Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, hosted by me, alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Strictly Facts family hello, hello on a depon. How are you doing All the things right? It is such a joy to know you all are enjoying the episodes that we've been putting out this year. It really brings joy to my heart to get some of your messages.

Speaker 1: 0:33

As always, my name is Alexandria Miller, your host of Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, back again with what I hope is another thought-provoking episode for you all today. For me, really, this one is interesting because I emailed our guest today, which I won't, you know, get into too much. You all wouldn't know some of this info from the back end, but I emailed our guest today thinking that we would talk about one thing and we ended up deciding on having a whole different conversation, still tangential, still on topic right, but not exactly what I hoped for, which I think you know it's amazing. So definitely brings a new element to what I was initially considering. So I'm really grateful to have her. But before I introduce her, I want to, you know, shoot some questions to you all to get you thinking about our episode today.

Speaker 1: 1:25

And so, when you hear the term Caribbean architecture, what comes to mind? Specifically, what comes to mind when you think of architecture and design of Caribbean homes? What do you think of? Is it the shape, the color you know that we usually repaint and put up new curtains during the holidays or is it the rooms themselves and how they are designed? Our guest today has worked on projects specifically on the latter, and so first let me introduce Dr Stacey Scott to the show. Dr Scott is a designer, researcher and educator currently serving as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. And so, as I said, dr Scott, welcome. So much. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your connection to the region where you call home and what inspired your interest in Caribbean architecture and design.

Speaker 2: 2:16

Thank you so much. This is incredible. I think it's awesome what you're doing. Honored to be on this show, I claim Jamaica. Okay, that's my country, that's my motherland, I love talking about Jamaica, so I can't wait to dive into it.

Speaker 1: 2:33

And what inspired your interest in Caribbean architecture and design you?

Speaker 2: 2:37

know, right now the phrase mini search is kind of taking off and I'm first gen or like a post-migrant era of Jamaican and I think for a lot of us there's this feeling of displacement that we just have to go after and I felt that same interest in resolving that displacement. I don't know if I've dug the hole deeper but I've learned so much along the way, it's been worth it. And my connection to the Caribbean is, you know, it's personal and it's academic but it's sort of rooted in like the lived experiences that I've seen and how limited that information is in record and how I can resolve that in my personal niche of interest.

Speaker 1: 3:25

You know that's definitely the topic of our conversation today, of sorts. Right, I gave our listeners a bit of a teaser. When it comes to thinking about, you know Caribbean homes and home life and you know the things that make up Caribbean homes. Some would call that, you know Caribbean domesticity, and I know that's a term you use in your research, and so, before we dive into the specific topic that we're talking about today in terms of the actual home, could you define sort of for us what you consider Caribbean domesticity and how you feel like it shapes who we are as a region, as a culture, and you know some of the cultural and imperial even influences that have shaped our home lives?

Speaker 2: 4:08

Definitely I love that question so much. To me, caribbean domesticity it's like a, it's a language, it's care, it's memory, it's structural, it's a scent, it's like the order, the pattern and the shapes that emerge, and like your understanding of home in general. It's how the rituals, sort of, are baked into your environment. It's the Sunday best you know, the plastic covered furniture. It's how certain changes that are spatial become expressions of love and dignity and aspiration and care. And yeah, you're absolutely right, it does carry a lot of traces of empire, post-colonial sort of inheritance with it, some positive, but a lot of it pretty complex and nuanced, a lot of imposition. But I think that what's really great about Caribbean architecture and Caribbean domesticity is the way that we reinterpret even that, even the things that weren't imposed, and the formality that was imposed and how we've made it woven into our own cultural fabric and how we've made that our own. I think that's like one of my absolute favorite things about the Caribbean and domesticity in general.

Speaker 1: 5:33

You mentioned the sofa with the plastic covering on it right, which is precisely part of our conversation today. Parts of your research have been exploring the front room as part of, you know, caribbean domesticity and the role that the front room plays in terms of who we are, how we, even you know, connect ourselves to the past, how we keep things alive and in memory in a lot of ways. And so, before we dive too much into the front room and you know, as you said, remembering even just you know you can't even go in there or the uncomfortability of that couch, for those who may be unfamiliar with what exactly a front room is, could you describe a little bit about what it looks like, the physical attributes you know of a front room and what distinguishes it really from other rooms in Caribbean households?

