Mazeway - Issue 01 | Fall 2021

MAZEWAY

ISSUE 01 | Fall 2021

“You have to have the love, you have to have the magic. That's also life.” - Toni Morrison

MAZEWAY

“It is therefore functionally necessary for every person in society to maintain a behavioral regularities, in order to act in ways which reduce stress at all levels of I have called “the mazeway,” since as a model of the cell-body-personality-nature includes perceptions of both the maze of physical objects of the environment (in maze can be manipulated by the self and others in order to minimize stress.” - An

The mazeway is nature, society, culture, personality, and body image, as seen by o

a mental image of the society and its culture, as well as of his own body and its the system. The person does, in fact, maintain such an image. This mental image e-culture-society system or field, organized by the individual’s own experience, it nternal and external, human and nonhuman) and also of the ways in which this nthony F. C. Wallace

one person.

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

Our intervention practices storytelling as placekeeping, as a way to confront gentrification, a process which violently severs community ties and uproots families from neighborhoods they’ve lived in for generations. To respond to the rapid gentrification of the area surrounding Pratt Institute, we are approaching gentrification in a matter that centers the community’s narratives.

We don’t intend to solve the issue, but we would like to raise awareness of the current situation.

This project draws inspiration from The Negro Motorist Green Book, most notably known as the Green Book. Published by Victor Hugo Green between 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was an annually released guidebook which listed businesses-- including hotels, motels, restaurants-which served Black people, important information at a time where Jim Crow laws were in effect.

Our project, like the Green Book, aims to record and map out places of significance for BIPOC people. However, our intervention differs in that not only does it center the community in Brooklyn, but we intend to feature places that are significant to the neighborhood for the way they embody community and evoke feelings of belonging, documenting the past and present and showing that connections transcend time. In highlighting these places, and in turn the stories they hold, means to counter the erasure that gentrification brings.

The intervention is also greatly informed by Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove’s Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, And What We Can Do About It. In writing about urban renewal in American cities during the second half of the 20th century, Dr. Fullilove sheds light on the harm such policies disproportionately inflicted upon African-American communities.

Through storytelling, Dr. Fullilove is able to effectively convey the violence of gentrification and tell us this: gentrification is not solely about buildings and structures and hard data and money, where an individual is merely a statistic. Gentrification disintegrates relationships. It deprives people of opportunity, of security, of stability, of community, of safety. It entails interpersonal and intrapersonal loss.

This project seeks to amplify what gentrification undermines: life and the connections which nourish it. To tell the stories of the community members and to shine light on their Brooklyn-- not the Brooklyn that developers want to distort it into-- is to resist gentrification and the erasure it brings and build a future in which these stories persist. With the involvement of members of the Brooklyn community, we aim to broadcast their voices-- their wishes, their needs, their concerns-and begin to facilitate a conversation between those in Pratt and those in the community.

This is an opportunity for all of us to come together and move forward.

-- Andrea Valero and Catherine Chattergoon Architecture Students at Pratt Institute, B. Arch

TABLE OF CONTENTS 01

BACKGROUND Gentrification Guidebook

02

HISTORY Pratt Center for Community Development

03

TOGETHERNESS As Told

04

CARE Ingersoll Garden of Eden

05

FAMILY Mike’s Coffee Shop

06

JOY St. James Joy

07

POSTCARD PROJECT Socially-Engaged Participatory Project

BACKGROUND

HISTORY

PRATT CENTER FOR COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Founded in 1964, the Pratt Center for Community Development, formerly known as Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development, partners and supports local community-based organizations and small businesses to help drive equitable and sustainable community growth and development. Driven by their vision for a just city and future, this group allows students and faculty at Pratt to come together with community members to foster genuine relationships, amplify the voices of residents, and elevate the local knowledge within Brooklyn.

TOGETHERNESS

AS TOLD

In light of the rapidly changing Brooklyn landscape, As Told combines a group of Pratt students and faculty with senior citizens in the community to view the changes over time in Brooklyn through the oral stories of long-time residents that experienced it firsthand. By centering the experiences of community members, this project reminds us that interrogating the lived past of our neighbors can help us begin to counteract harmful change brought about by gentrification and displacement.

What does it mean to carry long lifeexperience in a relentlessly changing city?

What no longer / still feels like home?”

