On Memory: Design Brigade Week 5.
A pivot towards design.
After over a month of focusing on outreach, we have turned our attention towards design in advance of our next client meeting. We’re hopeful that in presenting concrete design solutions, we are able to gather substantive feedback from the city, community leaders, and residents on which ideas work and which do not. This being said, we are still working on expanding our grassroots engagement via the dissemination of surveys and continued community outreach. All in all, the processes of design and engagement should be done in parallel.
This week’s Medium piece will be a reflection on the ideas and precedents that have been driving our design work so far, starting with an exploration of our intentions.
Intentions as the basis of design
Diving into our design challenge the first week, our ideas and solutions were narrow because we came at this as Yale students with limited perspectives of greater New Haven. Some of our initial sketches were of spatial interpretations of breathing and facemasks. We thought these themes represented this moment of pandemic and protests succinctly, but our designs had no bearing on the communities we were designing for. The idea of intention did not cross our minds, we were eager to imagine what a “memorial” could be and saw our roadblocks as design issues.
The more we got to know community members and organization leaders, the more we reeled back from ungrounded solutions. As the weeks progressed, we were confronted with these foundational questions: what value is a costly “memorial” for the people of New Haven who are hurting? What do people want for a ‘memorial’ space? Where do we fit in? What is our role?
As we are connecting the dots to see how we can work alongside communities and grassroots organizations, we realise that we have to be clear about our intentions. Having intentions centered on communities is the foundation for creating a lasting memorial. In order for our participation to be legitimized by the neighborhood(s) we are designing for, our goals have to be in alignment with the goals of New Haven’s communities.
In a conversation last Tuesday, Hanifa Nayo Washington of One Village Healing encouraged us to think deeply about the intentions behind this project and the importance of aligning the intentions of everyone involved in this project. She advised us to start with being clear about who this is for and why we are doing what we are doing, then let our intentions guide our designs. We then worked together as a team to share what each of us saw as the most important goals of this project. In our discussion, we narrowed down the list to the characteristics that we see as central to this memorial project.
The three main intentions we all agreed on are:
- Healing: we want to create a space for healing from the impact of Covid-19 and the systemic injustices that the pandemic has intensified. Healing also encompasses a few other qualities we want the memorial to have — reflection, introspection, peace, calm, commemorative, a place to grieve and release trauma.
- Gathering: Many residents we have surveyed want a space to come together for purposes of their choosing.
- Invitation/Non-prescriptive: we want to create space where people can use in their own ways. We do not want to make people feel or process in any certain way. We want to provide opportunities not forced actions.
Other important intentions:
- Embodied
- Purposeful
- Use our strengths and capabilities
Dichotomies: Design Approach
Who are we representing? Who is this for? Where will it be?
We are developing initial ideas that illustrate potentials within these dichotomies. In our meetings with city leaders, the need for permanent and impermanent spaces was frequently discussed. Likewise, because of the widespread impact of COVID-19, the question of whether the [memorial] should be at one key site that invites people from various neighborhoods or whether it should be placed on multiple sites in neighborhoods hit hardest by the pandemic has come into question.
In the greater picture, we see these seemingly opposite propositions belonging hand-in-hand with each other; this encourages an oscillation between elements of the past, present, and future. In drawing out narratives for possible manifestations of this project, we hope to see overlapping elements that can bolster the long-term goal of a community aligned memorial.
Some examples of preliminary impermanent and/ or multi-sited physical manifestations include:
- Mobile alters and scaffolds: pop-up meditation, healing, and remembrance spaces that can be broken down and moved to new locations or, if wanted, kept on sites that wish to keep them. This recognizes the profound need for healing infrastructure in multiple neighborhoods. A recent precedent for this is the Juneteenth Altar to honor Black New Haven Women at the Goffe St. Armory. These mobile structures aim to accommodate varying weather conditions and encompass elements of shade/covering, seating/physical organization, and potentially elements of sound.
- Mural painting and other mobile art initiatives — underpasses (ex:Under 91 Project in New Haven), ground, sculpture installation, potential mobile canvases, and tapping into existing mural artist initiatives. Mural as an art form has roots in black + brown solidarity, community building, and neighborhood rejuvenation.
- Adding on top of existing physical frameworks, such as fencing and open wall-space, to affix art, tie ribbons, or weave messages into. Examples of this include: the fence around the White House covered in protest art and the 2019 HBC Fence project, Alexandre Farto’s Carving of ten masked healthcare workers into a hospital wall in Porto, and interactive mobile blackboards echoing the work of Candy Cheng.
- Adding art to existing parks and revitalizing existing greenspace to incentivize the expansion of safe spaces for healing and reflection. For example, activating existing spaces with healing rituals and practices in collaboration with groups such as One Village Healing and other local healers (tying into the concept of mobile alters and pop-up spaces for gathering.)
Examples of preliminary concepts for permanent spaces that are either single or multi sited include:
- An Art Park that continues to evolve over time, accumulating more art as funds become available.
- A central safe space that serves as a place for people of all neighborhoods to gather. Similar to the New Haven Green but devoted to remembering this moment in time.
