Timeless History - Area of Reflection
Abstract
Description
For my Senior Design Project at the University of Delaware, I was given the difficult but rewarding task of unpacking the histories and hardships of slavery at the John Dickinson Plantation and ultimately design an area of reflection the commemorates the enslaved peoples who once resided there.
As a Delaware native, I found it important to understand my state’s specific history of slavery, as well as learn the legacy of slavery and its
lasting impact on American communities to this day. And although the enslaved community played an important role in the function of the plantation, there is a disproportional amount of documentation of their lifestyles compared to the documentation of the Dickinson family.
These distinctive concepts compelled me to create a design that would highlight the enslaved community that was intertwined with other free communities on the site, and would incorporate the existing list of enslaved peoples’ names.
Keywords
John Dickinson Plantation, Dover DE, Landscape architecture, Enslaved peoples, Passage landscapes, Memory Objects