CARE

INGERSOLL GARDEN OF EDEN The Ingersoll Garden of Eden was started in 2009 by six women of color at the NYCHA Ingersoll Housing Development in Fort Greene. Noticing that the public space in their development was underutilized, these women and other residents came together to create a space of community, collective care, nourishment, and belonging within their home. The garden was publicly recognized in 2018 for being an inspiration to the community.

FAMILY

MIKE’S COFFEE SHOP

Stationed on the corner of Dekalb Avenue and St. James Place, Mike’s Coffee Shop is a Clinton Hill staple. Mike’s has been serving the neighborhood for over 60 years, with many of its patrons coming from Pratt Institute right across the street. The current owners, Jimmy Velaoras and his brother and another partner, bought Mike’s about 25 years ago, and since then they have been running the beloved coffee shop, serving classic diner-style breakfast all day and bringing together the people of the community.

JOY

ST. JAMES JOY In the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, father and son duo and DJs Jo Vill and Chad Vill took their music and a single speaker out to the front of their brownstone.

Since then, their single act of joy has evolved into a celebration of COVID-19 first responders, neighborhood block party that brings together crowds totaling to nearly one hundred for nights of dancing, singing, rollerblading, hula-hooping– you name it. St. James Joy breathes life into Clinton Hill.

POSTCARD PROJECT

What do you love about Brooklyn?

What makes Brooklyn home to you?

What brings you joy and feeling of community and belonging in Brooklyn?

“Brooklyn has real people, they’re down people that care about each other.

There are people who have been here for decades and they came out and spotted that southern influence that allows the seeds to get into the ground and germinate and really become something different. ‘Cause there’s soil here.”

- The Edge Becomes the Center

“I love that in Brooklyn every few blocks is a new culture, but not like the other boroughs. I feel like my community is so vibrant and full of unity. Brooklyn is my home because I was born and raised here, but it also feels like home through the way I can breathe in air, and walk down streets. My favorite moments of community in Brooklyn are the events, like Brooklyn loves MJ. My sister and I were on the cover of a newspaper like the times or something when someone took a picture of my sister and I dancing at it. Also love the celebrate Brooklyn concerts, and any other small street gatherings. Love the G train even when it’s late. I love my brooklyn”

- Amouri E.

“(1.) I love the diversity of Brooklyn. You only need to go a train or one bus stop away to experience different food, cultures, and styles. No area is exactly the same, but all have such great variety so that everyone feels included.

(2.) In Brooklyn, the community seems closer because you can take time to slow down and enjoy your surroundings.

You are not rushing to a destination like in NYC. There are many places that you can bump into a neighbor or friendly face, such as: supermarkets, the cleaners, bodegas, pizzerias, public transportation, etc (3.) I am part of the first generation born in NY and I had the pleasure of growing up in Brooklyn. The fond memories from childhood through adulthood, such as walking to elementary school, taking two buses to get to high school, sitting on my stoop, experiencing 4 seasons, going to the Brooklyn Public libraries, eating italian ices, buying slices of pizzas, visiting Coney Island, Nathan Hotdogs, running around Prospect Park, bagels, Brownstones, having a drive way without alternate side parking worries, express and local trains, from tokens to the Metrocard, Flatbush to Brooklyn Heights to Dumbo. There is no other place where you can combine all these great experiences in one borough. Fuhgeddaboudit ... Brooklyn rules!”

- Patrice C.

“What I love about Brooklyn is how people here are very genuine and friendly. It’s easy and natural to make friends with store owners and random strangers here compared my hometown. Last week, for example, I helped a person find the right subway while I was waiting for the G train. We started talking and she ended up giving me her phone number if I ever wanted to meet up for coffee. It’s little unexpected moments with people I didn’t expect to make friends with in college that that make Brooklyn feel special to me.”

- Angie W.

“to me, brooklyn, as with so many spots across the globe, represents a space of black joy, excellence, pain, and resilience. and the space, the room, the possibilities that truth opens up. i’ve never been much of a city person, and therefore living in brooklyn was the only choice for me in new york. little did i realize how much the decision would further push so much of what i was coming to learn and unlearn about and in this world. no one’s home should serve solely as a place for others to come to educate themselves at the expense of people, land, etc, and leave. but for many new york can be that. however the core, the root, the ground in which brooklyn finds itself seems to consistently find paths toward holding tight to ensuring it isn’t taken from without being given back to. for that i admire and give brooklyn my love.”

- Nicole S.

TO BROOKLYN, WITH LOVE