At a time where black culture flourished, the Knights of Pythias Temple served as a space for civic, business, and social life for African Americans. It’s a permanence of Deep Ellum, surviving and adapting as an African American center, office building, and now a gutted shell surrounded by a high-rise boutique hotel under construction. It oozes an architectural history, a reminder of Deep Ellum’s roots as a town established by freed slaves.
A residence and workspace for artists on this site would serve as a metaphorical connection between the past and present. The apex of black art and music originated in this very building, on this very site. Perhaps the physical act of locating today’s artists on the site would conjure creativity and ingenuity that no other site in Deep Ellum would be able to offer.
Following the sinuous tendons of the railroads both past and present, this intervention embraces the curving, metallic tracks as well as the voids that it creates. In the 1921 Sanborn map of Deep Ellum, railroads are depicted as monuments of the land, sprawling over three full pages. These specific tracks have very specific behaviors. They may stay parallel to each other or undulate along the topography of the land but one behavior that all rails share is the inevitability of branching into new lines and assuming new forms. Taking advantage of the idiosyncrasies that these rails offer, the memory of the railroad is used to inform the plan of the intervention. Voids become spaces, and rails become stairs, hallways, windows, and skylights.
Location
Dallas, Texas, USA
Instructor
John Chow
Semester
Spring 2019 [B. Arch]
Program
Museum / Gallery, Residential, Theater
Type
Individual Project
Size
15000 ft² / 1400 m²
Related
diagrams
drawings
models
