Architecture informs the structure of society, determining how people move, whose paths cross, and which resources are accessible. By merging social justice initiatives and architectural design, buildings have the power to provide equity, strengthen communities, and encourage dialogue. Empowerment of residents and the disruption of mass incarceration are the goals of this proposal, implemented through community engagement techniques and a mixed-use program supporting employment, job training, housing, social networks, and healing.
Located in Midtown Edmondson's neighborhood of West Baltimore, this social justice center restores a dilapidated parcel of land and former ice factory. The proposed food hall, community center, and garden invite fluid exchange between this hub of resources and the larger society. Simultaneously, current inmates will have the opportunity to engage with the development process through a construction and design apprentice program. Former inmates will find immediate resources to ease the transition back into their community upon release, with supportive networks contributing towards lower recidivism rates and the restoration of voting ability and voice. In a cyclical process, upward individual and communal growth will be redistributed back into the community. Alongside these individuals, local residents are also invited into the fabric of this social justice center.
The project offers interdisciplinary and multi-scalar design from landscape to interiors, adaptive reuse, to new build architecture. By acknowledging history, actively listening, and designing with intention, this project meets current needs and offers a unique perspective on social architecture. With human rights at the forefront of design decisions, the final proposal reveals that design has the power to incite and actively work towards social justice and disrupt systemically racist institutions, like mass incarceration. / Master of Architecture / Design that disrupts, takes action and initiates social change against mass incarceration is the goal of this thesis. Through an interdisciplinary approach, engaging with the community through landscape, interior and built form, architecture has the power to interrupt current models of discrimination at the community level and provide platform for people to be empowered to work towards change.
The Dr. Lillie Jackson Center for the Arts and Social Justice showcases an alternative means to incarceration, mass surveillance, and removal of voice in West Baltimore. This community center reinforces the idea that public land remain public and that employment, housing, and community networks be seen as a human right, freely accessed. This new model for community empowerment uses architecture to demand autonomy, where people determine the future of their cities and livelihoods. It showcases that the removal of racist institutions and policing policies is not only possible but imperative to attaining social justice.
Built environments shape how people experience a city and the degree of safety, freedom, and power which is felt by each individual who occupies it. With this idea in mind, the Dr. Lillie Jackson Center states through its design moves, that mass incarceration must end and in its place, a new model for community driven, bottom-up initiatives which restore, heal and offer opportunities for growth.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/103636 |
| Date | 29 May 2021 |
| Creators | Germansky, Hannah Constance |
| Contributors | Architecture, Edge, Kay F., Tomer, Sharone, Bohannon, C. L., Tucker, Lisa M. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | 134 leaves, ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 26377456 |
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