[10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact series]
image: General Demotion/General Devotion exhibition at the Valentine
Richmond’s Monument Avenue has been a showpiece of our city’s ambitions since its inception, and a source of controversy for just as long. Designed during the City Beautiful era, its wide boulevard, grassy median, and grand architecture reflect the principles of urban city planning aesthetics, while also celebrating the Lost Cause narrative that fit hand-in-glove with the overt racism of the Jim Crow era. Since then, Monument Avenue has remained a target of strong feelings and, for better or worse, a defining symbol of our city.
Storefront for Community Design began programming efforts focused on Monument Avenue in 2015, following the racially motivated shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC. Storefront, in partnership with VCUart’s middle Of Broad (“mOb”) studio, sponsored a design education program and panel featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Paul Williams, architectural historian Calder Loth, and Bill Martin, Director of the Valentine.
image: mOb studio design poster for people’s choice voting (left); ballot box at final exhibit at the Valentine (right)
The issue gained renewed urgency in the summer of 2017, in the wake of the violence of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Storefront, once again in partnership with VCUart’s mOb Studio, decided to take a different approach by engaging not just local Richmonders, but the design community at large to reimagine Monument Avenue.
Storefront proposed a juried design competition, coined “General Demotion/General Devotion”, intended to facilitate constructive discussion about the future of Monument Avenue and guided by the principle that "good design has the power to offer nuanced, multi-layered and hybridized representation of the built environment in places where conventional discussion has failed."
Funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the competition attracted entries from an international cohort of design teams. Registration opened in April 2018 and concluded at the end of that year. A total of 68 entries were submitted from four different countries and 11 different U.S. states. Concurrent with the juried design competition, the team also sponsored "Monumental Youth," a design workshop curriculum encouraging high school students to re-imagine Monument Avenue.
“It’s a long journey but we think that this particular issue — how do we remember — is really important.”
image: Jurors’ Award for Scale and the People’s Choice
Design Team: Shane Neufeld and Kevin Kunstadt
image: Jurors’ Award for Context
Design Team: Archie Lee Coates IV, Jeff Franklin, Anya Shcherbakova, Phil Gibson, Dillon Kogie
image: Jurors’ Award for Intervention
Design Team: Lori Garrett, Robert Riddle, Neil Walls
image: Jurors’ Award for Programming
Design Team: Pratt Institute Group #2
In 2019, the Valentine Museum hosted an exhibition featuring the 20 top entries as selected by the jury, and the four winning entries were announced in November 2019.
One of the winning entries, from an international team of graduate students at the Pratt Institute, focused on reimagining Monument Avenue as a community engagement corridor, proposing an inclusive series of educational and recreational programming along Monument Avenue. The People's Choice Award, based on more than 2,000 votes cast by visitors to the exhibit at the Valentine Museum, recognized a submission from a Brooklyn-based design team that reimagines Monument Avenue as a Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Memorial.
“Looking at the winners, all of the proposals and the public response, it’s clear that design has a central role to play in moving forward, and this competition is where that difficult work starts. ”
With the removal of the Confederate monuments on Monument Avenue in the last two years, General Demotion/General Devotion has proved to be more than just a speculative exercise. Storefront continues to be engaged in public planning efforts regarding the future of Monument Avenue, and we look forward to helping the community shape what comes next for Richmond’s most iconic thoroughfare.
image: "Monumental Youth," a design workshop curriculum encouraging high school students to re-imagine Monument Avenue (left); design idea from a youth participant (right)
Learn more by downloading a final booklet developed by Storefront for Community Design and the mOb studio detailing the project background, timeline, events, and award winners. A huge thank you goes to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Valentine, and all of our community supporters who made this design competition a success!
WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!
We can only continue because of your generous support that makes it possible for Storefront to continue providing design education opportunities like the General Demotion/General Devotion design competition. In honor of our 10th anniversary and to ensure future funding, we are laying the foundation for the next 10 years of community impact. Money raised will be invested in a variety of ways that, taken together, are designed to increase Storefront's mission and programming that will bring positive change to Richmond communities over the next 10 years.
10 YEARS, 10 STORIES OF IMPACT
Follow Storefront for Community Design’s 10 Years, 10 Stories of Impact series to learn more about our impact over the last ten years and check out a timeline of milestones for an overview of our work.
01 | Storefront is Born
02 | Ms. Thompson’s Kitchen
03 | mOb + Storefront = ❤️
04 | Recovery by Design
05 | A Celebration of Community Design
06 | Designing an Innovation Center
07 | Building a Brave Space
08 | General Demotion / General Devotion
09 | Community Driven Design Process
10 | A Vision for the Future