ECOLOGICAL MEMORY, ARCHITECTURES OF DIASPORA

The project charge was to first consider the layers of history that came before the site and respond to the findings with a prototype to test with the public. Data collected in testing informed how one might approach designing an activist center in the second phase of the project - Architectures of Empowerment. Ecological Memory considers the Muscogee Nation diaspora, one of many which passed or began from the Southeast. Central to these people’s lives was the ecology of their land. This ecology became a memory when they were forcefully removed from it in the early 1800's and it was forever destroyed as all the old growth forest in the Southeast was cleared for agriculture. The prototype is inspired by Ecologies familiar to the Muscogee. Participants were asked to write or draw a memory that came from their experience with the prototype. All participants formed memories of places they were separated from by time or space, supporting that architecture inspired by ecologies might empower the user.