Speaker 2: 6:28

I'm happy to do that. So the front room is the most curated, most formal space in a Caribbean home and it's where the good furniture lives. It's where you know the best china is displayed. It's sort of a mix of memory and aspiration placed in one room. There's photographs, there's lace, doilies, it's where the family's sort of best and highlight reel of, you know, migration and also, like memory of the past, a connection to for me I will talk about Jamaica where it lives, and it's distinct from the rest of the house because it's not for everyday life, it's really for display, it's for guests, it's for performance, it's for front stage. The Goffman theory of front stage, back stage is totally a front stage space where you're showing your absolute best.

Speaker 1: 7:30

I, you know, have memories of visiting various you know whether it's an auntie or whoever is home right throughout my life and really thinking about as you're saying. Right, this room is is a front stage piece. It's oftentimes one of these first rooms that you come across, but it's not necessarily lived in right. There are many attributes. As you said, it holds the pictures of our past. You know some of maybe the family's best achievements, the fine china, things like this, as you said, what do you think these sort of physical attributes of the front room you know display about us as a people?

Speaker 2: 8:08

Oh man, I love that question. What you're doing is, I think, so critical, just to say, because you're asking questions that don't typically get asked, and I think that comes from your experience and your lens too, and that it's just like the way that you're asking questions is also a way to make people feel seen. So I'm totally feeling them. Um, I think that they really speak to our deep, deep sense of pride. You know, we have a deep desire to honor our lineage and our dignity and our visibility.

Speaker 2: 8:42

But Caribbean's are very, also big on decorum. If you are Jamaican, I know, and I don't know there are plenty of other Caribbean islands that do that. But decency, you know, is a big thing. You know, how are you showing up? What have you achieved since you've been here? It's aspirational. It reflects who we want to be seen as, not just who we are, and I think sometimes people are like there's a fakeness to that, but I disagree. I think it's aspirational, but it also reveals how we've internalized colonial respectability for sure. So we curate ourselves through space. I totally believe that, and we made beauty and order out of the constraint that we inherited, and I think that that's what it says about us.

Speaker 1: 9:35

I fully agree with that because I think, you know, in some sense it would be simple for us to be like, oh, we do these things because of British colonialism, right, and in part is it true, yes, right, but, as you're saying, right, we've made beauty, we've upheld histories, that, and our struggles and our journeys, in a lot of ways that you know are not necessarily at the front of the stage, so to speak. Right, all of these journeys and migrations and achievements of Caribbean people really get held in this front room and I think, on one hand, a really beautiful way. Right, that there historically hasn't been made other space for and that sort of like this, this holding of memories. And you know the way that the front room tells a story, because, for anybody again, who has never been in a front room, there are, you know, the awards that you know people have won in families. You know you might see the high school diplomas or whatever, right, all of these sort of achievements get held in this front room in a very particular way and it definitely tells a family story.

Speaker 1: 10:43

But I think, as we had sort of alluded to previously, it can sometimes feel cold or like museum, like, right, it's not necessarily the place where you're sitting down and just watching Netflix with your family in like a warm and cozy environment, right, it is very much, so a little bit sterile, if I may add.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Right Like it's supposed to be kept pristine, I'll put it that way. Right, I find that very interesting because we hold a lot of things like that in our histories, right, so it's not just showcased through the front room, but, you know, every Caribbean family has that aunt or that grandmother that you know safeguards all of these old documents and things, right, I think sometimes we joke and talk about the birth certificate or certificate being held under people's beds, right, but there are people who keep the programs for funerals and all of these things, right, and so in a lot of ways, our identity is shaped around this holding of our legacies and of our histories. How do you understand this sort of like juxtaposition between the preservation of our memories and our lineage, with this kind of like inaccessibility, or like stasis or sterile-ness, you know, of the environment that can be the front room?

Speaker 2: 12:06

sterile-ness. You know of the environment that can be the front room. I just want to say everything that you mentioned before is critical of what's in there. Right, it really depends, I think, what level and migration you are, and the front room is really a response to. It's not always possible to have your entire home be that way, but you are able to have carve out this corner for yourself. You're able to carve out this place and, I think, depending on where you migrated Michael McMillan has written extensively about this for the British diasporic population but I think it is a lot of similarities but there are a lot of differences for America and for Canada.

