Africatown Competition Winners Design Revitalized Community
Historic Alabama settlement of formerly enslaved Africans reimagined with new urban realm and public garden, training school, housing and a historic ancestral gateway; winning team includes Victor Body-Lawson, Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architecture, Brandt:Haferd, Nigeria-based Total Consult and WXY architecture + urban design
A team of acclaimed designers from the African and Caribbean diaspora and the noted women-owned firm WXY architecture + urban design has won the Africatown International Design Ideas Competition, which challenged architects to conceive solutions that both honor history and promise to spark revitalization in an Alabama community created in 1860 by former slaves brought on the last known slave ship to arrive in the United States.
Working to energize and celebrate the extensive site in Mobile, Alabama, the team assembled by WXY architecture + urban design includes design-build firm Total Consult and architects Brandt:Haferd and Body Lawson Associates, as well as landscape architect Elizabeth J. Kennedy ASLA. The group joined forces to conceive a composition of new urban interventions that also knits together the community fabric. Accessed through an honorary entry point, the Ancestral Gateway, visitors and residents are welcomed into a circular entry plaza that opens toward Africatown Boulevard, embracing and drawing in the flow of pedestrian traffic.