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Lightweight memorial structures of Brick & Tensegrity on the Chattahoochee Brick Company Site SPRING 2022 STUDIO by VERNELLE A. A. NOEL

Studio Description

by Vernelle A. A. Noel

In this interdisciplinary research studio (with Aerospace Engineering), teams designed exhibition and memorial pavilions on the site of the Chattahoochee Brick Company in Atlanta, Georgia. By employing tectonics of brick and tensegrity, these pavilions were to house exhibitions and serve as memorials for public education on the site's history, and showcase innovations in brick and construction.

The Site. The Chattahoochee Brick Company site is one of pervasive tension. Countless atrocities were committed there through the use and exploitation of convict laborers who were worked to death to benefit company shareholders including Atlanta Mayor, James English. The 75-acre site exists at several tensions: greed and (in)humanity; memory and material; experience and the built environment; the past, present, and future.

"The Chattahoochee Brick site is one of many sites across the South where humanity did not act humanely and honorably. We cannot undo the past. However, we can recognize and acknowledge what happened to the convict laborers, and with the community, in an inclusive and meaningful way, memorialize and honor those who lost their lives and were buried at the site." - Jill Arrington.
Postcard from 1896 of the Chattahoochee Brick Company Site
Current photo of Site

The Project – Poetics of construction, tectonics, and can it stand? ‘Lightweight’ pavilions were to be poetic in design, tectonics, and construction, exhibiting documentation, artifacts, and stories of these lives for public education. Designs were to include ‘brick’ to ground and commemorate the victims’ creativity. The purpose is to highlight the design innovations of those silenced, imagine their futures and possibilities with digital technology, and showcase the beauty of tectonics in architecture.

Ornamental brick fragment from the Chattahoochee Brick Company (link)

Learning objectives:

  • Conducting historical research on the site and its events
  • Research and prototyping of tensegrity structures
  • Conceptual grounding and siting of design proposals
  • Design development, and tectonics
  • Developing architectural attitudes in relation to current discourses on memorials

Below are 5 project descriptions and videos produced by the students.

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Pavilion for the Erased Brickmakers by Mary Hestad & Zaima Ahmed

Pavilion for the Erased Brickmakers by Mary Hestad & Zaima Ahmed

"This pavilion represents the duality of the Chattahoochee Brick Company’s history, acknowledging its heaviness while honoring the lives of the individuals that built Atlanta. Inhumane convict housing units on the site provided respite from the eye of the warden and a place for inmates to have a sense of ownership over meager belongings that included combs, keys, nails, and strings. The site of these tenements has practically been erased from history. In this project, we locate our pavilion (on this erased site), to celebrate the humanity of the people who labored tirelessly. Discarded fragments of brick - brickbats - would be salvaged from the site to mark the footprint of this place and as a construction material show how we can pick up these broken pieces and let them stand together. Within the footprint are steel frames, ghosts of the housing units, which dissolve into a space frame that reconciles earth to sky. These are the actors in the story while the pavilion itself serves as the narrator, telling of the people who were worked and housed like animals." - Mary and Zaima

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The Pavilion of Rhythmic Liberation by Alexander Poff & Colin Woodham

Pavilion of Rhythmic Liberation by Alexander Poff & Colin Woodham

"The kilns at the Chattahoochee Brick Company were a place of appalling mistreatment toward convict laborers, including the scene of crimes like beating, torturing, and even burning humans alive. A series of hidden tunnels found beneath the site appears to be a critical element to these kilns. This architectural feature is used in the pavilion, to be honest, and educate the public about these atrocities without traumatizing anyone. Therefore, the tunnels will be ‘defeated’ as the procession through the pavilion advances. Our tensegrity structure “unbuilds” the tunnel, which it represents, by blossoming upward from the brick. The human body will be responsible for overcoming the tunnel by raising the structure with its own weight. People will be liberated from the rhythm of a repetitious, uncomfortable passageway. The human bodies that were exploited are memorialized through this liberation, bringing the promise, “these bones shall rise,” to fruition." - Alex and Colin

