RECKONING: Healing After Hating

My most recent project was designed to address an injustice at multiple scales and multiple sites. The design culminates as an arts and cultural center and a memorial in Downtown Charlottesville and an additional memorial on Arts Grounds at the University of Virginia. The project was crafted in response to the Unite the Right Rally in Downtown Charlottesville & Torchlit March through Grounds that occured in August 2017. It is all about finding space to understand each other and appreciate the things that make up a diverse community.

Towards the end of the semester there was a mass shooting on Grounds that left our community heartbroken. As a result of this I added Arts Grounds to the project. It speaks the same language of healing after hating.

SITE LANDSCAPE SECTION TIMELINE // Using section conventions I’m displaying the evolution of each main part of the loop through time. The evolution follows when the Lee and Stonewall Jackson Monuments were commissioned and Maplewood Cemetary was paved, when the mounments became heavily contested in 2017, the monument removals in 2021, and the proposed influence of my proposal. Red represents the tension and chaos that filled these sites in the past and blue represents the healing that needs to be done.

LOOP OF CONFLICT // By connecting Market Street Park, Justice Square, and Maplewood Cemetary I found a loop of spaces that represent civil and racial distress in Charlottesville. Examples include the Charlottesville Police Department, Ablemarle Historical Society, Charlottesville Public Defender, Charlottesville City Hall, and the Office of Human Rights.

LOOP OF HEALING // The intervention into this contested space required the loop of conflict to become a loop of healing. My intervention would include a replacement monument at Market Street Park, a community center at Justice Square, and a pedestrian experience to connect the two to Maplewood Cemtetary.

MARKET STREET MONUMENT // This monument takes the place of the Robert E. Lee staue in Market Street Park. It emulates the 26-foot high structure to maintain the same level of munmentality even though it is in a different language. The tangle wire sculpture from previous exercises comes to play in two ways in this monument. Firstly, it serves a s a screen of chos that inhabitors look through to gain a new understanding of themselves and their community. Secondly, the wire influences the shape of the path that carves into the ground and splits th escreens. The six shapes are derived from that original wire shape, finding relationships in the curves created in the analytical drawing.

ARTS & LITERATURE COMMUNITY CENTER // The Community Center also takes on the wire tangle in two different ways. The first is those same six shapes that make up the Market Street Monument path make up the walls of the building. This accounts for an art exhibit, library, and study/ performance space on the interior, and 3 exterior sunken courtyards. The second was this wire tangle is integrated is as a screen facade outside of the glass on the perimeter of the building. The space would foster creativity in the community and host many art arts events, invite local artists, and work with public schools for competitions. The library would be a book sharing sysytem based on honor-code, that fosters a take one give one collection.

ARTS GROUND MONUMENT // Following the November 13th, 2022 mass shooting that took place on Arts Grounds at UVA, many of us were left heartbroken and in shock. The location of this hate-filled act of violence was our own little safe-saven and happened right in our front yard. I propose a monument that fosters reflection and connectivity with one another and our environment. The dimensions of this monument emulate that of an average tour bus, like the one the shooting happened on. There are two rows each with 11 pillars to represent the 22 students in the class that took the field trip. This monument would not have any trees or bushes in close proximity to maximize visibility. The mass shooting aligns closely with the issues I have tackling in this studio. Lack of human understanding, empathy, and care leads to brutality and racialized violence in our communities.