Master's Project by Alejandra Gomez

VESSELS AND VEILS

a contemporary narrative on the ethos of migration

“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.” - Italo Calvino ’Ivisible Cities’

- Para mis papas

VESSELS AND VEILS

a contemporary narrative on the ethos of migration

Alejandra Gomez University of South Florida School of Architecture and Community Design May 2018

A terminal Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Architecture.

Thesis Chair

Nancy Sanders Associate Professor University of South Florida, SACD

Thesis Committee

Dan Powers Associate Professor University of South Florida, SACD

Steven Cooke Associate Professor University of South Florida, SACD

Chaddy Hanwisai Adjunct Professor University of South Florida, SACD

Judith Birdsong Lecturer University of Texas, Austin

Acknowledgment s To the school, the place that became my second home and where I was able to meet the most dedicated, passionate and warm people. Thank you for encouraging companionship and an environment where everyone supports and helps each other. Also for harboring such an affinity to craft and exploration of ideas.

Nancy Sanders,

Thank you for your daily enthusiasm and commitment to guide me through this project. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m truly inspired by your drive and creativity.

Dan Powers,

Thank you for the daily laughs and talks. For always being there and

caring so much.

Steven Cooke,

Thank you for teaching me to be so passionate about architecture, to look for details and the song of materials, to strive for meaning and depth in what I do.

Chaddy Hanwisai,

Thank you for being there since day one and for your dedication to the students and love for teaching. What you taught me five years ago in my first design class still carries through. Thank you Chaddy for staying so attentive and present since then.

Judith Birdsong,

Thank you for your words of wisdom and for being so supportive and helpful throughout this project.

Jan Wampler, Thank you for your love and care for teaching and your endless dedication to architecture. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve been the most influential professor I have had and a true inspiration for anyone that meets you.

Felix Valbuena,

Thank you for your commitment to the community and for telling me stories that inspire me to be a better person.

My Friends,

Thank you for teaching me how to be a better friend and for making the last six years together the best I have ever had. For all the laughs, tears and stories that brought us closer all those late nights. I will miss you the most and I wish you the best as we move forward.

My Family,

Thank you for your constant, endless and persistent love and support. Papa, for encouraging me to put my whole heart into what I do. Mama, for being so understanding and always knowing what to say to make my day better. Ani, for being so present through the distance and always having time to talk and listen. Juampi, for being an example of dedication and commitment. Abuelo Chucho, for all your calls, texts and words of encouragement every time we talked about school and shared our interest in architecture. Tyler, for your patience and kindness. You were there through it all and most importantly through the hardest times bringing me calmness and peace. Thank you for everything you do.

Content s Introduction

Preface

Part I -The Narratives

Displacement

Pablo Neruda Arrival

73 Shaun Tan

Place Making

Italo Calvino

Part II -The Interstitial

Part III -The Intervention

103

Site and Context

105

Chicago

107

Hull House

111

Bridgeport

113

Piercing through the Shell

117

The Scheme

125

Masts and Sails

127

Vessels and Veils

129

Floating Fragments

131

Afterword

143

Stories to tell

145

Author Bio

165

Notes

167

INTRODUCTION This project presents a contemporary narrative on migrants through a lens that highlights the constant human condition of being adrift and crossing boundaries at different scales. It considers how, in the midst of a fractured society, wanderers try to define self, place and identity for themselves. It becomes a play of juxtapositions stressing the liminal quality between transience and permanence, individual and communal, storytelling and the storage of memories. The words “Displacement”, “Arrival” and “Place Making” were studied through the analysis of a series of poems, books and novels from authors Pablo Neruda, Shaun Tan and Italo Calvino. It became a process of narrative-driven spaces that speak of major truths and concepts affecting all typologies of migrants and humanity as a whole. This inspired the creation of a place for the displaced, a liminal home that celebrates the ethos of this

transition. A multicultural haven that offers a grounding place and speaks of culture, memory and belonging. Overall creating, facilitating and promoting social interaction and integration of people from different races and ethnic backgrounds. In the end, I aim for a reading of architecture where layers are excavated, veils are lifted and screens are removed as memories become the vessel that carry stories of culture, experience and language.

Fig 1-“Gilded Cage”, installation by Artist-activist Ai Weiwei at the entrance of Central Park, from the series “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors”. Photos by Author, December 2017.

PREFACE It is 2018. There is no question that this thesis is a response to the current atmosphere of hostility against foreigners and immigrants across the world. But it is with deep optimism and hope that I wanted to contribute to the conversation and tell a different side of the story. Even though some people may argue, globalization is inevitable, and it is important for us to learn about one another as boundaries begin to blur and edges across cultures and languages begin to blend. To quote UNESCO, adopted in London 1945:

“That ignorance of each other’s ways and lives has been a common cause, throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust between the peoples of the world through which their differences have all too often broken into war” 1 This project then aims to develop awareness of how individuals around the world interact with one another to strengthen understanding and the relationship across nations. My thesis is explained through the eyes of an emigre by exploring themes that relate to all those that have been displaced. “It’s not an issue just for myself, but for the public. It really is a human condition and a human crisis. We all have responsibility in this [...] There are many borders to dismantle, but the most impor tant are the ones within our own hear ts and minds – these are the borders that are dividing humanity from itself.” 2 Ai Weiwei. To grasp the current state of unrest, I will mention a few articles that give evidence to the unkindness and aggression that immigrants have to face as they arrive on new lands. Not only are they struggling to resettle and get used to their new home, but at the same time the government is cutting down aid, calling them “drug dealers, criminals, rapists” 3 and blaming them for the nation’s economic problems. Still, it is nothing new. This sentiment has been present underneath the surface for a long time and now the new elected government has truly exposed it. Right now we have the lowest cap on refugees since 1980. Robert Carey, who directed the Office of Refugee Resettlement under President Barack Obama, explains in a Reuters article that “The

population doesn’t go away when you turn off the spigot. If the intent is really to have people integrate into society then doing this is counter to that intent.” 4 By decreasing the amount of aid only more problems will arise and eventually there will be long term effects that will be tougher to solve. It becomes a matter of giving people an opportunity to strive for themselves. To lend a helping 1- Unesco.org <https://en.unesco.org/> 2-Theguardian.com <https://www.theguardian.com/refugee-crisis-human-flow-ai-weiwei-china> 3- Washingtonpost.com < www.washingtonpost.com/news/> 4-Reuters.com <https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-refugees>

Fig 2-â&#x20AC;&#x153;Pop-up kitchen for refugees and asylum seekersâ&#x20AC;? by architect Peter Merrett. The brightly coloured demountable modules that make up the kitchen and dining facilities allow the project to be moved around the city, expanding the reach of the program. The colourful interpretation of nautical signal flags were devised to overcome language barriers.

hand that will benefit everyone in the long run once resettlers have integrated and participate in society. As it becomes clear that the need and the cry for help still remains, major humanitarian organizations, together with community activists, have had to step up and make up for the lack of help from officials. Peter Merrett, founder of the architecture firm that created a pop-up kitchen for refugees and asylum seekers explains that, “[It] was an opportunity for us to engage with the refugee crisis in a

direct and tangible way, and perhaps begin to counteract the atmosphere of fear and suspicion that surrounds immigration and the global refugee crisis.” 5 Therefore, Merrett makes a note on how design can influence and take part of social change. It is important that architects and designers become part of this conversation, just like Peter Merrett, to give a voice and a space for moments of interaction between migrants and locals. Only through exposure and interaction will people slowly understand, and the skepticism, fear and prejudice against refugees and displaced people will fade. As my thesis becomes a form of catalyst to look back to in my career, I am mostly interested in how architecture can bring people together and make social and political statements. Melissa Fleming, head of communications for the UN Refugee Agency, explains in the HONY refugee series how hard it is to make people care about the sixty million displaced people in the world. She says, “I wish I could tell every single one of their stories. Because if people knew their stories, I

don’t think there would be so many walls. And there wouldn’t be so many people drowning in the seas. But I don’t think I anticipated how difficult it would be to make people care.” 6 It then became apparent how oblivious we have become as a society as we know nothing about these people who seem to be invisible and just numbers that carry a misinformed and demeaning stigma. Melissa then shares how the problem is harder than what it seems as we live in a society broken by fear and mistrust on many levels. She says, “It’s not that people are selfish. I just think that people have

a hard time caring when they feel insecure. When the world is unstable, people feel vulnerable. And vulnerable people focus on protecting what they have. They focus on their own families. They focus on their own communities. It can be very hard to welcome strangers when you’re made to feel threatened. Even if those strangers are more vulnerable than you.” It is clear that for things 6

to move forward one must look at building stronger communities where people can trust and feel like they belong in order to welcome new people and be more open minded. On this note, Kari Miller, a public school teacher in Charlottesville, Va, started the nonprofit International Neighbors that has now grown to more than 200 volunteers. As a step into friendship and creating better communities, International Neighbors has a program where it matches 5- Dezeen.com <https://www.dezeen.com/merrett-houmoller-architects-creates-mobile-kitchen-british-red-cross-riba-london-uk> 6- Humans of New York, refugee series <https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos>

Fig 3-Interview to Melissa Fleming in the Humans of New York refugee series. She is head of communications for the UN Refugee Agency.

Charlottesville residents with a refugee family or individual. In the NPR special series -take a number, Kari Miller explains how this nonprofit tries to pair families with similar makeups: children 7

who are the same age, single moms with other solo parents, or young adults. This shows how small acts of kindness can begin to heal and offer some of the relief that these recent arrivals need. Overall, this thesis asks for a pause to look back and understand the underlying story of people in transition and to re-tell it under a new lens. Even the increasingly popular journal of National Geographic came out with their April 2018 issue acknowledging that their coverage of the world had been racist for decades by carrying an undertone of western superiority over other countries presented as less civilized. Susan Goldberg, editor in Chief, explains, “How we present race matters.

I hear from readers that National Geographic provided their first look at the world. Our explorers, scientists, photographers, and writers have taken people to places they’d never even imagined; […] In two years, for the first time in U.S. history, less than half the children in the nation will be white. So let’s talk about what’s working when it comes to race, and what isn’t. Let’s examine why we continue to segregate along racial lines and how we can build inclusive communities.” After the 8

recent election there was a rise in fear, anxiety, and racial and ethnic tension. But there was also a realization that we need to change our attitude, like National Geographic, and to start using a different tone to respond to and make up for what is happening with more acts of service, concern and care. I hope that this document is able to move the reader through the recollection of stories, memories and moments from recognized authors and from people I know. To shine a light into the journeys of these wanderers so that we can be kinder and more understanding to those that have left it all behind.

7- npr.org <https://www.npr.org//90-days-to-start-a-new-life-for-refugees-in-the-u-s-what-happens-next> 8-National Geographic magazine <https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history>

PART I the narratives

DISPL ACEMENT

Fig 4-Map of the Americas showing Neruda’s exile journey crossing to Argentina and then eventually settling in Mexico where he wrote “Los versos de un capitán”.

PA BLO NERUDA + MULTIPLE READINGS Los Versos de un Capitán The catalyst for my thesis was the poem “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda. I saw it last summer when it had already been four years since I knew I would not be able to go back to my country, Colombia, for an indefinite amount of time because of bureaucratic issues I will later discuss. Neruda’s words were able to capture the nostalgia, frustration, and longing I had from not being able to visit my family and the country I was born in. Pablo Neruda, once called by Gabriel Garcia Marquez “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.”, was exiled from Chile in 1948 because of his affiliation with the Communist Party and for being politically outspoken through his poems during a time of oppression.11 He went into hiding, crossed the border to Argentina and travelled across Europe to eventually settle in Mexico City for a couple of years. During this time in Mexico he published anonymously the book “Los Versos de un Capitán” or “The Captain’s Verses” 12

out of respect for his wife as it was inspired in his mistress Matilde Urrutia. The book is composed of a series of poems about a traveler and his lover. The poems offer a double reading as they are also about his love and longing for his country, Chile. I chose three of the poems that captured the essence of nostalgia the most and added my own reading by distilling and hiding some of the words. The three poems were “Si me Olvidas”, “La Carta en el Camino” and “El Olvido” or “If You Forget

Me”, “The Letter on the Road” and “Oblivion”. Then I created magical realism mappings of Chile 13

and the Edge from Mexico to Chile to ground each poem accordingly. In the book “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson explain how identity issues overlap on stories of unrequited lovers that must become apart and exiles as “they

become the site for each other’s identification, of the essence of their self, a part of their self, of their place and identity which they wish to take with them, while at the same time they are actively engaged in the process of leaving and reinventing identity, place and self”.14 Therefore explaining the effortless layers in Neruda’s poems as the lover becomes his country and Chile becomes Matilde.

11- biography.com <https://www.biography.com/people/pablo-neruda-> 12-Chileculture.org <http://www.chileculture.org/biography-of-pablo-neruda> 13-Book, “Los Versos Del Capitan”, Poems “Si tu me olvidas”, “El Olvido”, “La Carta en el Camino”, Pablo Neruda 14-Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination”, A. Dawson and M. Johnson

si tu me olvidas if you forget me This poem is about remembering the past and longing for a return back home. It is a demand to oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own country to not forget that you are a part of it and that you will represent it wherever you go. And as time passes by, everything will remind you of memories that stay alive. The graphic on the right uses Chileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outline to ground an exaggerated version of Santiago, Chileâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital city, as memories tend to be deceiving and unrealistic as time passes by. It becomes a play of magical realism in a two dimensional way as a response to the very elusive and beautiful poem by Neruda.

Fig 5-Graphic of Pablo Neruda’s “Si tu me Olvidas” poem 27

IF YOU FORGET ME I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.

SI TÚ ME OLVIDAS Quiero que sepas una cosa. Tú sabes cómo es esto: si miro la luna de cristal, la rama roja del lento otoño en mi ventana, si toco junto al fuego la impalpable ceniza o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña, todo me lleva a ti, como si todo lo que existe, aromas, luz, metales, fueran pequeños barcos que navegan hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan. Ahora bien, si poco a poco dejas de quererme dejaré de quererte poco a poco. Si de pronto me olvidas no me busques, que ya te habré olvidado. Si consideras largo y loco el viento de banderas que pasa por mi vida y te decides a dejarme a la orilla del corazón en que tengo raíces, piensa que en ese día, a esa hora levantaré los brazos y saldrán mis raíces a buscar otra tierra. Pero si cada día, cada hora sientes que a mí estás destinada con dulzura implacable. Si cada día sube una flor a tus labios a buscarme, ay amor mío, ay mía, en mí todo ese fuego se repite, en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida, mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada, y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos sin salir de los míos.

la car ta en el camino the letter on the road This poem is a hopeful love letter to Chile as Neruda describes himself getting ready to go into battle and fight for his people in the hopes his country has peace again. He asks Chile to be strong as he is longing to come back home. The graphic on the right uses the outline of Central-South America to ground pieces and parts of Santiago as recollections spread throughout the distance there is between him and Chile.

