Princeton School of Architecture | On Solitude exhibition catalog and exhibition design
“Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows....” W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks
These works by Fields represent a series of totemic projections navigating the space of classical absence existing between Blackness and architecture. The projections emancipate Black iconic figures from architectural aesthetic regimes, revealing an underlying Black spatial syntax found in traditional typological traditions.
THE CATALOG DESIGN
The book design is an interpretation of the project entitled The Black Architecture Project. This project examines the mystery behind the conspicuous placement of a culvert in a black cemetery. Fields states: “Someone decided to place a culvert through the heart of a black cemetery. Or, someone decided a black cemetery should be placed on either side of a culvert”.
The culvert serves as a metaphor on the cover design, physically splitting both the book and the title in half. The cover is constructed with an overlayed half panel that wraps over the spine and onto the back. The back cover has a second spine and half flap that wraps onto the front of the book. These 2 halves align, falling just short of the center, creating a recessed gap. We applied magnets within the cover folds in order to achieve a precise alignment of the opposing half sections. The magnets added the necessary weight to keep the right panel laying flat against the book.
THE EXHIBITION DESIGN
The entrance to On Solitude is through a divided doorway. The veil that DuBois speaks of is represented by the black scrim wall that divides the exhibition space. The red line signifies another spacial division that aligns with a culvert on the center wall.
Entering On Solitude is to enter the space of Black negation and its emerging consciousness.
Exhibition design in collaboration with Darell Wayne Fields, architect
All exhibition photos by Michael Vahrenwald, courtesy of Princeton SoA