Peripheral meanings : constructing a celebration of the Jamaica Plain Lantern Festival

Abstract

In order to construct meaning of the world around us, we each internalize and react to a peripheral consciousness that we construct with inputs from our senses along with beliefs and values that we maintain. And so I have constructed an understanding of Jamaica Plain, the place where I live, as many things. My understanding encompasses the built place, the green spaces, the pond, the seasons, my own social relations, time, and so on. Jamaica Pond is somehow always central to my mental construction of this place and the annual Jamaica Plain Lantern Festival is a ritual that to me represents a rich celebration of community, life, place, time . .. My thesis explores this notion of the construction of meaning via a proposed architectural intervention that involves the cross-programming of a park, a public tower, an after-school art center (a home for the lantern parade), and a daycare center - all on a pivotal site at the intersection of Centre and Pond Streets. Centre Street is the 'Main Street' of Jamaica Plain. Pond Street is two blocks long and it connects between Centre Street and the formal entry to Jamaica Pond. Centre Street is a long street that winds through Jamaica Plain (also JP). Along it one finds two main areas of concentrated business activity with a mix of residential, school, non' storefront' commercial, and parking sited in between. I am proposing that a site at the intersection of Pond and Centre Streets would allow for the marking of entry onto Centre Street and thereby define a new entry into Jamaica Plain. In my work, I have attempted to address the above programmatic underpinnings through urbanistic and architectural solutions that maintain complex relationships without the loss of legibility. And there is my hope of creating an architecture that both physically and psychically participates in the ritual of the Jamaica Plain Lantern Festival.