Fig 6-Graphic of Pablo Neruda’s “La Carta en el Camino” poem

THE LETTER ON THE ROAD Farewell, but you will be with me, you will go within a drop of blood circu in my veins or outside, a kiss that burns my Face or a belt of fire at my waist. My sweet, accept the great love that came out of my life and that in you found no territory like the explorer lost in the isles of bread and honey. I found you after the storm, the rain washed the air and in the water your sweet feet gleamed like fishes. Adored one, I am off to my fighting. I shall scratch the earth to make you a cave and there your Captain will wait for you with flowers in the bed. Think no more, my sweet, about the anguish that went on between us like a bolt of phosphorous leaving us perhaps its burning. Peace arrived too because I return to my land to fight, and as I have a whole heart with the share of blood that you gave me forever, and as I have my hands filled with your naked being, look at me, look at me, look at me across the sea, for I go radiant, look at me across the night through which I sail, and sea and night are those eyes of yours. I have not left you when I go away. Now I am going to tell you: my land will be yours, I am going to conquer it, not just to give it to you, but for everyone, for all my people. The thief will come out of his tower some day. And the invader will be expelled. All the fruits of life will grow in my hands accustomed once to powder. And I shall know how to touch the ne because you taught me tenderness. [...] My love, it is night. The black water, the sleeping world surround me. Soon dawn will come, and meanwhile I write you to tell you: “ I love you.” To tell you “ I love you,” care for, clean, lift up, defend

our love, my darling. I leave it with you as if I left a handful of earth with seeds. From our love lives will be born. In our love they will drink water. Perhaps a day will come when a man and a woman, like us, will touch this love and it will still have the strength to burn the hands that touch it. Who were we? What does it matter? They will touch this fire and the fire, my sweet, will say your simple name and mine, the name that only you knew, because you alone upon earth know who I am, and because nobody knew me like one, like just one hand of yours, because nobody knew how or when my heart was burning: only your great dark eyes knew, your wide mouth, your skin, your breasts, your belly, your insides, and your soul that I awoke so that it would go on singing until the end of life. Love, I wait for you. Farewell, love, I wait for you. Love, love, I wait for you. And so this letter ends with no sadness: my feet are firm upon the earth, my hand writes this letter on the road, and in the midst of life I shall be always beside the friend, facing the enemy, with your name on my mouth

LA CARTA EN EL CAMINO Adiós, pero conmigo serás, irás adentro de una gota de sangre en mis venas o fuera, beso que me abrasa el rostro o cinturón de fuego en mi cintura. Dulce mía, recibe el gran amor que salió de mi vida y que en ti no encontraba territorio como el explorador perdido en las islas del pan y de la miel. Yo te encontré después de la tormenta, la lluvia lavó el aire y en el agua tus dulces pies brillaron como peces.

nuestro amor, alma mía. Yo te lo dejo como si dejara un puñado de tierra con semillas. De nuestro amor nacerán vidas. En nuestro amor beberán agua. Tal vez llegará un día en que un hombre y una mujer, iguales a nosotros, tocarán este amor, y aún tendrá fuerza para quemar las manos que lo toquen. Quiénes fuimos? Qué importa? Tocarán este fuego y el fuego, dulce mía, dirá tu simple nombre y el mío, el nombre que tú sola supiste porque tú sola sobre la tierra sabes quién soy, y porque nadie me conoció como una, como una sola de tus manos, porque nadie supo cómo, ni cuándo mi corazón estuvo ardiendo: tan sólo tus grandes ojos pardos lo supieron, tu ancha boca, tu piel, tus pechos, tu vientre, tus entrañas y el alma tuya que yo desperté para que se quedara cantando hasta el fin de la vida.

Adorada, me voy a mis combates. Arañaré la tierra para hacerte una cueva y allí tu Capitán te esperará con flores en el lecho. No pienses más, mi dulce, en el tormento que pasó entre nosotros como un rayo de fósforo dejándonos tal vez su quemadura. La paz llegó también porque regreso. a luchar a mi tierra, y como tengo el corazón completo con la parte de sangre que me diste para siempre, y como llevo las manos llenas de tu ser desnudo, mírame, mírame, mírame por el mar, que voy radiante, mírame por la noche que navego, y mar y noche son los ojos tuyos. No he salido de ti cuando me alejo. Ahora voy a contarte: mi tierra será tuya, yo voy a conquistarla, no sólo para dártela, sino que para todos, para todo mi pueblo. Saldrá el ladrón de su torre algún día. Y el invasor será expulsado. Todos los frutos de la vida crecerán en mis manos acostumbrados antes a la pólvora. Y sabré acariciar las nuevas flores porque tú me enseñaste la ternura.

Amor, te espero. Adiós, amor, te espero. Amor, amor, te espero. Y así esta carta se termina sin ninguna tristeza: están firmes mis pies sobre la tierra, mi mano escribe esta carta en el camino, y en medio de la vida estaré siempre junto al amigo, frente al enemigo, con tu nombre en la boca

[...] Amor mío, es de noche. El agua negra, el mundo dormido, me rodean. Vendrá luego la aurora y yo mientras tanto te escribo para decirte: “Te amo”. Para decirte “Te amo”, cuida, limpia, levanta, defiende

el olvido oblivion This poem has a defensive tone as Neruda justifies his love for Chile by saying that he has never stopped fighting for peace and for bread for his country. The anguish and frustration is clear as he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know when he will be able to return and see his lover-his country- again. The graphic on the right uses the outline of the edge from Mexico to Chile to highlight the distance between both countries that Neruda describes as he feels betrayed by his people having to live so far away.

Fig 7-Graphic of Pablo Neruda’s “El Olvido” poem

OBLIVION A l l the l ove i n a c up wide as the e a rt h , a ll the l ove with st a rs a n d t h o rn s I g ave you, b ut y o u w e n t with s mal l f e e t , w i t h d i rt y h e e ls over the fir e , e x t i n g ui sh i n g i t . A h g reat l ov e , my be lo ve d ! I did not s to p i n t h e fi g h t . I did not s to p ma rc h i n g t o w a rd s li fe , towards peac e , t o w a rd s bre a d fo r a ll, b ut I raised y o u i n my a rms and I s tuck y o u t o my ki sse s and I l ooked a t y o u l ike no human e y e s w i ll e ve r lo o k ba ck at yo u . A h g reat l ov e , my be lo ve d ! Then you did n o t me a sure my h e i g h t , and the man w h o se pa ra t e d y o ur b l ood, wheat, w a t e r you confus e d with the l itt le i n se c t t h a t fe ll o n y o u r s k ir t. A h g reat l ov e , my be lo ve d ! Do not expect me t o lo o k a t y o u i n t h e d is tan ce in the past, re ma i n s what I l eft y o u, w a lk with my b etra y e d ph o t o g ra ph , I wil l conti n ue ma rc h i n g , opening wide pa t h s a g a i n st t h e sh a d ow, m ak in g soft the eart h , d i st ri but i n g the s tars fo r t h o se w h o c o me . Stay on the ro a d . The nig ht has c o me fo r y o u. Mayb e at dawn w e â&#x20AC;&#x2122; ll se e e a c h o t h e r a g ain . A h g reat l ov e , my be lo ve d !

EL OLVIDO Tod o e l am o r e n u n a c o p a a nch a c o m o l a tie r r a, to d o e l am o r c o n e s tr e l l as y e s p in as t e d i, p e r o an d u v is te c on p ie s p e q u e ñ o s , c o n taco n e s s u c io s so b r e e l f u e g o , ap ag á n d o l o . A y g r an am o r , p e q u e ñ a am ad a! N o m e d e tu v e e n l a l u c h a. N o d e j é d e m ar ch ar h ac ia l a v id a, h a cia l a p az , h ac ia e l p an p ar a to d o s , pe r o te al cé e n m is b r az o s y te cl av é a m is b e s o s y te m ir é co m o j am á s vo l v e r á n a m ir ar te o j o s h u m an o s . A y g r an am o r , p e q u e ñ a am ad a! E n to n c e s n o m e d is te m i e s tatu r a, y al h o m b r e q u e p ar a ti ap ar tó la s an g r e , e l tr ig o , e l ag u a c on f u n d is te c on e l p e q u e ñ o in s e c to q u e te cayó e n l a f al d a. A y g r an am o r , p e q u e ñ a am ad a! N o e s p e r e s q u e te m ir e e n l a d is tan cia h a cia atr á s , p e r m an e ce c on l o q u e te d e j é , p as e a c on m i f o to g r af í a tr aicio n ad a, y o s e g u ir é m ar c h an d o , a b r ie n d o an ch o s c am in o s c o n tr a l a s o m b r a, h acie n d o su av e l a tie r r a, r e p ar tie n d o la e s tr e l l a p ar a l o s q u e v ie n e n . Qu é d ate e n e l c am in o . H a l l e g ad o l a n o ch e p ar a ti. Ta l v e z d e m ad r u g ad a n o s v e r e m o s d e n u e v o . A y g r an am o r , p e q u e ñ a am ad a!

Fig 8 -â&#x20AC;? 100 untitled works in mill aluminumâ&#x20AC;? Permanent installation by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. Photos by Author, September 2017.

DONALD JUDD + LIGHT STUDIES unraveling the landscape During the Fall of 2017 I traveled to Marfa, Texas with my colleagues to see Donald Judd’s installations in the landscape amongst other things. I was captured by the “100 untitled works

in mill aluminum” as they were able to capture light and unravel the vast desert around them. It became a play of ambiguity and precision as the aluminum boxes had been made so perfectly that the material became a backdrop for the play in light and landscape. The pictures on the left show how it became a surreal experience as the boxes captured uncanny moments as the floor, the ceiling and people were reflected questioning ideas of ground, scale and space. The specifically measured set-up of these boxes gave a sense of itinerary that was broken as one wandered through the space being drawn by the reflections of light within and outside the boxes. As my response to Judd, I created a series of lightboxes where each one controlled light and captured a specific moment in time according to the sun. These boxes would be laid out in the landscape with a specific itinerary as each one would be the interpretation of the memory from the last one.

Fig 9-Light studies in the landscape inspired by Judd’s aluminum boxes

Fig 10-Section through the Andes Mountains from Chile to Argentina marking six pivotal moments in Nerudaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s journey

Fig 11-Section model of Nerudaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exile memorial

PABLO NERUDA + EXILE JOURNEY grounding displacement When receiving the Nobel Prize in 1971, Pablo Neruda remembered his adventure crossing the 15

border to Argentina as a spiritual journey to freedom. His moving and fantastical speech is in the next few pages. The graphic on the left page is a section through the Andes mountains from Chile to Argentina where I marked the six pivotal moments that Neruda describes in his speech: crossing through great secret and forbidden forests, natural tunnels, immense mountains of snow, deathly rivers, primeval forests and meadows, and meeting the “community of fire” in the midst of the limitless solitude of the mountains.16 The model below the graphic is my interpretation of the second moment in Neruda’s journey when he talks about entering natural tunnels. This model is a memorial to Neruda in a section through the Andes mountains and carries ideas of refuge, looking back for lost travelers and against unwanted followers, moments of solitude to write poems, gathering spaces for the “community of fire” and spiritual quality spaces. The apertures that bring light into the space become a form of measure that one can see above ground. Like Judd, these markers begin to give a human scale to the extreme and vast expanses of the mountains. Overall, Neruda’s memorial grounds his displacement by having an itinerary of narrative driven spaces corresponding to different light studies.

15-Chileculture.org <http://www.chileculture.org/biography-of-pablo-neruda> 16-Nobleprize.org <https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture.html>

TOWARDS THE SPLENDID CIT Y Nobel Lecture by Pablo Neruda, December 13, 1971

â&#x20AC;&#x153;My speech is going to be a long journey, a trip that I have taken through regions that are

distant and antipodean, but not for that reason any less similar to the landscape and the solitude in Scandinavia. I refer to the way in which my country stretches down to the extreme South. So remote are we Chileans that our boundaries almost touch the South Pole, recalling the geography of Sweden, whose head reaches the snowy northern region of this planet. Down there on those vast expanses in my native country, where I was taken by events which have already fallen into oblivion, one has to cross, and I was compelled to cross, the Andes to find the frontier of my country with Argentina. Great forests make these inaccessible areas like a tunnel through which our journey was secret and forbidden, with only the faintest signs to show us the way. There were no tracks and no paths, and I and my four companions, riding on horseback, pressed forward on our tortuous way, avoiding the obstacles set by huge trees, impassable rivers, immense cliffs and desolate expanses of snow, blindly seeking the quarter in which my own liberty lay. Those who were with me knew how to make their way forward between the dense leaves of the forest, but to feel safer they marked their route by slashing with their machetes here and there in the bark of the great trees, leaving tracks which they would follow back when they had left me alone with my destiny. Each of us made his way forward filled with this limitless solitude, with the green and white silence of trees and huge trailing plants and layers of soil laid down over centuries, among halffallen tree trunks which suddenly appeared as fresh obstacles to bar our progress. We were in a dazzling and secret world of nature which at the same time was a growing menace of cold, snow and persecution. Everything became one: the solitude, the danger, the silence, and the urgency of my mission. Sometimes we followed a very faint trail, perhaps left by smugglers or ordinary criminals in flight, and we did not know whether many of them had perished, surprised by the icy hands of winter, by the fearful snowstorms which suddenly rage in the Andes and engulf the traveler, burying him under a whiteness seven stories high. On either side of the trail I could observe in the wild desolation something which betrayed human activity. There were piled up branches which had lasted out many winters, offerings made by hundreds who had journeyed there, crude burial mounds in memory of the fallen, so that the passer should think of those who had not been able to struggle on but had remained

there under the snow forever. My comrades, too, hacked off with their machetes branches which brushed our heads and bent down over us from the colossal trees, from oaks whose last leaves were scattering before the winter storms. And I too left a tribute at every mound, a visiting card of wood, a branch from the forest to deck one or other of the graves of these unknown travelers. We had to cross a river. Up on the Andean summits there run small streams which cast themselves down with dizzy and insane force, forming waterfalls that stir up earth and stones with the violence they bring with them from the heights. But this time we found calm water, a wide mirrorlike expanse which could be forded. The horses splashed in, lost their foothold and began to swim towards the other bank. Soon my horse was almost completely covered by the water, I began to plunge up and down without support, my feet fighting desperately while the horse struggled to keep its head above water. Then we got across. And hardly we reached the further bank when the seasoned countryfolk with me asked me with scarce-concealed smiles: “Were you frightened?” “Very. I thought my last hour had come”, I said. “We were behind you with our lassoes in our hands”, they answered. “Just there”, added one of them, “my father fell and was swept away by the current. That didn’t happen to you.” We continued till we came to a natural tunnel which perhaps had been bored through the imposing rocks by some mighty vanished river or created by some tremor of the earth when these heights had been formed, a channel that we entered where it had been carved out in the rock in granite. After only a few steps our horses began to slip when they sought for a foothold in the uneven surfaces of the stone and their legs were bent, sparks flying from beneath their iron shoes - several times I expected to find myself thrown off and lying there on the rock. My horse was bleeding from its muzzle and from its legs, but we persevered and continued on the long and difficult but magnificent path. There was something awaiting us in the midst of this wild primeval forest. Suddenly, as if in a strange vision, we came to a beautiful little meadow huddled among the rocks: clear water, green grass, wild flowers, the purling of brooks and the blue heaven above, a generous stream of light unimpeded by leaves. 43

There we stopped as if within a magic circle, as if guests within some hallowed place, and the ceremony I now took part in had still more the air of something sacred. The cowherds dismounted from their horses. In the midst of the space, set up as if in a rite, was the skull of an ox. In silence the men approached it one after the other and put coins and food in the eyesockets of the skull. I joined them in this sacrifice intended for stray travellers, all kinds of refugees who would find bread and succour in the dead oxâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye sockets. But the unforgettable ceremony did not end there. My country friends took off their hats and began a strange dance, hopping on one foot around the abandoned skull, moving in the ring of footprints left behind by the many others who had passed there before them. Dimly I understood, there by the side of my inscrutable companions, that there was a kind of link between unknown people, a care, an appeal and an answer even in the most distant and isolated solitude of this world. Further on, just before we reached the frontier which was to divide me from my native land for many years, we came at night to the last pass between the mountains. Suddenly we saw the glow of a fire as a sure sign of a human presence, and when we came nearer we found some halfruined buildings, poor hovels which seemed to have been abandoned. We went into one of them and saw the glow of fire from tree trunks burning in the middle of the floor, carcasses of huge trees, which burnt there day and night and from which came smoke that made its way up through the cracks in the roof and rose up like a deep-blue veil in the midst of the darkness. We saw mountains of stacked cheeses, which are made by the people in these high regions. Near the fire lay a number of men grouped like sacks. In the silence we could distinguish the notes of a guitar and words in a song which was born of the embers and the darkness, and which carried with it the first human voice we had encountered during our journey. It was a song of love and distance, a cry of love and longing for the distant spring, from the towns we were coming away from, for life in its limitless extent. These men did not know who we were, they knew nothing about our flight, they had never heard either my name or my poetry; or perhaps they did, perhaps they knew us? What actually happened was that at this fire we sang and we ate, and then in the darkness we went into some primitive rooms. Through them flowed a warm stream, volcanic water in which we bathed, warmth which welled out from the mountain chain and received us in its bosom.

