In his award-winning book Between the World and Me (Spiegel & Grau, 2015), author Ta-Nehisi Coates pens a letter to his teenage son in which he describes the challenges of being Black in America. A recurring theme is the body—the physical locus in which the effects of discrimination are intimately experienced.
“I tell you now that the question of how one should live within a black body, within a country lost in the Dream, is the question of my life, and the pursuit of this question, I have found, ultimately answers itself,” Coates writes. The author’s visceral and palpable depiction of inhabiting a Black body is one of the book’s most significant contributions.
The body represents the basis of design. In architecture, interior design, product design, and related fields, the human anatomy constitutes the primary reference for scale, proportion, and ergonomics. Even in works that have not been developed with the body as a central focus, there is no escaping the reality of one’s encounter with physical objects and spaces. Thus, projects that embrace an anthropometric, or human anatomy-responsive, design approach have the potential to convey more meaningful and memorable experiences.
Such an approach is profoundly evident in the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala.. Commissioned by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization devoted to racial justice founded in 1989 by lawyer and current director Bryan Stevenson, the museum and memorial occupy prominent sites in this birthplace of the U.S. Civil Rights movement. Both sites opened in 2018 with much-deserved attention (The Dallas Morning News called the sites the “single greatest work of 21st-century American Architecture”).
Last year, the Legacy Museum relocated to the new EJI Legacy Pavilion. EJI thoroughly developed the concept for the museum and, under EJI's direction, the Ohio–based firm Roto designed the 32,000-square-foot facility, located near a historic slave auction site. The new museum provides more expansive home for exhibits as well as an art gallery, Reflection Space, and other functions. During a recent visit to Montgomery, I was struck by how extensively and effectively EJI and the designers of the museum and memorial employed anthropometric concepts to communicate powerful messages.
To address a topic as grave as slavery, the exhibits in the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration pull no punches. After entering a room filled with immersive projections of a stormy Atlantic Ocean, visitors traverse a linear hall containing sculptures from Ghanaian sculptor Kwame Akoto-Bamfo’s Nkyinkyim series. Nkyinkyim, which refers to a “twisted” life journey in Ghana’s Twi language, is a collection of full-scale heads representing Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved in the Americas. The lifelike concrete faces occupy both sides of the corridor and emerge from the floor at different heights: some are neck-deep while others reveal partial torsos. Many of the heads also bear signs of bondage, such as ragged blindfolds or iron shackles. Positioning the heads at the level of visitors’ feet creates an intentionally jarring relationship between viewer and object, reinforcing the plight of these individuals who were forced against their will to traverse the Middle Passage. The simulated lapping of ocean waves also alludes to the watery graves that some two million of these enslaved Africans encountered on this perilous voyage.
One of the following installations is a series of holding pens where those who survived the journey were imprisoned. A painted wall sign reminds visitors of the local connection: “You are standing on a site where enslaved people were warehoused.” The jail cells feature holographic video projections of individuals in period attire. The holograms are life-size and appear when sensors detect the viewer's presence. As visitors walk near the pens, the monochromic projections come to life, appearing as ghostly apparitions that emerge from the darkness to talk, sing, and communicate first-person narratives directly to the onlookers. In one cell, a woman asks for her children, who may be found further down the hallway pleading for their mother—a gut-wrenching reminder of the cruelty white slave traders inflicted on these individuals.
The mass incarceration wing of the exhibit includes a parallel present-day experience in the form of rows of virtual prison windows. Unjustly incarcerated individuals peer out through individual screens situated above a prison visitor’s counter, which is supplied with seating and phone receivers. Mimicking the process whereby relatives communicate with inmates on the other side of security glass, museum-goers sit close to a “window” and pick up a receiver. This action triggers the start of a video recording in which the life-size prisoner relates his or her account of injustice, as if speaking directly to a friend or colleague.
In the nearby National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the central memorial structure designed by the Boston- and Kigali, Rwanda–based MASS Design Group references the body abstractly in terms of dimension and action. Visitors enter an open-air shelter populated with over 800 upright monuments. Each identically sized, coffin-like block references the dimensions of a human body. The corten steelboxes stand like soldiers arrayed in formation, each representing a county where one or more lynchings occurred. The names of these victims of racial terror are inscribed on each county’s monument. As the promenade turns a corner, the ground plane slopes downward while the boxes maintain the same level. This height difference continues to increase until visitors stand fully one story below the monuments. The experience is akin to bodies gradually being pulled upward, their substance and weight physically detached from the ground—and symbolically separated from justice. EJI commissioned a duplicate set of 800 monuments, collected in another part of the site called the Memory Bank, that are intended to be relocated to their respective county seats as part of a reconciliation process.
It is improbable—if not impossible—to come away unmoved from these encounters. The Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice employ design expertly to address what Coates articulates in words: the unjust treatment of Black bodies. The architects and designers pursued a variety of skillful and innovative physical, digital, and interactive strategies to connect with viewers in ways that relate tangibly to the size and physicality of viewers’ own bodies. As a result, the installations inspire an emotional connection in visitors, motivating an empathic response via thoughtful material and spatial means.
“Our nation’s history of racial injustice casts a shadow across the American landscape,” explains Stevenson. “This shadow cannot be lifted until we shine the light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation, traumatized people of color, and compromised our commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice.”
Design plays a crucial role in executing Stevenson’s vision, helping realize what I consider to be one of the most impressive exhibits—and one of the most significant memorials—to be found anywhere on the planet. It simply doesn’t get better than this. I applaud Stevenson and the entire design team and take inspiration that the more people who visit these essential cultural destinations, the closer we can come to achieving a just world.
The views and conclusions from this author are not necessarily those of ARCHITECT magazine or of The American Institute of Architects.
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