Its 4:30 when I walk onto Goat Farms grounds, the sun is beginning to set in the sky creating an dusky lighting over the art center. Buildings are dilapidated, shattered windows catch my immediate attention. Made of redbrick, clearly an old converted warehouse. A small farm is located in the front of the establishment right before the building. Goats graze in a containment in a building that is reminiscent of a traditional barn. Sparse patches of grass dotting the grounds as I continue to wander I run into more redbrick walls this time decorated with a mural of a cows skeleton. As I continue on I run into industrial lofts that house the resident artists apart of the art residency program there. I exit the building on my way to go back home, the grounds occupied by Goat Farm are very large and as it got dark it became apparent more daylight hours were needed to experience the whole of the art center. The last thing I notice on my way out is a raised platform- or gazebo of sorts that doubles as a stage on which concerts are preformed at the “Farm” in addition to the visual art pieces.
Monthly Archives: March 2016
Actually An Annotation: Segregation via Contemporary Architecture
Caldeira, T. P. R. “Fortcified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation.” Public Culture 8.2 (1996): 303-28. Web.
Teresa Caldeira, anthropologist and Professor of City and Regional Planning at University of California, Berkeley writes in her article Fortified Enclaves: The New Urban Segregation on how cities with the fortified enclave of urban contemporary architecture promote inequality and segregation: “Among the conditions necessary for democracy is that people acknowledge those from different social groups as cocitizens, i.e., as people having similar rights. If this is true, it is clear that contemporary cities which are segregated by fortified enclaves are not environments which generate conditions conducive to democracy” (Cladeira). Cladeira relied on the primary resources of her own personal research and analysis of her research. The authors purpose in writing this book is to provide a look into how architectural exclusion (specifically with urban contemporary architecture) can act as a mode of segregation. Her intended audience are researchers looking to understand the implications of the built environment and how it can be manufactured to promote inequities.This is useful because it brings to attention the insidious effect architecture has on those living in the inner city.
Passage Responses: Schindler’s “Architectural Exclusion”
1. Urban Design is exactly what it sounds like: the layout and architectural from the lines on the street to the top of the skyscrapers in an Urban, city-like location. Visually, Urban Design can look like what a Georgia State student sees when they walk to and fro from the numerous and fluctuating in architectural stylistics buildings that Georgia State owns. We at GSU are surrounded and immersed in Urban Design.
4. A lot of times people barely recognize the implications behind architecture or urban design, much less are cognizant of the exclusionary nature behind it. Something as simple as a park bench with bars separating 3 seats could be viewed as such (more than likely by people who live in the community or are privileged). However, for a homeless person, those bars, bar them from being able to sleep on the benches.
7. Architecture designs are all created with purpose. The phrase “there are no neutral designs” is in concurrence with that. All architecture has rhetoric, it simply communicates to different people different things- especially within different socioeconomic statuses.
14. It is very common to see African Americans (or POC in general) living in urban or metropolitan communities and Caucasians residing in suburban areas because of the stratification in cost of living. This fact, and the fact that many minorities living in the inner city either cannot afford or have no need to possess private transit such as a car. Therefore public transit is very common and heavily used. Although minorities have access to transit suburban towns have blocked this transit from reaching their towns- keeping minorities and their ability to get jobs in the inner city.