This studio reimagines ancestral practices in order to challenge colonial architecture and its aesthetic implications. Reconstructed Feminine presents a new architectural imaginary of a correctional facility located outside Hudson, NY. A radical, intersectional feminist occupation of this site that follows ancestral practices––such as jewelry making, stonework, and masonry––forges a new trajectory of occupation that directly challenges the planning and gentrification of Hudson. The handiwork and craftsmanship of women––particularly those practices that deal with hard materials such as marble, rock, stone, and brick––become a means through which the existing colonial objects and histories are healed and repurposed for the occupation of future ancestors. The core ambitions of the project seek to create a community where feminine practices––such as midwifery, or petit marronage––are rightfully understood as aesthetic and ancestral modes that can lead to the production of architecture in non-hierarchical ways.