Happily we splashed about, dug ourselves out, as it were, liberated ourselves from the weight of the long journey on horseback. We felt refreshed, reborn, baptised, when in the dawn we started on the journey of a few miles which was to eclipse me from my native land. We rode away on our horses singing, filled with a new air, with a force that cast us out on to the world’s broad highway which awaited me. This I remember well, that when we sought to give the mountain dwellers a few coins in gratitude for their songs, for the food, for the warm water, for giving us lodging and beds, I would rather say for the unexpected heavenly refuge that had met us on our journey, our offering was rejected out of hand. They had been at our service, nothing more. In this taciturn “nothing” there were hidden things that were understood, perhaps a recognition, perhaps the same kind of dreams. [...] I do not know whether these lessons welled forth from me in order to be imparted to many others or whether it was all a message which was sent to me by others as a demand or an accusation. I do not know whether I experienced this or created it, I do not know whether it was truth or poetry, something passing or permanent, the poems I experienced in this hour, the experiences which I later put into verse.”

Fig 12-Section model of Neruda’s exile memorial

NERUDA MEMORIAL grounding displacement When receiving the Nobel Prize in 1971, Pablo Neruda remembered his adventure crossing the border to Argentina as a spiritual journey to freedom. His moving and fantastical speech is in the next few pages. The graphic on the left page is a section through the Andes mountains from Chile to Argentina where I marked the six pivotal moments that Neruda describes in his speech: crossing.

Fig 13-Section model of47 Nerudaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exile memorial showing different light quality spaces.

Fig 14-Section model of49 Nerudaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exile memorial showing different light quality spaces.

ARRIVAL

Fig 15-Graphic showing the break in time and space with every new arrival

A break in time and space Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson In terms of time and space for arrival, Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson explain how the experience of exile disrupts the linear narratives of time and place. “Since each and every place,

time and event is reconstructed in a relation in which none is given ontological (existence) priority”..

There is a pattern in how most newcomers remember the date and time they arrived as a form of rebirth and renewal in a new land. The graphic below shows how different people, moments or worlds, reach the surface at given point in time starting a new cycle as part of a new society. The graphic is about movement, time, breakage, separation and adaptation all at once. It carries the essence of being in a constant state of unrest as, to quote Colleen Ward, “The pressures for cultural

change are often perceived as intense, immediate and enduring”. 21

20-Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination”, A. Dawson and M. Johnson 21-Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 3, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham

Fig 13 53

Fig 16-Graphic showing Goodmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s readings on how different worlds and perceptions can coexist together as a whole.

NELSON GOODMAN + PERCEPTIONS Words, Works, Worlds In the theoretical reading “Words, Works, Worlds” Goodman explains how there are as many worlds are there are perceptions of the world. How one absolute truth becomes irrelevant and 22

instead of talking about rightness we should speak of theories as right or wrong. This reading gives another level of depth to my masters document as it highlights how we should respect cultures and countries that see the world differently. Goodman says, “Worlds are as much made as found” supporting the need of learning other people’s views to become a more understanding society. Our cognitions of the world carry our own personal truths and they become deeper and stronger as we become aware of the differences around us by questioning what we know. The graphic on the left expresses these notions by being a collection of small identities that form a bigger whole. Each one being unique and personal yet still carrying a similar language as the rest. In the end it is about a profound and complex collective or worlds instead of individual perceptions.

22-Reading, “Words, Works, Worlds” by Nelson Goodman

Fig 17- Picture from graphic novel “Arrival” by Shaun Tan.

SHAUN TAN + THE UNKNOWN Arrival

While working on the stage of Arrival, I came across the graphic novel Arrival by Australian author Shaun Tan called. The New York Times called it not only an immigrant story, but the immigrant 23

story. The protagonist is a young father that leaves his home in search of a better life for his family in a distant land of opportunity. As he struggles to find meaning in his new existence he meets other immigrants that help him get settled. In the end he reunites with his family, and the strange unfamiliar land finally becomes home. The graphic novel is a series of abstract and surreal drawings that Shaun Tan painted himself. He describes the act of painting as the creation of a relationship. “It’s less self-expression than self-

reflection. You could even say, in my case, that it resolves into a feeling of belonging through the simple action of staying still, looking, feeling and thinking”. This parallels Pallasmaa’s description 24

of architecture as he believes the discipline should “create and defend silence and the slowness of

experience”.25 In this manner Tan’s novel becomes very architectural, as one has to pause in each drawing to begin to grasp and understand the layers of information and cultural meaning he has carefully crafted. The picture on the left side is one of the many drawings in his novel. The story then becomes universal as it embodies the feeling of unfamiliarity every immigrant feels upon their arrival. Tan explains how he purposely created this new land as a hybrid of anecdotes, research stories by saying “I think the surrealism of the universe means that you have to look

inwardly for the truly recognisable content, that is, your emotional empathy with the nameless characters in the face of conceptual displacement. In that sense, each strange sequence holds up a kind of mirror to a reader’s personal experience, demanding private interpretation”.

Inspired by Shaun Tan’s novel, I created my own version of an ambiguous arrival experience into a new land that is not settled on a specific person, time or place. It is a procession of seven uncanny collages at different scales that begin with looking at the land of opportunity from a distance and end with the final arrival at the new home. Each collage, found in the pages to come, asks for a moment of pause as there are many layers embedded into each. They are ambiguous enough that they work upside down, asking the spectator to discover and find their own meaning.

23-NYtimes.com <https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Yang-t.html> 24-Shauntan.net <http://www.shauntan.net/images/essayRicSpencerinterview.pdf> 25-Book “Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place.” Chp 1, Juhani Pallasmaa 26-Altmedia.net <http://www.altmedia.net.au/the-arrival-ben-walsh-x-shaun-tan/22548>

STAGE 1 saunter

Fig 18- Arrival graphic 1- Saunter 59

STAGE 2 harbour

Fig 19- Arrival graphic 2- Harbour 61

STAGE 3 anchor

Fig 20- Arrival graphic 3- Anchor 63

STAGE 4 enter

Fig 21- Arrival graphic 4- Enter 65

STAGE 5 wander

Fig 22- Arrival graphic 5- Wander 67

STAGE 6 discover

Fig 23- Arrival graphic 6- Discover 69

STAGE 7 arrive

Fig 24- Arrival graphic 7- Arrive 71

PL ACE MAKING

Fig 25- Totemic territoritalization construct showing the scale of the hand

TOTEMIC TERRITORITALIZATIONS constructs of coexistence These series of constructs embody ideas of coexistence between two different worlds, cultures, materials,etc. They have a specific order to show the degrees of host vs heritage culture during the process of integration into a new society. Based on the readings from Colleen Ward in The

Psychology of Culture Shock, she explains how there are four acculturation attitudes or strategies – integration, separation, assimilation and marginalization.27 The extreme of separation, when individuals prefer to gather with only those that share the same beliefs, language and traditions, compares to the extreme of assimilation, when individuals choose to neglect their heritage culture, language and traditions in the hopes of faster integration into society. I believe that there can be a balance between both extremes and that one can create their own identity with the sum of experiences and cultures one is exposed to. These constructs explore the relationship between wood and glass connections as both create space, edges and boundaries that reference deeper concepts of a simultaneous harmony. Sabir Khan explains this in, “The Reciprocal Framing of Self

and Place in Émigré Autobiographies”, by saying that migrants have a “need to find their own voice, to reterritorialize their lives” as they live between, across, and at the margins of cultures.28 The scale of these constructs alludes to the concept of totems as the scale and grasp of the hand references ideas of possession and ownership. For migrants, this becomes an issue as they usually have to leave possessions behind and travel with the minimum necessities. It becomes a question of what to pack? What to bring across lands? What to leave behind? In many cases these objects become the main vessel that carries meaning and memories.

27-Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 5, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham 28-Book, Memory and Architecture, Chp 1, “The Reciprocal Framing of Self and Place in Émigré Autobiographies”, Sabir Khan.

Fig 26- Totemic Terrritoritalization constructs that explore a gradual transition in the coexistence between host and heritage cultures. 77

Fig 27- Picture of Venice, Italy in the 19th century. Monovisions.com <http://monovisions.com/venice-italy-in-19th-century-historic-bw-photos>

ITALO CALVINO + ESSENCE OF PL ACES Invisible Cities The book “Invisible Cities” by Italo Calvino became a captivating and inspiring catalyst for the way that I began to look at my thesis. In the book, Marco Polo describes the different cities that he has traveled to with such detail and imagery that he is able to create a sense of specific architecture to each place. By the end of the book one finds out he has actually been travelling to Venice repeatedly and has described a different side of Venice each time. While I was reading this book I began to notice how each city carried an essence of place and belonging through the specificity of character. At the same time however, each city was elusive in its own way allowing for the imagination to fill in the cracks.29 For this part of the Master’s project I chose seven of the cities that carried these elusive yet specific characteristics and paired each one with a totem and an uncanny collage from before. The result from this was a reliquary of ideas and concepts embodied in seven graphics. These graphics are in the next few pages and each one is paired with Marco Polo’s name for the city, my own interpretation of its particular essence and a few quotes from the book.

29-Book, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

VALDRADA reflection and ambiguity “The ancients built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water. Thus the traveler, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down… At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.” I.C.

Fig 28- Place Making graphic - Valdrada 81

DIOMIRA customs and familiarity “For the man who arrives there on a September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls… A city with beauties that will already be familiar to the visitor, who has seen them also in other cities.” I.C.

Fig 29- Place Making graphic - Diomira 83

EUPHEMIA trade and tales “Euphemia, where the merchants of seven nations gather at every solstice and equinox… You do not come to Euphemia only to buy and sell, but also because at night, by the fires all around the market… the others tell, each one, his tale of wolves, sisters, treasures, scabies, lovers, battles…Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at every solstice and at every equinox.” I.C.

Fig 30- Place Making graphic - Euphemia 85

ZAIRA memory and [re]collection “The city consists of relationships between the measurements of its place and the events of its past… As the wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands… The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps… every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.” I.C.

Fig 31- Place Making graphic - Zaira 87

ISIDORA youth and desires “When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made… Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-ofcity contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age… Desires are already memories.” I.C.

Fig 32- Place Making graphic - Isidora 89

ANASTASIA belonging and joy “Anastasia, a city with concentric canals watering it and kites flying over it… The city appears to you as whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part… Such is the power, sometimes called malignant, sometimes benign… and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave.” I.C.

Fig 33- Place Making graphic - Anastasia 91

DOROTHEA learning and hearth “Four aluminum towers rise from its walls flanking seven gates with spring-operated drawbridges… each with three hundred houses and seven hundred chimneys. You can then work from these facts until you learn everything you wish about the city in the past, present, and future.” I.C.

Fig 34- Place Making graphic - Dorothea 93

PART II the Interstitial

Fig 35-Hybrid of historical studies of Paths as Places

PATH AS A PL ACE Spatial Sequences and Symbolic Narratives After reading Thomas Barrie’s concept of Path as a Place in the book “The Sacred Path and Place”, I overlaid plans from the historic references he mentioned to create a diagram of a dynamic and evocative path. The graphic on the left page is the diagram that emerged as a hybrid of egyptian temples (the temple of Hathor at Dendera and Pylon Temples of Late Kingdom Egypt), buddhist monasteries (Hemis Gompa), Courtyard dome mosques (Guzelce Hassan Bey Mosque in Hayrabolu, Turkey) and Japanese villas (Katsura). The graphic becomes a sort of labyrinth and place of circumambulation. Barrie describes pilgrimages as “the devotional act approaching the sacred” where the Path becomes a spiritual act itself. 30 As I began to ground my thesis document, I realized I wanted to develop a journey like space where a sacred path could talk about issues of displacement, arrival and place making. This place would celebrate the ethos of transition as it would offer a dynamic experience where symbolic themes are experiences visually, haptically and emotionally. It was interesting to me that even though the diagram was a hybrid of plans, the graphic itself had an elusive sectional quality. The sketch models below show ways that I began to play with the diagram using the positive and negative spaces as generators and drivers for what was to come next in the project.

Fig 36- Sketch models playing with positive and negative spaces from the path diagram. It becomes an ambiguous study of plan, cross and longitudinal section.

30-Book, the Sacred In-Between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture, Thomas Barrie

Fig 37- Slice of the spine showing how an embedded path can open up and create a moment for pause. This picture shows how the section pieces through the wood leave traces behind.

STUDY OF INTERSTITIAL SPACES punctures and reliefs The more I explored the concept of Path as a Place, the more I became interested in the idea of the connection between spaces. A very influential mentor and friend, Jan Wampler, calls this the in-between space. It is a network of spaces and places between buildings where identity and life happens. He compares it to Monet, as someone who painted the space between the water lilies, 31

between the watermills instead of the objects themselves.

The realization of all this research became the wood model that you can see below as a study of interstitial spaces that puncture through the whole. The wood piece was sliced and separated to show how an embedded path can open up and create a moment for pause. The picture on the left shows a close up of one of these slices. The hybrid graphic from the page before brought about a series of seven section studies and each one of these was interpreted and integrated into the slices of the wood model. 31-Jan Wampler, Urban Design Studio in class lecture on the space in-between

Fig 38- Log interstitial model

Fig 16

THE SPINE serial progression of slices The serial pictures on the left show the progression of the interstitial spaces piercing through the log. Each slice creates a space and a pause grounding the transition space of the path coming through. The path becomes a spine that punctures and leaves marks and traces in the wood as it touches the edges creating reliefs and hints of what is inside.

Fig 39- Series of pictures of the interstitial model showing all slices

PART III the Intervention

103

Fig 40-Picture of Chicago, Photographer Jose Gonzalez

SITE + CONTEX T Bridgeport, Chicago

Fig 41- Picture of Bridgeport, Chicago showing signs in different languages from far away places. <https://impact. apartmentocean.com/bridgeport-immigrant-haven-in-chicago>

The site for this project became the city of Chicago. It is a city that has always been on the forefront for immigration concerns as a sanctuary city and many call it “A neighborhood of neighborhoods”. In 2012, soon after Rahm Emanuel’s election as mayor, the city set up the Office of New Americans.

“The mayor has set a goal of making Chicago the most immigrant friendly city in the world,” boasts Adolfo Hernandez, a Latino community activist who heads the office. There’s a theory that America is a melting pot for immigrants. As they find roots here, they shed their distinctions for a new identity. But that’s not exactly what’s happened here, and sociologist Anthony Orum says it’s not a problem. “The ties to ethnic backgrounds for many immigrants are very important, and they

are sustained,” he says.32 The blog Chicago is the World, describes Chicago by saying “We are the World. Meander through

neighborhoods where the signs tell you about a place far away. Or visit a high school where they speak 70 languages. Or spend an summer in a park where they cook out in every language and every cuisine and when they are not cooking, they playing the futball, as soccer is called everywhere but here. Or take in an evening of storytellers talking about migration.”

