Students scale, which we’ve had to do for the past few semesters, I think is one of the trickiest problems in architecture.” The Berlin trip taken with her option studio and Mellon seminar led Black to further investigate the human aspects of influence that make a city what it is. “You have a group of gentrifiers moving into the same neighborhoods in which immigrants have been living for a few generations, or just moved into. It becomes these two competing factors, not to say in opposition, not to say that one is above the other. I think they both deserve equal attention because they affect the city in such a monumental way,” Black says. Prior to the Mellon Fellowship, Black was awarded a Hunter R. Rawlings III Cornell Presidential Research Scholarship (RCPRS) based on an essay about arrival cities and arrival architecture, which have the potential to aid assimilation by offering a supportive enclave, she says. “I gained a lot more focus since the Mellon seminar on what I want to look at. I felt that I was too vague and giving off an ‘architecture knows and cures all’ kind of vibe,” Black says of her original RCPRS paper. “My research is currently narrowing to focus on housing in the U.S. and Germany but will of course benefit from understanding border control and the idea of the noncitizen to paint a broader picture of housing migrant populations.” Black hopes to use her RCPRS research stipend for another trip to Germany for site visits, to continue researching Germany as an arrival country, and to further her research on New York City as a microcosm of global trends and political climates. “Right now I’m trying to triangulate what I’ve learned in my Berlin option studio with what I’ve been doing in the Mellon seminar, and building on this research independently,” she says of her RCPRS work, which may also lead to her B.Arch. thesis. Outside of the classroom, Black is the treasurer for Hallie Black presents during the review for the fall option studio titled Berlin—City Between Immigration and Gentrification, taught by Professor Werner Goehner. the student club Building Community at Cornell. The club encourages students to complete hands-on Profile projects, and share their skills both on and off campus. In 2016, the club created a traveling tool library, from which members of the Cornell community and Ithaca at large can rent out tools and return them, for example, after they’ve refinished a bathroom or hung a picture frame. And in the fall of 2017, the club collaborated with Cornell Hillel to construct a 30' by 10' sukkah, an outdoor structure for celebrating the Jewish holiday Sukkot. Black’s role in the club over the last two years has been organizing projects in the community. Her favorite part, she says, is using skills learned through metal and wood shop in a real-world setting within Designing on such a scale, Black says, is the biggest When she first started studying German, Black Ithaca as a whole. The tools library is housed at Ithaca challenge she’s encountered at Cornell. It involves not couldn’t imagine checking out library books in the Generator, a makerspace near the Ithaca Commons. only critical problems within the urban realm, but new language she was learning. In fact, at the begin“Our tools and library space now reach a greater also grappling with global migrations. ning of her studies, she had no intention of pursuing audience,” Black says. “As for our club, we also carry Understanding how to incorporate refugee housing a German minor at all. But in the summer of 2016, out smaller projects such as hosting our own workand the constructs of moving people are crucial to the Black was able to live with her cousin in Berlin shops on slip casting or designing/building shelving for design process. “Integrating people into a neighborand take a German intensive class for beginners at Significant Elements, a local consignment shop [and hood,” she says, “would allow for healthy interactions, Freie Universität. architectural salvage warehouse]. To fund-raise, we host healthy additions to a city that would promote better “I really wanted to experience a new place and community supper clubs to gather Cornell students living for citizens and noncitizens.” language, and learn something new that was not under one roof to celebrate community investment.” Born and raised in Boston, Black was a “lifer” at offered in my rigid degree process,” Black says. “More Going forward, Black is excited to continue studying Brimmer and May School, attending the same instituimportantly than learning a new skill and living on German, and conduct research independently as well as tion from Pre-K through high school. my own in a new environment, I began to investigate, for the RCPRS program. In spring 2018, she will partici“You’d imagine that I’d go and do something oppoperhaps subconsciously, the interactions of neighbors pate in another traveling option studio, Fly on the Wall. site to that, but instead I ended up doing something and people within the variations of housing typologies The studio aims to examine the U.S.–Mexico border and even more specified in a tight-knit community,” says of Berlin.” its spatial implications; students will travel from San Black, referring to AAP’s architecture program. She became interested in studying the architecture Diego to Tijuana to investigate the busiest land-border She was drawn to architecture by the time she of a city of contradictions that she would later revisit: crossing, and then on to Mexico City to explore how entered high school, in part because of the way it the quintessential Berliner/perimeter block, the incorporated what she describes as her “logic-based Hansaviertel neighborhood of Bauhaus exceptionalism, border territories affect neighbor relationships, from person to person and country to country. thinking” with a creative method of problem solving. and the IBA Neubau housing of the 1970s. Black remains driven as ever, and reluctant to Prior to college, Black participated in peer tutoring, The decision to pursue a foreign language has been narrow her options in a forecast of her future. She an opportunity that helped solidify some core skills creatively rewarding and eminently practical for Black. doesn’t rule out continuing in a graduate degree she would later use at Cornell. Breaking down algebra She returned to Germany in the fall of 2017 on a 10-day program, following in the footsteps of her mother, for one’s peers necessitates working through someone field trip that combined her choice of option studio and who recently completed her Ph.D. in social policy at else’s logic, she explained. It involves clarifying how to her Mellon Fellowship, both exploring migrant and Brandeis University, where she did research on income move through a problem in a way that others will refugee settlements in Berlin. Each class focused on inequality throughout much of Black’s life. understand through their own lens, as simply as issues of immigration: the studio, led by Professor “I’m just really proud of her; that’s influenced me in possible but without oversimplifying. Werner Goehner, explored immigration and gentrificaterms of thinking of architecture as a social practice. It Outside of architecture but in parallel, Black is tion, while the Mellon seminar, led by associate profesmeans to work in part with policy and other factors that pursuing a German minor. She enjoys both the sors Esra Akcan and Iftikhar Dadi, homed in on shape a city, before it can even shape itself,” Black said. logical element of the language itself, as well as the migration and discrimination. Black can also envision herself working for a opportunity to take classes in German cinema— The experience, Black says, opened her eyes to small architecture firm in the long term. “Coming for instance, one in which she does scene analyses intersectional work among artists, architects, urban from Cornell, I think you want to continue the rigorabout expressionism. planning, and policy. ous small community space,” Black says. “There’s “I’ve been taking books out from the library and trying “I’m really interested in refugee housing,” Black says, always . . . dreams of starting my own firm. Maybe to translate them, and it has been really rewarding, noting a passion for housing in general. “A home is so when I’m 45.”AAP Jennifer Wholey really frustrating, taking it word by word,” Black says. important, and to create homes on a megastructure
Student Investigates Implications and Intricacies of Public Housing
For the past three semesters, Hallie Black (B.Arch. ’19) has tackled the concept of housing on a large urban scale, from idea to execution.