Building/Border/Culture: Charlotte as the Gateway to the New (Latin) American South ©
Faculty: Jose D. Gamez
Course Timeline: Fall semester 2003: August-December 2003 Follow-up studios: Fall semesters of 2004, 2005
Number of Credit Hours: 5 credit hours
Brief explanation of where the studio falls within the curriculum sequence: This is a REQUIRED studio. Students are required to take 3 topical studios as a part of their education (urbanism, design, or technology). These studios are open to 4th year undergraduates and 2nd year graduate students. The Charlotte Community Design Studio is typically offered as an urbanism topical studio. This studio will explore the changes in the local urban condition and how recent immigration from Latin American countries can help to further contribute to a multivalent public realm in Charlotte, NC. The Latino community in North Carolina has grown by over 390% since the 1990 census and this demographic change brings with it changes in the cultural dynamics of the South. This studio, then, aims to both examine cultural and urban issues in order to better address questions of diversity and social equity within the core of the UNCC-College of Architecture curriculum.
Pre-requisites to the studio: Upper division undergraduate standing and acceptance to the Professional Degree Track in the Bachelor of Architecture Program and/or advanced graduate standing.
Prerequisites (not including university requirements): Undergraduate studios--Arch 1101, 1102, 2101, 2102, 3101, 3102 (ranging from fundamentals in 1st year to site conditions in 3rd year) Undergraudate seminars--Arch 2601 (theory), 4211 (history survey), 4212 (history survey),4213 (history topics),4214 (history topics), 4312 (materials), advancement to the Professional Degree Program. Graduate studios--Arch 5050 (intro to arch), Arch 6111 (design fundamentals), 6112 (design fundamentals). Graduate seminars--Arch 5211 (history survey), Arch 5601 (Ideas in Arch), 5212 (history survey), 6151 (design methods), 5312 (materials).
Approximate Number of Students: 14 (2 graduate, 12 undergraduate)
Pedagogic Framework
The students will engage two parallel projects over the course of the term: 1) a research project examining the changing impacts upon the local landscape as they relate to Latino demographic growth, the needs stemming from such growth, and the possible avenues of civic support available to meet the demands of such growth; 2) an architectural project that seeks to highlight the findings of the research, to integrate and address the needs found in the research, and to illustrate for the City of Charlotte the various options that it may have in fostering the well-being of Latino groups in the city. Therefore this studio is organized as a research-based design studio.
The studio will be lead by Jose Gamez but it will be organized as a team research project with all students participating equally. In order to meet university requirements, graduate students will be asked to take on leadership positions within the research team. While design projects will be independently executed, all students will be asked to participate in the development of each scheme through constructive/collective discussions. The overall approach to the studio will be one of productive collaboration and independent contributions to a larger given project.
The course is offered on a 15-week schedule and it will meet 3 days a week. The studio will be offered in two subsequent years in order to augment the findings of the fall 2003 studio. Students will be expected to spend a good deal of time in the field meeting with local residents in order to document the cultural landscapes of Latino communities and to work with the Latin American Coalition in order to determine possible sites for a new building that will serve as the Coalition's base and as a community service center.
Work and findings (both design and research) will be presented in public forums to be held at various times in the CCDS, City Council meetings, and in the current offices of the Latin American Coalition. The studio will also produce a document that will contain the results of the student research and design investigations. These materials will be made available to participants of the various public forums. Additionally, the student proposals will support the Latin American Coalition's efforts in raising funds to build a new home for itself and its services.
These venues will serve as the review process for the student work; this studio WILL NOT rely upon a traditional jury setting for student evaluations, reviews, and/or feedback. In this sense, students will have the benefit of dealing with interested parties whose comments will speak directly to the student's abilities to relate to and address the issues of a specific cultural group
Project Overview
This studio will examine the changing impacts of cultural flows upon the local cultural and urban landscapes. Specifically, this studio will examine the impacts of the growing Latino community in Charlotte. North Carolina has seen an increase in Latino populations of over 390% during the past decade and this demographic growth has produced vibrant contributions and contentious terrains. The growing Latino community is adding a new cultural dynamic to the historic Black/White cultural framework by which the South is often known. This raises various tensions over political, cultural, and (as this studio will illustrate) physical forms of representation within a limited field of resources. This studio will involve two simultaneous and inter-related tasks: research concerning the impacts of growth within Latino communities in Charlotte, NC, and the design of a community facility for that meets this community's needs.
