Ground
Works

Apothecarts: Mobilizing Abolition

Emilie Taylor Welty, Jackie Sumell, Jose Cotto



Abstract

How can design start a conversation and serve as a tool for advocacy and education? A team of artists, abolitionists, and architecture students combined efforts to answer this question through the design and fabrication of several mobile apothecaries, or “Apothecarts” for short. The Apothecarts challenge us to imagine a landscape without prisons by facilitating space for knowledge exchange and healing rooted in plant medicines grown at Solitary Gardens (the partnering non-profit). There are 2.2 million incarcerated people in the United States, and of those, around 90,000 are subjected to indefinite solitary confinement every day. The Apothecarts transform plants from Solitary Gardens into herbal teas and tinctures for communities most deeply impacted by the insidious reach of mass incarceration. This work is part of an ongoing effort at Tulane’s Small Center to expand design access, improve the design process, provide a design/build education and prepare a new generation of architects to create a more just world. Small Center is Tulane School of Architecture’s Community Design Center which includes design/build projects where students learn through making. This design/build process is an interdisciplinary collaboration that begins with interviews, area expert teach-ins, observation, and surveys as part of the project design phase. Students co-create design options that are presented to a core group of stakeholders. After a multi-stage feedback loop, students deliver a final built project, or in this case two small built projects. Since their debut in 2021, the carts have been part of multiple fairs, festivals, and events in their home city, and have sparked a conversation beyond New Orleans through inclusion in venues such as MOMA’s PS1 and in global design awards.

Impact Statement *

Architecture and design processes have their own inherent power structures and biases built into them - frameworks, methods, ideas, and ways of working that are taught in schools and perpetuated in practice. This project is an example of newer methods that challenge those design processes. It advocates for a collaborative model that leverages the expertise of all stakeholders, fostering a more malleable understanding of architecture and an architect's role in projects.

Apothecarts: Mobilizing Abolition

Published:

November 14, 2024 (215 views)

License:


Apothecarts: Mobilizing Abolition © 2024 by Emilie Taylor Welty, Jackie Sumell, and Jose Cotto is licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0

Project Metadata:

Contributor Roles · Project Site · Sites and Institutions

Part of:
Creating Knowledge in Common

Figure 1. Apothecarts on their first outing in Central City, New Orleans. The carts are pulled by bicycle and carry teas, tinctures, and medicinal herbs grown at Solitary Garden sites. The apothecarts design, messaging, color and details act as conversation starters on the effects of mass incarceration in their communities.
People talk and interact with two green carts that have shelves and drawers. A large orange umbrella attached to one cart shades the people.
Jose Cotto, Small Center

SIGNIFICANCE

This project is an example of a university-based community design center, Small Center at Tulane University, teaming up with a local non-profit partner, Solitary Gardens, to imagine, design, and create a project that advances the mission and partner’s agency - in this case highlighting prison abolition through gardening and advocacy. The longer standing project of Solitary Gardens transposes solitary confinement cells into garden beds that are the same size and blue-print as cells at Louisiana State’s Angola Prison (6’x9’ where some have spent decades of their lives. The contents (plants, flowers, and herbs) of the prison-cell-turned-garden-bed are designed by prisoners serving their sentences in isolation, through proxies on), the “outside.” An outgrowth of this effort is the Prisoner’s Apothecary, where Solitary Gardeners on the outside turn the products of the individual gardens into healing balms, teas, tinctures, and natural medicines - a symbolic way of healing communities most deeply impacted by the insidious reach of mass incarceration. Central to this project is a call to end the inhumane conditions of solitary confinement, simultaneously inspiring the compassion necessary to dismantle systems of punishment and control.

Figure 2. The cart invites people to imagine a landscape without prisons. The aluminum body of this Apothecart was CNC milled, then shaped and powder coated.
An automated tools touches a sheet of aluminum from above, carving patterns and the words “Imagine a Landscape Without Prisons.”
Photo courtesy of Small Center

As the medicine is designed by folks who are incarcerated and then distributed to affected communities, incarcerated individuals have a unique opportunity to heal and connect to the communities they are often accused of having harmed. Mobile carts, or “Apothecarts,” provide a way to mobilize and distribute the apothecary’s wares while also educating the public on issues related to the prison abolition movement.

