Studio Description
In this interdisciplinary research studio, "New conceptualizations of lightweight architecture: Design, Society, and Justice," I collaborated with Prof. Robert Rosenberger in the School of Public Policy. Students focused on historical research, community engagement, and justice, and critically questioned the built environment and its entanglement with oppression, inhibiting and fostering freedom.
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"Before it was a prison farm, it was a slave plantation, and before that, it was home to the Muscogee tribe, who were violently expelled in the 1820s and 1830s."
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BELOW ARE SEVEN STUDENT PROJECTS:
Grounded Expression by Stephanie Valdes & Linna Xia
“Land and land rights have played a significant role in the social, economic, and political hierarchies within the United States. The land of this site has been used to perpetuate disenfranchisement and the marginalization of minority groups in Georgia. Researching into the communities that have ties to this site-Muscogee and Black Americans, we have found forms of expression related to the land in voting - stomp dance and step dance. Programs and spaces promote solidarity amongst these groups and create an environment that allows for the intersectionality of voting rights in indigenous and black communities. Performance stages in the project are level with the topography of the ground as a reclamation of the physical land that has been taken and used against those marginalized for many years.” - Stephanie Valdes + Linna Xia
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Sweet Auburn Interstate Intervention by Maya Takai & Lizzie Turac
“This project examines the racist structures within the US interstate system, focusing on the I-85 and I-75 connectors in Sweet Auburn, Atlanta. Sweet Auburn was a historically rich African American community until white flight in the mid-20th century. The interstates were built to provide convenient access to the city for whites fleeing to the suburbs, but they became walls that trapped Black Americans in central cities. In Atlanta, the interstates displaced 30,000 people, with the original intention to destroy the city’s major Black-owned business. The interstates continue to divide and displace communities today, and unhoused people seeking refuge under the interstate are constantly evicted by the city’s “public safety” team. This project aims to reconnect the lost in-between space, create a more inviting underpass, and provide rest for the unhoused. It’s a step towards design justice for various underpasses across Atlanta and the US.” – Maya & Lizzie
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Breaking the Cycle by Nodoka Shimizu + Fatima Jarquin
“In this project, we break Atlanta Prison Farm into a set of fragmented blocks using lines that connect surrounding carceral systems. The fragmented blocks were reconfigured to create two masses facing north and south communities. Programmatic spaces provide education, food, and housing. The educational journey through the museum symbolizes the release from prison and the struggle of marginalization faced by formerly incarcerated persons. The project raises awareness of the barriers faced by reentering citizens and supports and visitors them through education, food, and housing. By encouraging interaction between reentering citizens and community members, the project aims to stop the cycle of recidivism.” – Nodoka + Fatima
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Reclamation Park by Alejandro Desrochers
“Reclamation Park is a public space for the arts and sports with two tensile structures, a sports court, and an all-purpose field. The winding walls are made of gabion baskets filled with concrete rubble from the Atlanta Police Department (APD) shooting range. They define the covered spaces, an art studio, and a batting cage. Evidenced by the graffiti-covered walls of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm across the street, the public may be inclined to cover the gabion walls with artful accounts of pain, healing, expression, and autonomy through graffiti. The proposal responds to the APD’s continued expansion in the DeKalb neighborhood by “decolonizing” a shooting range tucked in the forest, then reoccupying the land with interventions that promote and preserve the ecological, economic, and cultural value flows within the community.” – Alejandro Desrochers
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Torch by Jordan Hanna and Lauren Riehm
“The Cop City development reflects a continued trend of investing in carceral and punitive systems rather than community building and rehabilitation. Carceral systems continue to disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities, with mass incarceration contributing to perpetual marginality for those affected. Mass incarceration and punitive systems are upheld by systematic oppression that reaches deep into the history and the collective consciousness of America. Atlanta has a history of urban development that marginalizes those most vulnerable. While carceral systems embody control, exploitation, and distrust, our project attempts to create an architectural unit that embodies the opposite by being community-centered, owned, open-source, easily constructed, mobile, and adaptable. Torch is architecture in opposition to oppression and carceral systems: Architecture, instead of imposing, is community owned. Instead of bounding, it is open and portable. Instead of rigid, it is adaptable, malleable, and able to assist communities in efforts towards solidarity.” - Lauren Riehm & Jordan Hanna
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Culture Coves by Sophie Myers + Naomi Rubio
“This project is about the need for more wellness. There is a destructive, cyclical relationship between individuals and systems that are supposed to support and protect them. The economic imaginations of prison systems in the US extract well-being from populations by exploiting workers and denying them the resources to survive. Currently, Atlanta is working to erase the history of the Atlanta Prison Farm site by building a police training facility on it. Our response is the Culture Coves, located directly across the street from the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. Our project aims to remedy the social ills directed at the local community by granting them access to nutritious food. We take the position that some wellness can be attained through education, access, and community. Our programmatic spaces - classroom, greenhouse, farmers market, and mess hall - are integrated into six separate buildings.” - Sophie Myers + Naomi Rubio
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Unraveling the Fabric of Exploitation by Lauren Miraldi & Riwayat Katia
This team researched and critically studied how the textile industry and garment making are implicated in slavery and unpaid, prison, exploited labor today in America. “Textiles have a long, troubling history that is intertwined with the exploitation of workers. This project intends to make the ecosystem of textiles transparent. Informed by the history of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm as a site of forced labor, we acknowledge those who continue to make textile goods in dangerous conditions of exploitation. This project reconciles the process of making clothes, the workers exploited, and the act of purchasing clothes. From the initial stitching of a garment to upcycling it for a new life, our program celebrates the art of crafting and manipulating textiles through communal learning and tactile experiences.” - Lauren & Riv
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Our Studio Zine - "WORK IN PROGRESS"
In addition to project boards and videos, our studio created and published a student-led zine named "Work In Progess." It contains our research, student projects, and writings based on our learnings this semester. Click here to read the zine >>>
Link to Zine on EQIA website >>>
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to my collaborator Prof. Robert Rosenberger in the School of Public Policy; credible messenger and community activist Dominique Harris; SURJ organizer Ashley Dixon; Dr. Julie B. Johnson and her work with Idle Crimes and Heavy Work; storyteller and organizer Dr. Lauren Neefe; Victoria Lemos and her podcast Archive Atlanta; my colleague Danielle Willkens, and everyone else who contributed to this studio.