THESIS BOOK SELWYN BACHUS - SPRING ‘21
Table of Contents The content of this thesis book is the anthology of assignments for the Thesis Prep course at the Harvard GSD. Presented in order of issuance: Proust Questionnaire Definitions Thesis Statement Draft 1 Annotated Bibliography Family Tree Greimas Square Encyclopedia of Precedents Thesis Statement Draft 2 Program Chronology Site Cube Thesis Statement Draft 3 A short appendix has also been attached.
Prompt Questions (5) 1. What is urgent in the world? R: Respect and empathy S: need for peace 2. What occupies your thoughts? R: what the hell to do for thesis S: is there a “black” architecture, like there is “modernist” or “classical” 3. What architecture feels relevant? R: Architecture that isn’t self referential and reaches beyond the field, architecture that challenges the notion of what architecture can be S: Architecture doesn’t feel relevant to bigger societal issues 4. Which buildings are you interested in? R: From a formal perspective, I love Kahn. But I’m also interested in the sophisticated blankness of Lacaton and Vassal projects. S: Calatrava Transit Hub, metabolist architecture: formal biomimicry 5. What are you reading, watching, looking at, or listening to? R: ZUS: City of Temporality, Toshiko: Observations S: Watching: Queen’s Gambit, reading: Darell Fields “Architecture in Black”, Tom Misch and Yussef Dayes
“Beyond The prompt, my partner Rachel and I were tasked with writing 15 questions each. ”
Rachel Questions (15) 1. What/who is your “go to” design precedent? R: Stan Allen essays S: Tadao Ando 2. What has been your favorite studio prompt? R: Building Site Reciprocity S: Design a reading chair 3. What has been your least favorite studio prompt? R: Housing studio S: 21c Art Hotel 4. What do you consider overrated architecture? R: Anything swiss (Olgiati) S: hyper-minimalist design, it strips all meaning, sterility is negative (no sentiment or purpose) 5. Which historical architect would you most like to have a conversation with? R: Lina Bo Bardi on being a female in a man’s world S: Louis Kahn on the Salk Institute 6. Which skill would you most like to grow in design? R: Listening and asking for outside (not necessarily academic) input/advice S: Explaining design intent/meaning to non-architects 7. What don’t you like about architecture? R: too in a bubble S: pretentiousness (Capital-A Architecture as a social condition/ social value) 8. Where do you think architecture is headed? R: “Care is in the air” S: optimistically: egalitarian/liberating spaces, realistically: capitalist dumpster fire
9. Where do you feel you need to build? R: The south - need to mitigate the brain drain of talented, impactful designers S: Societal Margins: (i.e. the areas that developed for service staff in Brazilia) 10.What do you value most in your fellow designers? R: different backgrounds S: alternative perspectives 11.What would you be if you weren’t an architect? R: A planner or own a food co-op S: A Painter 12.What has 2020 meant to you? R: A year to slow down and put life into perspective… shifted attitudes of what it means to be a designer/architect S: Gratefulness 13.If you were to die and come back in a different decade or architecture movement, what would it be? R: 60s radical movement or 70s rising populism S: I would be a contemporary of Michaelangelo and break the classical system without operating within it like he did (campidoglio). Redefine the canon! 14.What is your most treasured book? R: Old photo album(s) S: Bible 15.What are your favorite design accounts to follow? R: everyverything, seriesofrooms S: Design milk
Selwyn Questions (15) 1. Do you believe that something could cause visual paralysis (visually encountering some”thing” that stops you in your tracks)? R: YES, happens every time I see a building in person that I’ve only ever seen in books S: yes, and i think it would have to be something that is either soul-shakingly horrifying or rapturously beautiful 2. Of all the buildings on earth, which one do you associate the most with joy? R: Friend’s loft S: Grandma’s house 3. Do you consider that space to be capital-A Architecture? R: definitely not, but capital F “Fun” S: not at all, but it embodies what i desire for cap-A Architecture to do/strive for 4. What work of Architecture would be your anthropomorphic double (characteristically and or physically)? R: Sagrada Familia - tall and slowly developing S: Gehry Louis Vuitton Foundation - all over the place 5. Do you have a preference for orthogonal or curvilinear, and is that preference related to the difficulty or ease of use? R: Tendency towards orthogonal, with a sprinkling of strategic arcs S: Orthogonal because i can control it 6. What is the worst outcome architecture can have? R: displaces existing culture S: make its inhabitants feel negatively 7. What is the best outcome architecture can have? R: creates excitement for the occupants, the context, and the field S: elevate the experience of living
