Siyue Fan (MArch I / MLA I AP)
The Victory of a Suppressed Ground
How could a piece of ground, suppressed by its expanding suburban neighborhood, regain its power and win victory over its surroundings? The site is an old African American church cemetery now buried underneath the asphalt paving of a Staten Island’s suburban strip mall. The proposed site extends the original cemetery geometry into the surrounding suburban fabric, collides with the adjacent buildings and landscape, and forms a series of unfamiliar, bizarre, and surreal conditions.
The different tectonics of the asphalt surface focus one’s attention to the ground itself: the elevated ground is the private space reserved for descendants of the buried, and the sunken ground across the street is an open plaza that invites the public gathering of all sizes. Within a single enclosed space here, one could experience both social detachment as well as social engagement. These new programs empower the site with new dynamics and new importance, and hence the title – the victory of a suppressed ground.
The Immeasurable Enclosure Fall 2022
The Victory of a Suppressed Ground
How could a piece of ground, suppressed by its expanding suburban neighborhood, regain its power and win victory over its surroundings? The site is an old African American church cemetery now buried underneath the asphalt paving of a Staten Island’s suburban strip mall. The proposed site extends the original cemetery geometry into the surrounding suburban fabric, collides with the adjacent buildings and landscape, and forms a series of unfamiliar, bizarre, and surreal conditions.
The different tectonics of the asphalt surface focus one’s attention to the ground itself: the elevated ground is the private space reserved for descendants of the buried, and the sunken ground across the street is an open plaza that invites the public gathering of all sizes. Within a single enclosed space here, one could experience both social detachment as well as social engagement. These new programs empower the site with new dynamics and new importance, and hence the title – the victory of a suppressed ground.
The Immeasurable Enclosure Fall 2022
