Jobie Hill, architect and founder of Saving Slave Houses, joined ARCH-401, as a consultant and a co-instructor with Scott Aker and Richard Wesley in the fall of 2021. The subject of the design studio was Slavery and the Founding Fathers. The studio project was a retreat and a memorial to slavery at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. The objective of the project was to demonstrate the potential of design to reimagine and transform the narrative of an iconic American building site to embrace the landscape of slavery, to use architecture as a means to reveal the forgotten stories of the enslaved people of Monticello.
In addition to offering lectures on her work on the excavation and restoration of the slave houses on Monticello’s Mulberry Row, Jobie led an in-depth study of slavery and an on-site tour of the slave houses at Monticello during a student and faculty field trip to Virginia and Washington, D.C. The four-day field trip, sponsored by the Wendy Evans (Joseph) Traveling Scholarship fund, also included an on-site study of slavery at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, as well as visits to numerous memorials and museums in Washington, D.C., including the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Jobie’s ongoing project, Saving Slave Houses, includes educational, interpretive, and community outreach elements along with an expanding national database of historic sites. To learn more see savingslavehouses.org.