- 091
- The Freedmen ChurchesRenewing Collectivity from the Margins of the City
- Abstract
- In the aftermath of the American Civil War, former plantation
slaves, or ‘freedmen’, exercised their newly-granted right to
landownership by building churches across the American
South. Despite the widespread discrimination they faced,
freedmen built a regional network of rural churches that
embodied a radical form of landholding based on collective
use. Today, urban shifts caused by real estate plans threaten
these historical sites. Saint John, one such church, is now
embedded in the sprawl of Houston, Texas. This architectinitiated
project takes Saint John as the germ of a
transformation to revitalise the freedmen church network
and reconfigure the suburban landscape.
- Citation
- Cuéllar, G. (2016). The Freedmen Churches. Renewing Collectivity from the Margins of the City. Social Poetics . The Architecture of Use and Appropriation, OASE, (96), 91–94. Retrieved from https://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/96/TheFreedmenChurches
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- Editors of this issue
- Michiel Dehaene, Els Vervloesem, Marleen Goethals, Hüsnü Yegenoglu
- Design
- Karel & Aagje Martens
- June 2016
- English/Dutch
- Paperback/Illustrated (b/w)
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- ISSN0169-6238
- ISBN978-94-6208-280-9
- © NAi Publishers, 2016
- Subsidising institutions
- Technische Universiteit Delft, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universiteit Gent, Universiteit Hasselt, Team Vlaams Bouwmeester