Speaker 2: 12:44

I know I have, like most people, my family went to all three places. So I feel that I can really see sort of the difference, especially with my cousins. We kind of call ourselves like the British cousins, the Canadian cousins, the American cousins. How did we all kind of turn out and what was the differences in sort of that space? So it was interesting to think about it in that way. But you know what are the common things that are in there? You've got the fake flowers, the doilies, the glass animal of some type, the china, the picture of Jesus, you know a lot of staples are there and I think that your question about the juxtaposition between preservation, memory and stasis, I feel that as I did the research, I kind of noticed the longer that a person was in the United States, the more Jamaican memorabilia made its way into that space and how it sort of bled out into the corners of different places of the home. There were lots of sort of different pieces of memorabilia. So when I think about especially first generation, some of these items can sort of be flattened into this piece of memory. You've got quotes. Jamaican proverbs are really big to have around your home. In my house they've got the coasters. Of course you cannot put even a plastic bottle down without a coaster. You know you have your place map, a lot of things that are focused around preservation of furniture and things that are focused around remembering where I'm from. Maps of Jamaica are really really big pieces of this, and so there is a really powerful tension between preservation of memory and the stasis that you mentioned, because the front room really holds memory in its highest form and it's an archive really. It's also inaccessible, as you mentioned. You can't touch it, you can't fully live in it, but I think that there's a very Americanized or Westernized of course we're a part of that tradition too but this idea that you can't live in something if you're not using it a certain way and I push back against that because I do feel like we're fully living in it.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Sunday morning or Saturday morning, if you grew up Adventist, there is like a different way of accessing that space. That's where the pastor could sit, that's where you know you work through a lot of things with visiting family members or visiting people. I remember a couple of family meetings being held in there and that being a place where you recognized that you were at your highest self in that space. And for me it was very aspirational to sit in that room and to think of what I could be. Very aspirational, um, to sit in that room and to think of what I could be no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 15:52

I think a lot of my work is like looking at that liminal space and how the front room really perfectly captures that. And for us that are first generation or post-migrant generation children, this room really becomes something that we inherit symbolically before we understand it, practically Like that juxtaposition. I wish I had even more to say about that, but I think, like you've really cracked at the crux of what I am so interested in is finding what that is, and I think aspiration is the beginning of the answer to that question and I hope to continue answering that as time goes on.

Speaker 1: 16:32

I would certainly agree with that, though I think you know you're mapping us through your own family, right, the ways that we have since migration to the global north, preservation of our memories really interesting, because it then becomes, you know, a place of not forgetting where we came from as well, right, but in that, as you're saying, right, I think it definitely extends out to other parts of the Caribbean. But, speaking as Jamaicans, we love manas, we love to say we have manas and we have, we have brought up, see, manas and all of these things. So it does also become that place where it's like, oh, like some big guests, some big people are coming to the house, let us, you know, usher them into this room, which is always clean, by the way, like that is the next thing, it's pristine in its most epitome of forms, right. But I think the other point that you know you're definitely getting to through this understanding of who we are and when we've migrated, I find very interesting, because I've at least seen it change a little bit, right, like the frequency by which I've seen front rooms be in Caribbean households, especially for those who are maybe second, third, you know, et cetera, generation becomes very interesting because it starts to wean off a little bit. And so, you know, as we are becoming the new adults, as I've been trying to remember right, the front room has started to fade a little bit as part of our culture.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Why do you think that is, you know, and I'm sure there's a whole colossal, you know sort of reasons to really think through that. I'm sure it's not just one thing, but I think, you know, are the things like wealth building challenges, you know, diaspora, migration, technology, like is it because you know we can hold some of our, you know, most prideful and and beautiful moments on instagram as opposed to having the front room right? Like, how do you think all of these different things have impacted the importance of the front room? And you know sort of evolving definitions of caribbean domestic?

