessity to take away bias, Virgil Abloh designed a garment for her that was meant to remind her and her audience of empowerment. Reiterating the power of identity in dress. This garment served as a reminder of her worth to the audience, but also encouraged her to remember who she was despite judgement from outside perspective.
CITIZEN : AN AMERICAN LYRIC
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Throughout Liz Teston’s presentation “Interiorities,” she explores public interiorities in the realms of southern identity, architectural installation, understanding history, perceived urban forms, and challneging the top down approach to design in the public space. The studies within “Interiorities,” seek to explore the southern identity that respects authenticity, the mundane, and human perspective, with an understanding that good design should be accessible to people of all walks of life. Teston develops a connected series of projects and explorations that reappropriate experiential observations through questioning the role of trained designers and highlighting the ephemeral of lived experience and passage of time. There is a connection between the human condition and urban condition - reflected in the way different humans adapt the encironments around them, and use clothing as a second skin, or interior environment within the urban fabric. How can we use empathy understanding a design tool?
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How can designers reveal interiority to others through interventions and installations?
PUBLIC INTERIORITIES
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Krzystof Wodiczko’s work at the urban scale is though provoking, educational, and controversial. He uses elaborate designs to create instruments of survival and exploration of social and political marginalization. His work often creates solutions for the alienated and excluded communities to share their experiences with others in the public realm. With his work seeking to visualize world problems, this thesis builds off of this same idea, recognizing and understanding problems in the urban identity and manufacturing a physical manifestation to communicate. From the scale of the body, to the scale of the shopping cart, to the scale of the neighborhood and city, his work assigns design practices to a variety of political problems of the time. Manufactured Identities seeks to apply the technique of exposing political issues of identity, ownership and adaptations to the urban fabric through physical manifestations.
PHYSICAL INTERVENTIONS
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METHODOLOGY METHODOLOGY
The methodology of Manufactured Identities seeks to take found or historical objects with a specific connotation, and transform them to another object that is culturally relevant to present identities. In the two following examples, this concept applies to myself, my histories, and my current identity in the transformation of garments. Garment manipulation is currently one of the most accesible form of expressing identity because of the global access and influence of social media, and ease in transforming garments you own, to represent alternate realities of one’s own identity. At this scale, one can observe how people in varying urban fabrics represent their own identities through the manipulation of garment. This methodology starts at the scale of the body, and eventually grows into the observations and interventions at the scale of the interiorities of the Burlington urban fabric.
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As a preliminary methodolgy in spatial manipulation, “Uniform Manipulation,� takes the simple concept of uniform as standard dress, and manipulates the garment to meet the identity of the individual. Using a Navy uniform from my a chest in my grandparents house, this methodolgy takes the archived family heritage, preserved in a chest for 45 years, and applies it to the relevant ideas of dress. This creates conflict - should the Navy suit be altered? Does this uniform mean more in a chest or being worn today? Taking the only form of identitiy - initials in the hood of the shirt, and creating an entire outfit that is more representative of idividual identity. When scaled up to urban interventions, how does this methodology still apply?
UNIFORM MANIPULATION
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RESTRUCTURED TRADITION
Restructed Tradition completely transforms a quilt with familial heritage that no longer posesses meaning. Once a symbol of an exrelative that has been forgotten, this quilt is now my individuality being expressed on my body as I move through urban spaces. It is transforms from keeping me warm in the private realm, to keeping me warm and portraying identity in the public realm. Is one more relevant than the other? Can this transformation of identity lead to a “performance enhancing architecture,� as seen on the body of Serena Willaims? This coat takes a standard pattern which can be used by anyone anywhere, and applies it to an approach that is only relevant to my individuaity.
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CONTEXT CONTEXT
With research, precedents, and methodology of identity at varying scales, the thesis of Manufactured Identities seeks to exist within a specific urban fabric. While still exploring varients within the scale of the body, to the scale of the neighborhood, the specific context of this thesis will exist within the urban and historically black neighborhood of Burlington in East Knoxville, Tennessee. As an inhabiting body of this particular urban community, being a neighbor allows for intimate and contextual interventions. Through intensive observation, intimacy, and involvement, the context of Burlington is an integral part of my daily life, the knowledge of community, and an “insider’s” perspective on the context.