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The Motion(less) Pavilion by Kaila Andino & Begüm Namal

The Motion(less) Pavilion by Kaila Andino & Begüm Namal

"The concept of The Motion(less) Pavilion comes from the idea of the idle crimes that mostly Black men were arrested for, and the movement as punishment that the laborers were forced to endure at the Chattahoochee Brick Company. After the site visit where we learned about the projects “Idle Crimes and Heavy Work” and “Moving our Stories” from Dr. Julie B. Johnson, we decided to take this concept of idle and movement and transform it from its negative connotations into a new positive meaning. Idle turns into moments of sitting and standing for education and reflection of the past and present of the site and the people, and movement turns into the action walking and performing and celebration." - Kaila and Begum

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The Pavilion of Stone and Light by Christian Waweru & Sean Li

The Pavilion of Stone and Light by Christian Waweru & Sean Li

“I have been walking down a crooked path, where the walls have fallen, broken me in half…I will not rest till I lay down my head, I’m gonna go to the house of stone and light.” - Martin Page, House of Stone and Light.

This pavilion is meant to commemorate the convict laborers who lost their lives at the Chattahoochee Brick Company, whose names most don’t remember, whose stories are untold. We memorialize them with bricks like the ones they built, the ones used as their makeshift gravestones, but much bigger, more prominent, and more deserving of their stories. We memorialize them with a brick-laden crooked path that tells of their hardship, and a tensegrity pavilion that tells of their resilience, which shifts and stretches and moves as time passes, but never falters. We dig into the ground and unearth their lost stories, and now, as one person once wrote on the walls of our site, “These bones shall rise.”

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"By Human Hands" Pavilion by Alejandro Ruck-Vega

"By Human Hands" Pavilion by Alejandro Ruck-Vega

"Death, in any form, appears to us unacceptable – but tragedy is unavoidable. When we accept this fact, we can choose to take life as being without purpose - yet societies build memorials. Christian scripture would imply that facing our pain – and pushing through it – allows even the most bitter and broken of us to find healing and hope. The now-razed Chattahoochee Brick Company once forced poor Americans accused of outrageous crimes to work as slaves to produce the bricks that built Atlanta. “By Human Hands” is a theoretical proposal meant to generate momentum towards transforming this sacred site today. In a narrative of steel and stone, the weight of the world is suspended around you as you lose touch with the earth. In a moment of reflection, you raise up the names of those who built our world. Perhaps, through confrontation, truth, and reverence, healing may find its way to this land. By human hands." - Alejandro

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“Between the shadows and light” Pavilion by Daniela Villaroel

“Between the shadows and light” Pavilion by Daniela Villaroel

"The history and the events of the site carry darkness and heaviness due to the stark injustice for the lives lost and evil acts committed at the former convict slave leasing brick factory. The long-sustained shadow cast to hide or erase the memories has also erased the light and voices that deserve exposure. By using a series of screens to display the memorial for the CBC victims and history, this shadow slowly gets split by introducing gaps where light bleeds through. There is a required contrast in materials used for the series of perforated walls that break up the rhythm as one walks through the pavilion, allowing for new views and light to be created as the days pass through. The screens also vary in structural composure, varying the perceived stability of an individual screen, yet adding to the concrete whole." - Dani

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to my collaborator Prof. Julian Rimoli in the Aerospace Engineering Dept., Victoria Lemos, host of Archive Atlanta; Dr. Julie B. Johnson and her work with Idle Crimes and Heavy Work, and everyone else who contributed to this studio.

References

  1. Bricks and Bones: Discovering Atlanta’s Forgotten Spaces of Neo-Slavery
  2. “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II” by Douglas A. Blackmon
  3. Slavery by Another Name film >>
  4. Groundwork Atlanta >>
  5. Amid Debates About Memorials, Advocates Push To Remember Atlanta's Forced Laborers >>
  6. Forced Laborers Built Atlanta's Streets. How Should the City Remember Them? >>
  7. Debate Over Empty Lot Unearths Ugly Piece Of Atlanta History >>
  8. Save Chattahoochee Brick Site >>