A Tale: Heading to the Tent of Tomorrow

The thesis project is considered as an experiment of transforming an abandoned artifact into an imaginary utopia which is occupied and renovated by people who have suffered from gender inequality and discrimination. The project aims to manifest the urge of eliminating the gender bias that is rooted within American history, and to depict an alternative future for the architectural relic through storytelling.

1

Hello, this is the voice recording archive. I received a tape, some documents, and photos from an anonymous sender, who left only a card with “We are one of the many” on it.

I carefully took out the tape and placed it in my dusty tape recorder. The play button pressed, the voice from the tape recorder made that constant intermittent noise. Still, I could clearly hear a woman with a bright and determined voice. There was pain and helplessness in that voice, as well as anger.

2

I reached into the bag and took out a folded flyer and some photos with people holding huge billboards, protesting on the streets. Others showed several women who were either scarred or oppressed. I realized that she, the owner of that tape, was one of the many, one of the many that suffered from gender inequality and discrimination, which has been causing acts of violence that bring serious physical or fatal damage and trauma.

3

I couldn’t tell when these photos were taken, and the footages were fragmented, showing the scenarios from the same protest. On the screen, people spontaneously formed groups, and fled from Manhattan. It seems that the protest took place in New York City. But obviously, it was just one of the many around the globe.

Where did they go? My eyes were fixed on the corner of the screen, on that huge, odd-looking architecture. I recognized it at once. The New York State Pavilion, built during the Second-wave feminism, was used for the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Ah, those delirious utopian fantasies, I couldn’t help but sighed.

4

Ah, those delirious utopian fantasies, I couldn’t help but sigh.

Because the irony is, those utopias of the fairs were never built to last. Most of the time they would be demolished and left barely a glimpse of the past glory. And behind all the fantasies there lied the rooted patriarchal social ideology.

I was surprised at what the pavilion had become after this protest. People seem to have occupied the structure and used it as the base to build their own place for protesting and manifesting. What a choice. I thought to myself.

As more and more people arrived there, they stood around the giant structure, with all the rage and pain at hearts. Days had passed, the pavilion did not look the same anymore. They eagerly got united and start to build the stages, because they had to express their feelings and needs openly and freely, and deeply in my heart I felt sorry that they had to do this in such an unapologetic manner.

They put scaffoldings all around the pavilion. On the screen I watched them building up the platforms that go all the way up to the observation towers. Fabrics and strands were tied together, weaving through the pavilion, together with the platforms and staircases, this portion of attached structures divided the massive void volume into smaller spaces. It looks like a labyrinth, yet later I realized all the platforms are not only connected with each other so well, but also together they formed spaces that can be used as an auditorium, allowing the views to the enter of the pavilion, where there are stages set up at multiple levels.

View my thesis booklet

Jiuying Li

JYL completed her Bachelor of Architecture at Bejing University of Technology in China and a graduate of the Master of Architecture Program at Parsons The New School of Design. She has been interested in urban resiliency, public health, sustainable architecture, etc. In the past seven years of architecture learning, she has developed a strong interest in the relationship between architecture and human's emotions. Moreover, she has been trying to understand how the role of buildings changes, on the premise of the increasingly tense relationship between man and nature.