The project’s design and its complementing programs explore narratives of wellness, access, and cultural expression with specific attention to marginalized communities. Rendered in simple, familiar materials, the project's reverential volume is responsive to various obstacles on, above, and beneath the courtyard’s ground, while its dark finish celebrates Black in response to traditional and modernist notions in architecture predicated on whiteness. The volume shapes a space of joyous contemplation, sound-dampened from the adjacent noises of Wilshire Boulevard, offering shade, shelter, and a cooling mist during the summer months.
In addition to its cultivation of calm, Black – Still engages the underlying geological conditions of the M_A X Craft Contemporary Courtyard, where tar oozes and methane gas rises from the ground, elements originating from the adjacent La Brea Tar Pits and underground oil seeps. Throughout LA, this primordial matter pushes through human-made infrastructure. The project’s wall assemblies of inside-out lath and plaster reproduce a familiar form of material seepage and call attention to the formlessness and expansive potential of “surfacing.” Black – Still is complemented by a series of public wellness events and workshops that center exchanges between creative practice and self- and community care practices.
Images
Photographs courtesy of Sam Wadieh.
Renderings courtesy of enFOLD Collective.
Past Events
Black — Still is supported in part by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Black Reconstruction Collective, Pasadena Art Alliance, and City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
Additional sponsorship for the project has come from Chu + Gooding, Deegan Day Design, Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects, Ivy and Fred McKinney, Warren Techentin Architecture, David and Kathy White, Co Architects, Jenna Didier, Hawkins\Brown, Marlon Johnson, Marc G. Andre Architects, John Stewart, Stefan Stewart, and This x That.
Supporters
Maria Adeyefa, Victoria Bui, Barbara Bruner, Shani Carter, Cesar Castro, Hester Clark, Victoria Costello, Jared Culp, Katherine Curiel, Safie Da Costa Soares, Tayina Deravile, Deborah Echols, Urenna Evuleocha, Matthew Frazier, Louise Griffin, Carolyn Grossman, Stephanie Hayes, Kristen Hunter, Cassandra Jonas, Daphne Thomas Jones, Daryl Jordan, Ryan Jordan, Sam LaTronica, Paul Lillehaugen, Stephany Lin, Sima Lotfi, Sahar Lotfi-Emran, Vanessa Munoz, Meagan O’Sullivan, Adrienne Ott, Denise Pyrfrom, Amber Robinson, Laurel Schwab, Dawveed Scully, Chris Skeens, Evora Thomas, George Thomas, Natelege Whaley, Tamara Wilson
In-kind supporters
Hempitecture, Simpson Strong-Tie, Liberty Tire Recycling.
Special thanks to Lisa Balse, Aubrey Bauer, Jylani Ma’at Brown, Allie Brown, Jared Culp, Gary Fox, Eryn Li, Raffy Mardirossian, Jila Mendoza, Dami Olufowoshe, Francois Sabourin, Jamel Williams, and Shuo Zhai. Immense gratitude to builders P31 Construction / Builder Bee.
enFOLD Collective is an interdisciplinary design practice that seeks to position community voices at the center of their work. Through stakeholder engagement and collaborative design processes, their mission is to propel a renewed sense of thinking and uplift the voices of underrepresented and under-resourced communities. Innovation, aesthetics, and craft equally serve their design framework and praxis.
All renderings courtesy of enFOLD Collective.