THE SHOP
From Architecture at Zero: “The Architecture at Zero 2023 competition challenge is to design a teaching and innovation farm lab, connecting the history of California’s first Black town, to its present aspiration to become a destination for sustainable agriculture.”
THE SHOP must act as an impetus for community growth – not a “solution”, but an adaptive tool. In designing it, we have to ask ourselves what supportive architecture is, and what it looks like in a variety of scales and contexts. It is vital that THE SHOP engages the community somehow, building on and potentially enriching the local identity of Allensworth. It cannot be an alien structure, superimposed. Residents should feel a sense of ownership over THE SHOP. What can something like an educational farm lab teach the community, and how will that knowledge manifest beyond site bounds?
Allensworth prides itself on its resilience and its subversion of expectations and norms. By engaging in discourse regarding collective memory/local identity, communal ownership over space, and the meaning of transparency in an architectural context, THE SHOP does its best to stay mindful of its social site as well as its physical one.
TYPE : Residential, Cultural, Higher Education
STATUS : Student work, competition entry, completed 2023
DESIGN TEAM : Hollie Sikes and Shakori Carpenter, under the direction of Kevin Stevens
LOCATION : Allensworth, California
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