WXY Architecture and Jerome Haferd Architecture design structures for historic Africatown

US studios WXY Architecture and Jerome Haferd Architecture are among four firms that have won a competition to design several cultural venues for historic Africatown in Alabama.

The Africatown International Design Idea Competition, spearheaded by Renee Kemp-Rotan of local architecture firm Studio Rotan, called for proposals to assist a Mobile, Alabama community in the improvement of the historic Africatown district.

The four first-place winners – WXY Architecture, Jerome Haferd Architecture, Body Lawson Associates, and Fabl Design – answered the call for the design of four sites, each possessing four venues, across a single cultural mile.

Included in the winning proposals was a design for a cemetery, an Africatown Museum, affordable housing, a marina, a hotel, a performance centre, and a "gateway" back to Africa.

Located on the outskirts of Mobile, Africatown is the landing location of America's "last" slave ship, Clotilda, which held 110 enslaved African peoples that were illegally transported to the country after an 1807 legislation prohibiting the importation of the enslaved.

Upon reaching land, it was burned and sunken to destroy any evidence of its existence and to keep the transporters from legal prosecution.

Today, the town is home to many third-generation descendants of those transported on the Clotilda and has been blighted due to nearby power plant pollution.

The descendants of these enslaved peoples had struggled to prove the claim to land based on the site.

It was not until January 2018 that the National Museum of African American History and Culture located the sunken ship through the Slave Wrecks Project.

The competition was launched around the question of ownership over the "story" of Africatown.

"It does make a difference if [the narrative] is told through the story of the blood memory of people that suffered on that boat versus the kinds of stories that come from curators that see the boat as a fine American artefact," Kemp-Rotan told Dezeen.

"I would hate for somebody to ride through here about 50 years from now and see a marker that said 'Africatown used to be here'."

One notable portion of WXY's design submission is the Memorial Shrine and Garden.

"Central to our design philosophy was to design a memorial that could attest to the strength of the descendant's knowledge and lived experience in Africatown," director of global practice at WXY Farida Aby-Bakare told Dezeen.

The design's circular rammed-earth wall pays homage to West African cultural histories while also referencing vernacular architectural styles from the region like the "castle houses" of Benin and mud brick constructions in Mali.

"Understanding the kingdom of Benin and those kinds of connotations of what rammed earth meant and how each family's lineage and stories were based in rammed earth; they would have different symbols and the complexity of it would prove the families' wealth. [That materiality] just resonated a lot with all of us," Abu-Bakare continued.

Rather than working against one another as contestants for a prize, the four studios opted to work collaboratively to design what was best suitable for the Africatown community.

According to Haferd, the four studios chose to meet throughout the process to discuss the cultural mile as a collaborative landscape, sharing ideas and also approaches to ensure fluidity of aesthetics and intention across the cultural mile.

Jerome Haferd Architecture focused on the redesign of the recently demolished Josephine Allen public housing site.

The proposal draws upon Native American and African stewardship of the site to celebrate solid earth and flowing woven elements that encourage remediation and co-existence with the natural floodplain.

"The title of this project In the Wake is a reference to writer Christina Sharpe as she ponders blackness in this kind of wake of loss, slavery, ceremony and emergence," Haferd told Dezeen.

Body Lawson Associates proposed a water-based intervention to reconnect communities via floating pavilions on Chickasaw Creek. Each pavilion serves as a storytelling point to the history of the arrival of the Africans.

"We wanted to use the spirit of the water to connect the [African] Continent and Africatown. Our proposal had a transcontinental reach," said Body Lawson Associates founder Victor Body Lawson.

Fabl Design, in its proposal for the Africatown Museum, also referenced vernacular African architecture and the history of the site.

By incorporating a low-pitch roof, the form of the building also continues this dialogue between Africa and Africatown.

While the competition was completed in 2023, Kemp-Rotan is continuing to work with the community to understand the next steps needed to make these design proposals a reality.

Elsewhere in Alabama, Avenir Creative renovated a historic hotel in Montgomery, while a memorial dedicated to the legacy of racial violence and injustice in America by MASS Design Group and Equal Justice Initiative was opened in 2018. 

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