Spencer, Rachel2018-08-252018-08-252018-08-25https://hdl.handle.net/1794/23674Examining committee chair: Mark EischeidIn seeking to develop a design approach inspired by African American culture, jazz emerged as a deep source of creativity in art and design. This project looks at the invariable features of jazz—improvisation, syncopation, call-and-response, harmonic structure, and kinetic orality— in relation to the sister disciplines of the visual artwork of Gee’s Bend and the spatial practices of African Americans in the Southern United States. Drawing connections between the media resulted in an interpretation of their commonalities leading to a set of operating and underlying principles that explained the occurring phenomena. These principles were then tested in a research by design experiment with a determined context, at a site choosen for its historical relevance to the African American community in the Lower Albina neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. The objective of the design sought to reestablish the urban fabric that was severed by the elevated transportation infrastructure of the interstate highways. The resulting new approach was discovered through an iterative process of design and reflection that tested the interpretation of constructed principles inspired by African American cultural expression. This new approach consists of a set of guidelines that is transferrable to other sites and is an opportunity for future research.en-USCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USTerminal Project