Healing the Quilt of the Myaamia

Project Narrative

For hundreds of years the Myaamia tribe lived in the land known today as Oxford, Ohio. Yet when settlers from the east forced them from their lands, the people, ever united as one community under one land, became separate. Yet still their unity fought to persist, making rise for the forming of the symbol of the double sided diamond (the red one for the people and land of their homeland and the black for those in Oklahoma: the promise of unification- that the two lands under two split groups of people were still one. Now there are no natives left in their homeland, and the memory of their land’s natural beauty has been mutated into a rural landscape, populated by the settlers who had torn them from their home.
The new people of Oxford have failed, the land that was once populated by a group of people united as one, has been torn through the center. The people of two estranged communities have divided the land into the town and campus (Miami University), and in the process the diamond (the symbol of the responsibility of conserving the land) has been shattered
Inspired by the quilt and ribbonwork artistry of the Myaamia tribe, I studied the lines and grid that came from linking the sites surrounding buildings (some structures from the town and others from campus) in an attempt to sew the land between the two communities and heal the torn line between the lands together into one. And when in the process of reformation, the diamond shape was regrown, which in turn created the shape of my building.

                                           

Project Details

Submission Category

Building Architecture- Large Scale (>10,000 sf)

Date of Completion

December, 2022