Core Objectives
- To develop an understanding of the importance of cultural diversity within contemporary society and to highlight the often unequal distribution of resources within the urban landscape.
- To highlight the importance of architecture and architectural practices in the processes that help to shape a multivalent and socially equitable public realm.
- To develop a set of skills with which to engage a specific cultural group in order to make their needs and wishes an active part of a design process that also works to make the physical environment accessible to all (including ADA issues).
Clients and/or user consultants involved
The studio will work with several organizations in a mutual effort to raise awareness of the needs of the growing but under-represented Latino population in Charlotte, NC. We will work directly with the Latin American Coalition (LAC) and its Director, Angeles Ortega, in an effort to identify the organization's needs and to produce building proposals aimed to meet the Coalition's needs and its mission of support within the Latino community. The LAC works with immigrant and Spanish speaking communities in an effort to provide services to people and groups who often have no other place to turn. Their work involves language training (ESL), immigration consultation and support, and community advocacy. The involvement of the LAC will ground the studio in the real-world needs of a specific organization, in tangible architectural needs, and in the issues relating to a growing immigrant and Latino community in a region that often fails to recognize the positive contributions of culturally diverse groups.
We will also work with the Levine Museum of the New South in support of a planned (2005) exhibition focused upon the Latino community in Charlotte, NC (student research documents will become part of the exhibition).
These organizations, the Levine Museum and the Latin American Coalition, will also provide much needed dialog and feedback as the studio progresses in its research agenda. These two organizations will act as our client/consultants; their involvement will bring issues of diversity into the studio setting as they relate directly to client needs, to a specific population of people who will use the LAC's resources, and to the growing diversity of the Charlotte metropolitan region.
We will also work with Charlotte City Council Member Nancy Carter, whose district represents many Latino residents, in order to make our findings available to the City Council at large, to foster discussion regarding possible civic investments, and to strengthen the studio's connection to the everyday needs of Latinos in Charlotte.
Other organizations will be contacted and invited to participate; these include: the Latin American Women's Association and the Latin American Business Coalition.
We will also work with the Charlotte City Council in districts that have high concentrations of Latinos in an effort to develop local knowledge that will help the City better serve the needs of local Latino groups. This will involve reports to the City Council, work with district representatives, and the identification of possible sites for infrastructure support.
The combination of these clients/consultants will help the studio develop a way to give issues concerning the Latino community in Charlotte a visible form and to make these issues available as public information (this will happen through studio documentation, the planned exhibition, and materials submitted to the City Council). In addition, this combination of clients will give students exposure to the varied needs of local cultural institutions and their abilities to meet the demands of a diverse set of public constituents. Therefore, this studio will act as a bridge between the often overlooked needs of Latinos in the area and traditional spheres of influence. This will highlight the differential points of access afforded many groups within a civic setting while also providing a much needed venue for an under-represented group. Additionally, this will expose students to the workings of cultural and political organizations in the local area and expose them to issues of diversity and cultural representation that would not normally architectural students.
We will also use ethnographic methods as a way of putting students in contact with local Latinos in an effort to record their life-stories, understand their needs with regard to the built environment, and to help us formulate a way of acting, through design, in order to improve their everyday community conditions. This will help to personalize the often difficult to comprehend issues tied to cultural identity, community, and place.
It should be said that the organizations involved with the studio have not funded this studio; there are no budgets allocated for this studio, the exhibition, or for cultural facilities. This grant would become the seed for future funding applications and the funds will go to pay for student expenses (research document expenses, research material production costs, field research expenses). We will be seeking other funding sources in the form of arts-related matching grants in an effort to build the necessary resources to offer this studio in the coming years
Approach to the Proposed Studio Process and Content
This research studio will address the changing cultural dynamics of the Charlotte metropolitan region in order to foster a more diverse and equitable public realm. In order to do so, we will use our architectural, community, and urban design skills to identify the needs facing the local Latino community. We will work with the Latin American Coalition (LAC) in order to provide possible solutions to their current architectural needs: the LAC has outgrown its current offices as their community service agenda has grown; the students will work with the LAC in order to identify a program and design of a facility that will serve as the new home for the LAC and its community services, which include language training, job counseling, immigration consultations, drop-in day care, and community advocacy. The LAC is a local not-for-profit organization and, as such, has limited resources; the resources that the LAC currently has go directly to support its community service commitments. The studio will, then, attempt to serve the needs of the LAC by exploring the organization's building options. These building options will be informed by the everyday needs of the LAC and the needs of the public served by the LAC. By working with the LAC, the students will be exposed directly to the issues that face the local Latino communities, both established and immigrant.
