MARKET VALUE(S)
Rhode Island School of Design
CLASS: Core 2 - Constructions
TERM: SP2022
PROF: Cara Liberatore
TERM: SP2022
PROF: Cara Liberatore
The historical context of Market House is a place of commerce and a community center. Its very existence was prompted by the citizens of Rhode Island in August of 1771 and flourished into a hub of civic life in the city. Market House might have been serving a community that prided itself on acquiring freedom from the British crown, but its success in goods and trading profited from slave labor. Its legacy holds a quintessential American context, participating in the earliest forms of American commerce. “What is of value is what you can sell.”
An introduction to the project involved defining a spacial concept, especially working with the chosen material of wood. Despite the depressing history of Market Place, it was important to maintain a playfulness and whimsical design.
I seek to focus on the brick materiality found at the site. The bricks are so ubiquitous that their presence is a fleeting recognition. Given the historical construction standards, I assume these bricks are bearing the gravitational loads of the building. I want to mirror this to the slave labor utilized at Market House, extensive and untraceable, yet still vital for commerce. Here, labor is valuable and yet is given no value. This sordid past heavily shaped the Providence plantations into the state of Rhode Island.
An introduction to the project involved defining a spacial concept, especially working with the chosen material of wood. Despite the depressing history of Market Place, it was important to maintain a playfulness and whimsical design.
I seek to focus on the brick materiality found at the site. The bricks are so ubiquitous that their presence is a fleeting recognition. Given the historical construction standards, I assume these bricks are bearing the gravitational loads of the building. I want to mirror this to the slave labor utilized at Market House, extensive and untraceable, yet still vital for commerce. Here, labor is valuable and yet is given no value. This sordid past heavily shaped the Providence plantations into the state of Rhode Island.
