University of Kentucky
Voices of Home in Bluegrass-Aspendale: Constructing the Ideal
Institution
University of Kentucky
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
Wallis Miller; Michael Crutcher; Richard Schein
Abstract
This project looks at whose voice counts in a struggle over the history and redevelopment of a public housing project in Lexington, Kentucky. From its 1937 construction as a Works Progress Administration project to its destruction in 2006 by way of a HOPE VI grant, the site underwent continuous evolution. Throughout its contested existence, Bluegrass-Aspendale has competed with the normative standards of the ideal home. At times espoused as model housing and others as a collector of crime and destitution, the 571 units demonstrate the complexity of constructing this ideal. This project looks at four distinct voices that have impacted the housing project. Each group’s representation of Home infers the ideology backing their position. The project looks at the media’s formation of a normative American house type, the authorities creation of public housing policy, and the designer’s motivations behind their schemes. The fourth voice comes from former residents of Bluegrass-Aspendale. Their stories relate a more personal representation of Home, one in which locates their own familial, economic and historical self. This sensitive relationship of personal narrative contrasts with the other three and serves to illustrate the challenges of this site and in public housing at large. The poster will be a designed object in itself, full of maps, images and text. Instead of displaying empirical information, it will serve as a medium of discussion, raising questions to problems that might otherwise be overlooked. If possible, through assistance from the Kentucky Oral History Commission, I will provide equipment to broadcast actual interviews of former residents.
Voices of Home in Bluegrass-Aspendale: Constructing the Ideal
This project looks at whose voice counts in a struggle over the history and redevelopment of a public housing project in Lexington, Kentucky. From its 1937 construction as a Works Progress Administration project to its destruction in 2006 by way of a HOPE VI grant, the site underwent continuous evolution. Throughout its contested existence, Bluegrass-Aspendale has competed with the normative standards of the ideal home. At times espoused as model housing and others as a collector of crime and destitution, the 571 units demonstrate the complexity of constructing this ideal. This project looks at four distinct voices that have impacted the housing project. Each group’s representation of Home infers the ideology backing their position. The project looks at the media’s formation of a normative American house type, the authorities creation of public housing policy, and the designer’s motivations behind their schemes. The fourth voice comes from former residents of Bluegrass-Aspendale. Their stories relate a more personal representation of Home, one in which locates their own familial, economic and historical self. This sensitive relationship of personal narrative contrasts with the other three and serves to illustrate the challenges of this site and in public housing at large. The poster will be a designed object in itself, full of maps, images and text. Instead of displaying empirical information, it will serve as a medium of discussion, raising questions to problems that might otherwise be overlooked. If possible, through assistance from the Kentucky Oral History Commission, I will provide equipment to broadcast actual interviews of former residents.