Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia

07/06/22 • 32 min

In 2020 The Memorial to Enslaved Labourers opened at the University of Virginia, designed as a collaboration between Höweler+Yoon Architecture, Mabel O. Wilson, landscape architects Gregg Bleam and Frank Dukes, and the artist Eto Otitigbe.

As Wilson has explained, “civic buildings and monuments in the U.S. are often emblematic of a disavowal of the founding precepts of liberty, equality and justice, where they become sites to imagine and enact American whiteness.” In this episode Wilson discusses how the memorial was conceived and designed to assert its position within the campus’s Eurocentric architectural context, whilst addressing the university’s history of racism and recovering lost narratives of enslaved people in the process.

Power & Public Space is a co-production of Drawing Matter & the Architecture Foundation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Power & Public Space is a co-production of Drawing Matter & the Architecture Foundation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Andre Patrao – Chora L Works (Parc de la Villette)

Parc de la Villette was emblematic of the strong ties made between the disciplines of architecture and philosophy in the1980's, where “Deconstructivism” in particular became a theoretical framework through which buildings and landscapes were both designed and interpreted.

Visual fragmentation and conceptual links to semiotic analysis characterised this period of architecture, and originating in projects such as Chora L. Works. A collaboration between Peter Eisenman and Jaques Derrida, the unrealised Chora project was intended to stand within the Parc de la Villette complex as an ode to a dialogue between architecture and philosophy.

In light of such pressing issues as climate change, decolonisation and spatial inequality, the formal experimentation and philosophical inquiry of Chora L Works can appear abstract and disengaged; In this episode Andre Patrao reflects on this period of recent architectural history and what can we learn from it.

Power & Public Space is a co-production of Drawing Matter & the Architecture Foundation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Markus Lähteenmäki – Monument to the Victims of the Revolution

Markus Lateenmaaki’s research explores, in part, how architecture became instrumental in the societal and cultural transformations that took place in revolutionary Russia.

It’s worth noting this episode was recorded in early 2022, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine; in fact the discussion doesn’t focus on contemporary Russian politics and culture, but instead reflects on the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the ways in which Russian people altered and re-framed the imperialist monuments and public spaces around them as power was ceded from the monarchy and aristocracy and taken up by the Bolshevik party. Parallels are also drawn to contemporary debates on how to contend with retrograde monuments still standing in public spaces.

Lateenmaaki also unpacks the motivations behind Lev Rudnev’s monument to the Victims of the Revolution, erected in the field of Mars in st petersburg, which eschewed the traditional gathering place and conduit for public movements across the field through the streets, recasting the city itself as a monument to collective life.

Power & Public Space is a co-production of Drawing Matter & the Architecture Foundation

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.