The Small Center’s design/build team collaborated with the Prisoner’s Apothecary to design and fabricate these Apothecarts, which are a set of mobile herbal medicinal carts that make healing justice visible and accessible across the City of New Orleans. The carts are filled with herbal medicines from the Prisoner’s Apothecary, and are used to catalyze public conversations at the intersection of healthcare, social justice, public art, and prison abolition.

Figure 3. Conversations on abolition and healing at a youth-centered event in New Orleans’ City Park. In addition to carrying teas, tinctures, and jars of herbs, the Apothecarts carry folding stools and educational booklets and supplies for events.
A small group of people sit on the grass or on folding chairs under a blue sky, talking. Rectangular carts, painted green and hitched onto a bicycle, are parked near the group.
Jose Cotto, Small Center

CONTEXT

This project is situated at the intersection of art, activism, and architecture. The overlap of art and activism has a long lineage (sidenote: See Reed 2019 for an overview. ↩ ) and this project was built on recent exhibits that have highlighted the negative effects of incarceration on communities, such as the Per(Sister) Exhibit at the Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University and a recent show at MoMA’s PS1, in Queens, New York, on Growing Abolition.

Work on topics of abolition in the Architecture academy include visual and data driven work such as Columbia University Spatial Lab’s Million Dollar Blocks. This project served as an early reading for students to understand our local landscape of incarceration and its impacts, and also as an example of how designers can use data to visually inform and advocate.

As an academic/community partnership, the Apothecarts project is in a family with many other community-based participatory action research projects that university-based community design centers have engaged in since the 1960’s. In the past decade, such centers as the Gulf Coast Design Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, Dotte Agency at the University of Kansas, and the University of Detroit Mercy’s Detroit Collaborative Design Center have evolved to combine public interest design (sidenote: See Meron 2013 for readings on Public Interest Design. ↩ ) with design/build education.

INTEGRATION

The Apothecarts were designed and built during the fall of 2020 by students at Tulane’s School of Architecture. This work has been an ongoing effort to expand design access across our community, improve the design process, and prepare a new generation of architects to create a more just world through Tulane’s Small Center. Each semester, this academic studio approach pairs a team of architecture students with a local non-profit to facilitate programming, design, and fabrication of a project that models design excellence and best practices in community engagement. This research is action-based and includes interviews, area expert teach-ins, observational methods, and surveys as part of the project design phase. At the time of COVID-conscious teaching (August of 2020), many of the guest speakers and stakeholders were communicating with the class through Zoom, a suboptimal yet necessary way to extend our frame of reference and to include our community partners in the process. This interdisciplinary and reciprocal process directed our design options and was presented to a core group of stakeholders who had been identified by the partner organization, Solitary Gardens. Over the course of fifteen weeks, we engaged in a series of design feedback meetings with partners and stakeholders of Solitary Gardens to understand the needs and explore the appropriate scale of the carts. As incremental decisions were made through cardboard and plywood mockups, the cart forms and their details went beyond standard drawings and other typical means of communication to pull all stakeholders into the design process. This multi-stage feedback loop process resulted in a final built project, or in this case, two small built projects.
Figure 4. Jackie Sumell of Solitary Gardens provides feedback about a cardboard mockup of an apothecart. The design process involved a cycle of rapid design iterations and feedback sessions before final fabrication began.
A small group stands around a cardboard and plywood cart that is waist high, a TV screen with digitally made cart design images is in the background. A woman in a blue shirt gestures as she talks.
Emily T Welty, Small Center
Figure 5. A diagram from mid-way through the cart scheme design explores ways that a single cart could transform or aggregate to form larger spaces and functions.
A diagram that shows a cart-sized object in various positions. On the left, the diagrams show that a single cart has different ways to be set up with larger conter space or shade. On the right of the image is an example of how many carts can be used together to make a larger arrangement in a line, or in a circular formation.
Jeremy Baudy, Small Center studio team
Figure 6. While mockups were made with cardboard and plywood for quick testing and manipulation, the final carts were built with welded steel frames, aluminum bodies, and skatelite work surfaces for durability. Students learned how to safely weld and use tools during their studio course.
Two people wearing welding helmets and work on a steel frame inside a shop garage doorway. The person in the foreground is kneeling as she uses an angle grinder in her hands; orange sparks fly.
Emily T Welty, Small Center

