Materials of Memory: Designing a Pavilion for Peace Park

3 units

In Wounded Cities (2012), Karen E. Till writes, Artistic interventions advance the difficult 'work' of memory in wounded cities marked by particularly violent and difficult pasts. Such projects also may offer possibilities of place-based mourning and care work across generations that build self-worth, collective security, and social capacity. In this course, architecture students will work alongside art students enrolled in a parallel seminar to develop integrated designs for an open air pavilion, a bus shelter, and educational signage for North St. Louis's Peace Park. This seminar is the current phase of an ongoing collaborative between Washington University and the College Hill Community to find tangible actions that can address past injustices, respect memories of the neighborhood, begin a process of healing in the present, and build infrastructure for the future. Students will conduct memory work by collecting narratives from local residents, exploring the recent and distant history of the site, and examining past placemaking projects that have successfully utilized memory work to create healing spaces. This foundational work will be used as the basis for the design and construction of large operational presentation models to be placed on display for the local residents. This collaborative process will continue after this semester and will result in a built project by the end of the summer of 2023.