8. What method/thing would you say defines your design process the most? R: Fabricating a conceptual crisis halfway through the design process S: Perspective (views) 9. What non-designers have inspired or developed your design positioning? How? R: 5 of my closest friends from high school who are now a lawyer, doctor, data analyst, farmer, politician’s staff. They ground me to the realities of the world by making fun of what I do. S: Family - shaping what communal space “feels” like, to design for a feeling as opposed to an aesthetic. 10. What is your greatest pet-peeve in built work? R: aluminum facades S: mis-alignment and lack of rhythm 11. What building would you like to demolish tomorrow? R: Any Peter Eisenman project, but specifically the Aronoff Center. S: Portland Building 12. Attempt to describe what Architecture “is” in 7 words or less? R: Design that is more hopeful than realistic.. S: Confluence of the spiritual, social, and spatial 13. In what context would you most like to build? (any city, state, country, continent, or landscape, maybe even planet) R: Either extreme urban or extreme rural S: Mountain top (snow-capped) 14. Is architecture your true or only passion? Can architecture be a passion? R: It used to not be, then it was, and now it’s not as much of one or more a changing definition of passion. Architecture must be a passion for anyone that’s made it this far in school. S: Not my only passion, but it is so loosely defined that I think most of us cannot truly grasp it to be passionate about. You can’t be passionate about something that is both immaterial and concretely material.
15. If you could inherit a skill from one architect, what skill would it be, and from whom? R: Dan D’Oca and his ability to make true connections with locals in the environment he’s building or designing for. S: Renzo Piano’s detailing, so that i could not worry about details (they would be second nature) and focus on big picture stuff.
“The Proust questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. ”
Define (verb) verb (used with object), de·fined, de·fin·ing. 1. to state or set forth the meaning of (a word, phrase, etc.): They disagreed on how to define “liberal.” 2. to explain or identify the nature or essential qualities of; describe: to define judicial functions. 3. to fix or lay down clearly and definitely; specify distinctly: to define one’s responsibilities. 4. to determine or fix the boundaries or extent of: to define property with stakes. 5. to make clear the outline or form of: The roof was boldly defined against the sky.
6. verb (used without object), de·fined, de·fin·ing. to set forth the meaning of a word, phrase, etc.; construct a definition.
“II
”
Define: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Black Canon Detail Embody Immaterial Margin Perspective Purpose Rythn Sentiment Site Social/communal Soul Spatial Spiritual
“Text from Selwyn Bachus
”
Black (adj./noun/verb)
• • •
having the very dark color of the night sky or the eye’s pupil : of the color black of or relating to any of various population groups of especially African ancestry often considered as having dark pigmentation of the skin but in fact having a wide range of skin colors characterized by the absence (*absorption) of (*all) light “Black is an experience. An experience of emotion, of culture, of space, of interwoven time. Black is the folding in of 4 centuries of the American “experiment” in relation to black bodies and minds, along with the primordial connection to the roots of the human race. It is at once homogeneous and disparate, simultaneously cosmic and individualized. Black is dynamic, in the night sky, it is the absence of any light, but in light it is the presence of all colors. Blackness is centripetal, it has its own gravitational pull, like a frozen star (black hole). Unlike a black hole which acts as solely consumptive, Blackness is ultimately constructive. Blackness is resistant to singular definition, but to characterize, it is the experience of the ebbs and flows of constant “Otherness”. ”
Canon (noun)
•
a body of principles, rules, standards, or norms “Architectural canons are tired dogmas. The restrictive nature of these fabricated doctrines has led to the death of the soul in architecture. The reliance on Modernist tenets has placed contemporary work in a space that privileges the blank, the nondescript, the sterile, and the formally stunted. Rules were meant to be broken, let us return to the ornamental, the honest, the spirit-filled. ”
Detail (noun/verb)
• • • •
extended treatment of or attention to particular items the small elements that collectively constitute a work of art to assign to a particular task a part of a whole “Details are much greater than the way hand rails or door hinges come together, they are the design moves that tie together space with meaning. In the case of the The National Memorial for Peace and Justice each suspended element participates in a dialogue of highly-charged enumeration. In the Saint Petersburg mosque, as is the case with much Islamic architecture, the overlap of geometry and mosaic creates intense and sophisticated depths of light and shadow. Which is meant to represent the grandeur of a most-high power who’s image is never to be speculated upon. Gaudi’s Casa Battlo is a gold-mine for cases of detail with narrative, the most striking of which is the combination of multicolored tiles and textured glass in the central light well. Creating the experience of moving water. ”
Embody (verb)
•
to make concrete and perceptible “Architecture in my opinion has the difficult requirement of somehow embodying what it represents. To make concrete that which often is immaterial. For example, Newton’s intimate relationship and knowledge of the universe. Or the formidable expression of trial-by-fire, death, and hope after survival Stanley Tigerman had to contend with in the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. The plan of which uses the hinge between to programmatic bars to create an “uninhabitable void”, a space memorializing those who did not make it through to “hope” after trial. ”
Immaterial (adj.)
