Open Collections

Robinson, Sarah

My people are here! celebrates Black culture in Vancouver. Black communities have migrated from Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States into Vancouver neighborhoods, such as Hogan's Alley, for the last couple of centuries. While other provinces in Eastern Canada continue to maintain visible epicenters and enclaves, Vancouver struggles to exhibit similar strengths, especially in regard to Black folks. Unfortunately, the city has built a reputation that has encouraged a particular curiosity in new residents and tourists: “Where are the black people?" They are isolated, suffer from loneliness, and are acutely aware of the communal disparity within the major city centers. This project is a spatial project about people. It is a teaser, a conversation starter about how we, as a collective, can foster a reevaluated sense of belonging, by using even the most abstract or mundane architectural typologies. In this case, the front porch is adopted as a tool for fore-fronting Black culture, landscapes, and togetherness. The project employs the past and present, histories, ideologies and events of Black culture to engage with Afrofuturism as a dynamic way to spearhead the reinventing of the porch and its socio-cultural connection to Black communities. The porch, although largely an American invention, has acted as an unifier for Black communities. Porches are vessels for cookouts, familial and friendly bonding, for artistic and activist expression, and for garnering support among others. Ultimately, these day to day activities hold enough fluidity to be activated and amplified to the larger collective, fostering the belonging, companionship, connection, freedom of thought, speech and movement, and security and support that many within the Black community yearn for. These phenomenons have been conceptualized as porchness.

Text

University of British Columbia. ARCH 549

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0442283

Applied Science, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/