32-Chicagostories.org < http://chicagostories.org/immigrant-chicago/> 33-Chicago online journal, Chicago is the World Blog and Ethnic Media Project < http://chicagoistheworld.org/2014/05/we-are-theworld-a-doorway-to-tours-and-dining-in-global-chicago/>

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A B

2 3

Fig 42-Site plan of Chicago showing context and major migration points in the city

1- The Near West Side of Chicago A- University of Illinois-Little Italy B- Hull House C- Maxwell Street Market D- Chicago Cultural Center

2- Bridgeport

E- The Bridgeport Art Center - Chicago Maritime Museum F- Siegel Administration Building G- Zhou B Art Center

3- Bronzeville

H- Illinois Institute of Technology I- Old Regal Theatre- now Harold Washington Cultural Center

107

Fig 43-Picture of Chicago, Photographer Jose Gonzalez

1- The Near West Side of Chicago

Beginning in the 1850s, the Near West Side of Chicago was the main ‘port of entry’ neighborhood for new immigrants. Located two miles west of downtown, the area is bounded by rivers and railroads: Chicago and Northwestern Railroad/Kinzie Street (north), Pennsylvania Railroad/Rockwell Street (west), the Chicago River (east), and 16th Street (south). German, Bohemian, French, and Irish immigrants arrived first, followed later by Eastern European Jews, Greeks, and Italians into the late 19th century. As historians Dominic Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett explain in Chicago, City of Neighborhoods, the overcrowded neighborhood was less of a ‘melting pot’ and more often an area divided along ethnic, economic, and racial lines. One of the most important institutions on the Near West Side was Hull House, Chicago’s first—and the nation’s most influential—settlement house. Reformers Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established the home in 1889 with the goal of providing social services, training, and resources for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the surrounding neighborhoods. Maxwell Street Market—at the intersection of Halsted and Maxwell streets—you’d find rows of temporary tables and pushcarts set up between the shops. The street would have been crowded with peddlers selling everything from food to clothes to household goods. Acoustic guitar music, and then later electric Blues music-a major movement in music evolution-thrived on Maxwell Street.

2- Bridgeport

In the late 1800s, this neighborhood started off as home to Irish-Americans who came to Chicago to build the Illinois-Michigan canal. The state’s budget ran short, so instead these workers were paid with land script, which allowed them to buy canal land in what is now known as Bridgeport.. By the 1950s, it was home to many Italian, Croatian, Chinese and Lithuanian immigrants and then Mexican immigrants by 1990. Home to five Chicago mayors, including Richard M. Daley and his father, Bridgeport is rooted in political history. Today, it is a thriving community and boasts rich ethnic diversity. In 2004 the Zhou Brothers -Internationally recognized Chinese artists- founded the Zhou B Art Center with the dream of providing a platform and creative freedom for international artists.

3- Bronzeville

The neighborhood of Bronzeville sits within a larger community area called Grand Boulevard, named for the north/south street that would eventually become Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Middle-class and working-class people, typically second generation Irish, Scottish, English, and German Jews were the first residents of the neighborhood. A few African-Americans lived in Grand Boulevard in the 1890s, but the population started to swell in the late 1910s during the beginning of the Great Migration from the rural states of the Deep South—one of the most rapid racial transitions in any Chicago neighborhood. By 1920, blacks made up 32% of the neighborhood residents; just ten years later blacks were 95% of the total population. And by 1950, the community’s 114,000 residents were 99% African-American.Often characterized by historians as a cultural mecca and a “city with a city,” Bronzeville in the 1920s was a thriving metropolis of black-owned businesses, religious institutions, social and music clubs, and civic organizations. A large number of black artists, musicians, writers, athletes, intellectuals, and politicians called Bronzeville home in 1928. The heart of the neighborhood was the commercial corner of 47th Street and Grand Boulevard which was home to the Regal Theater. 34-Architecture.org <http://www.architecture.org/teach-learn/no-small-plans/readers-toolkit/chapter-1>

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Fig 44-Reception room of Hull-House. <https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/hull-house/>

Fig 45-Jane Addams talking with a group of young people visiting her settlement house called The Hull-House <https://www.history.com/news/the-humble-chicago-house-that-started-a-movement>

HULL HOUSE + JANE ADAMS Opening New Worlds One of the most important institutions on the Near West Side was Hull House, Chicago’s first—and the nation’s most influential—settlement house. Reformers Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established the home in 1889 with the goal of providing social services, training, and resources for the hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the surrounding neighborhoods. Jane Addams was able to understand that all immigrants needed was a chance and opportunities to be able to contribute to the adopted land. For example, teaching hygiene and nutrition for infants, helping immigrants not get abused and appealing to culture specific traditions to help immigrants with their transition.

“Hull-House in many ways grew up with the immigrants, Both learned much in the process- the immigrants about American ways taught at Hull-House, and Jane Addams about immigrant cultures.”

The immigrants Jane Addams helped were, as Emma Lazarus described them on the Statue of Liberty: “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses… the wretched refuse of your teeming shore…

the nameless, tempest-tost.”

Scholar Andrew Kopan explains how immigrants saw Jane Addams as a “mother” and HullHouse as “a home away from home”. Even though the living conditions at the time reflected the overcrowding and poverty of the inhabitants, Hull-House was an important training ground for the next generation of leading businessmen. “Given opportunity and sometimes a temporary helping

hand from Hull-House, the sons of this ragged parade of exiles were to realize the promise of American life”. 35 Reading about Jane Addams grounded my master’s project as it was the main reason the site located in Chicago. Her work is an example of how people that are struggling just need opportunities to begin to succeed by themselves. I wonder if we can look back at history and read stories like these to question the current attitude and state of hostility against immigrants that expects them to strive with no guidance nor help. By cutting down on funding on places like Hull-House thousands are left without a chance to contribute and the gap between the poor and the rich keeps increasing.

35-Book, Opening New Worlds, Jane Addams’ Hull-House, The University of Illinois at Chicago 36-Washingtonpost.com <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/give-us-your-tired-your-poor-the-story-of-poet-and-refugeeadvocate-emma-lazarus>

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1 A

E D

Fig 46-Site plan of Bridgeport showing context and major buildings in the community

BRIDGEPORT transitional community Geographers and sociologists have often critiqued Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s community areas as they miss the crucial point that boundaries are not accurate. Cartography and the Reality of Boundaries by Bill Rankin suggests that pointillist maps show both gaps and gradients quite clearly, and they give a very different understanding of Chicagoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spatial fabric from those maps that rely on borders..37 While there are some well defined edges, there are very internally diverse areas that could be considered transitional communities as there is no major demographic that defines it. Bridgeport is one of these transitional communities.

20th Century Migration Pattern Settlements 1- Irish 2- German 3- Polish 4- Lithuanian

Cultural Locations

A- Benton House B- Fellowship House C- Chicago Maritime Museum | Bridgeport Art Center D- Zhou B Art Center

Site

E- Spiegel Building 37-History.yale.edu <https://history.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2010%20rankin%20-%20reality%20of%20boundaries.pdf> See Notes for Chicago pointillism map.

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Fig 47-Streetview Spiegel Administration Building. <https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2014/12/17/historic-abandoned-bridgeport-spiegel-building-turns-a-page/>

Fig 48-Facade and Plan drawings of Spiegel Administration Building. <https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2014/12/17/historic-abandoned-bridgeport-spiegel-building-turns-a-page/>

20th Century Migration Pattern Settlements

Twentieth century Bridgeport was rather an ethnically segmented piece of geography. Morgan (formerly Laurel, which was earlier Ullman) street was a dividing line between the Poles and Lithuanians, even though the first Lithuanians in the neighborhood had often boarded with Polish families and attended the Polish church. The Irish had originally been situated on Archer Road near the Illinois and Michigan canal lock by Saint Bridget church, while the Germans were closer to Main (Throop) street.

Cultural Locations

In 1944 Bridgeport had three settlement houses (Benton, Fellowship, and the Salvation Army settlement, which included a clinic and a nursery), three public baths (Ogden, Wentworth, and Wilson), one park (Mark White Square, now McGuane park), three public play grounds (Bosley, Thirty-first/Lowe, and Wilson), a community center (Wilson), the Valentine branch of the Chicago Boys Clubs, a branch office of the Infant Welfare Society, an office of the Community Council of the Stockyards District, and numerous organizations based at the local churches, which included social halls, clubs, libraries, nurseries, and so forth. Two of Bridgeportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most noted settlement houses were the Fellowship House and the Benton House. The Fellowship House began in 1893 at what was then known as the Helen Heath Settlement. It operated a library, a kindergarten, a day nursery, a penny savings bank, as well as hosting clubs and socials for many years. Benton House was founded by Janett Sturges in 1907 as the Providence Day Nursery, located at 2873 Archer avenue near Elias Court. This not-for-profit nursery provided day-care support for mothers who worked in local factories. For a nominal fee the nursery provided the children three meals a day and weekly check-ups by a physician. In addition, nutrition clinics and English classes were offered in the evenings for the parents. In 1909 Benton House moved to its present location at 3052 south Gratten avenue. By 1916 it had expanded to include the House of Happiness, a recreational outlet for older children. The House of Happiness offered reading classes, shop classes, sports clubs, sewing classes, and home economics classes. Citizenship classes were also given for the increasing number of immigrants who patronized the establishment. The Zhou B Art Center was founded in 2004 by the internationally acclaimed Zhou Brothers. The centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission is to promote and facilitate a cultural dialogue by organizing contemporary art exhibitions and programs of international scope. With at least ten exhibitions a year, they have hosted and curated over 160 major exhibitions in the past ten years. The Art Center houses more than 50 artist residencies, including international artists, with a wide variety of mediums represented.

Site

The Spiegel Administration Building was designed in a loft style so that different parts of the building could be reconfigured easily, which was necessary because it was also where all of the inbound mail orders were processed. It was built in 1936 and is one of the few Art Moderne industrial buildings remaining in Chicago. The southeast and southwest corners of the building feature internal stairwells enclosed with glass block. It is around 40,000 sq ft and is six stories high.

38-Lockzero.org <http://lockzero.org.uic.edu/IV.html> 39-Yochicago.com <http://yochicago.com/good-morning-bridgeport/>

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Fig 16 Fig 49-Photo of the three iterations piercing the shell.

THE SHELL piercing through the walls The Spiegel Building Administration building became the site for my project. This building has been abandoned for over 20 years and the scale of it, roughly 40,000 sq ft per floor times 6 stories, responds to the massive diaspora that is occurring. Therefore, this design could become a micro world village welcoming migrants across nations, a constellation of miniature worlds. In terms of design, I began to question how to intervene in the building and how to pierce the surrounding shell. The picture to the left shows in plan view three different iterations of how to inhabit these walls. They translate ideas of Displacement, Arrival and Place Making. Each one carrying its own essence and letting the design be driven by these major concepts.

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Fig 50-Piercing the Shell model pictures - Transient + Permanent

TRANSIENT + PERMANENT [displacement] Movement- Journey- Travel- Exile- Instability- Fluid- Routes- Mobile- Adrift- Vessels and Sails This scheme is about a wandering line that discusses ideas of itinerary and discovery. It encompasses the ethos of displacement being ethereal and fluid. This fleeting path is not linear but transforming and personal as it goes in different intended directions. Its overall structure is a freestanding steel armature that allows for its walls to change through time. Apertures frame moments, each one unraveling something new. Mechanical and interactive moments also speak of vessels and sails as migrants become travelers transforming the path itself. This line goes through a series of static and fixed places that contrast the transitional quality of the path. These places offer moments of rest and reflection as hopeful spaces that make human the vastness of displacement. Overall it becomes a journey of discovery and nostalgia that reminisces the instability of being adrift and makes things present by their absence.

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Fig 51-Piercing the Shell model pictures - Storage + Storytelling

STORAGE + STORY TELLING [arrival] Threshold- Memory- Boundaries- Edges- Entry- Traces- Liminal- Passage- Measure- “Ma” This scheme is about a series of thresholds and an overlay of measure. It welcomes someone’s arrival by unfolding a recollection of memories through an ascending space that looks into the future. These narratives are all stitched together in a patchwork that tells the universal story of the migrant and the nomad as issues of the human condition being adrift. Descending spaces into contemplation offer a more private and secluded experience where one can continue to find artifacts and traces in the walls that register stories left behind to be read and remembered. There are moments of silence and pause when one can measure and hear one’s own stride. Piercing light wells from above unravel the uncanny illusion of the vaults and the privacy of the mind. Through dissolving boundaries and edges, intervals open up to gathering areas where one can sit and listen to people tell their stories. Empty niches and voids in the walls invite people to share their own stories and leave something behind and also speak of the many more migrants to come. This design then becomes a conveyor of memory that acts as the scroll and the vessel and recognizes that, in the end, we share the same kind of dreams.

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Fig 52-Piercing the Shell model pictures - Communal + Individual

COMMUNAL + INDIVIDUAL [placemaking] Belonging- Pause- Home - Reterritorialization- Anchoring- Community- Roots- Identity This scheme dwells in the contrast between personal and social spaces that organize themselves around courtyards that punctuate the existing building. It explores ideas of bringing people together for central gatherings and celebrations and at the same time offering places for refuge and isolation. There are spiritual phenomenas of solitude and solidarity with ephemeral and solemn spaces. In the search of belonging and trying to define identity, self and place, this design speaks of a place of coming together to a wider sense of community, where there is a link between unknown people and where there are worlds within worlds. Courtyards vary from communal and private scales to celebrate pause, emotion and action. These punctuations become light wells bringing light and air into the building together with vines and plants that weave through these sanctuary-like spaces. The first step for place making then is to explore ways of nearness to oneself, to mankind and to community to feel at home.

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Fig 53-Axo views of the overall scheme. The picture above shows the scheme with the outside walls hidden. The picture below shows how the scheme inhabits and pierces the outside walls.

THE SCHEME the Intervention The overall scheme became a weaving path through volumes of program. The circulation dictated the organization of the spaces relating back to the labyrinth like studies of Path as a Place. This path became a series of terraced gardens that lead to the different levels of program offering habitable roofs. The ground plan below shows the organization of the program: Market, that became the threshold of the community to the place and offers experiences to share and exchange. Playground, a place for kids and adults to play. There is a beautiful quality of children across nations playing without the need of language. Performance space, a place to gather and celebrate traditions both multicultural as well as the ones from the host country. Archive, a place to store peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stories. This space goes down below into the basement and it is surrounded by voices and activity. Education, a place for kids and adults to help them transition into the new community. Also a place for migrants to teach other their languages and crafts they might know. Housing, a transient place that becomes a liminal home where migrants can stay while they settle and ground themselves. Entry, a welcoming sanctuary where migrants arrive to their new home. Fig 54-Ground Floorplan showing path and organization of program

1- Entry 2- Library 3- Living 4- Performance 5- Education 6- Playground 7- Market 7

3 125

Fig 55-Constructs distilling concepts from sailboats: Hauls, Masts and Sails

MASTS AND SAILS allegory to travellers Throughout the project there is an allegory of comparing migrants to travellers and outcasts that are in the search for a new home. As travellers sailing through the seas and across boundaries, there is a transient quality that comes with this. The picture on the left shows two constructs where I distilled the concept and forms of a sailboat as drivers for later designs and ideas. There is a clear simplicity and harmony that comes with sailboats. While the haul is massive and heavy, there is a lightness and almost liminal quality to the masts and sails. These concepts can be seen throughout the project and were maintained for all aspects of the design. To quote John Haduk â&#x20AC;&#x153;Fiction is more tactile. The architect starts with an abstraction and moves

toward reality, and the best architects are those whose reality, when itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finished and complete, is closest to the original abstractionâ&#x20AC;?.40 At this point in the design I continued to draw from fiction and went back to the sailing allegory to drive my final design moves.

40-Book, Mask of Medusa, John Hejduk

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Fig 56, 57, 58-Etherial renderings responding to concepts of vessels and veils.

VESSELS AND VEILS vessels and veils These renderings show how the concept of migrants as travellers and sailors came through by having design ideas that relate to masts, sails and hauls. The path that goes through the building between program spaces has freestanding light structures that reminisce of masts and sails. The spine like form can hold tapestries, colored sheets, flags, etc. It becomes a stage for activity and life to happen by allowing a patchwork of colors and materials to work together. By letting people engage in the design they begin to develop a sense of ownership and belonging, which is what migrants strive for. The roof condition became an undulating constructed piece that not only helps with shade and ventilation but also acts as a design feature that responds to the concept of transience as it was inspired in the shape of the haul and waves moving. Overall, it becomes there is an ethereal and liminal quality in the space as it allows for things to change as people intervene in it. Some things reflect other things responding to the surreal concepts explored through Neruda, Tan, Calvino and Judd. The path becomes ambiguous in itself as the

smooth space that Gilles Deleuze and FĂŠlix Guattari describe in A Thousand Plateaus celebrating change by avoiding strict categorization and stratification of rules and ideas.41

41-Book, A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and FĂŠlix Guattari

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Fig 59-Front picture of final exploded model | By Author

FLOATING FRAGMENTS lifted layers + the cloud of program The final piece is an exploded model of the overall design intervening the Spiegel building in Bridgeport, Chicago. It is an exploration of different parts of the project that allow for a deeper understanding and synopsis of the ideas. Standing on a constructed base that references the quality of the spine through the building, there are three layers suspended over the site.

