The missing designers : a history of activists designing for racial justice
Name
1227046119-MIT.pdf
Size
14.23 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
3871f86b10335db7da90fbce7b66d5c6
Author(s)
Taymuree, Zainab(Zainab Feroza)
Advisor(s)
Timothy Hyde.
Alternative Title
History of activists designing for racial justice
Date Issued
2020
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Design precedents are often de-historicized, de-politicized, and de-raced. By starting at the margins, what lineages can designers uncover for seemingly apolitical design tactics? Intervening in the genealogy of race and design, this thesis locates design creativity within Black resistance movements and complicates the narrative of who is credited with transforming and repurposing the built environment. As critics of the status quo, Black activists did more than just fight and dismantle. They designed and created alternatives to the systems that aimed to diminish them. Two case studies offer a closer look at design interventions for self-determination by Black communities in the late 1960s. In Chapter One, I consider the Black Panthers as tactical urbanists who reshaped the environment in low-cost, temporary, and participatory ways. In Chapter Two, I examine the New Communities land trust and their design charrettes as a democratic intervention in an often professionalized planning process. Chapter Three considers how Critical Race Theory decodes images in these cases that seem natural, inevitable, and race neutral.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Architecture, September, 2020
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 106-112).
Subjects
Architecture.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture
Terms of Use
MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
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