Community characteristics reflect geographical location, economic status,
historical background, topographical capabilities and limitations, as well
as code restrictions. However, it is ultimately the people who inhabit
a place—by living, working, or spending leisure time—which fully defines
the character of the community.
Communities are developed and maintained for the purposes of people,
therefore the needs and desires of people are what should ultimately define
these communities.
As students of the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we have been assigned to the task of designing affordable housing for families in the Emerson Park community of East St. Louis, IL. In East St. Louis, 98% of the residents are African American. Due to this high percentage, our study focuses on African American culture.
The purpose of our research is to draw awareness to the specific and general needs of African Americans in order to design sensitively for the improvement of quality of life in the home environment.
We had a difficult time finding resources on African American user needs. Numerous searches for books, periodicals, web sites, and newspaper articles surrounding this topic led us to four possible conclusions:
1. Not much has been researched and published on this topic,
2. Research has been done, but not published
3. We simply were not able to uncover that which has been published
on this topic, or
4. African American user needs are not specific due to culture, but
are instead enveloped in the user needs of the general American population.
We are leaning on the latter…
We contacted Bradford C. Grant, AIA, Chair of the Department of Architecture at Hampton University and inquired about his knowledge regarding African American user needs. We chose this contact from Hampton University due to the fact that this university has traditionally been known of as an African American college. Mr. Grant told us that the information that we were looking for would not be found in written form. That is not to say that the information is not in existence, only that it probably has not been published at this time. He did tell us that by contacting local architecture firms we may have more success in finding private studies on specific needs. At this time, we have not pursued this course of research.
Due to the minimal amount of resources found on African American user
needs, our focus will be to draw attention to the historical causes and
continuing need for low-incoming housing for African Americans. We
chose to place our topics in a chronological sequence in order to show
the progression of African American culture.
Index | Intro | Terms | History | Vernacular Architecture | Harlem Renaissance | User Needs | Racial Segregation | Stats | Front Yard Design | References | Summary