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Fig 60-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment one

FRAGMENT I piercing the shell Shell- Intervention - Territorialization- Anchoring- Community- Roots- Identity The first fragment remains grounded as it is the site itself highlighting the walls of the existing building, the small unused lot on the west side and a local taco building on the right side (these latter ones are frosted on the plexi ground level). The shell is shown already broken down to give notice of where the intervention happens. The ground is cut through to show the sectional quality of the underground carving.

Fig 61-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment one

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Fig 62-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment two

FRAGMENT II weaving path Path- Transience- Movement- Journey- Instability- Fluid- Routes- Mobile- Adrift The second fragment is the path itself. The ambiguous, ethereal, surreal path that weaves through the building determining all the other layers. The path is the one that pierces through the existing walls blurring the outside-inside edge. The spine like quality makes the ground look like it is lifting and reaching for above. The dynamic spatial organizations become unified through the circulation and their variety of uses.

Fig 63-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment two

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Fig 64-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment three

FRAGMENT III cloud of program Threshold- Boundaries- Edges- Liminal- Passage- Zones The third fragment is the cloud of program. The floating volumes that speak of activity and gathering spaces. They are not fixed and are meant to be seen as thresholds that can change their use and purpose. The volumes are determined by the path and are the liminal passage between the elevated ground and the dripping ceiling. They are zones, not lines and are a hybrid of private and public spaces. They glow at night as lanterns that bring the Spiegel back to life and eminante what is happening inside.

Fig 65-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment three

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Fig 66-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment four

FRAGMENT IV dripping ceiling Belonging- Light - Waves- Hauls- Community- Roots- Identity The fourth and last fragment is the roof that drips down with hanging plants that bring light, freshness and nature into the space. The roof responds to ideas of hauls and waves as a constructed undulating piece. It encloses the building by filtering natural light in giving a sense of privacy and at the same time blurring the inside-outside edge. The top floor is habitable offering a more private gathering space as it is mostly for the people that live here. This offers different levels of community gathering to stay involved and feel like you belong.

Fig 67-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment four

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Fig 68-Axo picture of final exploded model showing floating fragments

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A F TERWORD This thesis was a moment of pause that gave a voice to stories that have not been told enough. It is a celebration of humanity that shows how connected we are as people and how much we depend on one another for a better society and community. While there were many aspects to this master’s project, it overall tells a bigger story, a bigger truth of the ethos of humanity always being adrift. We are all going through some form of transition in our lives and globalization has made our own personal stories the more valuable and unique. The process of displacement, arrival and placemaking is not linear but rather cyclical and in constant motion. As much as we must rejoice in our differences, we must focus on what makes us the same. To finish with Neruda’s words “And we must pass through solitude

and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny...There is a link between unknown people, a care, an appeal, and an answer even in the most distant and isolated solitude of this world”.

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STORIES TO TELL Here I share some of the stories I was told. They are from mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. I prefer to share them anonymously and in the native tongue they were written.

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INTERVIEW I H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? - 4 1 y ears old, Thailand H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? - 1 6 y rs H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? - y e s , 2 t i mes D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? - y e s , I do W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? - y e s , we always s pe ak Thai at o ur h ous e D i d you have to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? - no W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? - b e i n g close to my sib lings and f rie nd s f rom m y c h il d hood or e v e n p laces w he re I gre w u p W h a t soun ds/ image s /s me lls /flavors r e mind you of w he re you c om e f r o m? - T h a i son g with trad itio nal Tha i ins trum e nts /te m p l e s p i c t ures, buddha picture s /s me ll of s p ic y f ood /s p ic y f ood D o y ou rememb e r co ming to A me ric a? Wh at w as that l ik e ? - i t w as st ra n ge at first, ne w cu l ture , ne w p e op l e , ne w l ang uag e I f y o u don ’t mind s haring, why d id you mov e h e re ? Was it w hat you e x p e cted? - w a n ted a bette r o ppo rtu nity fo r our f amil y and our k id s . ye s i t m e t most of the e xpe ctatio ns. w e h av e w hat w e w ante d . it’ d be h a r der in Thailand . W h a t surp ri se d /s ho cke d yo u the mos t w he n you c ame he re ? - c u l ture shocks and s e e ing ne w te c hnol og y W h a t’s y our f avo rite thing ab o u t l iv ing h e re ? - i t ’ s very con ve nie nt

W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g of th e c ul ture you c om e f r om ? -p eop le are ve ry nice and f rie nd l y to e ac h othe r, w e tr e at e ac h other like a b ig family D o you like le arning fro m oth e r c ul tur e s ? -y es, so we can und e rs tand othe r c ul tur e s D o most o f yo ur frie nds n ow s h are your c ul tur e or are the y fr o m other b ackgro und s ? -most o f my frie nd s s hare th e s ame c ul tur e and s p e ak s am e la n g uage . W a s i t e asy to me e t pe o pl e w he n you mov e d he re ? -y es, it was W here did yo u me e t mo s t o f your f r ie nd s ? -Tha i pe o ple u s ually ge t tog e the r at thai te mp l e , and that is how I me t mo st o f my friend s . For f or e ig ne r f rie nd s , I m e t th e m a t work W hen p e o ple ask yo u the q ue s tion, “ w h e re ar e you f rom? ” , What do y ou sa y? What co u ntry d o you id e ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w er e born a t/whe re yo u re s ide in/ s ome w h e re e l s e ) -I say, I am fro m Thailand. The c ountry w h e re I w as bor n I f y ou co u ld change so me thing about w he re you l iv e rig h t now wha t wo uld that b e ? -f or p eo ple to b e mo re frie nd l y Are you a citize n o r wo ul d you w ant to be one one d ay? -y es, I am Ha ve y ou ke pt any trad itions f r om your nativ e c ountr y? What a r e t hey? -we p ray to b ud d ha, we hav e bud d has at h om e . and w e al w ays s pe a k Tha i at ho me W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite trad ition f r om th e c ountry you l iv e in n o w ? -every thing

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INTERVIEW II H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? 1 9 y e a rs old, Parish Tre lawne y Jamaic a H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? A b ou t 3 1 yea rs H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? Y e s 1st visi t 3 ye ars late r fo r a w e e k d ad s ol d h ous e D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? S t i l l f luen t in native Jamaican p atois W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? N o b eca use marrie d an A me rican d id n’ t w ant a bar rie r in com mun ication, s tarte d wo rking w ith p e op l e w h o had hard Tim e u n d e rstan din g D i d you have to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? J a m iacan p ronunciatio n o f maria… mharia W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? F a v o rite memory pe ace fulne ss at d us k W h a t soun ds/ image s /s me lls /flavors r e mind you of w he re you c om e f r o m? Ra g g a e musi c take s me b ack, Sme l l of the oc e an, Untouc he d nature h i l l s va lleys natu re place s yo u in touc h w ith h ol y s e l f . D o y ou rememb e r co ming to A me ric a? Wh at w as that l ik e ? E x ci t i n g becau s e lo ve d to re ad book about us a. B rid g e s N e w Y ork ci t y C en t ra l park. Lights and tal l buil d ing s . I f y o u don ’t mind s haring, why d id you mov e h e re ? Was it w hat you e x p e cted? Mov e d beca use pare nts an who le f am il y w as g oing w ante d be tte r m o r e op ortui ty W h a t surp ri se d /s ho cke d yo u the mos t w he n you c ame he re ? N o t w ha t was e xpe cte d. So me ne ighborhood s w e re bad thoug h t a l l of us wa s nice . A partme nt in ne w Y ork not as nic e as l and . S h o c k ed a bout po o r pe o ple ho me l e s s ne s s in ric h c ountry.

W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g about l iv ing h e re ? S o ma n y o ppo rtunitie s to d o anyth ing c an s w itc h more g e t a roun d . A me rican citize ns c an g o anyw he re W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g of th e c ul ture you c om e f r om ? F a vorite thing Jamaicans s tic k tog e th e r as f amil y in touc h w i t h each othe r live s D o you like le arning fro m oth e r c ul tur e s ? Yes she’ s cu rio us s urprise d a l ot of c ul tur e s are s im il ar in wa y s g oo d insight s ame co re v al ue s m or al s re s p e c ts . D o most o f yo ur frie nds n ow s h are your c ul tur e or are the y fr o m other b ackgro und s ? F rom othe r culture s no Jam aic an f rie nd s W a s i t e asy to me e t pe o pl e w he n you mov e d he re ? Yes becaus e I’ m a ve ry fri e nd l y p e rs on s hy. Chal l e ng ing but n o t dif f icu lt. Se e me as any o th e r p e rs on. W here did yo u me e t mo s t o f your f r ie nd s ? Meet mo st o f my frie nds at c hurc h. B ap tis t to non d e nom inatio n a l . Meet boy at church (hus b a nd now ) . W hen p e o ple ask yo u the q ue s tion, “ w h e re ar e you f rom? ” , What do y ou sa y? What co u ntry d o you id e ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w er e born a t/whe re yo u re s ide in/ s ome w h e re e l s e ) B orn jamica came to u s as a te e n to ne w Y or k mov e d to f l orid a . D on ’t re co gnize cu rre nt ja m aic a. S p e nt m or e of l if e in us . Fam i l y job everything is he re wh at I k now . Are you a citize n o r wo ul d you w ant to be one one d ay? I a m a citize n ye s mo re than 2 0 ye ars . g l ad be c aus e I c an v ote voice he ard citize ns righ t. Ha ve y ou ke pt any trad itions f r om your nativ e c ountr y? What a r e t hey? C ha n g e mo re family o rie nte d p e op l e . S und ay w as f or f amil y. I n us S un day is no rmal day. S und ay f amil y orie nte d . W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite trad ition f r om th e c ountry you l iv e in n o w ? Never mo ve b ack to Jamaic a . . no. V e ry d e v e l op e d c ountr y h e re ge t wha t eve r yo u want quick ambul anc e he re . Jamaic a is a v ac atio n .

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INTERVIEW III H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? 2 0 a nd I ca me fro m Jo rd an H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? 6 Y e a rs H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? I h a v e been back 3 time s D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? Yes W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? I w ould becau s e it’ s part o f who I am D i d you ha ve to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? I d i d n ot W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? F ood W h a t soun ds/ image s /s me lls /flavors r e mind you of w he re you c om e f r o m? Y e l l in g an d the co lo r re d D o y ou rememb e r co ming to A me ric a? Wh at w as that l ik e ? I t w as a n ig htmare , I mis s e d my f l ig ht, g ot s tuc k in N Y had no i d e a where to go o r what to d o . I w as re al l y e xc ite d , but I d id n ot k n ow wha t I was giving up. I f y o u don ’t mind s haring, why d id you mov e h e re ? Was it w hat you e x p e cted? I t w as an y t hing b ut what I e xpec te d , I mov e d he re be c aus e of th e g r e e n card. W h a t surp ri se d /s ho cke d yo u the mos t w he n you c ame he re ? P e o ple are n ice he re b u t it’ s no t l ik e the mov ie s I w atc h e d W h a t’s y our f avo rite thing ab o u t l iv ing h e re ? L i v i ng on t he wate r. Me e ting pe o p l e f r om al l around th e w orl d wi t h dif f erent b ackgro und s and c ul ture s . W h a t’s y our f avo rite thing o f the c ul ture you c om e f r om ?

F ri en ds wo u ld die fo r e ac h othe r. Fam il y and Food D o most o f yo ur frie nds n ow s h are your c ul tur e or are the y fr o m other b ackgro und s ? They do n’ t and ye s the y are . W a s i t e asy to me e t pe o pl e w he n you mov e d he re ? Hell n o W here did yo u me e t mo s t o f your f r ie nd s ? W ork a nd s cho o l W hen p e o ple ask yo u the q ue s tion, “ w h e re ar e you f rom? ” , What do y ou sa y? What co u ntry d o you id e ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w er e born a t/whe re yo u re s ide in/ s ome w h e re e l s e ) I say I am fro m Jo rdan Are you a citize n o r wo ul d you w ant to be one one d ay? I just b e came o ne

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INTERVIEW IV H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? 4 1 B o g ot a , C olo mb ia H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? 1 8 y e ars H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? No D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? Yes W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? Y e s , beca use I want he r to spe ak tw o or more l ang uag e s D i d you have to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? No W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? L i v i ng close to my family W h a t soun ds/ image s /s me lls /flavors r e mind you of w he re you c om e f r o m? Mu s ic (sa lsa, carib e ña, llane ra) Food (as ad os , band e ja p ais a, c af é) D o y ou rememb e r co ming to A me ric a? Wh at w as that l ik e ? L l e ga r a Ta mpa, una ciud ad dife re nte a l a ag itad a B og ota. W h a t surp ri se d /s ho cke d yo u the mos t w he n you c ame he re ? L a org an i z a ción d e la ciu d ad, la s e g urid ad , traf ic o org aniz ad o W h a t’s y our f avo rite thing ab o u t l iv ing h e re ? O portun ida d de trab ajo . W h a t’s y our f avo rite thing o f the c ul ture you c om e f r om ? Re s peto p or to d o (líne a para acc e d e r a al g o, a l a autor id ad , e l t r á fico, et c. ) D o most of your frie nds no w share your c ul tur e or are the y f r om ot h e r backg ro u nd s ? Yes

W a s it easy to me e t pe o ple whe n you mov e d he re ? Yes W h e re did you me e t mo s t o f yo ur f rie nd s ? A t c hurch W h a t k in d of place (if applicab l e ) w oul d you l ik e f or th e re to be to e a s e a n d help the immigratio n exp e r ie nc e ? (A p l ac e to me e t p e op l e / l e a rn the langu age / e tc.) A t c hurch, at lib rary, at scho o l W h e n p eop le as k yo u the qu e s tion, â&#x20AC;&#x153; w he re ar e you f rom? â&#x20AC;? , What d o yo u s a y ? W ha t country do yo u ide ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w e r e born at / wh e re y ou resid e in/ so me whe re e l s e ) F r o m C olombia I f y o u could c hange so me thing a bout w he re you l iv e rig h t now w h at wou ld that be ? E l alto costo d e vida (s e guro s, m ov il id ad , r e nta, e tc . ) A r e you a citize n o r wo uld yo u w ant to be one one d ay? N o an d I don â&#x20AC;&#x2122;t kno w H a v e y ou kep t any traditio ns fr om your nativ e c ountr y? What are th e y ? A l g un as comi das, ce le b rar la nav id ad

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INTERVIEW V H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? I w a s 3 0 an d i co me fro m e l salv ad or. H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? I h a v e have b e e n he re since 1992 , s o 2 6 ye ar s . H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? Y e s o n ly on ce in 2005 fo r a mo nth. D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? O f c o urse. W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? T h a nk f ully ye s , to my hus b and and i, it w as v e ry im p ortant th at ou r k ids sp oke s panis h. Be caus e f or one , w e w ante d to be abl e to cl e arly communicate with the m, s e c ond w e s til l hav e f am il y in e l s a l vador t ha t we wante d o u r kid s to g e t to k now . T h ird w e k ne w i t would be ve ry he lpful fo r the m to be abl e to be bil ing ual i n t his coun try. Bu t also we are p roud of our he ritag e and w e wa n t ed them to b e a part o f that. D i d you have to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? N o , ive n ever had tro ub le with it. W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? My f a vorite time in e l salvad o r w as al w ays c hris tm as , the tow n wou ld always b e s o b e au tiful. My f rie nd s and i w oul d g o around t o h ouses an d se e all o f the nativ ity s c e ne s th at w oul d be al l ov e r . W h a t soun ds/ image s /s me lls /flavors r e mind you of w he re you c om e f r o m? U s u ally i t s fo o d . A nd e s pe cially th e f r uit, l ik e c oc onuts , m ang os a n d oran g es. D o y ou rememb e r co ming to A me ric a? Wh at w as that l ik e ? I r e a lly don t like to think ab o ut to think of it m uc h . I t w as v e r y un con f ormab le , i re me mb e r p art of the trip i w as in trunk of a ca r, it w as ve ry co ld and i had a c ar p e t hid ing m e . B ut i wa s nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sca red, i had faith in Go d that e v e rything w oul d be f ine .

