arch studio.2021
Architecture Option Studio: The Third Space
Architecture Option Studio: The Third Space
Fall 2021
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Instructor: Cory Henry
🏚️🗺️ Counter Map
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg defines the third space as a place between home and work, where people exchange ideas, build relationships, and have a good time; which are all essential for building community. So, how can abandoned houses & empty lots in South Atlanta be mapped to create a third space?
South Atlanta is rapidly gentrifying and its black community, which has been there for generations, is being pushed out. In the conversations with community members and the leadership team of the nonprofit organization Project South, there were recurring concerns of the community’s history being erased. They explained how the Atlanta Beltline maps, among other maps, are actively contributing to that erasure.
Maps have been historically used as tools of oppression by structures of power. A counter-map, on the other hand, is developed as a form of protest or response to tell alternative stories that official maps don’t tell. This counter map takes 25 abandoned houses and 11 empty lots and proposes a network of programs, requested by the community, that serve as an extension of the support offered at the Project South building into more parts of the neighborhood.
South Atlanta is rapidly gentrifying and its black community, which has been there for generations, is being pushed out. In the conversations with community members and the leadership team of the nonprofit organization Project South, there were recurring concerns of the community’s history being erased. They explained how the Atlanta Beltline maps, among other maps, are actively contributing to that erasure.
Maps have been historically used as tools of oppression by structures of power. A counter-map, on the other hand, is developed as a form of protest or response to tell alternative stories that official maps don’t tell. This counter map takes 25 abandoned houses and 11 empty lots and proposes a network of programs, requested by the community, that serve as an extension of the support offered at the Project South building into more parts of the neighborhood.
