Winner of the 2018 BDA Prize.
Project with Lauren McQuistion and Tyler Whitney.

The proposed installation takes root on the west end of the Charlottesville Downtown Mall on the site of what is now called Vinegar Hill Park. As a counterpoint to the existing Free Speech Wall, it duplicates its exact dimensions, tying together opposing ends of the mall with a common message of open communication and shared conversation. The existing Free Speech Wall on the east end of the downtown mall provides a blank canvas for expression in a passive sense—written messages are left for others to find and contemplate. To many, freedom of speech takes on the form of detached social media, but speech itself, person to person, holds a special power to reconcile, build community, and communicate something true. The mediating wall proposed here both acts as a complement and challenge to the existing wall by actively engaging members of the community to pursue ongoing dialogue.

The wall, comprised of several layers of perforated and cut metal mesh, depicts a pattern derived from a 1920’s Sanborn map of Charlottesville’s Main Street corridor, the very site of the installation itself. The source map illustrated a period of development and diverse prosperity in Charlottesville’s core prior to the 1960’s urban renewal efforts which resulted in the destruction of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood. Transparency through the layers of mesh allows for variable readings of the once robust urban fabric along Main Street that has since been drastically hollowed out. The shifting quality of light on a seasonal and diurnal scale results in dynamic patterns and shadows, alluding to the many faceted narratives associated with the site and the map depicted on the wall’s surface. This record of the spatial history of Charlottesville helps prompt conversations about how its history is inscribed in the built environment.

Functionally, the installation provides a new urban space to host significant community-oriented conversations. Benches installed on tracks slide through the wall allowing for different configurations of seating for individuals or groups, small or large public gatherings. The active decision to take a seat indicates an open invitation to converse. Rather than dividing, the mesh wall acts as a filter for conversations conducted through the surface itself. Much like speaking through a confessional, conversations through the wall can be held with a level of anonymity and safety, allowing for the potential emergence of honesty.

Press
Bushman Dreyfus Architects exhibits design competition submissions at Jefferson School

Demo Bonds
Honorable Mention: Storefront for Art and Architecture's Taking Buildings Down Competition
Team: AJ Artemel, Lauren McQuistion, Swarnabh Ghosh, Samuel Medina

For this project, the wOS team developed a brand identity and strategy sales brochure for an imaginary financial investments manager. The company is attempting to sell a new type of financial instrument: the demolition bond. This would allow governments and businesses to finance the demolition of buildings by leveraging future business or tax income from surrounding properties.

Cannibal Mall
Honorable Mention, ONE Prize 2012
Team: Lauren McQuistion, AJ Artemel, Spencer Peterson

The current economic climate has left many commercial centers built in the 1980's and 90's vacant and disused. Once the focal points for social organization and consumer culture for suburban Americans, these now-blighted malls were left behind by the same forces of wanton development that first brought them into being. Using Northern Virginia's Springfield Mall as a case study, this project proposes the rehabilitation of a regional scale shopping mall into a multipurpose community center with far-reaching economic, environmental, and social effects.

In our proposal, local businesses and governments take responsibility for transforming these abandoned malls into municipal centers which house recycling and waste-to-energy plants, social services, community education classrooms, agricultural opportunities, and living landscapes. This new form of community center strives to lay bare the lifecycle of consumer goods and educate the public about smart energy while encouraging social interaction and healthy living habits within anomic suburban areas. This project, applicable in part or whole in communities across America, seeks to turn the forgotten architectures of a bygone era into the forerunners of a more sustainable one.