Month: September 2016

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Summary of Sarah Schindler’s “Architectural Exclusion”

Article: here

Sarah Schindler’s piece on architectural exclusion highlights the ways our built environment has been used to further racial and class segregation. Schindler draws our attention to how architecture can subtly influence the environment in a way that most people don’t recognize or think about, allowing it to slip past regulation and avoid legal consequence. Sometimes, even physical barriers were set in place to keep “undesirable people” out, such as in the case of Robert Moses’s Long Island bridges that were designed to “hang low so that the twelve-foot tall buses in use at the time could not fit under them.” Section 1, Part B clarifies that “[a]lthough regulation through architecture is just as powerful as law, it is less identifiable and less visible to courts, legislators, and potential plaintiffs.”

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PSR: The Children’s Museum of Atlanta

I almost wish I could’ve made it here before the museum closed. I’ll swear on my life that I never want kids, but seeing children smiling is one of those things that makes me feel all warm inside, like everything’s okay and the world is beautiful after all.

My drawing of the site

My drawing of the site

The staircase outside the Children’s Museum is short and confined on both sides, enciting that cosy feeling I get when sitting in a corner or wrapped up in a blanket — open enough to ease the claustrophobia but enclosed enough to feel safe. There’s something pleasantly serene about the mostly empty streets around the area that reminds me of being in school after everyone’s gone home, or waking up while it’s still dark. The world seems to settle, and nothing much matters anymore. Sitting here on the staircase, I remember there is quiet in the universe.

 

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FBED: The Children’s Museum of Atlanta

full outside view of the museum

full outside view of the museum

It’s 5:30 pm on a Sunday at The Children’s Museum of Atlanta, after the doors have been locked and the establishment has been closed for the day, leaving behind  a hollow shell of bright colors and floral arrangements against an otherwise monochrome and clouded landscape. A steady but sparse pattern of cars and buses traverse the intersection at the corner; the traffic light unhurriedly shifts from red to orange to green.

 

close-up of the sculpture just outside the building

close-up of the sculpture just outside the building

 

 

The sculpture out front is a motley stack of brightly colored rectangular prisms atop a concrete cylinder, and adorning the righthand staircase adjacent to the building is a string of potted ferns and shrubbery, some overflowing with cascading leaves of a deep maroon color and lined with curled white foliage.

stiars to the right of the main entrance

stiars to the right of the main entrance

 

 

 

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Brown and green leaves speckle the walkway, a few peeking out of the crevices between cardinal red bricks or skidding across beige concrete streaked with darker tones of olive. The ground is flecked with both dark splotches and pale dots.

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Schindler Summary Class Work

Architectural exclusion is rarely addressed in legal courts. Residential areas are generally designed in a way to make them less available to poor people and people of color, and the “racial meaning” of a place provide a way for authority figures to effectively make decisions about who “belongs” in a place and who does not. Despite several authors drawing attention to these issues, “law and lawmakers habitually overlook the way that the built environment functions as an express tool of exclusion.” Although architectural regulation is as effective as law in separating people by class or race, it is less obvious and distinctive to courts – even when the segregated outcome is intended, officials tend not to see these actions as needing regulation.

Julianne Register, Jennyfer Chica, Ayman Vaid, Brianna Reynolds