The Borough Project

The Borough Project was a collaboration between nationally-prominent artists, Spoleto Festival USA, hundreds of civic leaders and volunteers, local architects, and the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston (CAC). Conducted from August 2002-June 2003, the work involved two groups of undergraduate and graduate students in architecture and landscape architecture.

PART I consisted of a feasibility study for a non-profit African-American group with a mission of preserving and documenting a lost multi-ethnic neighborhood. We developed five approaches to converting the last remaining houses from the former neighborhood into a museum, along with a feasibility study.

PART II was an installation for Spoleto Festival 2003 that recalled the two lost neighborhoods from the site and served as the setting for a civic debate on urban livability.

In order to make tangible the twice demolished neighborhood, we reconstructed the urban pattern and architectural typology of the 1900-era neighborhood with a material pallet that recalled the 1940 housing project. The result was a series of empty porches with the presence of previous occupation.
For the arts festival, eighty prominent citizens (from the Mayor to teenage leaders) were recruited to debate issues of urban livability. Starting at the original houses, former Borough residents delivered an oral history of the lost neighborhood; the audience filed past the empty porches; and citizens then convened around a civic leader and discussed density, traffic, schools, public space, streets, parks, and other issues of urban livability.

Due to citizen interest in the project, the City asked that the installation stand through the summer of 2003.

This project received the NCARB Prize, Honorable Mention, in 2004.