Speaker 2: 18:56

Wow, I love that you really really started touching on the answer as well, like with the way you even asked the question. I think that you really hit the nail on the head. Like the front room is fading because the conditions that produced it are not intact anymore. It was never just a space, it was a performance. It was a performance of aspiration, performance of respectability, of control, and it emerged specifically in response to certain pressures that were really specific to a time, I think Colonial surveillance, class mobility, diaspora, dislocation, like the desire to be seen as proper, as high class, as good in the eyes of a world. That really doubts your legitimacy, unfortunately. And those pressures are not gone by any means, but they've shifted, and so our location of responding to those are beginning to shift as well.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Um, migration patterns have changed. Homes are a lot smaller than they used to be in a lot of places. So what? What we can afford especially, um, my generation, millennial generation what we can afford is a lot different. Your home life is also more transient. You know it's more likely that you'll move. You're in an apartment, you'll go somewhere else, and so when you're looking for an apartment, you're not necessarily thinking about that space, and the space is still there, but it's sometimes more compressed. I know I still have it, but it's compressed and it's more spread out throughout the home. And I think that the financial precarity that we're experiencing right now not that the generations before us did not experience that same financial precarity, but we're experiencing it here in the United States specifically in a different way that prioritizes function over some of that formality at times in certain ways, and so I think, with a hybrid or diasporic post-migrant identities, the performance of like a singular cultural code, like the careful curation of a front room, sometimes it feels less necessary and sometimes it feels impossible and I definitely miss it. I think that even the way that homes are shaped now makes it really hard to have that sort of transition space that you're so used to. And technology has also really transformed hugely our relationship to display and audience, and the curation of the front room has moved in a lot of ways from physical to digital interface, has moved in a lot of ways from physical to digital interface, and right now I'm looking at a lot of that digital space as sort of a primary frontier or terrain, especially for post-migrant generations.

Speaker 2: 22:08

I feel that the internet raised me in a lot of ways. Of course, my parents are mostly responsible, but it took a lot of the internet to reaffirm my Jamaican-ness. I did not receive that from Jamaica as an island. In fact, I received a lot of pushback of that's not my identity, you're not Jamaican, you're American. And I think that disconnect is really palpable for a lot of us. And so the curation has moved from you know, that physical space to that digital space.

Speaker 2: 22:40

Okay, we have Instagram, we have that aesthetic feel that we're looking for, we have the new modes of cultural performance, we've got legibility, we have the urge to display taste and beauty and status. We still have that. That has not disappeared. It's just migrated to a different location. And I think the front room itself as it existed, as it was born, it's not really totally gone and I think what we're seeing now, especially as the front room was one of the very few spaces that really have big diasporic roots, it's something that has come heavily from migrated people, and what we're seeing right now, I think, is more of a reclaiming than making a direct replica.

Speaker 2: 23:30

Younger generations are reinterpreting the textures, the codes, the emotional weight. They might not create the exact same lace doilies Although I have a lace doily, I'm sorry. Like I have one. I'm not getting rid of it, I think it rocks. You know I'm not covering myself on plastic but I still have that preservation mindset and I am really proud of that. You know what? I'm just going to drop, this little tiny thing about myself.

Speaker 2: 24:00

A lot of Jamaicans, a lot of us. You tell me right now if in your circle who has the cleanest shoes, it's you, the Jamaicans. We have the cleanest. I mean, that's debatable, but we have like our things are kept for so long. I'm so pleased with my backpack from sixth grade. It looks like it could have been bought yesterday.

Speaker 2: 24:23

You know, and some of that is, you know, probably trauma response, but I think a lot of it is the fact that we are raised to be archivists. We really are Like, I like to see that positive part of it, not because the other side is not there, trust, I like to see that positive part of it, not because the other side is not there. Trust me, I have a lot of critique about it, but we are shown a lot of the negativity about our culture and I think it's great to look at it through a different lens. And so we're still engaging in the cultural memory work. We're still doing archival projects. We're still doing with our interior design choices, like we may not be doing the Damascus wallpaper anymore, but there's still storytelling, there's still art practice, and like it's more of a metaphor in a lot of spaces than it is a physical room, but the care, the inheritance, the layered belonging that's sort of reconfigured for a new context, it's still there the layered belonging that's sort of reconfigured for a new context, it's still there.

Speaker 1: 25:22

You said so much that I was like I could cut you off and we could take this conversation into so many different realms. Because, as we're talking about shoes, I was like, yes, I know a couple of people, well, that will put their Clarks in the freezer and have their special toothbrush. You know all of these things. But also, as you're talking and I'm like, I'm sitting in my apartment and I'm like, okay, I don't actually have a front room because you know, I have a single girl's apartment, right, so it's not enough rooms here to have my own front room. But I definitely do have traces of these front room things, right, the heirlooms, the cultural motifs. I have a thing of, you know, a Jamaican proverb on my fridge, right, like all of these things would have maybe historically been, you know, configured in one place for different generations. But also to understand that there is always that home, back home, you know, on the islands that we can all go to, where the front room can be definitely kept and pristine, you know, of our parents' generation. There is that sort of configuration of you know, this will always be our home in a sense, right, where the front room can exist for generations, for several years, whereas, you know, as we are moving through life and understanding our own challenges, and, you know, the front room is there oftentimes, hopefully, for a lot of folks to go back to. But the ways that we do that for ourselves is definitely very interesting In a lot of ways.

