A Saturday Morning Ritual: A Space for Re-Membering, Columbia GSAPP
Architecture
2021

“A Saturday Morning Ritual: A Space for Re-Membering” focuses on centering and celebrating black hair, the art of hair-braiding and the rituals that its entails.

 

It does this while expanding on the efforts of local art programs such as the BxArts Factory (which is a Bronx-based art organization that is already doing the work of supporting local artists and making art more accessible to the community). The idea is to combine more contemporary art forms with hair braiding to emphasize how this practice that is very familiar to the memory of the neighborhood is also art.

 

The installation takes place along the very active White Plains Road so that it is highly visible, and adjacent to several existing hair shops. It is attached underneath the elevated railway and hovers over a garden on street level.

 

The programs are supported by an often overlooked structural system: the scaffolding, which is easy to erect and move around similarly with the many Open Street restaurants that have popped up around New York City which extend dining into public space. Here, the structure extends the daily, weekly, bi-weekly rituals of hair care into public space. It is also a material that is very familiar to the city as something that is not seen as too precious to touch or feel welcome in.

 

The illustrated renders shown in this project follow a user's walk through the bits of the installation on an early Spring Saturday (the unofficial, yet globally recognized “hair day” by black girls and women across the world from West Africa to the Caribbean).