Whether in the physical transition from one cultural district to another or the emotional transition of immigration from one culture to another, there is a period of uncertainty and a sense of not belonging. This is the edge between two cultures. What then, happens if we create a habitable edge, a place for finding, instead of losing, our identity in the transition?

Saturday, December 18, 2010

181210 The Post-Migration, Imagined Identity

This semester has been a period of intense research into the issues of cultural adjacencies, immigration, assimilation and identity. This period of investigation has led to a conclusion about the real and the imagined cultural identity we project. Immigrants and diaspora groups, in their romanticized view of the homeland, form a new identity, loosely rooted in truth, which is unique to the post-migration experience. This expression of cultural fantasy and the imagined identity will be the focus of the architectural project that is developed over the next four months. The design will seek to answer the questions 'can we be emplaced by cultural identity? and how much does the post-migration, imagined identity actually relate to the homeland identity?

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

101110 . Programmatic Elements

As the Program diagrams illustrate, I see Media and Food as major indicators of cultural identity for the West Indian Group. By Media, I am referring not only to news and radio, but also to the long traditions of written and oral history which hold a Diaspora group together many generations after migration. The relationship between media and settlement, then, becomes one which is infused, legend, myth and folklore enter a community at a specific point, moves through the group and takes on various forms before becoming part of a broader collective belief system outside the Diaspora group. Usually, this transfer of collective memory occurs during meals or food plays an otherwise large role in the process. As such, the following program emerges:


MEDIA:
Radio Station                  +/-   3,500 Sq. Ft. 
Magazine                        +/- 10,000 Sq. Ft. 
Cultural Media Museum    +/- 15,000 Sq. Ft. 


RESTAURANT:               
Coffee Shop/ Bakery        +/-   2,000 Sq. Ft. 
Restaurant                       +/-   8,000 Sq. Ft. 


ADMINISTRATION:          +/-   2,000 Sq. Ft. 


RESIDENTIAL:                +/-  50,000 Sq. Ft. 


CIRCULATION:                +/-  10,000 Sq. Ft. 


TOTAL:                           +/- 100,500 Sq. Ft.                              

101110 . The West Indian Diaspora in Boston

Further research into the West Indian Diaspora group in Boston has revealed a bustling subculture, often overshadowed by the larger characterization of 'Caribbean', or 'African American'. As an English speaking group of Afro-Caribbeans, with colonial ties back to the British empire, this group of people has long struggled to find what their particular cultural identity is in the larger urban fabric. In Boston, the first major influx of immigrants arrived on the boats of the United Fruit Company at Long Wharf in the early 1900s seeking upward social mobility in what they believed to be the center of cultural activity and education in the United States. By the time they arrived, however, Boston was already segregated into distinct cultural neighborhoods and, facing racism, the West Indian group was limited in where they could attain housing, usually in already established 'Black' neighborhoods in the South End and Roxbury. Eventually, they distinguished themselves spatially from the native-born Black community by taking over the Blue Hill Ave. area of Dorchester, as the previous Jewish community was moving elsewhere. The West Indian Diaspora held their cultural identity close, to distinguish themselves from African Americans, and used tools of accent, clothing, song, dance, formation of cricket teams, and celebration of British colonial holidays in addition to starting a newspaper, the Boston Chronicle, and, eventually a Radio Station. Today, the area along Blue Hill Ave is still heavily influenced by the West Indian Diaspora, most noticeably through the restaurants and cultural organizations along the street, and the yearly celebration of Carnival, which parades from Martin Luther King Blvd, down Warren Street, and onto Blue Hill Ave. While this area is the hotbed of cultural activity for this group, their presence extends as far as St. Cyprian's on Tremont St, although it becomes infused with Hispanic Caribbean and African American groups near Dudley Station. As the proposal of this thesis project states, the city is divided and there are edge conditions between cultural groups all over Boston and, in an effort to address the edge between these groups, the site for the West Indian Cultural Media Gallery and New Immigrant Transitional Housing will be located at this intersection of cultures, near Dudley Station in Roxbury. Dudley Station also makes an appropriate site because it is somewhere between the origins of the West Indian settlement and their current location, and is the hub of transportation for each of the cultural groups around Roxbury and Dorchester. 

Monday, October 18, 2010

101018 . Development of an Architectural Program

So, after thinking theoretically about immigration and cultural identity for the past month, it's time to start translating these ideas into what will become an architectural project.  What does it mean to be an immigrant, struggling between assimilation into the host society and a sense of abandoning the homeland? In the context of the divided city, this internal tension becomes even more palpable. To help solve this question architecturally, I will focus on the West Indian diaspora in Boston, specifically in Dorchester, and create a mixed-use program for New Immigrant Transitional Housing with social and community space at ground level. Specific programmatic elements and site location are still being determined and will follow shortly.

Some resources I'm using are:


Cairns, Stephen. ‘Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy.’ New York: Routledge (2004).

Johnson, Violet M. ‘The Other Black Bostonians: West Indians in Boston, 1900-1950 (Blacks in the Diaspora)’ Indiana: Indiana University Press (2006).

Ed. Oakes, Timothy S. and Patricia L. Price, ‘The Cultural Geography Reader’ Routledge, New York (2008)

Cohen, Robin, ‘Global Diasporas: An Introduction (2nd Edition)’ Routledge, New York (2008)

Ed. Çinar, Alev and Thomas Bender, ‘Urban Imaginaries: Locating the Modern City’ University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (2007)

Tuan, Yi-Fu, ‘Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience’ University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis (1977)

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Between Two Cultures

I walk along the edge of reason
Betray my homeland, feels like treason
I try to find my place and fail;
Seek my true self beneath this veil.


I wander through this foreign land, 
Feeling small as a grain of sand,
Filled with doubt and hope and fear, 
And cling to what I hold so dear.


My homeland comes along with me,
Warning, begging, makes its plea,
'Be careful not to stray to far,
lest you forget who you truly are.'


But never farther from home am I,
than when I keep that place on a pedestal high,
It shifts and changes in my mind,
polished, perfect and refined.


And then I carve a home away, 
A place from which I cannot stray.
To which home then must I be true? 
To both or neither; just passing through. 

I live between two worlds apart
And each of them lives in my heart.
But who I am is not defined
From whence I come, as in designed

Who I am is yet to be
Shaped and molded by what I see.
Where I belong is in this place,
Inside my mind, which forms this space.

When will I find serenity?
When, first I know my identity.

-Krystal Rodrigues
22 September 2010

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

100921 . Expansion of initial idea

What are the implications of immigration and identity? Through immigration, displacement occurs, followed by uncertainty, a sense of not belonging, and an instinctive move to cling to what we have left behind. We essentially carry our culture and background with us and transplant it into our new lives as a means of preserving an old identity that no longer exists. At the same time, we are seeking our new identity in the context of the new place. The goal of the journey is ultimately, reconciliation of old self and new self in the discovery of a new cultural identity.

100917. Thesis Idea

What happens at the 'space between cultures'? Cultural and ethnic groups gather throughout the city and  we experience the shift from one cultural district to another. How do we define this edge and what does it become?