Design. A Sense of Place.
Every human has a right to self-determined place and the sense of it.
This is what I know for sure.
Design is fundamentally about creating place -- the physical definition of it and our emotional tether to it. Existing in place. Design addresses that human condition. What we wear, how we live, the tools we use to make our way through this world -- they are design responses to our place.
We exist in concert and our place in relationship to one another is design response. Whose stories are celebrated, who is pushed to the margins? Those systemic realities are design driven. Design is traditionally considered an end product -- often an aspirational acquired object to drive our consumer culture. I am much more interested in how end results can be distilled down to a design dna in our sense of place. Are we in control of it? I have questions. I hope you will, too.
So, that's my perspective. I consider our world through our current events. By shining a light on the many ways that design shapes our place, I believe we can expand our understanding of it and question it to power change from the personal to the universal.
October 7, 202
Public Monuments.
It is the holiday weekend when we have traditionally celebrated Christopher Columbus -- the explorer credited with discovering the place almost 600 million of us call home. We take a day off to commemorate his achievement. We have erected no fewer than 185 Christopher Columbus statues in his honor. In my lifetime, he has gone from being the subject of early classroom poetry praising his sailing the ocean blue in 1492 to acceptable statuary of yet another white patriarch to inspiration for the annual sale of deeply discounted retail to a pariah where at least 36 of his statues have been removed leaving 149 -- the highest profile one in New York City where that particular statue is gated off from public access, yet the surrounding circular neighborhood still bears his name. What was once commonly accepted is now highly controversial. Columbus stands as a symbol of the indigenous cultures that have been erased. We are questioning his place.
Who do we collectively immortalize through monuments in our civic spaces? Just focus your lens to see who has a seat at the table in the room where it happens. Historically, these larger than life erections are designed symbols of the white patriarchy -- warriors, politicians, athletes, captains of industry. It is a true reflection of our dominant values.
Change is happening. People of color and women are insisting on their place in the public discourse. Most recently I read about the 3 glowing statues in the likeness of George Floyd, John Lewis, and Breonna Taylor newly installed in NYC’s Union Square right in front of the George Washington on horseback sculpture. Before I could even write about it here, George Floyd’s statue had been vandalized. The memorial plaque identifying where Emmett Till’s body was dredged up had to be redesigned to be bulletproof material and so heavy it could not be moved.
A statue, The Fearless Girl, depicting a young female proudly owning her power was placed facing the bronze Wall Street bull. The bull’s male artist cried foul -- her placement turned his art into something negative. She was defiant! The bull on its own symbolized strength and aggression. Adding Fearless Girl called those celebrated qualities into question. Her presence was so threatening, she had to be REplaced -- an act of the white male fragility. She now stands facing the New York Stock Exchange building where architecture is apparently more robust than delicate artistic ego.
If I could sit down in conversation with just one person, it would be Maya Lin. I remember where I was when I first saw the images of her Vietnam memorial. I remember it like I remember where I was when I heard John Lennon had been killed. It rocked me. I was sorting the mail at the architecture firm where I worked when I graduated from college -- flipping through an architecture magazine. When I saw it, it took my breath away and I had to sit down. It was unlike any memorial I’d ever seen before. It’s placement was cut into the earth. It was powerful in all it’s black starkness. It didn’t glorify. It was personal. The purity and power of her memorial design stands on its own. To learn that the designer was an Asian American woman, my age took it to a whole other level. The Vietnam War Memorial existed in spite of monumental resistance. They protested her race, age, and gender. How dare she be given this responsibility. Like me, she is defined by her Asian-ness though she was born here and does not speak any Chinese. She had to fight for her vision against a chorus of traditional male voices, including Ross Perot and Roy Cohn, who wanted to overwhelm her design with Remington statues. Her genius lies in every detail of thoughtful placement. (Expand on details?) It inspires deep contemplative reflection and invites physical interaction. My admiration of her is boundless.
In a 1991 NYTimes interview about her approach to monument design, Maya Lin said, It's the difference between telling people what to think and enabling them -- allowing them -- to think. It still gives me chills. And that’s the current state of public monument design. Marginalized communities are insisting on public places of honor. Growing public sentiment will not be told to honor confederate soldiers. And there continue to be those who will enforce the white male as the dominant presence in our public discourse.
Monument design. It is that sense of celebrated place and whether it is imposed or self-determined.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/george-floyd-union-square-monument-2015895
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