• •
of no (*extremely) substantial consequence not consisting of matter “To embody the ineffable requires command of the immaterial. The blur building represents immateriality in its most material sense, that of ephemeral an transient. More often the sense of immateriality in architecture is the sensuous: sound and silence, refraction of light, temporal (historical) oscillation, temperature, air quality, even smell (Petrichor in the Pantheon). All of these immaterial phenomena reside in the Pandora’s box of architectural manipulation. ”
Margin (noun/verb)
• • • •
the outside limit and adjoining surface of something a spare amount or measure or degree allowed or given for contingencies or special situations the limit below which economic activity cannot be continued under normal conditions measure or degree of difference ““Otherness” implies the marginal, beyond the threshold of uniformity. In direct contrast to the canonical, the margin offers the most opportunity for growth through radical exploration. Socially, the marginal are those who have been cast out by architecture. As an institution, Architecture has a duty to repair the wounds which it helped to inflict, and by association the architects who carry out the act of architecture. ”
Perspective (noun/adj.)
• • • • •
a mental view or prospect a visible scene the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance the appearance to the eye of objects in respect to their relative distance and positions the technique or process of representing on a plane or curved surface the spatial relation of objects as they might appear to the eye “Perspective gives us the greatest ability to experience theoretical and unbuilt architecture. It relates most to our actual perception of existence in space. As a design tool, it is indispensable for understanding how things will truly be encountered in space Solely as a drawing device, perspective provides the most dynamic outcomes and design opportunities. Most importantly, perspective allows us to design for others. By working to understand the mental prospect of those we are designing for, we are able to design more effectively and intuitively. (design empathy) ”
Purpose (noun/*adj.)
• • •
something set up as an object or end to be attained: intention a subject under discussion or an action in course of execution the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists “Mies’ assertion that architecture is the “will of an epoch translated into space.” compared to his sentiment (from the same essay) that “The endeavors of the mystics will be remembered as mere episodes.” is meant to be antithetical and disparative. These sentiments though are two faces of the same coin. In the essay he also attacks the “romantics”, but Mies himself is a mystic and a romantic, just of utility and function. Architecture is purpose (will) materialized.