The studio has two primary aims:
- to introduce students to issues of cultural and community diversity in an effort to develop the skills necessary to practice in an diverse public arena;
- to introduce students to research skills that will benefit architectural practices, community, and/or urban design practices. The combined approach (research and design) is aimed at developing a "border sensibility" within the students such that abstract notions of culture, community, and identity can be understood as embodied--as cultural borders that we often carry within us and that are often manifest as we confront difference within the local landscape. This "border sensibility" will help students understand the role of culture and identity in communities in which there is a large number of immigrants--particularly when they confront a local cultural landscape that is largely anti-immigrant in its political and social outlook. Therefore, this studio marks a concentrated moment within the curriculum during which issues of diversity and social equity are brought to bare upon architectural practices.
Our approach will build upon the ethnographic methods of the sociologist Michael Burawoy in order to expose the students not only to a set of skills that will benefit their architectural practices but also that will put them into contact with the people that this studio aims to address--Latino community members. Burawoy's Extended Case Study Method will provide the studio's research framework by providing:
- a set of methods by which students can access individuals who are often unlike themselves; and
- a grounding in a body of existing literature (sociology and cultural theory) while simultaneously exploring a specific case that may highlight or challenge existing theoretical models. This framework is extremely useful for beginning researchers, as they do not need to be experts in the field of social or cultural theory at the on-set of their work. As the research progresses, students will compare their findings with existing literature; over the course of the term, the students will become well versed in a particular area of cultural studies, adept in research methods, and intimately familiar with the local conditions of the Latino community. Additionally, this approach will highlight the importance of inter-disciplinary work when dealing with human-centered investigations.
This research component has the dual benefit of supporting the studio's design approach as well as a planned exhibition focused upon the local Latino community to be held at the Levine Museum of the New South in 2005. The Levine Museum's mission is to "tell the story" of the South and its changing identity; the recent addition of large numbers of Latino immigrants to the cultural mix of the South provides the museum and the studio with the opportunity to add a new chapter to the on-going saga of the New South; the South is no longer characterized by a Black/White binary and the Museum would like to broaden its mission to meet this changing cultural need. Specifically, the exhibition, which will include student generated research illustrating the impacts of the Latino community upon Charlotte's urban landscape, is a first step in this direction. The exhibition has the benefit of providing students with an opportunity to publicly exhibit their work while also providing students with the opportunity to give voice to an under-represented community.
While the studio design projects will be speculative, they will be given to the Latin American Coalition as material support for their planned capital campaign. The LAC has outgrown its current home and cannot adequately handle its growing public demand. Therefore, the LAC is planning to build a new community center (tentatively called "El Centro"). The studio will support these efforts by taking the LAC as our primary client. This will help ground the studio in the real-world conditions of the Latino community and to bring added diversity to the studio itself. And, the student work will support the development efforts of the LAC; in this way, the studio overall provides the non-profit a service that it would not otherwise have access to at this point in its efforts.
All the materials produced by this studio will also be made publicly available at no cost to those who request the materials. Therefore, the materials generated, which will include large scale graphics (exhibition quality) and research report that will include research data and portfolios of the proposed design projects, will be distributed to the Charlotte City Council and the Latin American Coalition. Once created, these documents will form the basis for further research and for exhibition planning. The studio will self-publish these documents with the support of grants and in-kind donations.
Responses to Reviewer’s Questions
- Assure that the design part of the project is not just Latino –
but includes subgroups: children; elderly, and socially disadvantaged
people.
