Mabel O. Wilson – Memorial to Enslaved Labourers, University of Virginia

In 2020 The Memorial to Enslaved Labourers opened at the University of Virginia, designed as a collaboration between Höweler+Yoon Architecture, Mabel O. Wilson, landscape architects Gregg Bleam and Frank Dukes, and the artist Eto Otitigbe. As Wilson has explained, “civic buildings and monuments in the U.S. are often emblematic of a disavowal of the founding precepts of liberty, equality and justice, where they become sites to imagine and enact American whiteness.” In this episode Wilson discusses how the memorial was conceived and designed to assert its position within the campus’s Eurocentric architectural context, whilst addressing the university’s history of racism and recovering lost narratives of enslaved people in the process. Power & Public Space is a co-production of Drawing Matter & the Architecture Foundation Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Om Podcasten

Life is more virtual than ever, but in this intensely divided moment, it's arguably our streets, squares, plazas and monuments where power remains most contested.How does a garden become an act of resistance against gentrification? How can an urban park expose a pre-colonial landscape? What are the boundaries of protest in public space? And what role does architecture play in the the stories we tell ourselves about our collective histories, hopes and dreams?Coming soon from Drawing Matter and the Architecture Foundation: a new series on Power & Public Space.Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.