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Book Description
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, Jan. 28-April 4, 2004. The exhibition featured a multimedia response from over a dozen black architects for site proposals
throughout Harlem. Eighteen architects consider the past, present, and future of the capital of African-American culture. In a field sorely lacking African-American practitioners, "Harlemworld: Metropolis as
Metaphor," celebrates the work of 18 African-American architects invited to submit pieces to the show. But
architecture—drawings and models, sections and floor plans—is not what many of the 18 invitees offer. Given no brief but to, as the exhibition's introductory copy reads, "explore the ways that Harlem exists
in our imaginations as a site for cultural, territorial, psychological, and architectural ideas," the output is equal parts conceptual art and architectural strategy.
Studio Museum chief curator Thelma Golden explains that Harlemworld was inspired by "the way in which, when people
speak about Harlem, they went to James VanDerZee's photos of the Harlem Renaissance and photojournalistic images of the '60s, in which Harlem was depicted as the archetypal ghetto." In light of signs of this new,
high profile awakening, she says, it followed that the "architectural mode" was one means of thinking about the community in more contemporary and progressive terms. Indeed (and even if more in perception than fact),
perpetuity-minded architects contemplate the present in forward-looking terms.
Product Details
Softcover: 180 pages
Publisher: Studio Museum in Harlem (June 2004)
Language:
English
ISBN-10: 0942949277
ISBN-13: 978-0942949278
Product Dimensions:
11 x 9 x 0.8 inches
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