Sound Service: Networks of Sound and Place for Community Preservation and Collective Memory
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Rich-nia_rich-march-arch-2026-thesis.pdf
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Author(s)
Rich, Nia
Advisor(s)
Aguirre, Xavi L.
Date Issued
February 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
What are the types of infrastructure required to retain and care for a Black archive within its community and how can that archive be physically manifested within the built environment as a tool for both memory and community preservation?
These questions are considered through the medium of sound and framed within the context of the Washington Park District, the first planned black neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. While Washington Park and the adjacent Westside Atlanta neighborhoods initially thrived as havens for Atlanta’s black middle class, urban renewal and disinvestment led to their decline in the late 20th century. In the present, Washington Park faces an inflection point as one of many of Atlanta’s Westside neighborhoods adjacent to the city’s soon to be completed Beltline project, a loop of bike path and parks around the city and a key driver of gentrification. The predominantly Black Westside of Atlanta now fears yet another cycle of loss, a silencing of its rhythms.
In response, this thesis imagines a sonic archive enterprise for Washington Park, rooted in its existing yet attenuated networks of self-sufficiency and community stewardship. The sound service consists of a network of programs which aid in the memory, cultural preservation and place-making of Washington Park and the Westside of Atlanta through the recording and transmission of sound. These programs are supported by an infrastructure that manifests itself physically via a kit of parts architectural assembly that propagates throughout the neighborhood grafting onto the neighborhood’s seen and unseen landscape.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
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