While the primary client organization, the Latin American Coalition (LAC), serves the largely immigrant Latino community of Charlotte, Latinos will not be the only audiences served. We (the studio members) see our role as one that serves not only a diverse Latino community but also the various communities that have now been impacted by Latino immigration to Charlotte and to the Southeastern United States. The Latino communities of Charlotte are made up of various Central American groups as defined by the US census, which include immigrants from across Latin America (Mexico, Peru, Cuba, and Ecuador, for example). These immigrants represent a first wave of immigrants for this region; Latino immigration is largely shaped by patterns dating from the 1990’s forward. Therefore, this has been a young, largely male, demographic with little tangible impact prior to the mid 1990’s in the Southeastern US (excluding Florida). This has two implications for the cultural work that we must engage: 1) these Latino groups are now bringing their families and the LAC finds itself facing a growing demand to provide support for unemployed Spanish speaking women, the children of immigrant families, and extended family members such as grandparents. Therefore, the category of Latino in Charlotte is changing and the LAC now faces a the need for a facility that can accommodate and serve Latinos of all ages—particularly women with children; 2) given the recent and rapid growth of the Latino community, tensions have arisen not only between Latinos and greater Charlotte but also, between Latinos and other traditionally marginalized groups—among them African Americans in particular. The South has long been characterized by a Black/White cultural binary and the recent growth in Latino communities in the region has begun to place strains on the social infrastructure on either side of this binary. In this sense, one of the goals of the studio is to attempt to illustrate the various common needs that marginalized communities often have in an effort to build bridges between groups such that African American and Latino groups are not fighting over a piece of the American pie at one another’s expense. Additionally, the areas in which we will be working, east and south Charlotte, are areas populated by both low-income Anglo and African American communities as well as the immigrant communities of Latino and Asian origin. For example, the Anglo residential population in and around these areas is now entering its retirement years-i.e., this is an Anglo population made up of homeowners who moved into these areas in the 1950’s and have witnessed significant changes occurring within their own backyards. As one might imagine, many long-time residents (both Anglo and African American) see the growing presence of Latino immigrants as a treat to the stability of the area. The LAC, as one of its goals, would like a facility in which workshops and events could be held that would serve to bring both longtime residents and newcomers together in order to learn about one another. In this sense, the studio design project will necessarily have to address these very different cultural constituencies in order to both meet the needs of the LAC and to fit within existing neighborhoods. Therefore, the geographic arena that the studio will be working within is loaded with tensions but our goal will be to seek avenues of inter-cultural dialog. The LAC does not see itself as an organization that solely serves Latinos, although their advocacy agenda certainly focuses upon this group. Rather, the LAC aims to work between groups—the LAC aims to work as a mediator between the growing Latino communities of Charlotte, the mainstream majority of Charlotte, and the city’s various other cultural groups. Therefore, the LAC aims to serve a broad constituency as it seeks to raise awareness of issues, as it aims to provide social services, and as it sponsors civic and/or cultural events. Our studio will also aim to work in-between cultures in a similar fashion—this is what is meant by the statement made in the syllabus regarding the development of a “border sensibility.” This studio aims to foster a respect for cultural diversity and plurality and such a sensibility will include a respect for differences with regard to age, social challenges, sexuality, and race and ethnicity in general (see related comments below in the Reviewer comments section).
- Describe any ongoing ways, before the public forums, that the users/clients
can give feedback.
Our studio will work directly with Angeles Ortega, the Director of the Latin American Coalition, and with Jean Johnson, the Exhibitions Coordinator of the Levine Museum of the New South. Our work with each of these individuals will involve regular meetings during which our progress will be discussed; in other words, we will meet with each of these individuals regularly in studio or in their respective facilities to present our findings, emerging documents, and tentative design proposals. These regular meetings will facilitate an on-going dialog that will help the students address both the needs of a client (the LAC) and the needs of a community of interested individuals (the Levine Museum).
These meetings will be informally organized in the sense that they will not be organized as studio reviews in a traditional sense. For example, we have invited Angeles Ortega to stop in as often as she likes to review the student’s work, to review their interpretations of her organization’s needs, and to give the students feedback on their emerging architectural design proposals; design solutions will emerge from this dialog between “client” and student. We expect to have several informal “drop-in” sessions over the course of the first 10 weeks of the term. And, we began the semester with an afternoon in the offices of the LAC during which the students met Angeles Ortega and observed the daily activities of her organization. Additionally, the students will return and spend time in the LAC’s offices over the term and they will participate in several LAC sponsored events (three office visits and two events). This type of ethnographic activity will help the students to better understand the needs of a non-profit agency, of a cultural advocacy organization, and (hopefully) the plight of immigrants, many of whom do not speak English. These office visits will also provide students with the opportunity to observe people in their own environment in order to arrive at understandings and interpretations of how people engage their social worlds. The combination of studio visits by Angeles Ortega and the student’s visits to the LAC will provide various opportunities for feedback and dialog in a setting conducive to open dialog.
