intro panels
In our practices and our teaching, we conceptualize space as colorblind. We render those spaces as white, hegemonic, and normative. And we disengage when those spaces sustain racism.
This exhibit is an exploration of architecture’s role in perpetuating forms of racism. We share our thoughts through a series of images and texts that lead to a space for reflection and contribution. We hope that you will borrow and share material to help us, collectively, think more clearly about colorblind racism in architecture.
The sequence of images to the right are reconstructions of the space on Staten Island where Eric Garner was killed on July 17, 2014. We intend for these reconstructions--as well as those presented in this exhibit--to mimic the technologies and visualizations that we as architects and students use to produce and share our designs.
The center image shows ways we render these spaces and construct an imagined occupation of space. Our active color-blindness often reveals itself forcefully at this stage of design. The image at the bottom depicts the racist killing of Eric Garner in this space.
The question of whether the architecture--the product, the buildings, and streetscape--directly resulted in racial violence is not one we pose here. Rather, we ask if the services that architects employ in figuratively and literally rendering these spaces is racist.
Ibram Kendi defines racist policies as, “any [measures] that produces or sustain racial inequity between racial groups.” And he defines policies as “written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations, and guidelines that govern people.” If we extrapolate from policy to architecture--with architecture representing regulations, guidelines, and spaces that govern people--Kendi’s definitions tell us that the answer to the question posed above is yes.
This project is a collaboration of students, staff, and faculty in Environmental Design, the Center for Inclusion and Social Change, and Special Collections, Archives and Preservation at the UC Libraries. The project is based upon work partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1664260. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
