Walter Hood
‘Black Landscapes Matter’ co-author integrates racial history into his urban designs
“You could feel something in the landscape,” Walter Hood said, describing the underdeveloped waterfront lot in Charleston, South Carolina, that he is helping transform into the new International African American Museum.
Hood, an Oakland landscape and public artist, is talking about the “spirits” of the 100,000 African slaves who arrived at Charleston’s infamous Gadsden’s Wharf in the late 1700s and early 1800s. How, he wondered, “do you emote those spirits in the landscape?”
The design created by Hood, a Macarthur “genius fellow” known for integrating local history, ecology and culture into his designs for parks, museum gardens and other urban spaces, features a tidal pool with waters that will recede at regular intervals to reveal a pattern of human figures, aligned as though imprisoned within the hold of a slave ship.
Other recent projects, including Oakland’s Lafayette Square Park, similarly spark conversations about social justice and marginalized communities. Now the UC Berkeley professor has a new collaborative book, “Black Landscapes Matter,” and an art piece he unveiled in February at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
QIn “Black Landscapes Matter,” you talk about Black landscapes having been “erased” throughout history, including Seneca Village in New York City, a Black village eliminated to make room for Central Park in the 1850s. Any local examples?
A You can look at the Fillmore in San Francisco: gone. When we talk about urban development in the 1950s and ’60s, we talk about how it was done for the public good. In actuality, it lowered the density of Black people in urban areas and pushed them to high-density separate areas. In the Fillmore, pre-redevelopment, people lived in houses, and there were a lot of us.
Q You’re known for giving new life to underused spaces in cities. Was that the intention with your Oakland projects, such as transforming a turn lane under 580 into Splash Pad Park?
A I hate that interpretation, because it puts out the idea that I work in these “bad places.” These places aren’t “bad.” It’s just that people only see them in one way. I think for artists and designers, we have to reimagine places through the people who are there, as well as the cultural moment they are in.
Q Can you talk about your piece for the new SFMOMA exhibit, “Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America”?
A It’s called “Black Tower, Black Power.” I’m proposing a fictitious landscape in Oakland on San Pablo Avenue that’s littered with nonprofits that basically are supposed to take care of people in this kind of marginal existence. I’ve lived along this corridor, and my office has been there for almost 30 years, and it’s gotten worse. I also deal with the history of redlining that prevented any major development higher than six stories west of Telegraph Avenue. I create this fiction asking: What if nonprofits were armed with the Black Panthers’ Tenpoint program? I’m proposing high-rise towers for 10 nonprofits that illuminate how they might help people think of the future in a completely different way.