- Dispersed sculptures created by local artists that tie into a common message and serve as physical markers of remembrance, which also promote places to gather and organize rituals of remembrance.
- Greenhouses placed in either local gardens or in a collective location that allow for gathering, activity and growth during all the seasons.
Potential Design Components and Directions:
This week we have been exploring different directions that our project could take. We are finalizing specific design possibilities to present our meeting with the city and some community leaders next week. The following are a few ideas that we have been discussing as components of these designs.
Community Gardens + Other Green Spaces
In our outreach for this project, green space has come up repeatedly. “Parks,” “green space,” and “gardens” were common responses to our post-it board survey a few weeks ago. Many conversations we have conducted so far suggest that people want something restorative and rejuvenating from this memorial. With this in mind, we love how forward looking green spaces are, how gardening is the creation of new life, and how it embodies hope and healing. As Leslie Radcliffe of the Hill-North Community Management Team told us, “green spaces allow us to just go and be.” Thus, we have been thinking about how our project can create green space or add to existing green spaces.
In thinking about how space can be a service to the community, the many community gardens that dot New Haven’s cityscape are an admirable precedent. Gather New Haven, formerly known as the New Haven Land Trust, organizes over 50 community gardens spread across all neighborhoods of the city. The Urban Resources Initiative (URI) also supports the establishment and protection of green spaces with local organizations. New Haven’s community gardens have bridged food deserts and brought neighborhoods together. They are born from the hands and hearts of local residents. Like these gardens, the community must be involved in the imagination, design and implementation of our memorial project.
One idea we have is to introduce small interventions — a series of workshops, small artistic installations, or functional additions like benches or shade — into these existing pockets of green as a way of activating them further and of weaving the grief, compassion, bravery and resilience of this moment into the city-wide narrative of neighborhood garden spaces. Circling back to the dichotomies, we think these interventions could paint a singular picture despite their multi-sitedness, and could promote both permanent and impermanent [memorial] ideas. As an alternative single-sited option, we have also discussed the creation of one memorial art park that incorporates art pieces by local artists that memorialize this experience of this pandemic.
Brownfields + Urban Healing
In a conversation last week, Professor Elihu Rubin brought up the idea of brownfield sites as a potential component of our project. According to EPA, “a brownfield is a property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.” For example, an abandoned lot that previously housed a gas station, may retain chemical pollutants from petroleum and thus be considered a brownfield.
Our memorial seeks to address the impacts of a public health crisis: COVID-19. This crisis has affected people disproportionately along lines of race and class. Similarly, environmental justice issues, such as contaminated brownfield sites, affect low-income and communities of color disproportionately. Brownfield sites and the pollutants they contain pose a public health threat to the communities they are located within. This pollution is one of many underlying injustices that create health inequities between communities.
Our team is interested in thinking about how the siting of this memorial project could contribute to urban healing. Could we place this memorial on a newly-remediated brownfield site and honor the struggle of a public health crisis (COVID-19) while providing a public health service by removing pollutants from a neighborhood? We are interested in looking further into federal and state programs to fund remediation of brownfield sites, as well as learning more about the specific brownfield sites located within the city of New Haven (here is a list of federally recognized brownfield sites in New Haven County).
Healing Space
One Village Healing in New Haven is a source of inspiration — in its mission, vision, and practice for what we hope to achieve with our project. The team met with Hanifa Washington, one of the co-founders of One Village Healing, to talk to her in depth about healing spaces and placemaking. One Village uses holistic healing practices (such as breathing, meditation, yoga) to combat and acknowledge the effects of systems of oppression on the body and mind. One Village reminds people that they have individual and collective power to reclaim their bodies, voices, and spirit.
As a placemaker, Hanifa outlined values that create, shape, and build a healing space. These three values loop into every aspect of the healing space, from intentions to dynamics.
- Shared intentions. Between the team, or the designers of the space, unified intention is essential because all is affected, from team meetings, to how the practice manifests, to how individuals feel. She advised our team to set three core intentions, and to always return to them no matter what.
- Less is more. Especially in designing for healing spaces, less is more: less pattern and color go a long way to shape meaningful, individual spaces, and create a simple and soothing environment. Additionally, having the elements present (plants, living things; candles)
- Exercise empathy. This means acknowledging that we may not understand the traumas or issues experienced by the individuals invited into the space. Understanding the power dynamics — between the team, the individuals within the space.
Next Steps
- Develop ideas and research into a series of concrete designs, that grow from the intentions we listed above.
- Prepare for our presentation to the clients and community leaders.
- In a parallel fashion, continue our outreach and engagement.
Additional Resources
‘How Architecture Could Help Us Adapt to the Pandemic,’ Kim Tingley. New York Times.
‘Old Armory Sprouts A Community Garden,’ Christopher Peak. New Haven Independent.
‘New Haven Museum Grows Its Pandemic Purpose,’ Lucy Gellman. Arts Council of Greater New Haven.
Roundtable on the Pandemics of Racism, Environmental Injustice, and COVID-19 in America.
‘The Fullest Look Yet at the Racial Inequity of Coronavirus,’ New York Times.
