First Advisor

Andrew Santa-Lucia

Date of Award

5-22-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Architecture and University Honors

Department

Architecture

Language

English

Subjects

Soul City (N.C.), Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem (New York, N.Y.), African Americans -- Social conditions, African Americans -- Intellectual life, Utopias

DOI

10.15760/honors.887

Abstract

In line with Charles Davis III's assertion in regards to the formation of black space and it’s spectral qualities representing the "material conditions of black survival", two black utopian projects: Soul City, North Carolina and the unrealized work of Architects Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) in New York City are analyzed to explicate to what extent that the United States built environment is compatible with "black survival". These two case studies are used to inform an understanding of the anti-black nature of Modernism and the cultural relationship between the construction of "whiteness" and "blackness" in the United States. This relationship based on capital and space influences the sabotage of black survival in the suburban hegemony and further exploitation via urban renewal in the United States. Exposing the undersides of American capitalism subsumed under global capitalism both ideations of black utopia will be historicized both in writing and creating visual graphics to distribute to empower ideation of new heterotopias of black survival.

Rights

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/33135

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