”
1
“The metaphor of life is rooted in architecture. To be born, to grow, to be, is an architectural experience. It starts from excavation, from nothing, and has only a plan that in time comes to fruition. No matter how sad, how tragic a site might be, how abused by history, architecture has the notion of a future.” - Daniel Liebskind
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/daniel-libeskind-architecture-emotions/index.html
Rhythm (noun)
• • •
a characteristic rhythmic pattern movement, fluctuation, or variation marked by the regular recurrence or natural flow of related elements the effect created by the elements in a play, movie, or novel that relate to the temporal development of the action “Rhythm is important visually and perceptively in experiencing architecture. The ordered collection of architectural elements shows an ability to focus and guide the will being materialized, allowing the will to be easily perceived by those “in-the-know” (architects) and the “lay-person”. The Rhythm of promenades and spatial experience is much more like dance, experienced as constant relation to previous positioning. Rhythm in promenade separates the great building, from the fetishized formally-provocative or surface-rich (in facade). Rhythm should be pervasive from outside in and vice-versa. ”
Sentiment (noun)
• • •
an idea colored by emotion the emotional significance of a passage or expression as distinguished from its verbal context emotional idealism “Emotional intent ”
https://designmanifestos.org/mathias-goeritz-emotional-architecture-manifesto/
Site (noun/verb)
• • • •
the spatial location of an actual or planned structure or set of structures a space of ground occupied or to be occupied by a building the place, scene, or point of an occurrence or event to place on a site or in position : locate “Site means history. The physical, but more so temporal and relational context in which we build. Site is the first design driver, formal answers lie within it. As we examine the palimpsest of a sites multiple contexts, we can establish the magnetic poles that pull at our project. These nodes of formal attraction can come in many forms: the historic, the hydrologic, the spiritual, openings in the city fabric, even the regional. The desired reception of a building by any site should be that the project looks as if it was always/meant to be there. Justification should be made for a project to dominate or detract from its surroundings, disruption and detraction aren’t desired ”
Social/communal (adj./noun)
• • •
of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society of, relating to, or designed for sociability tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others “The power to house the collective and facilitate interaction is an inherent power of crafting space. Architecture serves as social currency, attracting visitors for its cultural value and relevance. It serves as social condenser, demarcating and sorting the confluence of human movement. It houses (domestically) the collective, imbuing spaces with memory. The social need should be the driving force of program as site is to form. ”
Soul (noun/adj.)
• • • • • • •
the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe a strong positive feeling (as of intense sensitivity and emotional fervor) conveyed especially by African American performers cultural consciousness and pride among people of African heritage of, relating to, or characteristic of Black Americans or their culture designed for or controlled by blacks “Soul is the emotional essence of the human subject, the unstoppable emissive nature of human experience. Soul is experienced by a sort of sixth sense, felt but not definable. Buildings can have soul too, by projecting onto or deepening the emotional sate of the inhabiting subject. This requires a level of intimacy with the design of a project, a pouring into the being of art from oneself. The other arts benefit from the expenditure of emotional and intellectual intensity: in BB King’s guitar riffs, in a mother’s cooking, in the theatre. Pouring emotion into architecture makes buildings anthropomorphic. Hejduk best exemplifies this in “Victims” and the proof resides in the realized manifestations of “The House of the Suicide” and “The House of the Mother of the Suicide”. ”
Spatial (adj.)
•
of, relating to, or involved in the perception of relationships (as of objects) in space -space: • a limited extent in one, two, or three dimensions • an extent set apart or available • physical space independent of what occupies it • the opportunity to assert or experience one’s identity or needs freely • an opportunity for privacy or time to oneself • a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction “The spatial is the projective and the relational. Space is experienced as both the distance between two objects (like God and Adams’ fingers), but equally important is the space between people. (see Craig Wilkins Aesthetics of Equity) . The spatial is also projective, the preparation of spaces for new programs, new inhabitants, and new technologies. Galina Balashova’s speculations on what inhabiting space (cosmological) should be like serve as an example of designing for the yet unrealized. ”
Spiritual (adj./noun)
• • •
• •
of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : incorporeal of or relating to sacred matters related or joined in spirit -spirit: • essence • soul of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena a religious song usually of a deeply emotional character that was developed especially among Blacks in the southern U.S. “Relating to the unknown but desired understanding of the order of the universe. An experienced connection between the individual experience and the cosmic collective. Intimately related to the soul. ”
Draft I “The project creates a marginal space on a 6 block stretch in Omaha of Harney Street, between 12th and 18th. The blocks are within the city’s main business district, and the social condenser of downtown. One hundred years apart, Will Brown was lynched by a mob for a crime he did not commit in September of 1919, and in May of 2020 James Scurlock was shot by a white bar owner during protests as a result of George Floyd’s murder. As Omaha coped with the aftermath of Scurlock’s killing, a common sentiment was that Omaha was not a place where things like this happen. A cursory analysis of the city’s history and the downtown site of Scurlock’s untimely and unnecessary death reveals that black struggle is deeply ingrained in the fabric of the city both physically and socially/historically. The project will operate with the concept of promenade in relation to experiences of time, to illustrate how time has moved forward but things remain the same. Using stair-elements to create a promenade that feels as if progress is being made, but staying in the same place, or ending up back where you started. Concretizing the black experience of time and progress, which is like the Penrose (or impossible) staircase that forms a continuous loop, where a person can climb them forever and never get any higher. Or the drawings of M.C. Escher’s distortive pathways in his 1953 illustration “Relativity”. Lastly the twinning and application of anamorphosis between the sites of these two men’s separate but deeply intertwined fates, to stitch together the urban context’s (and city at larges) immaterial scars. ”
Bibliography 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.