Speaker 1: 26:46

I think what you were saying about preservation, in terms of how we archive ourselves and keep our histories alive, it is also a sign of our, you know, tendency of respectability in several ways, which I think, again, definitely comes down through that, you know, british imperialness and its presence on our lives and especially how we have to perform as Black people, oftentimes as well. But I think, as you said, right, it's a complicated juxtaposition between being like, ok, you know, it's so terrible that we've, you know, done this thing because of British imperialism, but also there is beauty in the ways that we've adapted it. So I definitely, you know, echo those sentiments and really agree. I'm appreciative for you to sort of bring that to light for us, right, it's not just either or.

Speaker 1: 27:34

In a lot of ways, I think you know this also brings me to my favorite question of the show. I oftentimes am, you know, always thinking through the ways that we model and highlight these aspects of who we are in popular culture. Right, what are some of your favorite examples of you know seeing whether you know be the Caribbean front room in movies or in shows and stuff like that, or just you know overall ways that you've seen Caribbean domesticity really being brought to life through popular culture?

Speaker 2: 28:12

Oh my goodness, yes, when I was thinking about this I was walking down memory lane because I grew up on Saturday nights watching Oliver with my parents. If you know, you know, okay, if you don't know. So the sets on those really stick in my mind, especially the airport scenes and how interesting people were sort of navigating the space and how it was really created by the experience. And so, oh my goodness, I think a huge part of my humor, like my interests, are really formed around those memories. But if you guys are not familiar with Van Lee Burke, he's a British Jamaican photographer and he does Black British interiors, a British Jamaican photographer, and he does Black British interiors, especially with people who are migrating, and I absolutely love the photos that he has because it's not just a space, it's like a documentation of taste and of migration, of aspiration, as I've mentioned several times. And if you're also familiar with Miss Lou Louise Bennett poetry, it makes things feel alive and intimate at the same time. I really love her work. It kind of really understands like the language around things and parts of that same performance. And in popular culture we really can see traces of the front room in everything I feel you know um old dance hall album covers, old reggae album covers. In the way that certain films frame direct domestic interiors, um, there's like a ceremonial stillness to it and you know what? Um, if you've ever watched reality tv with your two-way grandma, if you haven't, I highly recommend trying it. It's great. Um, my grandma, I miss her terribly. She's gone, but I remember we're constantly her saying they couldn't have cleaned up their house like for tv and those kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 30:17

And so I think, like when I look at the way homes are portrayed in the media here versus that pristineness that has remained in Jamaican media, and it doesn't matter how small your home is, it doesn't matter what kind of status you have with money I think that's something that I've always appreciated. I have been freshly out of grad school, so the come up has been a build for a lot of times and you lived in many different spaces based off of what you can afford. But that's never an excuse to have your room dirty. That's never an excuse to have some of those things changing. So I think that's really reflected, even still, in popular culture.

Speaker 2: 31:01

And so the descriptions of the good room, this untouched, over decorated space that's reserved for guests, it's like full of meaning and I think it's really incredible. There are a lot of people that layer that choreography with domestic life, but I also think what's really woven in with it. Alexandria is like this idea of work. Okay, trigger warning for the Jamaicans. How many of us had to learn Heights of Great Men Reaching Kept or Not Attained by Sudden Flight? Okay.

Speaker 1: 31:35

Carry on. I'm not even gonna go ahead, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2: 31:38

You know that. You learned that before you learned to read. Okay, but they, while their companions slept, come on, finish it with me for toiling upward in the night, okay. So, like I remember my dad teaching me that very early, and I think like one of my pride points of being Jamaican is how tough I am when it comes to work ethic. And people might say, well, what does that have to do with design and architecture? It has everything to do with it. All of these things are woven together. It's impossible to divorce them.