It is important to note that these projects don’t end on the last day of classes. As artists and activists use the carts, they continue to let our design team know what is working well and what isn’t, and to bring the carts in for adjustments. One of the lessons of this work is the importance of building trust by having a staff and faculty team who are present to take calls and make project repairs as needed beyond the semester course timeline (sidenote: See Taylor Welty 2018. ↩ ) .

DISCOVERY

Design amongst a team of nearly twenty students, artists, advocates, and social justice lawyers requires a considerable amount of conversation, deliberation, and trust-building. With incremental feedback and collaborative design sessions, the team realized that material choices and details hold the power to draw people to the cart and, in doing so, raise awareness and foster conversation. Small things such as the door and drawer handle variations were tested in multiple venues to elicit response and engage the senses of users; texture, color, text and material all became deliberate means to draw people in. For example, the handles were made of locally salvaged cypress wood with the Latin names of common medicinal weeds milled into the wood.

Figure 7. Handles, storage boxes, and components of the carts that required human hands to operate were made with local cypress and materials that invited touch. Handles have the Latin names of medicinal plants carved into them, a small invitation into conversations about the plants’ common name and medicinal properties. Counter surfaces and cutting boards are made of Skatelite, an antimicrobial and durable product more typically used in skate park surfacing.
A hand pulls open a drawer in a green metal cart. The wood handle of the drawer has a Latin word laser etched into it. In the background are four wood and aluminum boxes.
Jose Cotto, Small Center

RESEARCH outcomes

Typically, the Small Center begins each year with an open call for projects amongst the local non-profit community. A jury of past project partners, School of Architecture alumni, and a design center staff member convene to determine the projects the design center will work on. This is the process through which the Apothecarts project came to the design team.

Once the partner, Solitary Gardens, was selected and before students arrived, the team sat down to discuss goals, priorities, and what success might look like for this project partnership. The research question, while broad, offered direction: “Can design seed conversations?” The resulting answer, after a few years of the Apothecarts being on the ground both in New Orleans and nationally at events and exhibits, has been a resounding yes. Although small, these traveling apothecaries open the door to conversations and connections with a range of people who may want some of the natural medicines, or may just want to see what the interesting-looking cart is all about.

Co-creating this project has produced positive outcomes for Solitary Gardens: more programmed events to engage with the public, and raising the profile of the larger mission. For the design students involved, this has been a chance to work on a project where design and social justice meet, to build capacity through a designed object, and for this collaborative process to be recognized by notable design juries. Lastly, for the design center this project offered a scalar counterpoint to larger projects they have recently built and has proven that small scale projects can both accomplish student learning outcomes and raise the profile of community design efforts.

Figure 8. Students debate details and decisions through cardboard mockups. Design processes focus on ideas and outcomes instead of authorship as a method of fostering collaborative design.
Four students talk about a furniture-sized cardboard structure. One student sits near the cardboard structure to test the height and privacy offered by a hinged piece of it.
Emily T Welty, Small Center
Figure 9. Exploded axon of the final Apothecarts designs shows the functions and storage elements of the carts. An additional series of drawings were developed so that the design build participants could efficiently communicate the cart-making and assembly amongst the team.
A drawing of two carts in axon with some pieces pulled away to show storage within and movement of cart components. The carts are shown in green with shelves, drawers, and storage boxes in orange, all on a blue background.
Drawing by Claire Divito and Zach Speroni, Small Center studio team

