Layered Landscapes: Spatializing Return for the African Diaspora

Abstract

The identity of African diasporans is in a constant state of negotiation. Tied to two notions of home, individuals inhabit space in-between. Connections to the homeland are maintained through cultural practices, return trips, memorial pilgrimage, familial ties, or embodied in layered landscapes, but there often exists a persisting desire to return. Drawing on these connections, the thesis engages architecture to question how return might be spatialized for physical and spiritual reconnection.

The thesis extracts the meaning held in layers of land. It establishes a methodology to view, filter, and inscribe the landscape and reinterprets pilgrimage framework. Three operative lenses, Agricultural, Cultural, and Ecological, are employed, acting at the scale of site, region, and global diaspora. The site of peri-urban farmland near Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe is designed as a village for agricultural production, community use, and ecological learning and research, sustainably supporting the local region and productive diasporic return.