We will meet with the Levine Museum prior to any public event in order to discuss the methods we are using to present our research and finds (these discussions will cover issues such as data, accuracy, presentation, and legibility). We will also invite Jean Johnson to visit the studio as often as she likes in order to see the work as it emerges. These meetings will help us understand the needs of the museum as it plans an exhibition focused upon the Latino community in Charlotte, which is tentatively scheduled for late 2005. Our discussions with the museum will focus upon “telling the story” of the Latino community and its integration into the community of Charlotte at large. These discussions will help the students understand how an exhibit is organized, how materials for an exhibit are gathered, and how such materials must be presented in order to engage a broad public audience. We will be meeting with Jean Johnson within the next few weeks in order to show her our initial research (tentatively schedule for week 3 of the term) and we will meet with her again prior to our public presentation during week 10.
We expect to have three public presentations: two are determined by the College of Architecture schedule and one by the City Council meeting schedule. We will have a presentation at week five of the term in order to formally engage the LAC and others in our research questions (we have and will meet with the LAC informally prior to this date). This event will be held in conjunction with the LAC at a venue to be determined. The LAC occupies a small office in Eastland Mall in Charlotte, which is a mall in decline. We are working on securing a venue in Eastland Mall in order to hold an open public forum with the LAC. At week 10, we expect to have wrapped up our research phase and our initial design phase; the products of these efforts will be presented at an open forum at the Charlotte Community Design Studio (CCDS) and will be open to the public (our research materials will be fine-tuned with the help of the Levine Museum prior to this date). Our final presentation of our work will be in the final weeks of the term tentatively to be held at a Charlotte City Council meeting. An open public viewing of the work at the CCDS will follow this presentation. These plans are still in formation as we have not yet been scheduled with the City Council Agenda nor has a time-allotment been determined. However, at a previous City Council meeting this summer, I was given approximately 10 minutes to present the studio’s agenda; I am seeking 20 minutes from the City Council for our next visit. We are working with City Council Member Nancy Carter whose district encompasses one of the areas (east Charlotte) that we will be examining. Council Member Carter has agreed to meet with us in order to share her vision for her district, to share information regarding possible resources, and to learn from our insights. We expect that Council Member Carter will join us at the LAC co-sponsored forum during week 5 and again at CCDS for our final presentation.
Having said all that, it is our hope that we will provide several opportunities for the LAC and the Levine Museum to strengthen our work such that we can present a strong case to the City Council. We desire strong participation on the part of our invited guests, as they will provide important access to information that we would otherwise not have. More importantly, the LAC, the Levine Museum, and Council Person Carter will provide a human dimension to the studio work typically not found in many design studios.
REVIEWER 1:
Very strong organization and methodology to completing the project. The notion of not using the traditional jury system, which is used in architectural academia, I believe, will allow students to focus completely on the client necessities and not just a grade. Exploring where Latin Americans fit into the greater picture of the South in itself is quite remarkable, it would be interesting to look back on this project at 2010 to note the progress made.
I agree that a look back in 2010 would be beneficial and, if all goes well, this studio could be revisited at that point. Our goal, as stated in the application, is to run a multi-year studio (i.e. to hold a series of recurring studios in 2004 and 2005) in order to both strengthen the work and to begin to track related developments. This work aims to support the Levine Museum’s goal of looking back to the year 1990 and to examine the transformations that the city has undergone with regard to Latino growth. In a sense, that exhibition will provide a moment to access the progress of the studios and to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for further work.
REVIEWER 2:
This reads like a good research proposal. It has a strong analytic component. The creative/synthetic aspect typically foregrounded in studios, either architectural design, and exhibit, or other "presents" for the community is not clearly explained. Perhaps it is not clearly developed. This is the proposal's weakness, from a studio perspective.