I f y ou d o n’ t mind sharing , w hy d id you m ov e he re ? Was it w hat y ou ex pe cte d? I moved he re b e caus e i wante d to l iv e w ith my hus band and s i n c e i was pre gnant, i re ally w ante d m y s on to hav e a c h anc e to h a v e a bette r life . The civil w ar had j us t e nd e d and e v e r yth ing w a s a di sas te r, e ve rything, ro ad s , h ous e s , s c h ool s , e v e r yth ing w as i n ruin s. I did no t have many e xpe c tations , i k ne w it w oul d be v e r y dif f erent, b u t no thing dr amatic . W ha t surprise d/sho cke d you th e mos t w he n you c ame he re ? The f i r s t thing that s urp r is e d m e , w as at my f irs t j ob, it w as t h e brea k s and lunch b re aks at m y job. A t 1 0 w e took a bre ak and a t 12 we had lu nch, and the n anoth e r bre ak at 3. I k e p t think ing how easy wo rk was he re . W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g about l iv ing h e re ? There are to o many things . S imp l e th ing s l ik e g e tting p aid at t he en d o f the we e k o f work . H ow s imp l e it is to g e t f ood and con ven ie nce o f things. W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g of th e c ul ture you c om e f r om ? I ha ve to say fo o d, fo r s ur e . D o you like le arning fro m oth e r c ul tur e s ? Yes, ag ain, i like the fo o d . I l ik e l e ar ning how to m ak e d if f e r e n t t hi n g s. D o most o f yo ur frie nds n ow s h are your c ul tur e or are the y fr o m other b ackgro und s ? I t hi n k the y are ve ry simil ar , m os t of the m. O nl y s m al l dif f erence s. W a s i t e asy to me e t pe o pl e w he n you mov e d he re ? Yes becaus e it was at chu rc h. W here did yo u me e t mo s t o f your f r ie nd s ? At church. W hen p e o ple ask yo u the q ue s tion, “ w h e re ar e you f rom? ” , What do y ou sa y? What co u ntry d o you id e ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w er e born a t/whe re yo u re s ide in/ s ome w h e re e l s e ) I a lwa ys s ay that im fro m e l s al v ad or.

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I f y o u could c hange so me thing a bout w he re you l iv e rig h t now wh a t would t h at b e ? I w ould chan ge the immigratio n p roc e s s to m ak e it e as ie r f or p e o ple i n n eed to co me he re . I w oul d al s o w ant f re e e d uc ation f or youn g p eople . A nd wo u ld wan t more l aw s to p rote c t w ork ing p e o ple, or ma ke it e asie r fo r th e m to h av e a l oud e r v oic e , a g a in st a buse s . I s t here an y thing fro m o the r cul tur e s th at you hav e s e e n/ l e a rn ed that yo u like ? Dis like ? I l i ke man y o f the ame rican ho l id ays , and h ow th e c e l e br ate t h e m. But i do nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; t like ho w racist p e op l e c an be he re . I h av e not f e l t welcome he re many time b y p e op l e i h av e c om e ac ros s . A r e you a citize n o r wo uld yo u w ant to be one one d ay? I w ould be n ice , b ut im d isco urag e d by th e p r oc e s s . m y e ng l is h is n ot g reat a n d the te st s e e ms to d if f ic ul t. B ut m aybe one d ay il l m a k e a n ef f ort to take it. Bu t i m v e r y th ank f ul to G od that i w as a bl e to become a pe rmane nt re s id e nt, s o i ne v e r h av e to w or ry a bout my status o r b e s care d o f be ing s e nt bac k .

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INTERVIEW VI H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? 4 7 a ños H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? A pr o x i ma damente 5 año s H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? L og ra mos visitar ve ne zue la s o lo una v e z d e s d e q ue nos v inim os D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? N o , e s di f ícil apre nde r a e s ta e d ad . W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? S i , ambos. D i d you have to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? N o , aun que en varias o po rtu nida d e s l o h e p e ns and o. W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? Mi n iñez en San Cris tób al (mi ciud ad natal ) s obre tod o e n tie m p os d e navida d. W h a t soun ds/ image s /s me lls /flavors r e mind you of w he re you c om e f r o m? E l o lor de la mo ntaña, aún cu an d o e s d if íc il d e e xp l ic ar, e s un a r o ma que n unca s e o lvida. D o y ou rememb e r co ming to A me ric a? Wh at w as that l ik e ? P a r a mi en p articular fue muy i nte ns a, l os ne rv ios d e d e jar tod o l o q u e con oces atrás y e ntrar a un mund o d ond e no s abe s que v as a e n con t ra r. I f y o u don ’t mind s haring, why d id you mov e h e re ? Was it w hat you e x p e cted? L a s itua ci ón po lítica d e nue s tr o p aís . W h a t surp ri se d /s ho cke d yo u the mos t w he n you c ame he re ? L a s e g uri dad y la fo rma de vid a d e l ame r ic ano. W h a t’s y our f avo rite thing ab o u t l iv ing h e re ? L a t ra n qui li dad , a e sta e dad e s al g o que no tie ne v al or.

W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g of th e c ul ture you c om e f r om ? L a comid a, no hay nad a co mo l a c om id a d e c as a. D o you like le arning fro m oth e r c ul tur e s ? S i emp re me gus ta co no ce r p e r s onas d e otros s itios e n e l mund o . D o most o f yo ur frie nds n ow s h are your c ul tur e or are the y fr o m other b ackgro und s ? S oy vene zo lana, pe ro mi famil ia v ie ne d e v ar ios s itios (Es p añ a y C olombia po r no mb rar algunos ) W a s i t e asy to me e t pe o pl e w he n you mov e d he re ? No, en re alidad aún e s u n r e to. W here did yo u me e t mo s t o f your f r ie nd s ? En ven e zu e la, s o b re to d o e n l a e s c ue l a y l a univ e r s id ad . W ha t kind o f place (if app l ic abl e ) w oul d you l ik e f or th e re to be to e ase and he lp the imm ig r ation e xp e rie nc e ? (A p l ac e to m e e t p eop le/ le arn the languag e / e tc . ) S i , S ería algo que s e ría d e muc ho us o. W hen p e o ple ask yo u the q ue s tion, “ w h e re ar e you f rom? ” , What do y ou sa y? What co u ntry d o you id e ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w er e born a t/whe re yo u re s ide in/ s ome w h e re e l s e ) V en ez olana. I f y ou co u ld change so me thing about w he re you l iv e rig h t now wha t wo uld that b e ? En rea lid ad nad a, e n partic ul ar m e s ie nto muy aug us ta d ond e est a mos. I s there anything fro m o th e r c ul tur e s th at you hav e s e e n/ learn ed that yo u like ? Di s l ik e ? La música, me e ncanta la m ú s ic a y má s s i s e p ue d e bail ar . Are you a citize n o r wo ul d you w ant to be one one d ay? No soy ciud adana, y s i no s g us taría p od e r s e r c iud ad anos . Ha ve y ou ke pt any trad itions f r om your nativ e c ountr y? What a r e t hey? Ha cemos to d o lo que e s tá e n nue s tras m anos p ar a mante ne r la mayo r cantid ad de tradic ione s que p od e m os , s obre tod o l as n avida de s . Navidad y año nue v o s on m uy e s p e c ial e s e n V e ne z uel a . 159

INTERVIEW VII H ow old were yo u whe n yo u came to A m e ric a? Wh e re d id you c om e f r o m? Y o l l eg ue a Am érica a lo s 42 años . V e nía d e A rg e ntina d ond e v i v i mos p or 10 año s . So y Co lo mb i ana, mi e s p os o y mis hijos t a m b ién . E llos ya d o minab an e l ing l és al l l e g ar aquí. Y o no p e r o s i l o ha bía estu d iad o e n A rge nt ina p or tr e s añ os . H ow lon g ha ve yo u b e e n living h e re f or ? L l e v o vivien do 7 año s y 3 me se s e n Fl orid a. L a m is ma c iud ad d e s d e q u e lleg ue a A mérica. H a v e y ou g on e b ack since yo u lef t? H ow m any tim e s ? A A r gen tin a no he vu e lto aun. A c ol ombia h e id o 6 v e c e s d e s d e que l l e g amos. Est amo s más ce rca y e s m á s e c onó m ic o que A rg e ntina y a d e m a s lo ma s impo rtante e s ta nue s tr a f am il ia (p ad re s , h e rm anos , s o b rin os, tíos , primo s ). D o y ou st i ll s pe ak yo ur native l ang uag e f l ue ntl y? S i , c on t i n uo hab land o e spaño l tod os l os d ías . L a mayoría d e n u e stros a mi go s so n his pano s . V e o tv y oig o mú s ic a e n ing l és , a v e c e s me a y udo d e s ub título s pe ro d e s d e q ue l l e g ue e s e f ue e l p r op ósito p ara me jo rar mi inglés . W e r e you a ble to pas s alo ng yo u r nativ e l ang uag e to your k id s ( i f an y )? W hy o r why no t? P o r volun tad d e mis hijo s s e guim os habl and o e s p anol e n c as a d e s de que llegamo s , po r e so lo d om inan muy bie n. L a raz ó n f u e que ellos se se ntían lib re s al e xp r e s ars e e n e s p anol . N o n e ce sitaba n ningún e sfu e rzo mental j aja. D i d you have to change /e d it yo ur nam e w he n you c ame he re s o p e o ple could pro no u nce it b e tter ? Y e s , I ha d t o ed it my name b e caus e it is d if f ic ul t to p ronounc e . I h a v e a mi dd le name and this i s w h at I us e but s om e time s I h a v e t o use m y firs t name . My o ld e s t d aug h te r and m e h av e th e s a m e f irst and last name so s o m e tim e s it is f unny or w e ird , it d e pe n ds. W h a t i s y our fo nd e s t me mo ry o f w he re you c om e f r om ? Mi s r ecuerdos más e spe ciale s d e Col ombia s on e l nac im ie nto d e m i s hi jos y compartir las navid ad e s c on l a f am il ia: re z ar j untos , ca n t a r y mucho s re galo s . Mi s r ecuerdos más e spe ciale s d e A r g e ntina s on g oz ar c on m i e s poso y mi s hijo s e l co ntacto c on l natural e z a c om o p e s c ar, h a cer camp in g e ir a nave gar.

W ha t sound s /image s /s me lls /f l av or s re m ind you of w h e re you c o m e f rom? El son ido d e lo s pájaro s e n s p ring y e l ol or d e l os jaz mine s m e recuerdan a A rge ntina. Es c uc har l a m ú s ic a d e Carl os V iv e s , c o m e r a rep as y to mar cho co late c al ie nte me r e c ue rd a a Col om bia. D o you re me mb e r co ming to A me r ic a? What w as that l ik e ? V en i r a A mérica para mi e r a ate rr ad or p or q ue yo te nía e l p rejui c io de que la juve ntus no te nia v al ore s ni c ontrol . Te ní a p á n ico d e no e nco ntrar una c om unid ad Catol ic a p ara m i y mi f a mi li a. F ue un a le cción po sitiva d ar me c ue nta q ue e s taba e quiv oc ad a. “ D ios es tá e n to das parte s ” s ol o hay q ue v e rl o. I f y ou d o n’ t mind sharing , w hy d id you m ov e he re ? Was it w hat y ou ex pe cte d? Yo vi n e a A mérica po rque m i e s p os o c ons ig uió trabajo aq uí y en Arg en tina s e te rmino su c ontr ato d e e mp l e o. M i e xp e r ie nc ia d e vi vi r aquí ha sid o mu cho m e jor d e l o que e s p e r aba. H e c onoc id o g en t e mu y b ue na y pe rte n e c e mos a una c omunid ad q ue nos h a a y uda do a cre ce r e n muchos s e ntid os : inte l e c tual , e s p ir itual y soci a l. W ha t surprise d/sho cke d you th e mos t w he n you c ame he re ? A mi me so rpre nd ió la ama bil id ad d e l os A me r ic anos y s u d e s e o p or i n te grarno s. A pe sar d e no habl ar bie n s u id ioma e n g e ne r a l , ellos hací an e l e s fue rzo p or e nte nd e r me o ayud ar me . W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g about l iv ing h e re ? U n a de las co sas qu e más m e g us ta d e v iv ir aquí e s e l r e s p e to ha ci a e l o tro . Es o me ha pe r mitid o s e ntir ig ual d ad e n m e d io de t a n tas d ife re ncias de raz as y d e c r e d os . W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite thin g of th e c ul ture you c om e f r om ? D e mi c u ltura latina lo q ue má s me g us ta e s l a c om id a. L os sabores trae n re cue rd o s de m om e ntos e s p e c ial e s y c omp artid os con la ge nte qu e rida. D o you like le arning fro m oth e r c ul tur e s ? Me en canta co no ce r o tras c ul tur as . S us d if e r e nc ias , c om id a, cost umb re s y de e sa mane r a ac e p tar y d is minuir l as d if e r e nc i a s que obviame nte e xiste n. D o most o f yo ur frie nds n ow s h are your c ul tur e or are the y fr o m other b ackgro und s ? L a mayo ría d e mis amigo s s on his p anos s in e mbarg o m is v e c ino s 161

t od o s son ame ricano s y co nge niamos bie n. W a s it easy to me e t pe o ple whe n you mov e d he re ? F u e f á ci l hace r amigo s po rqu e bus que e s p ac ios d e e nc ue ntr o. W h e re did you me e t mo s t o f yo ur f rie nd s ? Mi s amig os los co no cí u no s e n m i p ar roq uia y a otr os e n l as cl a ses de in glés . W h a t k in d of place (if applicab l e ) w oul d you l ik e f or th e re to be t o ease a n d he lp the immigration e xp e r ie nc e ? (A p l ac e to me e t p e o ple/ lea rn the langu age / e tc . ) Me g ustaria un s itio d o nde se c ombinar an v ar ias c os as : c l as e s d e i n g lé s, de manualidad e s (pintar , te j e r, c oc ina) , j ue g os d id á c tic os p a r a los n i n o s, b ib lio te ca, ju e gos d e m e s a p ar a l os anc ianos , cl a ses de g imnasia para to das l as e d ad e s , c e l e brar d if e re nte s f i e s tas de los paíse s de e sa co m unid ad y l as ame r ic anas tam bién, ch a rlas sobre te mas para vivir m e jor e n A méric a. P or e j e mp l o, com o rea li z a r lo s taxe s, co mo fu nc iona e l te m a d e s al ud y d e e d u c ación (op cio ne s de co le gio s, be c as , univ e r s id ad e s o c omm unity col l eg e. ) W h e n p eop le as k yo u the qu e s tion, “ w he re ar e you f rom? ” , What d o y ou say? W ha t co untry d o yo u ide ntif y w ith now ? (Wh e re you w e r e bor n at/ where yo u re s ide in/ s ome w h e re e l s e ) C u a n do me p regu ntan d e d o nde soy d ig o e l p ais d ond e nac i, C ol o mbia. Ya casi no me ncio no qu e v iv í e n A rg e ntina. I f y o u could c hange so me thing a bout w he re you l iv e rig h t now wh a t would t h at b e ? C om b i n aria el s iste ma e du cativo niv e l m e d io (mid d l e s c hool ) con Hi g hschool. Pro mo ve ria más l a p arte s oc ial y tal l e re s d e cr e c imien to p e rs o nal e inte grac ió n. I s t here an y thing fro m o the r cul tur e s th at you hav e s e e n/ l e a rn ed that yo u like ? Dis like ? Me g usta mucho ve r co mo lo s A me r ic anos q uie re n y re s p e tan a s u p a í s y a la s pe rs o nas d e las fue r z as m il itare s . E n mi s cursos de inglés co mpartí c on al g unos Chinos y me g us ta s u medicin a a b ase de pro d ucto s natural e s . N o m e g ust a que lo s inmigrante s no s e inv ol uc r e n e n l a c ul tura A m e ri ca n a y e n ve z de apo rtar l o bue no q ue tie ne n s e q ue d e n al m a r g en y cri tiqu e n. A r e you a citize n o r wo uld yo u w ant to be one one d ay? N o s oy ciudad ana pe ro sí me gus taría s e rl o p r onto p or q ue me

g ust a ria vivir aqu i po r muc hos años mas . Ha ve y ou ke pt any trad itions f r om your nativ e c ountr y? What a r e t hey? S i man te ngo algunas tradic ione s d e Col om bia c omo l a nov e na d e n avida d y de A rge ntina cons e r v o l a tr ad ic ió n d e l os p ar tid os de f utbol (so cce r) y algu nas c omid as c om o e m p anad as y tar tas . W ha t ’s yo u r favo rite trad ition f r om th e c ountry you l iv e in n o w ? I r a ve r lo s fu e go s piro téc nic os d e l 4 d e Jul io y c e l e br ar Tha n ks giving.