The Aesthetics of Equity - Craig L Wilkins * Architecture In Black - Darell Wayne Fields * The Future of the Race - Henry Louis Gates, Jr. + Cornel West * Schlepping Through Ambivalence - Stanley Tigerman * Designing Bridges to Burn - Stanley Tigerman * Mask of Medusa - John Hejduk The Black Architect’s Experience - J Max Bond African American Architects in Current Practice - Jack Travis Dear Architecture - Craig Wilkins Such Places as Memory - John Hejduk Soundings - John Hejduk Adjusting Foundations - John Hejduk Architectures in Love - John Hejduk The architecture of Exile - Stanley Tigerman The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois The Shaping of Black America - Lerone Bennett, Jr. Versus: An American Architect’s Alternatives - Stanley Tigerman African American Folktales - Roger D. Abrahams Ruffneck Constructivists - Craig L. Wilkins Resistance, Education and the Collective Will of the Just City - Jack Travis An imaginary Territory, The Problematic of Space in Zionist Discourse - Uri Eisenzweig The Archetype of the Labyrinth in the Architecture of Holocaust Memorials - Katarzyna Witasiak The Site of Memory - Toni Morrison Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America - S. Hartman The Architect as Storyteller - James McGregor Inventing Traditions - Eric Hobsbawm * Consent Not to be a Single Being - Fred Moten Intimate History, Radical Narrative - Saidiya Hartman * The Lesson of Africa - David Adjaye *
30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.
Thesis - Liz Diller A Black Theology of Liberation - James Cone Race + Modern Arch.: A Critical History from Enlightenment to Present - Wilson, Cheng, Davis Space, Time, & Architecture - Sigfried Gideon Risks of Faith: The emergence of a Black theology of Liberation, 1968-98 - James H. Cone The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History - Dolores Hayden Collage City - Colin Rowe Citical Mass: Urban Philosophies - Rem koolhaas and Cornel West Necropolitics - Achille Mbembe Critique of Black Reason - Achille Mbembe Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization - Achille Mbembe The Non-Objective World - Kasimir Malevich The Site of Memory - Toni Morrison Big Jugs - Jennifer Bloomer * Tabbles of Bower - Jennifer Bloomer * Piranesi’s “Campo Marzio”: an Experimental Design - Stanley Allen Cultural Community Wealth: Project Pride - Angeline Dean * Exodus - Rem Koolhaas * Field Trip - Rem Koolhaas * Kissing Architecture - Sylvia Lavin * Kinaesthetic Knowing - Alexander Zeynep * The Split Wall: Domestic Voyeurism - Beatriz Colomina Critical Regionalism - Kenneth Frampton * Notes around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism - Somol & Whiting * Critical Architecture - K. Michael Hays * Undead- John McMorrough * The Ecstasy of Influence - Jonahtan Letham * Building Character - Charles Davis * Postmodernism and Consumer Society - Fredric Jameson *
59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.