Speaker 2: 32:15

And there are, like this idea of not just showing respectability, because part of what's baked into respectability is work ethic. You cannot be respectable if you are lazy or you know not doing work. It's to show off the work and what you have done as well. And so I think I'm like straying from your question a little bit, but, um, you know there are lots of references um photography, and so I've uh been capturing a lot of it with film, which I love, um super 8, 35 millimeter, 120 millimeter, and I uh polaroid sometimes, because I think that the colors, the images, those things are still within popular culture. But so I mentioned reggae, I mentioned dance hall albums, I mentioned, like old comedy plays we love a good play. I think even church is a huge part of that weaving in, of bringing the church inside of your home in some way and having that reflected, that mirrored relationship, the conversation between church and home happening.

Speaker 2: 33:28

But also there's Instagram. For those of us that are more like in today. We look at those curated spaces. There's the television today as far as like shows that we watch spaces. There's the television today as far as like shows that we watch. I'm not really plugged into the TV scene in Jamaica right now. Like what shows are on, like I should probably check it out. But fashion editorials, the echo, the texture we see that everywhere.

Speaker 2: 33:53

And I just have like a message of love for my Caribbean people right now that I have to share the things that are used from us have permeated the entire world and the things that we have brought to culture. You know how Jamaicans say you know like the things that we have are everywhere. But tell them why you know like the things that we have are everywhere and you can feel, and should feel, a sense of pride at how much that's permeated culture, to the fact where I can't even think for your question, like. Is this Caribbean, is it not? It's permeated so many spaces. So I think that I went off the rails a bit like my answer. So I think that I went off the rails a bit with my answer, but you can look up Olive Senior, andrew Levy.

Speaker 2: 34:50

You know the energy of the household. A lot of Caribbean writers use that. Jamaica, kincaid a lot of these faces and these incredible writers. I'm sure I'm forgetting many, but, as I mentioned, a lot of that British input, because that was Wadsworth Longfellow, that poem that we all had to learn, and those different things. A lot of those are domesticity that's mirrored in pop culture or in everyday life or in the things that even we had to learn from the media.

Speaker 1: 35:15

You took me down several memory routes of memory lane a while ago, right, but I do. I do definitely agree with what you said in terms of not only the wealth of Caribbean influence in the world, but also the you know sort of myriad ways you can see this, whether it is through writing, through photography, through plays, right, so I will be sure to link a lot of these books and similar media on our Strictly Facts syllabus for all of those who are wanting to check out more. I definitely want to tie our conversation together, because I started with this point on architecture, right, and I think oftentimes when people hear the word architecture, they're not immediately going to what we've spoken about today. Right, they're thinking about how buildings are built and bridges and all of these things that I'm not heavily versed in, right, all that to be said, the front room, you know what we've spoken about in terms of Caribbean domesticity and home life. Like we are the architects of not just the physical space but of these cultural spaces, right, especially when you consider the systemic barriers that have been and impacted our lives.

Speaker 1: 36:32

Right, not only have we built a lot of these things and haven't systemically gotten credit for them, or historically gotten credit for them, rather. But we've found ways to do that for our own selves, within our own homes, within these private spaces, within church, et cetera, right Places that we can not only find comfort and solace in, right, but be proud of and preserve for ourselves. Right, but be proud of and preserve for ourselves. And so how do you, you know, think this interpretation of architecture right? Not of the people who are building the bridges and the buildings and stuff, but, you know, creating this home life for us. How does this interpretation shed new light on what we generally think of as Caribbean architecture?

Speaker 2: 37:28

Wow, what a beautiful question. These questions are amazing, like you, should be like a research question, like a consultant. These are quite good, I think, man. It shows us that Caribbean architecture is expansive, and I feel this way about all architecture. I think a lot of times, like you know, in my particular field in architecture, it's so limited to this specific definition and my work has thought about how to expand that past what, like some, of the more purest or formal way of looking at things as an architecture is walls and ceiling and floor, just to be like super literal. But a lot of us not just me by any means are looking at sort of the behavioral aspect, that human aspect in Caribbean architecture.

