The Lumen Museum

This project made me think critically, and worked through all of the stages of the design process.

Given that it is based on a highly delicate subject, I have chosen to only upload the slides to my final presentation. For only an in person explanation and walkthrough of the project may be deemed proper and give thorough insight into my design.

Project Statement:

Over the last several months, there have been ongoing debates surrounding the status of monuments, specifically, monuments that memorialize and honor military figures of the Confederate States of America. Recent issues of social injustice have reoriented our gaze to public spaces and the objects that occupy them, recalibrating our understanding of Confederate monuments and their social, political, cultural and historical import.

But scholars and historians alike have come to the same conclusion: these monuments should not occupy public spaces which we, by Constitutional law, deem universal.

The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), in their statement on the removal such monuments from the public realm, suggest: By leaving them [Confederate monuments] in place, we allow the dead hand of the past to direct some Americans away from that which belongs to all of us [public space].

For this project, we are going to take the SAH to task on their statement and design an ‘exhibition’ space to house monuments that have been removed from their original siting, specifically, Confederate monuments. The siting of the project will be up to each designer, but consideration must be administered to a location within traveling distance, as site analysis will be a critical part of the early stages of the project. The spatial dynamics of the project will work in rigorous coordination with concepts of memory, chronology and cultural saturation. The defining features of each project will elaborate the context of each object and its relation to its constituent members.