2 Architects 10 Questions - Rem Koolhaas + Bernard Tschumi * Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? - Bruno Latour * Did Postmodernism Lead to Post-Truth? - Lee McIntyre * Junkspace - Rem Koolhaas * The Case for the Tectonic - Kenneth Frampton * Notes on More - Andrew Holder * Reflections on Simultaneity, Ambiguity, and the ‘Jellyfish’ Drawings of Daniel Castor - C.A. Debelius The Archetype of the Labyrinth In the Architecture of Holocaust Memorials - Katarzyna Witasiak God and Black Suffering: Calling the Oppressors to Account - James H. Cone The Politics of the Envelope I & II - Alejandro Zaera-Polo
“ * previously read ”
Family Tree Ando Blackwell Buege Cohen Fields Hejduk Mori Sample Shannon Tigerman West Wilkins
blackness theory mythology/spirituality research narrative crafting form
Bachus
Greimas Square LIFE
TIME
SPACE
CIPHER
KINESTHETICS
NOT TIME
NOT SPACE
DEATH
Encyclopedia A visual encyclopedia of precedents.
Department of Radio and Television, University of Silesia - BAAS Arquitectura + Grupa 5 Architekci Void from Solid, Transparency v. Opacity, Material Contextual Response
Exhibition Hall with Floating Levels - Conrad Roland Untraceable beggings and Endings, Percieved Endlesness, Ad Infinitum
Niyang River Visitor Center - Standardarchitecture + Zhaoyang Architects Carving, Geode-like material revelations
Op Art Graffiti - Astro + 1010 Surface Reclamation, Unnerving Voids, Implied Darkness and Depth
Anamorphic Typography - Joseph Egan + Hunter Thomson Perspective Alteration, Collapsing of Space
Trois Elipses Ouvertes en Desordre - Felice Varini Urban Scale Anamorphosis, Building Scarring/Tattooingg
The Steps of Providence - Machado + Silvetti City-scale Promenade, Interweaving Found Urban Fabric
Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto - Carlo Rainaldi, Bernini, Fontana Twinning, Framing, Urban Gateways
NMAAHC Contemplative Court - Aadjaye, Bond, Freelon Water and Reflection
NMAAHC Exhibition Promenade - Aadjaye, Bond, Freelon Kinesthetic Historical Journey
The Hive “Vessel” - Thomas Heatherwick Interweaving Continuous Promenade
Step Wells of Chand Baori, Nagar Sagar Kund, and Sree Peralassery Temple Continuous Kinesthetic descent/ascent
Salk Institute - Louis Kahn Twinning, Water and Procession
Museum of Independence, Dhaka fountain - Marina Tabassum Twinning (Above and Below), Water and Reflection
Draft II “The project attempts to embody a reflexive procession of spaces, through kinetic rhythm and constructed perspectives of site on a 6 block stretch of Omaha’s Harney Street, between 12th and 18th. These blocks occupy space amongst fortune 500 non-human “financial” entities, and the social condenser of the Old Market. More importantly, these blocks occupy space between two scenes of Black Martyrdom. These blocks unassumingly and unconsciously participate in a temporal and social doorway effect, allowing the city’s history to be forgotten after passing through (or be covered up). In September 1919 Will Brown was lynched by a mob for a crime he did not commit, and in May of 2020 James Scurlock was shot by a white bar owner during protests as a result of George Floyd’s murder. As the city’s social fabric coped with the aftermath of Scurlock’s killing, a common sentiment was that Omaha was not a place “where things like this happen”. A cursory analysis of the city’s history and these sites of martyrdom reveal that black struggle is deeply ingrained in the city’s physical fabric alongside the social. The project is an incessant and ceaseless promenade in relation the Black experience of space and time on these blocks; moving forwards yet backwards, up but down toward and away. “Time has moved forward but things remain the same.” Like the Penrose (or impossible) staircase that forms a continuous loop, where a person can climb them forever and never get any higher. Or the drawings of M.C. Escher’s distortive pathways in his 1953 illustration “Relativity”. The twinning of these martyrs will express itself in, on, and through the buildings that connect and separate them. Making visible the city’s scars, revealing this is a place “where things like this happen.” ”
Program Event: Historical Empathic Pilgrimage Program: A Maze or Labyrinth, that disorients the senses and distorts perceptions. Agenda: Interrupt the flow of urban movement, demarcating important sites by slowing down processions. Maneuvering through the labyrinth inculcates the frustration of trying your damndest to make progress, but never quite reaching it. Program Chronology: The project would have to commence immediately, in the midst of this post-George Floyd moment, and in light of the 1oo year timeline being referenced. It could begin with simple in-ground plaques, that then become twin site markers, ultimately turning into coupled arch/gateways correlating the sites. The project is not prototypical as it is highly site specific, but the specificity, site + context, and content necessitate permanence. If the project is meant to reveal the city’s scars, it might have to operate as one itself, altering the city forever. I can hear them, but I can’t see them. I can see them, but I can’t get to them. Haven’t we been here already? This looks familiar... AGAIN?!?!!!? How do we get out of this? --Did we ever even make it out?
