Written on Coahuiltecan Land (overarching name representing several different tribes, and native nations residing on land that is now southern parts of Texas and Northeastern Mexico) and on Sana Land.
this photo was taken by adé of diédié textile mill at Seed2Shirt's farm [on Lumbee land]
this particular part of the grass naturally looks like the top of a heart, so adé added green lines to my arms to complete the heart
Highways built on top of trees, parks layered onto highways and under bridges that are covered in hundreds of locks. Symbolizing love and whatever else was on their hearts that day. Design decisions layered on top of each other. How I’m able to move on foot through this city today has been determined by urban planning decisions that took place decades ago. It is also determined by my values, interests and way of seeing. My interior experiences impact how I relate to the exterior environment. This season I’m curious about using our interior desires to design our exterior spaces.
The Black Urbanist Blog has transformed into the Black Interior(s) Blog. This is my attempt to share my expanding thoughts on the materials in our lives and their relationships to our environment. I have always centered space, place and identity in my work. In this season—rather than describing how those three things are shaped by the public environments, I’m exploring how we can use those themes to design our more private spaces and home environments. This shift is an experiment, coalescing with a new offer I’m working on: Sacred Spaces with Teju.
In my experience sustainability has to do with community and culture being their own non-monetary currency. A currency for connection. There is an idea pushed on us thousands of times a day, and this idea is that: constant consumption is connection and engagement. We’re influenced to believe that connecting to our environment is done through monetary consumption. I believe connection is a relationship with all that is alive around us… not a financial transaction. What if we connected more than we consumed?
As I walk around Houston I look for opportunities to connect. I see a blossoming tree full of pollinators like bees and butterflies. Tens of butterflies and bees flirt with this tree creating a spring-like busyness that National Geographic would appreciate. I stand and stare at the tree for a while. Just beyond this tree, brick buildings stacked towards the sky. Excessive, brutalist, and somehow beautiful. Bricks layered behind trees, on top of a bayou. In some parts of the Fifth Ward area in northeast Houston, the brick streets were hand-lain by the recently freed enslaved African-Americans who settled there in the 1860s. The residents created their own roads and urban infrastructure. For the public good.
I honor these guerilla urban planners by learning about them. I now see parts of this city as a relationship with enslaved ancestors who literally paved their own way. In this season, removing my attention is a way I make tiny protests every minute of the day. Re -placing / -claiming/ -directing my attention is investing in the world I want to see. I pay attention to stories that support the types of communities I want to live in, and honor.
It seemed like I walked some very long Houston blocks before seeing a trash can. I was holding onto a little piece of plastic. It’s what baristas put in the mouthpiece of cups so the beverage being carried doesn't spill out as the person is walking. People don't seem to walk much here, though. Or at least that's what I'm told, and explains why the sidewalks are so vast, yet so empty. Filled with parking spots instead of human bodies; luckily they planted a few trees.
I saw two unmoved buildings on the edge of gentrification. In the 1960s it was called “revitalization.” The buildings are actually on the edge of two highways built in the 1960s and 70s that cut the Fifth Ward off from downtown Houston and the rest of the city. It disrupted / busted through the Fifth Ward community. To give them access, was the rationale. Who decides what access means? Is it massive concrete architecture, pretending to be community-centered infrastructure? Is access even a physical thing... or a system, or a relationship? I have a feeling access is a relationship to space, infrastructure, and each other. Mostly: each other.
I'm writing this from a thirty-story building. I am sitting on a couch that almost looks like linen, but is most likely made of some polyester cotton blend. Polyester—basically fancy plastic—can feel soft to the touch. It can be transformed into something that looks like a natural textile. Mimicking nature, but made out of refined and processed oil. Plastic is truly a pervasive material, so much so that it can't go away. Ever (in human time). Even when we think we're throwing it away. There is no away. That little plastic spillage stopper I threw in the trash can will be on this planet unable to break down for hundreds of thousands of years. That’s how long it can take plastics to become earth again, and then it is harmful for soil when it does return. What if we made stuff that returned to the earth in months (instead of thousands of years) as nutrients instead of toxins?
I wonder what it would be like if this couch I’m sitting on:
was made out of regenerative flax (linen) grown on small regional farms, stewarded by Black and Indigenous humans
blended with climate resilient cotton grown in warmer regions alongside peanuts and black-eye peas
spun, woven, dyed and wefted by people who transform yarn into the diverse types of fabrics and textiles we use for clothing, furniture, blankets rugs… the things that make us feel cozy
So many relationships are necessary to make our stuff. Relationships between materials and land. Relationships to access and excess and geography. Sometimes as I walk around cities, places, streets I think to myself: we are living in the future. This is the apocalypse the movies with Tom Cruise imagined; except with more Black people—obviously. It's happening in real life, in real time. Look up from this screen, for a moment.
Yes, the apocalypse can also be beautiful. Yes, even in crises we have moments of beauty. Octavia Butler said it would look like this: Earthseed.
What if we imagine a lovely room filled with material(s) that required small revolutions to be produced? How might our design choices change if we think of our stuff / things / materials as a series of relationships?