Please note: The Fall 2020 SoA Colloquium season ends with a presenation by SoA Professor Dr. Emily Makaš: Container/Contained: Phil Freelon: Design Strategies for Telling African-American Stories. Although the event will not be held in the Charles C. Hight Architecture Library due to Covid-related building restrictions, we are excited to announce that talks will be presented on Zoom.
Friday, December 11, 2020 at 12:30 PM EST
Zoom meeting ID: 94595307205 Passcode: 952176
(If you are joining outside of the local Charlotte area, you may email soa-info@uncc.edu for an alternate Zoom log-in)Though widely publicized in the architectural and general media, surprisingly little scholarly attention has been paid to Phil Freelon's body of work exploring African American heritage and identities, with the exception of the Smithsonian National Museum of the African-American History and Culture, on which Freelon collaborated with David Adjaye and J. Max Bond, Jr.
In the Fall of 2021, a UNC Charlotte School of Architecture exhibition will examine that high-profile museum within the context of Freelon's other African-American-focused projects, both built and unbuilt, including museums, cultural and research centers, and public parks. In a 2017 interview, speaking about his approach to design for these projects, Phil Freelon argued “We feel the architectural element to be more than just a container or a wrapper around exhibits. We feel the architecture should help to tell the story. It should be integral with the exhibitry and the artifacts, so there is a unified experience.” Our exhibition will explore the relationship between the container and the contained, that is, connections between the forms, materials, and meanings of Freelon’s architecture and the histories and cultures exhibited and celebrated within his projects. At the colloquium, the research team will present the exhibition's timeline and key themes as well as current work in process on the exhibition design, including spatial layout, wall panel layout, and modeling explorations.