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Sancofa Museum of St. Ann's Bay

Part 1 Project 2002
Andre Baugh
Fiona Sheppard
University of Technology Kingston | Jamaica
In order to express my views towards transactions while satisfying the brief, I have designed a historical museum for St Ann’s Bay. St ann's Bay is the first town of Jamaica. It is located near the docking site of Christopher Columbus. Columbus, navigated by the Moors encountered Jamaica in 1492.

This museum is intended to be a tool for perceptions. I chose to design spaces which shall instigate traversions through past, existing and potential times. Perceptions are created through the invocation of memory in various states. These states include literal, metaphorical and physical elements of the past while utilizing local materials, old and new.

In attempt to allude negligence of Caribbean history, each space was derived from a reinterpretation of a particular phase of the past. The four phases include the tranquility, encounter, deceptive entrapment and freedom phase. most spaces are designed to take advantage of the hot air rising around and through them. this air movement further induces cooler air from the surfaces of both the still and moving bodies of cold water. To prevent moisture damage to artefacts, their glass display units contain silica gell undreneeth below the artefacts.

The museum seeks to educate while agreeing with Haile Selassie when he said, "A man who knows nothing of the past is like a tree without roots". Its intensions are best summarised by the Arawak word "Sancofa". Sancofa is the Arawak translation for an eagle looking back in the wind whyle he flys forward through infinite spaces. these spaces are no different to possibilities in the caribbean.



This project, situated in St. Anns Bay Jamaica, required the student to make a civic intervention into a historically charged, small urban context. The specific programme of the museum also required the student to be aware of the notion of history as a generating force. However, ideological exploration was highly encouraged, and the student was not restricted to duplicating the vernacular.

From the beginning, the ideas of this project were in constant development through analytical explorative drawing and model making, writing and dialogue. The Idea of the Journey through an experience, as a method of storytelling was effective and contextually relevant. The student exhibited not only a large capacity for, and understanding of, spatial development and representation, but also a dexterity of formal language and use of materials. This project also showed the student's facility for independent thought and expression, it was ideologically strong, well worked out and ultimately very well presented.

2002
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