Pavilion for the Erased Brickmakers: Uplifting Heavy Histories 
Studio Spring 2022 | Vernelle Noel
In collaboration with Mary Hestad

This pavilion commemorates the erased history of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, a site where incarcerated laborers endured inhumane conditions while producing the bricks that built much of Atlanta. The project seeks to hold both the weight of this history and the dignity of the people who lived through it. On the footprint of the former convict housing units, the pavilion elevates the humanity of the individuals who once sought moments of privacy and ownership over small possessions- combs, keys, nails, strings- amid brutal circumstances. Salvaged brick fragments, brickbats, are reintroduced as a primary material, their brokenness forming the foundation of a new collective structure. Steel frames rise from this footprint as ghosted outlines of the long-lost tenements, gradually dissolving upward into a light space frame that metaphorically reconciles earth and sky. In this narrative-driven architecture, the materials, traces, and structural ghosts act as the protagonists, while the pavilion itself becomes the storyteller- honoring lives that were exploited and acknowledging the persistence of their legacy.