The creative/synthetic aspect of this studio is, admittedly, less clearly developed than the research agenda. This is, in part, due to the nature of this venture: this is the first attempt at this type of studio at UNCC and, while the students are familiar with design in general, they will be less prepared for research related activities. Therefore the syllabus and the application were focused more squarely upon research. This is not to say that design is not important in this studio; we will strive to be thoughtful, articulate, and innovative designers. This studio, however, aims to anchor what is often an arbitrary process for many students—design—in a rigorous method of inquiry. In this sense, research is intended not only as a way of learning about a given subject but also as a way of grounding a set of design decisions that respond to formal contextual constraints as well as the social realities of folks who rarely are afforded the attention of design professionals.
My approach to design in this studio will be one in which information will fuel design exploration. In this sense, I am interested in the role that non-material entities might inform a material practice. I am of the opinion that architecture is a form of material culture and, as such, it is informed by the collective experience of an individual author in concert with her/his surroundings. Architecture is not, in my opinion, a purely formal exploration or one free from social and cultural constraints. I do, however, recognized that cultural issues are often difficult to grasp and even harder to translate into a vibrant material form. There are a number of models of research-based design that have emerged over the last decade and this studio will draw upon this recent trend as a way of bringing culture into the studio. My hope is that a rigorous and reflexive mode of investigation will open the doors to a creative and culturally responsive design process that does not fall prey to reductive stereotypes. As the sociologist Renato Rosaldo states, culture is in motion and I am seeking a vehicle to engage architectural design in dialog with a living and expressive cultural realm.
REVIEWER 3:
How is diversity among the students ensured? Is diversity an important part of this project? While the project is focused on the Latino community in NC, specific groups within that group (children, economically disadvantaged, elderly, people with disabilities etc.) could be emphasized a bit more.
Diversity among the students was not something that I was able to control given the nature of the enrollment process in our College of Architecture. However, the studio attracted a diverse group of students; I suspect that the nature of the studio attracted a diverse set of students. The studio demographics: 2 African American men; 3 Anglo women; 1 Italian woman; 3 Anglo men. Enrollment in the studio fell from the pre-enrollment numbers registered prior to the term. Diversity is an important component of the studio however our college is not very diverse in its student body. This is an issue that the faculty is aware of and that the admissions committees, both undergraduate and graduate, would like to address.
With regard to subgroups such as children, the economically disadvantaged, elderly, and people with disabilities, I agree that the syllabus and the application do not clearly articulate how such groups might be addressed in the studio. I have tried to answer some of these concerns in a response earlier in this attachment but I will briefly addresses these concerns here as well. I agree that an emphasis on a broad set of issues and groups is necessary and this studio will attempt to address some of these issues directly. Children, for example, are often present at the LAC’s offices as women come in regularly seeking advice and, given their economically disadvantaged situation, must bring their children with them. The LAC would like to develop a program to deal with the needs of these children (ranging from daycare to ESL courses) and we will examine the implications of this for our design proposals. It must be said that the LAC is an organization with a modest budget so the design proposals that we will provide will be for small buildings with several flexible spaces that might accommodate various activities over the course of a day or week. Therefore, economically disadvantaged women and children will be a primary concern for the students and this has been highlighted by our first visit to the LAC’s offices during which students had to share a room with a woman and her child (we were talking with the Director and the woman was searching through job announcements). We will also comply with ADA regulations; this is, in my opinion, simply an issues of professional responsibility (not to mention civil rights).
How does the ethnographic method highlight the importance of inter-disciplinary work when dealing with human-centered investigations?
I feel that the ethnographic method helps illustrate the point that architectural skills alone cannot address the needs of real people in real situations. Ethnography, drawn from sociology and anthropology, helps to illustrate the importance of various human-centered disciplines that, in many ways, provide strong parallel practices to our own. Broadly, I emphasize Cultural Studies as a discipline whose methods are diverse and whose body of literature build upon Sociology and Anthropology, among others, for its theoretical underpinning. These disciplines provide both methods and theories that can benefit architectural practices and, therefore, highlight the importance of inter-disciplinary work.
For more information, contact Jose D. Gamez at jlgamez@email.uncc.edu
Citation: Gamez, Dr. Jose (2003). Building/Border/Culture: Charlotte as the Gateway to the New (Latin) American South ©. Retrieved (Enter date here), from Universal Design Education Online web site: http://www.udeducation.org/teach/asj/gamez.asp