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CONTEXT CONTEXT BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
This map of Burlington highlights many of the critical avenues through the neighborhood and boundary lines. It also highlights many of the existing interventions and adaptations of urban space that will be further explored throughout this portion of context. Each of these interventions has been studied because of its alternative use of the existing urban fabric, created boundaries, community involvement, and reapproriation of space. Each of these contextual artifacts is a “rebel garage� of its own sort.
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BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
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BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
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BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
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BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
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BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
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BURLINGTON, KNOXVILLE, TN
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HOMELESS VEHICLE KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO - 1988
PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE T SAKHI - 2019
PROPOSAL PROPOSAL MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES
The proposal of Maufactured Identities is to install a series of interventions at varying scales. These interventions are both camoflauging and exposing of unordinary uses of space. The interventions are physical and digital - built and projected. The interventions seek to materialize the identity of spaces within the community - it seeks to bring quality design to the fringes - highlighting the seen and unseen. There are existing methods of intervening within the public interiorities of Burlington - creating a market from seemingly “unowned� parking lots, transforming interstitial spaces for gathering, painting destroyed walls with messages of hope, and forming a restaurant from abandoned overhang. The neighborhood lacks no creativity - it transforms what exists to portray an identity of community and entrepreneurship. Manufactured Identities proposes to further these interventions, to challenge and conceal their presence, while seeking to bring grassroots design abilities to the neighborhood in order to communicate identity.
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THE COMMUNITY CLASSROOM O’DONNELLBROWN - 2020
PROPOSAL PROPOSAL MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES
MODULAR VERTICAL FARM FRAMLAB - 2020
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RC WATER FILTRATION PLANT KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO - 1988
“LES JUMEAUX” THE TWINS CAMILLE WALALA - 2020
PROPOSAL PROPOSAL MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES
WASTE FURNITURE MESSGEWAND - 2020
RECYCLED / FLAT PACK FURNITURE PAOLA CALZADA ARQUITECTOS - 2018
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FLAT-PACK FURNITURE
HENNING STUMMEL - 2018
PROPOSAL PROPOSAL MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES
MODULAR PLYWOOD PIECES LAWRENCE LEK - 2012
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“HOPE FOR THE HOOD”
TULANE
“BLACK AND BLUE” “ZOOT SUIT” “DESTANDARDIZATION OF UNIFORM”
REFLECTION REFLECTION MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES
As most of the work up to this point has been understanding urbam territories through the lens of a set of characters - the continuation and development of this is critical. Building upong this, more details are critical, along with designed interventions that can accompany the existing analysis. Taking broad ideas of fashion and urban interventions remains critical, but a refinement and clarification of intentions is helpful moving forward. This would include questions of: What are the specific materials that would be used in a physical urban intervention? What is the value in conlict vs. camoflauge - hiding or revealing interventions in the public realm? Moving forward, this thesis requires a set of policies in terms of material choices, procurement operations, site interventions, and time boundaries. I hope to develop each of these aspects, becoming more specific over time. This allows for a greater understanding of the community, and how design can impact or play a role within each intervention and result.
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A Brief History of the Zoot Suit https://www. smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief history-zoot-suit-180958507/ Camille Walala - The Twins https://www.camillewalala.com Dimensions of Citizenship http://dimensionsofcitizenship.org Framlab Vertical Farm https://www.framlab.com Future Firm - Rebel Garages https://future-firm.org/Rebel-Garages Henning Stummel Architects - Flat Pack Furniture http://henningstummelarchitects.com Krzysztof Wodiczko Work https://www.krzysztofwodiczko.com Lawrence Lek - Wooden Pavilion https://lawrencelek.com Messegewand Waste Furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2020/03/12/ messgewand-makes-maximalist-furniture from-waste-and-found-objects/ O’Donnell Brown Community Classroom https://www.dezeen.com/2020/04/12/ community-classroom-odonnellbrown outdoor-learning/
APPENDIX APPENDIX MANUFACTURED IDENTITIES
Paola Calzada Arquitectos - Recycled Furniture http://www.paolacalzada.com 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 ‘FIT” https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/serena- williams-french-open-outfit-off-white/ Teston, Liz. “Interiorities” http://mediasite.utk.edu/UTK/Catalog/ catalogs/college-of-architecture-and- design-events-fall-2018 T Sakhi Installation https://www.tsakhi.com “What Were the Zoot Suit Riots?” https://www. history.com/news/what-were-the-zoot suit-riots Wilson, Mabel. Mine Not Yours. https:// www.e-flux.com/architecturedimensions- of-citizenship/178292/mine-not-yours