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Fig 69-Graphic explaining where Author has lived

AUTHOR BIO With an expired visa and an active student permit it is hard to explain what I am. There is no real category for my immigration status and it is always a long complicated story to explain how I got here. It is no surprise then that this thesis is very personal. While I tried to stay away from telling my own story I saw my journey reflected throughout the project. We have moved a few times with my family, always hoping for a better future leaving places that we cared for but also places where the political, economic and social situations became too hostile and unsafe. I was born in Colombia in 1993, when I was five years old we moved to the US for a year, then moved back to Colombia for a year, then moved to Argentina for ten years and now I’ve been living in Florida with my family for seven years. The graphic on the left organizes these spatial and time changes in my life. Every time we moved we had the opportunity of starting with a blank slate and we made the most out of the places we lived in. Over the years we have become a hybrid of cultures keeping the Colombian accent, using Argentinian expressions and keeping traditions from all three places. I would like to thank my parents for always keeping an optimistic view of the world and for being so open to trying new things as we ventured out from our comfort zones and experienced other cultures. It wasn’t always easy. Specially now not knowing when I will be able to visit Colombia again to see my extended family and explore the country I was born in. I haven’t been back in four years and I might not be able to go back in another four. As I get a little older some memories begin to fade, others stay vivid and become exaggerated through time. I wonder how surreal and inaccurate my perceptions are at this point. Nonetheless, my situation has helped me look at other people’s stories and I have become more aware and interested in immigrants who have come from different places. I have a lot more compassionate and understanding in the struggles that they go through and there has been a realization that to a certain degree we have all in some way experienced the same struggles, fears and joys. In Neruda’s words, “I do not know whether these lessons welled forth from me in order

to be imparted to many others or whether it was all a message which was sent to me by others as a demand or an accusation… In this taciturn “nothing” there were hidden things that were understood, perhaps a recognition, perhaps the same kind of dreams.”

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NOTES Quotes, graphics, writings, deeper understandings from other authors that influenced my work.

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ON DISPL ACEMENT I

“Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination” Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson In the book “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Andrew Dawson and Mark Johnson discuss the fact that displacement is not a simple narrative as it talks about the liminal transient quality of exile. Of routes over roots as there is a resistance to place-based identity. As exiles may search for roots, there is either a nostalgic attempt at recovery (of belonging) or a liberatory experience from self (by being able to adapt and change). Exiles, as well as immigrants, nomads, travelers and diasporas become romantic figures as mobile, creolized and hybrids that increasingly inhabit non-places. “Place and identity are most often constructed experiences as a variety of both literal and metaphorical roots and routes.”

Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination”, A. Dawson and M. Johnson

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ON DISPL ACEMENT II

Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson Nation-nes: more universally legitimate value in political life of our time. Nation: notion. Not scientific inherently imagined political community. Limited and sovereign. Today it has a profound emotional legitimacy. “Imagined”: members of a nation will never know most of the other members. Still, they feel connected. Communities: To be distinguished not by their falsity or genuineness but by the style they are imagined. There is a deep commandership and a willingness to die. Cultural roots: The importance of the unknown soldier has cultural roots of nationalism. 16th century: Decline in the Latin language (sacred language) with rise in vernacular written books. 17th century: Decline in monarchies and dynasties and rise in nations. New ways of thinking. Help of Capitalism. 18th century: Decline in religion aligned with rise of nationalism. “The great merit of traditional world-views has been their concern with man-in-the-cosmos, man as species being, and the contingency of life. The extraordinary survival over thousands of years of Buddhism, Christianity or Islam in dozens of different social transformations attests to their imaginative response to the overwhelming burden of human suffering – disease, mutilation, grief, age and death. […] In Western Europe, the eighteenth-century marks not only the dawn of age of nationalism but the dusk of religious modes of thought. As we shall see, few things were (are) better suited to this end than an idea of a nation. If nation-states are widely conceded to be ‘new’ and ‘historical’, the nations to which they give political expression always loom out of an immemorial past, and, still more important, glide into a limitless future.” “It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny. With Debray we might say, ‘Yes, it is quite accidental that I am born French; but after all, France is eternal’.”

Book, “Imagined Communities”, Benedict Anderson. Brief explenation on the rise of Nationalism.

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ON ARRIVAL I

“Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place” Juhani Pallasmaa SPIRITUAL: “Meaningful Architecture, as all art, makes us experience ourselves as complete embodied and spiritual beings” SOCIAL: “More important for an architect to possess the talent for imagining human situations than to fantasize about spaces. Architecture is essentially the art form of accommodation and integration” CULTURAL: “Architecture is cultural record written landscape. The human landscape.” “The art of architecture is mentally possible only in a world of hope and it implies an optimistic and positive view of culture” TIME: “We inhabit space and time domesticated by architecture. Architecture then becomes a measure to grasp the past and have confidence in future” NOSTALGIA: “Architecture of essence reinforces and revitalizes our sense of life” “Pairing of place of sanctuary with place of trauma. There is never a single place to be in place.” REALITY AND IDEAL: “An interaction between reality and the ideal is a fundamental dimension of design” “The idealized client projected and internalized by the architect” “Architecture imortifies and glorifies something. It aspires for a condition that is more subtle, cultured and humane than the actuality of culture.” “Instead of accelerating invention and newness, the fundamental task of architecture is to create and defend silence and the slowness of experience.”

Book “Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place.” Chp 1, Juhani Pallasmaa

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ON ARRIVAL II

Culture Learning, Cross-cultural Transition and Social Difficult y Colleen Ward “The culture learning approach provides a broad theoretical framework for understanding ‘Culture Shock’. On the most basic level it recognizes that the problems experienced by cross-cultural travelers can be attributed to the absence or distortion of familiar environmental and social cues. Furnham and Bochner (1982) have noted, for example, that unfamiliarity with any or all aspects of a new society (physical, technological, climatic, political, legal, educational, linguistic and sociocultural) may contribute to ‘culture shock’, but have argued that the most fundamental difficulties experienced by cross-cultural travelers occur in social situations, episodes and transactions.” “Culture learning theory can contribute to the understanding of cross-cultural transition and adaptation. In connection with this line of research four questions arise: Which factors predict sociocultural adaptation? Culture-specific knowledge, language fluency, more extensive contact with host nationalists, cultural similarity and longer period of residence in the host culture are associated with lower levels of sociocultural difficulty (Ward, 1996). How does sociocultural adaptation change over time? Longitudinal research reveals, not surprisingly, that sociocultural adaptation follows a learning curve with a steep increase over the first 4-6 months, then tapering off up to the end of the first year (Ward and Kennedy, 1999). Does sociocultural adaptation vary between sojourning and resident groups? Data increase, as expected, that sedentary groups experience less socio cultural difficulties than sojourners (Ward and Kennedy, 1999) Does sociocultural adaptation vary across sojourning groups? Cultural and ethnic similarity is generally associated with fewer sociocultural difficulties. Mainland Chinese and Malaysian sojourners in Singapore, for example, adapt more readily than Anglo-European ones.” “In multicultural societies, successful culture learning for newcomers involves acquiring biocultural communication competence, to enable these permanent settlers to function effectively in both their co-national and host-national social networks. Biocultural communication competence also sustains the development of an integrated, biocultural identity which contributes to the mental and physical wellbeing of the settlers”

Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 3, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham

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ON ARRIVAL III

Social identification theories, Acculturation and Identit y Colleen Ward “Acculturation refers to changes that take place as a result of continuous first-hand contact between individuals of different cultural origins (Redfield, Linton and Herskovits, 1936). While such contact may produce changes in attitudes, values, behaviors, one important component of acculturation relates to changes in cultural identity. On the most basic level, ethnic or cultural identification involves the recognition, categorization or self-identification of oneself as a member of an ethnocultural group. Identification, however, is also seen as including a sense of affirmation, pride and a positive evaluation of one’s group, as well as an involvement dimension, relating to ethnocultural behaviors, values and traditions (Phinney,1992).” “Immigrants, refugees and sojourners enter a new society embedded with long-standing, distinctive cultural norms and values. The newcomers may have originated from relatively homogenous countries where cultural identity is rarely, if ever, challenged, and in many cases they may have had no previous exposure to the new host culture. Under these conditions the pressures for cultural change are often perceived as intense, immediate and enduring.” Early studies: The assimilation model “immigrants were seen as relinquishing identification with the culture of origin and ‘progressing’ towards identification with the culture of contact.” 1980s: Bioculturalism: a balance model of acculturation and identity. “Bioculturalism was viewed as the middle ground between assimilation and separatism; however, the two referent identities were still viewed as interdependent, rather than orthogonal domains and posed obvious measurement problems.” 1990s: A categorical model of acculturation. “More sophisticated models have conceptualized home and host culture identity as independent or orthogonal domains. Four acculturation attitudes or strategies – integration, separation, assimilation and marginalization.” “While it is widely agreed that identification with both culture of origin and culture of contact is an impor tant component of identity in immigrant groups, there is little agreement about the nature of the relationship between these two referent identifications.” Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 5, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham

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ON PL ACE MAKING I

My thforms Paul Carter “Migrant mobility involves the processes of localization.” Pulvinenti ‘Active process of anchoring’: “By stepping off places that are provisionally constructed and allow for movement and change the migrant will create a new speaking position and identify with a place. Therefore, the migrant becomes ‘grounded’.” “Identities are territorialized” Placism vs Placelesness Application of the picturesque landscape Aesthetic to the design of new places Sedentary anchorless movement Prescribed nomad Picturesque grid natural development of tracks and lines “The migrant’s isolationism depends on the placism within its host culture’s placist dream. It actively intervenes in shaping migrant techniques of self-becoming at that place.” The process of transforming house into home by intervention, creating memories, personalization. “Mobile subjectivities become anchored in place”. “Becoming a movement from a place vs becoming a movement at that place. Mobilisation of the first kind is evident when migrant subjectivity is built around nostalgia and the circular movements between homeland-host land. Mobilisation of the second kind is manifest in what Pulvirenti calls the ‘Active process of anchoring’”...

Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 4 “Mythforms”, Paul Carter

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ON PL ACE MAKING I I

“Conclusion: On migrant minds and es /isled imaginings” Stephen Cairns “Imaginings of exile are never singular and straightforward but often involve contradictory expressions and desires, both literal and cognitive dissonances which are never completely reconciled” “We may be able to describe fixity and movement as interdependent modalities. There may be a situation where the imagination of other places and times informs images of community constructed in the here and now that people seek to instill in perpetuity, in this case in the bricks, mortar, display cabinets and cassette tapes of a heritage museum, perhaps so as to overcome the crises of discontinuity that impending death threatens: movement gives on to fixity gives on to movement. Here, then, are home bodies and migrant minds, for whom place is fashioned and remade as a route for, as much as it is the root of, identity.” “Migration and exile are often written about as movement away from what is familiar and selfsame, which either leads to nostalgic attempts at recovery or to a liberatory experience from the self. We wish to disrupt this oppositional logic of either roots or routes to posit a more complex relation of both/and, which we suggest might be written as the ex/isled.” “In particular we think ex/isled is a useful metaphor for rethinking identity process in general, because it not only evokes the sense of leaving, which is a longing and a carrying with, but also is evocative of destination not achieved, and of return never fully realized.” “In trying to think through the making of place and identity, we wish to reconceptualize liminality as the awareness or realization of the betwixt and between, in order to get away from its being seen as a temporary stage in the process of movement from one fixed state or place to another.” “ To resolve a temporary and transitional period between discrete phases, states or places without affirming a fixed state of being therefore seeing social life as continual series of changing states, of “lots of little series of beginnings, middles and ends”. As living, “is a condition of in-betweenness, a crossroads of various real and imagined comings and goings.” Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Conclusion: On migrant minds and es/isled imaginings”, Stephen Cairns.

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ON PL ACE MAKING I II

“Hospital it y B egins at Home” Deborah Gans “The permeability of so many national borders across Europe, and the exceptional impenetrability of a few so-called rogue states, have heightened concerns about security and identity, and also about the stranger, whether alien, immigrant or guest. In our era of terrorist threat and economic stress, we struggle to find new ways to cope with the rights and places of people who are not citizens. So it is useful to recall the most fully developed legal framework that addresses the status of the stranger: the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which dealt with Europe in the aftermath of World War II, and the 1967 Protocol, which expanded the law to make it universal and unending.” On The In-House Festival, held in Jerusalem in June 2011: “For me, the autobiographical stories were the most satisfying performances (despite the extreme limitations of my Hebrew), because they created the aura of a dinner party where the divide between storytellers and listeners — performers and guests — was blurred and the events seemed to almost spontaneously unfold.” “Passage across a border wrenches us from a space of citizenship — where our individual being is cloaked in layers of legal protection — to a space where we experience at once freedom and nothingness. As architects and planners, we lack the language for describing this shift in the perception and socio-political dimension of place; for distinguishing between the place of the citizen and the place of the stranger within the space of the state. We have the impoverished terms “private” and “public,” but these are inadequate even to distinguish between commercial and civic proper ty. To refer to the market of a refugee camp as public, or the hideout of an alien as private, is perhaps to misrepresent the status of these places. Only the abstract though evocative language of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in Nomadology, distinguishes the experience of territory in terms of its relation to the state. Deleuze and Guattari describe an unbounded “smooth” space of nomadic wandering, organized by events, affects and forces, that is distinct from the experience of the “striated” space of sovereign power, which is par titioned, stratified and fixed in its organization.” Placesjournal.org <https://placesjournal.org/article/hospitality-begins-at-home/>

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ON PL ACE MAKING I V

“ The Reciprocal Framing of Self and Place in Émigré Autobiographies” Sabir Khan “Émigré autobiographies stress how the bearer of memory reconstructs the relationship between memories of spaces and the spaces themselves. Even though memory appears to be tied to time, the metaphors we use to understand its operations invariability invoke the spatial and the architectural: “layers excavated, veils lifted, screens removed”. Whereas a distracting in time and space sponsors memories, the act of remembering itself is predicated on disjunction, on break in the flow of the present, and a dislocation between the memory and the remembering.” “Writing their life-stories in English reiterates it as a sign of their being simultaneously at home and not at home, a marker of their status as insider/outsider both when growing up and as emigres in England and America.” “the memory of the individual, precisely that which is often taken to epitomize individuality, draws upon collective idioms and mechanisms. […] The more universal narratives of loss and migration, of letting go and putting to rest. These accounts both employ and reveal these culturally specific forms and norms.” “Certain tropes and patterns remain strikingly constant even as their articulations vary.” “Itineraries of the self that articulate their relationship to place through memory operations in order to come to terms with rerouting and rerooting. Both engage the dynamics of cross-cultural transactions, working the vein of “in-between-ness” with the ambivalent (and bivalent) perspective of the émigré.” “ Their need to find their own voice, to reterritorialize their lives, gives their accounts a par ticular currency for those who work and live between, across, and at the margins of cultures. Their deracination, it seems, exaggerates their sense of belonging and of displacement, making their stories all the more vivid”.