REFLECTION

One challenging, but standard, aspect of a one-semester design/build course is the time it takes to help students empathize with the issues the partner faces, facilitate design charettes and interdisciplinary-engagement sessions, generate technical “build set” drawings, and teach students how to safely use tools. In addition to all of these activities, the partner organization was interested in co-creating the course curriculum to include readings and a teach-in to ground the students’ research in both the social and material aspects of Solitary Gardens’ work. We designed and organized a volunteer day at the garden where students built a garden bed in the footprint of a solitary cell to understand the spatial implications of solitary confinement.
Figure 10. Studio students volunteered at Solitary Gardens early in the project process to understand the mission and work of the partner organization. Students created a Solitary Garden with “revolutionary mortar,” a mixture of chattel slave crops of the area (sugarcane, cotton, indigo, tobacco) bound together with lime and water. The mixture is similar to concrete and tamped into the form of a solitary prison cell, while the remaining space is planted with plants as envisioned by a person in solitary confinement who shares their vision through written exchanges.
A small group of people stands outside in work clothes in a garden. In the foreground is a large white outline of walls and a toilet as you would see them in a floorplan. This white formwork is about ten inches tall and is empty on the inside.
Emilie T Welty, Small Center

While these added curricular activities created even greater time pressures within the semester, they raised meaningful questions that drove much of the design process and were useful in pushing forward unique design iterations:

  • can design seed growth?
  • how can design create a space for conversation?
  • how can the design process build capacity?
  • how can design foster community?
  • how can design heal?

PRESENTATION and Dispersal

The co-created design object, the Apothecarts, has provided Solitary Gardens a mobile venue to lead programming and outreach, one that is particularly useful for getting in and around the many fairs, second lines, and festivals that happen in the streets of New Orleans.

Figure 11. The Apothecarts were designed to easily get around by bicycle power to several locations around the city of New Orleans. The carts are stored and loaded at a centralized location and have a designed travel radius of five miles, although they have been across the United States as seeds of advocacy and outreach for Solitary Gardens.
A map of New Orleans shown in greyscale showing a river winding through a grid of many city blocks. The scale is zoomed out so that roads and an interstate are visible but houses are not.
Map Image by James Rennert and Dana Ridendour, Small Center studio team overlaid on Google Earth map

Unexpectedly, the carts have also reached a larger audience beyond the city, appearing at the 2022 MoMA’s PS1 summer program and making their way to the west coast.

Figure 12. The Lower Eastside Girls Club NY used the Apothecart to host an Abolitionists Tea Party at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) PS1 in July of 2022. The Apothecart was part of an exhibit at MOMA’s PS1 in 2022, then moved to the San Jose Museum of Art.
Seven smiling women stand around a cart that is holding tea canisters, flowers, bowls, and plants. There is a white square tent shading them and a string of green pennant flags and a concrete wall behind them.

The carts connect the work of Solitary Gardens and their associated incarcerated individuals to the larger community. This fulfills the mission of the project: to go beyond the art gallery and bring the prison abolition discussion out into the streets. Tulane’s Small Center and the School of Architecture have benefitted from numerous awards, both local and international, expanding awareness and understanding of the potential of design in collaboration with community partners.

REFERENCES

“Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.” NAACP, https://naacp.org/resources/criminal-justice-fact-sheet. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.

Groner, Anya. “The Solitary Garden.” Orion Magazine, 23 Sept. 2019, https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-solitary-garden/. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.

Meron, Gilad. “Public Interest Design: An Annotated Bibliography.” Center for Sustainable Development, 2013, https://issuu.com/giladmeron/docs/pid_bibliography. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.

Reed, T. V. The Art of Protest: Culture and Activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the Present. U of Minnesota Press, 2019.

Strong, Justin D. et al. “The Body in Isolation: The Physical Health Impacts of Incarceration in Solitary Confinement.” PLoS One, 15(10):e0238510, 9 Oct. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238510. Accessed 18 Aug. 2024.