Site Omaha, Nebraska Population: 478,192 12.3% Black Area: 141 Square Miles Poverty Rate: 13.4% 26.37% Black 8.29% White “#6 Ranked State” “#2 Best Cities After Military Service” “#3 Best Cities to Relocate to in America” “#6 Most Secure Large Cities in the U.S.” “#6 America’s Best Cities for a Healthy Retirement” “#8 Most Secure Places” “#9 Best Places for Military Retirees” “Higher STD Rates than U.S. Average for over 15 years ” “Per Capita: higher Murder Rate than Chicago ”
Omaha is a flyover city, in a flyover state, in an unassuming and rarely considered landscape.
Relatively safe from foreign attack, it is all too familiar with domestic attack.
Interstates Hang, Draw, and Quarter the city.
Rigidly defining economic, social, and racial zones. Within the Central Business District and Social Condensor of the Old Market entertainment district, the supposed “melting pot” of the city, occured two killings of Black men that scarred the city. 100 years apart.
Black Hispanic White
1919 Will Brown 18th and Harney Lynched by mob
2020 James Scurlock 12th and Harney Shot amid George Floyd protests by white bar owner
Draft III “The project attempts to embody a reflexive procession of spaces, through kinetic rhythm and constructed perspectives of site on a 6 block stretch of Omaha’s Harney Street, between 12th and 18th. These blocks occupy space amongst fortune 500 non-human “financial” entities, and the social condenser of the Old Market. More importantly, these blocks occupy space between two scenes of Black Martyrdom. These blocks unassumingly and unconsciously participate in a temporal and social doorway effect, allowing the city’s history to be forgotten after passing through (or be covered up). In September 1919 Will Brown was lynched by a mob for a crime he did not commit, and in May of 2020 James Scurlock was shot by a white bar owner during protests after George Floyd’s murder. As the city’s social fabric coped with the aftermath of Scurlock’s killing, a common sentiment was that Omaha was not a place “where things like this happen”. A cursory analysis of the city’s history and these sites of martyrdom reveal that black struggle is deeply ingrained in the city’s physical fabric alongside the social. The project is an incessant and ceaseless promenade in relation the Black experience of space and time on these blocks; moving forwards yet backwards, up but down toward and away. “Time has moved forward but things remain the same.” Like the Penrose (or impossible) staircase that forms a continuous loop, where a person can climb them forever and never get any higher. Or the drawings of M.C. Escher’s distortive pathways in his 1953 illustration “Relativity”. The twinning of these martyrs will express itself in, on, and through the buildings that connect and separate them. Ultimately making an architectural incision where a social gash has already been inflicted, making visible the city’s scars, revealing this is a place “where things like this happen.” To emulate the black experience of a violent urban fabric, this project will incorporate elements of the house of horror/terror. Architecturally this will manifest in descents into darkness, shrinking and compressive pathways, distortion of depth perception (nearness and farness), incessant surveillance, isolation, feeling through a fog-filled space, self-responding echoes, wading through water. It will be a solitary journey, through a choreographed pathway, from which you can never be the same again. ”
Appendix “In the midst of a vast landscape, exists a central spot. Some call it the heartland. Specifically, we are referencing Omaha, Nebraska. Considered generally to be insignificant, a “flyover” city. For National security, it is of extreme importance, as the most difficult place for foreign attack. But what about domestic attack? The city has participated in spatial violence and used interstate scarrification to create fairly rigid boundaries. Keeping the Hispanic community confined to the South East, and the black community to the North East. In the supposed melting pot of the central business and entertainment district, where business entities and racial communities mix, one would assume the spatial violence ends It does not. In fact it is even more explicit, but far less evident. ”
K O O B S I S E H T 12‘ GNIRPS - SUHCAB NYWLES