Speaker 2: 38:16

To get to your question is it's not just about verandas, jealousy, windows, passive ventilation although I'm very interested in all of that and a lot of that really, really matters, especially when we think about what we deal with with climate, which is very important, but it's also about ritual, it's also about symbol, it's also about coded space, and so the front room is a form of spatial storytelling. It's architecture. To me it's not just in its materials but in its intention, and our mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers they were practicing design and architecture without some of these labels that we use and I think because of that it gets to be dismissed. But the interior design, the curation of home, the way of fighting not even fighting back, but joining in with climate to protect homes, and things like that are very Caribbean. You know, when we think about sustainability, even Caribbeans are at the front lines of the response to a lot of those things. And because they don't maybe carry the same names, like that, nomenclature is not there. In the same way, I think it can be dismissed. And so arranging space around visibility, respect, aspiration, memory it's not just decorating, it's curating meaning, it's staging, belonging, it's constructing a very specific type of legibility that's meant to make your children and your grandchildren feel this level of inclusion within a colonial and diasporic framework. Like that is architecture to me, and I very much feel strongly about that, and I think it's really important if you are a Caribbean person, it's really important if you are a Caribbean person. I think like it's important to reframe your narrative, if you don't already have this, of the things that I have been doing. Even if they don't have the same name, they can still fit into the certain framework or they can be expansive, even beyond it.

Speaker 2: 40:37

We have been contributing to a lot of these different design conversations in huge ways, and so I do think a lot about those specific things. You know the filigree, the specific types of windows, the specific types of, you know, material culture that we have within architecture and the history with it. But I also feel that the front room really disrupts the idea that architecture is only about a specific type of interpretation and is only about professional involvement. I think it really reinforces us to think about architectural authorship, which I think is really important. Who gets to be called a designer? Who is seen as someone who's shaping space?

Speaker 2: 41:22

And my research for Goody, I specifically thought about mothers and how mothers are really responsible for showing us specifically me, that architecture and design can be emotional, it can be symbolic, it can be deeply domestic and it's not just the materials that you might think.

Speaker 2: 41:42

You know concrete, timber, even though those are incredibly important, but it's also lace runners, you know plastic flowers, souvenir figurines, moral maxims that we have and the silence that we use to create. All these different things are materials and I have sometimes felt like out of place within some of the architectural conversations, but that's okay, and if you feel out of place as a Caribbean in certain conversations. Just know that that's your invitation to expand it and that's how I have taken it. And I think that our understanding of how space performs in Caribbean life, how architecture has become a form of social choreography, is critical. The threshold, the guests, the gaze, you know the active display, is all a part of spatial ritual. And the front room is not just a room, it's a spatial philosophy and it teaches us that caribbean architecture includes the structural but it also moves beyond it. And that's not just caribbean architecture, that's many, many, many cultures. It's cultural, it's psychic, it's intergenerational. I hope that responds to the question.

Speaker 1: 43:06

I very much so think.

Speaker 1: 43:07

So I think you know the way that you've outlined it for us.

Speaker 1: 43:10

I find not only like deeply moving, especially as somebody who is in these higher ed spaces right, and sometimes doing things that are out of norm or tradition right, but also, again, wanting to ensure that I am who I am and I bring who I am to the fore when I'm in certain spaces.

Speaker 1: 43:35

So I hope, as you said, right, that those who you know may be waiting through some of these challenges or, you know, negotiations, continue to bring themselves to the four.

Speaker 1: 43:47

I also find deeply what you said in terms of you know how our foremothers and forefathers have always been architects, right, just not only moving, but truly like we've continued to do this for generations. So they are truly the pilots of you know cultures in a lot of our culture in a lot of ways, and so I don't want to take too much of the ending of our episode away from what you beautifully just put for us. So I will bring us to a close and say, dr Scott, I am tremendously appreciative for you joining me on the show. It's always, I think, especially a joy for me to have a fellow Yadi on the podcast and identify with a lot of what we're saying in some of these intricate ways, although, as we said, right, a lot of this can definitely parallel and has definitely paralleled in other parts of the region, parallel and has definitely paralleled in other parts of the region, and so I am grateful to have you join us and, you know, be a new part of our Strictly Facts family to our listeners.

Speaker 1: 44:46

you know, big up on ourselves, I hope you know. This was again a really thought-provoking conversation and one that forced you to think a little bit about maybe your own front rooms growing up and how you hope to maybe even bring the front room into your lives now, in nuanced ways, of course, as we've discussed. So with that, I again hope you all enjoyed the episode. Until next time, lookle more. Thanks for tuning in to Strictly Facts. Visit strictlyfactspodcastcom for more information from each episode. Follow us at Strictlyfaxpod on Instagram and Facebook and at strictlyfaxpd on Twitter.