Book, Memory and Architecture, Chp 1, “The Reciprocal Framing of Self and Place in Émigré Autobiographies”, Sabir Khan.

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Fig 3-The temple of Hathor at Dendera. Pylon Temples of late Kingdom in Egypt choreographed a spatial sequence of pylons, courtyards, hypostyle halls. They created a linear symbolic journey of increasingly more enclosed and sacred spaces until the final goal of a sanctuary was reached.

Fig 3-Hemis Gompa,, 17th century, “Buddhist Monasteries in the Western Himalaya”. Buddhist Monasteries have a choreographed path that sometimes replicates the mandala’s symbolic journey to enlightenment.

ON THE INSTERSTITIAL

The Sacred Path and Place Thomas Barrie Path as a Path: Spatial sequences and symbolic narratives. “Dynamic spatial organizations unified through their variety of uses.” “The entry, path, and sanctuary of sacred architecture often symbolize the spiritual path and its goal.” “A dynamic experience where symbolic themes are experiences visually, haptically, emotionally.” Example: The egyptian temple of Hathor at Dendera. The Place as a Path: Labyrinths and places of circumambulation. “A labyrinth is a place that guides the pilgrim from a chronos time to a kairos time. From the temporal world to the sacred world. “A pilgrimage elongates the devotional act approaching the sacred. The Path becomes a spiritual act itself.” Example: Hemis Gompa, Buddhist Monastery. Path as a Place: Pilgrimage paths. “Pilgrimage paths typically involve a depar ture from everyday life, a journey along a defined route, an arrival at a sacred place and a return (that has been changed by the experience).”

Book, the Sacred In-Between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture, Thomas Barrie

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ON THE INTERVENTION I

“Radical Car tography, Chicago B oundaries.” Bill Rankin “We are the World. Meander through neighborhoods where the signs tell you about a place far away Or visit a high school where they speak 70 languages Or spend an summer in a park where they cook out in every language and every cuisine and when they are not cooking, they playing the futball, as soccer is called everywhere but here. Or take in an evening of storytellers talking about migration.” “The memory of coming here from over there, of making a new life here, of finding a new meaning. Or the memory of the pains suffered, the discrimination endured, the tragedies overcome. It lives with us and with the people and communities we tell stories about. We’ll explore the role of memory and history for one community on Tuesday, May 20th, but it’s the process that really matters. That is, it’s the recognition that every community has a story imbedded in its memory and to ignore that story is to sidestep a way to connect.” “Memory is the most potent truth. Show me history untouched by memories and you show me lies”- Carlos Eire “Most of us experience some form of migration in our lifetime, whether we are moving into and out of neighborhoods, or crossing state lines and national borders. How has this movement impacted our concept of self, our relationships with others, and our idea of home? What is the collective result of moving across countries, continents, and identities?”

Chicago online journal, Chicago is the World Blog and Ethnic Media Project < http://chicagoistheworld.org/2014/05/we-are-the-worlda-doorway-to-tours-and-dining-in-global-chicago/>

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Fig 3-Pointillism map of Chicago that highlights the different gradiants of ethnicities/races. Proposes a new reading of map without sharp and defined boundaries.

ON THE INTERVENTION II

“Car tography and the Realit y of B oundaries” Perspecta [Journal of the Yale School of Architecture] “If nothing else, boundaries could no longer be seen as a neutral graphic convenience. They carry too much conceptual baggage; they provide answers that are too easy. But searching for cartographies that don’t rely exclusively on borders is not just a question of deleting some lines. What’s needed is deep engagement with massive amounts of data: discovering variations in space becomes a design problem in itself, where the challenge is to navigate between the hopelessly simple and the hopelessly complex. “ “Certainly there is a limit past which visual complexity simply becomes chaos. But this is not just a question of legibility; it is also a question of trust. For better or worse, legible maps are seen as authoritative, and most people simply accept Chicago’s community areas as facts. But this means that legible maps which manage to push existing analytic and graphic conventions can advance rather sophisticated arguments without much notice: they can resist singular, reductivist interpretations and provoke more questions than they try to answer. The reality effect generated by a good map can make the world seem simpler and more conquerable than it actually is, but it can also be used to give complex systems their due.” “Pointillist maps, for example, show both gaps and gradients quite clearly, and they give a very different understanding of Chicago’s spatial fabric from those maps that rely on borders. Perhaps most surprising is that there sometimes are very sharp lines of change, especially of racial and ethnic identity. But it is also clear that no redrawing of boundaries could ever create coherent demographic areas, even if we took “internally diverse” as one of our categories.”

History.yale.edu <https://history.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2010%20rankin%20-%20reality%20of%20boundaries.pdf> See Notes for Chicago pointillism map.

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ON THE INTERVENTION III

Creating Communit y Loren Rullman and Jan van den Kieboom Sociologist Ray Oldenburg (1999) introduces the idea that society is comprised of the first place (home), the second place (work), and the third place (neither home nor work). The first place (home) is the most basic to people and is primarily a place of family, privacy, and inward focus. The second place (work) provides the necessary means to support living and is more highly structured— with rules, norms, and hierarchy—than the first place. Third places, such as coffee shops, lounges, and neighborhood pubs, are essential to democracy and act as anchors for the most vibrant communities. Third place attributes include the following: they are typically free or inexpensive to use; food is commonly available; they are easily accessible and proximate to first and second places; one can expect to see regular users; the ambiance is welcoming, comfortable, and playful; rules are few and neutralizing to hierarchy and status; and conversation is the primary sustaining activity. Frank and Howard (2010) On the other hand, type can also limit discovery and the full potential of a building “to be transformative at the scale of the human body and everyday life”. The authors remind us that types are merely guides, were invented by people, and are in a state of flux as they are critiqued, changed, and reinvented. Further, they argue that types should be challenged but often are not because “transforming type requires belief and determination: a strong and clear vision for the new building and the willingness and capacity to stand up to the controversy a transformed type often provokes” (Franck and Howard 2010, p. 173). “It is through community—the social context—that individuals apply what is learned in and beyond the classroom while also experimenting with meaningful interaction, conflict negotiation, deepening understanding of self and others, and the beginnings of fulfilling the civic compact that higher education purpor ts to offer society.”

Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 4 “Mythforms”, Paul Carter

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List of Figures Fig 1-“Gilded Cage”, installation by Artist-activist Ai Weiwei at the entrance of Central Park, from the series “Good fences make good neighbors”. Fotos by Author, December 2017. Fig 2-“Pop-up kitchen for refugees and asylum seekers” by architect Peter Merrett. The brightly coloured demountable modules that make up the kitchen and dining facilities allow the project to be moved around the city, expanding the reach of the program. The colourful interpretation of nautical signal flags were devised to overcome language barriers. Fig 3-Interview to Melissa Fleming in the Humans of New York refugee series. She is head of communications for the UN Refugee Agency. Fig 4-Map of the Americas showing Neruda’s exile journey crossing to Argentina and then eventually settling in Mexico where he wrote “Los versos de un capitán”. Fig 5-Graphic of Pablo Neruda’s “Si tu me Olvidas” poem

Fig 6-Graphic of Pablo Neruda’s “La Carta en el Camino” poem

Fig 7-Graphic of Pablo Neruda’s “El Olvido” poem

Fig 8 -” 100 untitled works in mill aluminum” Permanent installation by Donald Judd in Marfa, Texas. Photos by Author, September 2017. Fig 9-Light studies in the landscape inspired by Judd’s aluminum boxes

Fig 10-Section through the Andes Mountains from Chile to Argentina marking six pivotal moments in Neruda’s journey

Fig 11-Section model of Neruda’s exile memorial

Fig 12-Section model of Neruda’s exile memorial

Fig 13-Section model of Neruda’s exile memorial showing different light quality spaces.

Fig 14-Section model of Neruda’s exile memorial showing different light quality spaces.

Fig 15-Graphic showing the break in time and space with every new arrival

Fig 16-Graphic showing Goodman’s readings on how different worlds and perceptions can coexist together as a whole. 195

Fig 17- Picture from graphic novel â&#x20AC;&#x153;Arrivalâ&#x20AC;? by Shaun Tan.

Fig 18- Arrival graphic 1- Saunter

Fig 19- Arrival graphic 2- Harbour

Fig 20- Arrival graphic 3- Anchor

Fig 21- Arrival graphic 4- Enter

Fig 22- Arrival graphic 5- Wander

Fig 23- Arrival graphic 6- Discover

Fig 24- Arrival graphic 7- Arrive

Fig 25- Totemic territoritalization construct showing the scale of the hand

Fig 26- Totemic Terrritoritalization constructs that explore a gradual transition in the coexistence between host and heritage cultures. Fig 27- Picture of Venice, Italy in the 19th century. Monovisions.com <http://monovisions.com/venice-italy-in-19th-century-historic-bw-photos> Fig 28- Place Making graphic - Valdrada

Fig 29- Place Making graphic - Diomira

Fig 30- Place Making graphic - Euphemia

Fig 31- Place Making graphic - Zaira

Fig 32- Place Making graphic - Isidora

Fig 33- Place Making graphic - Anastasia

Fig 34- Place Making graphic - Dorothea

Fig 35-Hybrid of historical studies of Paths as Places

Fig 36- Sketch models playing with positive and negative spaces from the path diagram. It becomes an ambiguous study of plan, cross and longitudinal section. Fig 37- Slice of spine showing how an embedded path can open up and create a moment for pause. It shows how the section pierces through the wood leaving traces behind. Fig 38- Log interstitial model

Fig 39- Series of pictures of log interstitial model showing all slices

Fig 40-Picture of Chicago, Photographer Jose Gonzalez

Fig 41- Picture of Bridgeport, Chicago showing signs in different languages from far away places. <https://impact. apartmentocean.com/bridgeport-immigrant-haven-in-chicago> Fig 42-Picture of Chicago, Photographer Jose Gonzalez

Fig 43-Site plan of Chicago showing context and major migration points in the city

Fig 44-Reception room of Hull-House. <https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/hull-house/>

Fig 45-Jane Addams talking with a group of young people visiting her settlement house called The Hull-House <https://www.history.com/news/the-humble-chicago-house-that-started-a-movement> Fig 46-Site plan of Bridgeport showing context and major buildings in the community

Fig 47-Streetview Spiegel Administration Building. <https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2014/12/17/historic-abandoned-bridgeport-spiegel-building-turns-a-page/> Fig 48-Facade and Plan drawings of Spiegel Administration Building. <https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2014/12/17/historic-abandoned-bridgeport-spiegel-building-turns-a-page/> 197

Fig 49-Photo of the three iterations piercing the shell.

Fig 50-Piercing the Shell model pictures - Transient + Permanent

Fig 51-Piercing the Shell model pictures - Storage + Storytelling

Fig 52-Piercing the Shell model pictures - Communal + Individual

Fig 53-Axo views of the overall scheme. The picture above shows the scheme with the outside walls hidden. The picture below shows how the scheme inhabits and pierces the outside walls. Fig 54-Ground Floorplan showing path and organization of program

Fig 55-Constructs distilling concepts from sailboats: Hauls, Masts and Sails

Fig 56, 57, 58-Etherial renderings responding to concepts of vessels and veils.

Fig 59-Front picture of final exploded model | By Author

Fig 60-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment one

Fig 61-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment one

Fig 62-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment two

Fig 63-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment two

Fig 64-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment three

Fig 65-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment three

Fig 66-Picture of final exploded model showing fragment four

Fig 67-Front Picture of final exploded model showing fragment four

Fig 68-Axo picture of final exploded model showing floating fragments

Fig 69-Graphic explaining where Author has lived

199

Works Cited 1- http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=15244&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html 2- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/02/refugee-crisis-human-flow-ai-weiwei-china 3- www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime 4- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-refugees-exclusive/exclusive-dozens-of-refugee-resettlement-offices-to-close-as-trump-downsizes-program-idUSKCN1FY1EJ?utm_source=applenews 5- https://www.dezeen.com/2018/02/25/merrett-houmoller-architects-creates-mobile-kitchen-british-red-crossriba-london-uk 6- https://www.facebook.com/humansofnewyork/photos 7- https://www.npr.org/2018/03/09/577353905/90-days-to-start-a-new-life-for-refugees-in-the-u-s-whathappens-next 8- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email 9-Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination”, A. Dawson and M. Johnson 10-Book, “Imagined Communities”, Benedict Anderson. Brief explenation on the rise of Nationalism. 11-https://www.biography.com/people/pablo-neruda-9421737 12-http://www.chileculture.org/biography-of-pablo-neruda/

13- Book, “Los Versos Del Capitan”, Poems “Si tu me olvidas”, “El Olvido”, “La Carta en el Camino”, Pablo Neruda

14- Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination”, A. Dawson and M. Johnson 15- http://www.chileculture.org/biography-of-pablo-neruda 16- https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1971/neruda-lecture.html

17-Book “Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place.” Chp 1, Juhani Pallasmaa

18-Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 3, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham

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19-Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 5, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham 20-Book, “Drifting - Architecture and Migrancy”, Chp 6 “Migration, exile and landscapes of the imagination”, A. Dawson and M. Johnson 21-Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 3, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham 22-Reading, “ Words, Works,Worlds” by Nelson Goodman 23-NYtimes.com <https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/books/review/Yang-t.html> 24-Shauntan.net <http://www.shauntan.net/images/essayRicSpencerinterview.pdf> 25-Book “Architecture, Ethics, and the Personhood of Place.” Chp 1, Juhani Pallasmaa

26-Altmedia.net <http://www.altmedia.net.au/the-arrival-ben-walsh-x-shaun-tan/22548> 27-Book, The Psychology of Culture Shock, Chp 5, Colleen Ward, Stephen Bochner and Adrian Furnham 28-Book, Memory and Architecture, Chp 1, “The Reciprocal Framing of Self and Place in Émigré Autobiographies”, Sabir Khan. 29-Book, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino 30-Book, the Sacred In-Between: The Mediating Roles of Architecture, Thomas Barrie

31-Jan Wampler Urban Design Studio in class lecture on the pace in-between

32-Chicagostories.org < http://chicagostories.org/immigrant-chicago/>

33-Chicago online journal, Chicago is the World Blog and Ethnic Media Project < http://chicagoistheworld. org/2014/05/we-are-the-world-a-doorway-to-tours-and-dining-in-global-chicago/> 34-Architecture.org <http://www.architecture.org/teach-learn/no-small-plans/readers-toolkit/chapter-1>

35-Book, Opening New Worlds, Jane Addams’ Hull-House, The University of Illinois at Chicago

36-Washingtonpost.com <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/give-us-your-tired-your-poor-the-story-of-poetand-refugee-advocate-emma-lazarus>

37-History.yale.edu <https://history.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2010%20rankin%20-%20reality%20of%20boundaries.pdf> See Notes for Chicago pointillism map. 38-Lockzero.org <http://lockzero.org.uic.edu/IV.html> 39-Yochicago.com <http://yochicago.com/good-morning-bridgeport/> 40-Book, Mask of Medusa, John Hejduk 41-Book, A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and FĂŠlix Guattari

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Alejandra Gomez University of South Florida School of Architecture and Community Design May 2018 407.446.5493 gomezgomez@mail.usf.edu https://issuu.com/m.alejandragomez

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Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Project May 2018 University of South Florida