Jessica DoSouto
HOMESPACE
Architecture education and the broader American historical narrative could be significantly improved and enriched through the inclusion of African American contributions and experiences, particularly in terms of domestic space. The challenges for the establishment of African American homes and the strategies that people have developed to meet these challenges constitute a major part of the distinctive history of American housing.
Despite the eradication of once-legal discriminatory practices like redlining and covenants, systemic racism intertwined with socio-economic factors has perpetuated a substantial gap in African American home construction, ownership, and retention. These coupled factors manifest in poor construction quality, compromised air quality, and detrimental health consequences such as heightened stress levels, increased prevalence of respiratory conditions, high blood pressure, exposure to lead, depression and shortened life spans. Within a society that in this way systematically makes it less feasible for the African American home to exist, the making of home both conceptually and physically can be an act of resistance and subversion.
Shotgun houses, largely understood to be an African American typology, encapsulate the struggle, freedom, and resistance in making home. Shotgun houses having traveled to New Orleans with freed, previously enslaved people from Haiti, and to the greater South – highlight the significance of community, resourcefulness, and thermal comfort.
The thesis archives and imagines an adaptation of multi-generational shotgun houses situated in View-Park Windsor Hills, Los Angeles.
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