JUSTICEscape

Investigations on how race is constructed by spatial means, linking concepts from theories and policies throughout history to explore racism and its legacies of colonialism and social inequities. Emphasis on how space can be shaped by racism (or the ignorance or denial thereof) and its connections to modernity, migratory politics, public health, land use, the environment and human representations in the built environment, including concepts of Blackness, Whiteness, civil rights, resistance and protest. Investigations entail hands-on activities that engage students’ insights on the interconnected discourse of humanness in Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Architecture, and inform and reconceptualize what it means to be human.

The goal of this course is to educate ourselves, hold each other accountable, and build solidarity in the pursuit of embracive public space design, equitable representation and consideration of all peoples in landscape architecture, we center our attention on social justice, examining and dismantling systemic canons founded on Eurocentric, white supremacy, and work to create a genuinely accessible public realm. Although BIPoC is the current, ubiquitous acronym for ‘Black, Indigenous and People of Color’ (PoC, the acronym meant to combine all non-whites into a convenient monolith -including the truncated terms Latinx and Asians), we question these designated, flattened labels bypassing identity recognition, intersectionality and multiplicity. The nomenclature and discourse of JUSTICEscape rebuffs euphemisms while stipulating that Black Lives Matte rand advocating for the place-keeping of cultural spaces. In building community and shifting language and framings from ‘diversity’ to ‘equitable representation’ –from ‘race’ to ‘humankind’ and/or ‘global citizens’–from ‘inclusion’ to ‘belonging’ –from ‘minority’ to ‘majority’ (according to a census section of White people -Wikipedia, there are 850 million whites in the world which is about 11.5% of the world population), we challenge the existing, insidious social contract in order to lay new groundwork for an ‘EVERY’-body politic. We trace the historical trajectory from socioeconomic access and mobility to the privatization and consumerization of public space and institutional goods as hoarding vehicles to maintain privilege, using race as the camouflaged driver of capitalism. We confront the hypocrisies of these processes to reveal denied facts and reclaim our value as tellers, keepers and preservers of our own histories and stories. We disassemble the illusions of the empire and decolonize inequitable structures, unmasking the intrinsic racial hierarchies that persist in the making of the built environment.

Through the power of discourse, narrative and ‘making’ assignments –research papers, debates, systems mapping, experiential prose, and graphically collaged stories –students will speak truth to power, ask difficult questions, and assert their inherent worth as global citizens and designers. Students will also craft a digital children’s book derived from the intersecting, social and urban systems researched to contextualize and illustrate landscapes devoid of erasure, marginalization, assimilation, homogenization, colonization, and dehumanization. We maintain that these obstacles are surmountable as we acknowledge the full humanity and rich contributions of all global citizens, while simultaneously recognizing that colonial history shapes the current inequalities that structure society. We need to be able to hold these multiple realities at once, as they are the keys to unlocking and supporting our future visions for a just landscape and a healthy environment. As we challenge disfunction, engage in uncomfortable, and nuanced conversation, and find comfort in truth, we shall build communities of well-being and resilience in coexistence with the natural world, exercising our pleasure and responsibility as designers to ethically reshape the land.

Upavee Amarasinghe created a patchwork/fabric collage to convey the ideas of the blue pill vs red pill, false consciousness vs reality, and Matrix vs Zion. The blue side shows a generic city skyline as is depicted in the Matrix in the film. It is familiar but cold and unwelcoming, much like the life of the inhabitants of the Matrix. The red side is in chaos and disarray, similar to how Zion looked in the movie after the AI and humans had got into a war and destroyed the earth. These relationships also correlate with the choice to take the blue or red pill, the blue pill means that you will forget everything and return to a false but safe reality. However, if you take the red pill you will enter a real but very dangerous reality. This idea is related to the saying “ignorance is bliss”, often in life the truth hurts, and becoming awake to the issues that plague society (red pill) is very painful while choosing to stay ignorant (blue pill) is easier.