2020 Research Prize
Public Space and Scrutiny: Examining Urban Monuments through Social Psychology

Monuments and memorials have been the focus of national conversations and contention because of who and what they honor, and how their design memorializes the truth (or fiction) of our collective past. Although conversations surrounding public memory and social justice are at the forefront of design pedagogy and practice, very little of the empirical work on recontextualizing public spaces has included the voices of people of communities in which these spaces exist. This interdisciplinary research project examines the differences in perceptions of public monuments to equip designers with the skill set to engage with communities when searching for equity, inclusivity, and truth in collective forms of commemoration. With the support of the SOM Foundation Research Prize, we explored how community voices can contribute to shaping more inclusive public spaces, monuments, and memorials.

Research Team

Our team collaboration draws from each of our existing programs of research and teaching, extending our expertise in the areas of social identities, bias, and intergroup stress (Molix), design pedagogy (Lin), and community engagement and design/build implementation (Welty). Additionally, a number of architecture and social psychology students and lab assistants were part of this team (see final report for team member names).

National Survey

Central to our research project was a national survey to quantitatively examine the relationship between social group memberships, individual differences in social dominance orientation (attitudes toward social hierarchies and beliefs about whether one's groups should dominate other groups), color-blind ideology (denial of racial differences by emphasizing sameness and denial of racism by emphasizing equal opportunities), community esteem or a sense of community, and participants' opinions about which elements of design are relevant or desirable in community spaces. Over 400 participants completed the thirty-minute survey as of April 2022. The survey data contains perspectives from across the United States, including people who self-identified as designers and those who do not identify as designers.

Course-Based Research

A key element in the execution of this project was the cooperative development of a set of tools for use in the reconceptualization of contested public spaces. To this end, our team conducted an architecture seminar in the fall of 2021 that invited students to examine existing public spaces, monuments, and memorials—and collaborate on developing a framework for future design. The course included the diverse interdisciplinary perspectives necessary to inform and then create such a framework. This course was followed by a spring studio aimed at turning the fall seminar and National Survey data into action through a site-specific test case. Students reconsidered design pedagogy and had a chance to welcome a broad coalition of stakeholders to collaborate on a community-engaged or participatory-action research method of marking memory in public space. In the spring of 2022, our team led a group of architecture students through the process of prototyping a public memorial for the Lafitte Greenway—a linear park that transverses six urban neighborhoods of Central City, New Orleans. We collaborated with a community partner, Friends of the Lafitte Greenway, a nonprofit organization with the goal of generating a community-engaged process that would inform the design of a new public memorial at the site of a formerly segregated playground. During the semester of engagement and design we more fully understood the complexities of contested sites including the individual histories and how decisions about what stories are told and by whom are made. While site-specific design continued, we shifted efforts to building a public-facing exhibition to share the results of the body of research. The culminating event of this research project was the exhibition of this body of work at the AIA New Orleans Design Center—a charged venue that is in front of an approximately seventy-five-foot empty pedestal that held a 16'6" statue of Robert E. Lee until it was removed on May 19, 2017. Its storefront windows also face the city's Civil War museum. Interactive panels invited visitors to contribute to the content of this exhibit and engage in conversations surrounding the design of monuments and memorials.

Conclusion

As educators who work to teach design values and practices that build a more equitable future, we hope that projects such as this can help both students and professionals in design fields gain a deeper understanding of and commitment to the relationship between design and social justice. Our work strengthened our belief in the need for interdisciplinary collaboration to gather insightful data and the buy-in of community members if we want to create meaningful public monuments and memorials. From speaking with the community elders, we were humbled by the extensive personal histories that preceded us and the need for more time and vested engagement to truly respect the immediate community input and craft a process for deciding which stories are told and how. We revealed that the time needed for this thoughtful engagement was at odds with academic and grant cycles, creating some internal friction between the desire to act and the need for more conversation and collaboration. Furthermore, the initial data gleaned from our national survey taught us that designers may have a higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and be more likely to endorse color-blind ideology than nondesigners. This underscores the need for community input when designing for public spaces and programs. Since our group of Tulane students were predominately privileged (e.g., white, affluent, not living with disabilities), we were concerned that we may inadvertently perpetuate the issues of SDO in this work, especially if we rushed to build the proposed project on site. Although the project paused, we hope the gathering of this information will inspire design proposals that bridge the gap between the architects and the general public when creating spaces marked by racial injustice. In addition, we hope the survey results and engagement tactics we used can be referenced by other practitioners, artists, and academics working on similar projects.

More on this Project

Project was presented at the 2023 Architectural Research Centers Consortium International Conference at the College of Architecture, Texas Tech University, Dallas, TX, April 12–15, 2023.

How Do We Remember? Presented at the AIA New Orleans Design Center May 20–June 24, 2022.

Awards

2022 Global Architecture & Design Awards (GADA)

2022 Tulane Research, Scholarship, and Artistic Achievement Award

Students and Collaborators

Rachel Abrahams
Leah Bohatch
Yardley Borton
Hayden Boyce
Zachary Braaten
Hayley Burroughs
Tahlor Cleveland
Andreea Dan
Alex DiSimone
Kareem Elsandouby
Lovia Feliscar
Paola Foresti Pinto
Joelle Friedman
Laura Isabel Gonzalez Rosenberg
Vivien Hartin
Camille Kreisel
Seth Laskin
Mei-Ling Malecki
Talazia Manuel
Gabriella Maze
Brooke Mehney
Andres Eduardo Perez Yepez
Malina Pickard
Leonardo Sequerra Koogan Breitman
Bruno Soria
Miriam Taylor
Tiger Thepkanjana
Joseph Townsend

Contributors and Consultants

Jose Cotto
Rachel Breunlin
Suzanne Mobley
Bryan Lee
Dr. Ibrahima Seck
Mart Deceuninck
Jha D. Amazi
Pace Engineering
Water Zehner
Justin Garrett Moore
CJ Hunt
Friends of the Lafitte Greenway