Taylor Welty, Emilie. “Refining Process, Expanding Practice; Public Interest Design Fieldnotes from the South.” 106th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings,The Ethical Imperative, edited by Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg, ACSA, 2018. https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.106.7

Footnotes

  1. See Reed 2019 for an overview. ↩
  2. See Meron 2013 for readings on Public Interest Design. ↩
  3. See Taylor Welty 2018. ↩
x

Acknowledgements

Johnson Controls, Inc. Tulane’s CELT program

Supporting Materials

Apothecart_Booklet_Digital_2021_reduced.pdf

10.677 MB · Download / View






Contributors

 Emilie Taylor Welty†: Conceptualization, Methodology, Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Project administration, Reflective Analysis, Relationship Development Outreach, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing
Jackie Sumell†: Conceptualization, Methodology, Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Project administration, Reflective Analysis, Relationship Development Outreach, Supervision, Writing – review & editing
Jose Cotto†: Conceptualization, Methodology, Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Project administration, Reflective Analysis, Relationship Development Outreach, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – review & editing
Ann Yoachim: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Relationship Development Outreach
Inaki Alday: Funding acquisition
Tom O'Brien: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Naomi Smith: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Joey Tomshe: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Allison Slomski: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Malia Bavuso: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Abby Carlton: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Anna Kathryn Becker: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Kristin Hamilton: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Shanelle Brown: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Tracy Jones: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Riley Siltler: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Yi Wei: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
An Lee: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization
Ryan Russell: Production - Technical, Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, Visualization

Roles

 Conceptualization: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†,, Ann Yoachim.
Methodology: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†,, Jose Cotto†.
Production - Technical: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†, Tom O'Brien, Naomi Smith, Joey Tomshe, Allison Slomski, Malia Bavuso, Abby Carlton, Anna Kathryn Becker, Kristin Hamilton, Shanelle Brown, Tracy Jones, Riley Siltler, Yi Wei, An Lee,, Ryan Russell.
Production - Creative: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†, Tom O'Brien, Naomi Smith, Joey Tomshe, Allison Slomski, Malia Bavuso, Abby Carlton, Anna Kathryn Becker, Kristin Hamilton, Shanelle Brown, Tracy Jones, Riley Siltler, Yi Wei, An Lee,, Ryan Russell.
Production - Social: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†, Tom O'Brien, Naomi Smith, Joey Tomshe, Allison Slomski, Malia Bavuso, Abby Carlton, Anna Kathryn Becker, Kristin Hamilton, Shanelle Brown, Tracy Jones, Riley Siltler, Yi Wei, An Lee,, Ryan Russell.
Project administration: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†,, Ann Yoachim.
Reflective Analysis: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†, Tom O'Brien, Naomi Smith, Joey Tomshe, Allison Slomski, Malia Bavuso, Abby Carlton, Anna Kathryn Becker, Kristin Hamilton, Shanelle Brown, Tracy Jones, Riley Siltler, Yi Wei, An Lee,, Ryan Russell.
Relationship Development and Outreach: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†, Jose Cotto†,, Ann Yoachim.
Supervision: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†,, Jose Cotto†.
Visualization: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jose Cotto†, Tom O'Brien, Naomi Smith, Joey Tomshe, Allison Slomski, Malia Bavuso, Abby Carlton, Anna Kathryn Becker, Kristin Hamilton, Shanelle Brown, Tracy Jones, Riley Siltler, Yi Wei, An Lee,, Ryan Russell.
Writing – original draft: Emilie Taylor Welty†.
Writing – review & editing: Emilie Taylor Welty†, Jackie Sumell†,, Jose Cotto†.
Funding acquisition: Ann Yoachim, Inaki Alday.
† denotes by-line credit.

Completed

 Between September 2020 and January 2021

Website:

 Project Site

Sites and Institutes

 Millhaus, Tulane School of Architecture
Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, Tulane School of Architecture

Keywords

 Design Build Activism Art + Design Collaboration Collaborative Design Collaboration; Collective Action; Public Interest Design

Disciplines

 Architecture Art

Views

 215 views

Collection

 Creating Knowledge in Common

Collection Indexing Tags

 #Community Art #Design-Build #Participatory Design #Radical pedagogy #Intermediary #Reciprocity #Redistribution #Power #Representation