Studio Project
Overview
There is an enormous amount of information to assist with the recovery of Bronzeville across its various stages of development and change. This data exists in the maps of the Chicago School of Sociology, in works of fiction and poetry, in collections of street photography, in the archives of famous residents, in the myriad histories that have been written about its enormous contributions to American culture, in the testimonies of living memory collected by researched like Timuel Black, in interviews with Studs Terkel and the recordings of Alan Lomax, in the archives of historic newspapers like the Chicago Defender or Chicago Bee, and in the special collections of the University of Chicago, the Chicago Public Library, and institutions across the United States and Europe.
There are also abundant techniques and technologies for producing visualizations. Some involve the disciplinary conventions of urban analysis, planning, urban design, landscape and architectural practice. Some involve the discipline of cartography, psychogeophy, cognitive mapping. Some relate to the inventions of 20th Century and contemporary artists.
However, attempts to translate raw data about Bronzeville (which is often structural) into visualizations that communicate and interpret its history are fairly limited.
This project invites students to make some attempts.
Instructions
In teams of 2 or 3, students are asked to produce two (2) complementary visualizations of the “Ghost City”:
A. Reference for Walking
Via reckless neglect and active annihilation, the urbanistic and architectural spaces that once formed the scenography of Bronzeville have been collapsed into their own foundations. Like an archeology of the recent past, these spaces now reside just beneath the surface of other sites and myriad empty lots. Students are invited to plot an itinerary through Bronzeville’s urban field to reconstruct a visual reference to assist others to understand the degree of change that has taken place.
This reference can integrate many time periods into the following frameworks for visualization:
- A street plan, which could be continuous or discontinous depending on the topic of interest, showing the location of spaces in relation to both sides the street.
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Elevations of buildings or interiors (if significant) on either side of street. These can be photographic collages or drawings.
- Annotations about the cultural significance of sites and any notes about time if these drawings reflect multiple periods.
B. Constellations or Networks of Cultural Development.
The itinerary above would intersect with one or more constellations of spaces that supported various forms cultural development in Bronzeville. Because of the history of disenfrachisement, these sites might include both formal institutions and informal spaces, for example:
- Jazz Venues
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Blues Venues
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Theaters
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Churches
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The living rooms of famous residents.
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Policy sites.
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Newspaper publishers.
- Recording studios.
- Fine Arts Institutions