[Re]Construction House

Built, 1891.  Re-rooted, 2019.

On Saturday, September 28, 2019, Sweet Water Foundation (SWF) unveiled its latest transformation project - [Re]Construction House at The Commonwealth -  an art gallery and co-living space for the SWF community. [Re]Construction House at The Commonwealth is the physical manifestation of Regenerative Neighborhood Development applied to the rehabilitation of an abandoned home.  A home that once stood vacant and degenerating has been brought back to life and now stands as a vibrant place of commoning.

Read on below to learn more about the [Re]Construction House at The Commonwealth…

A Story of Regeneration

The house, located at 5731 S. Lafayette Avenue, was once home to an elder whose only living relatives resided out of state. Upon her passing, the home sat vacant for more than a year, during which it began a process of degeneration and disrepair, until one of the relatives visited the area and witnessed the work of SWF firsthand. The home was donated to SWF in late 2016 in hopes the organization would bring it back to life one day.

The vision for the home’s transformation first manifested as an art installation in the threshold of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. The Radical [Re]Constructions exhibit (September 2017 – December 2018) provided a platform through which Emmanuel Pratt, the SWF team and apprentices, and the Sweet Water community reimagined what the house could become. Throughout the 18 month exhibition, SWF worked closely with Smart to activate the space via workshops, family days, talks, and exchanges from which a lasting, values-based partnership emerged.  

In 2019, this partnership culminated in the Smart Museum and Emmanuel Pratt being selected as one of the five winners of the 2019 Joyce Awards, which provided funding to complete rehabilitation of [Re]Construction House and its inaugural exhibit, People, Energy, Light, Power: the [Re]Construction of Ethos.

Transforming the [Re]Construction House

Sweet Water Foundation began rehabbing the house as a learning project for Urban Ecology Apprentices engaged in Sweet Water Academy. However, the project was much more than the simple rehab of a vacant house. The [Re]Construction House was designed and rehabilitated via a process that deconstructed the spaces of a home and reimagined the potential of each space within the structure as a site of convergence and engagement for multiple publics; a process of commoning. The cumulative body of work across the entire house demonstrates a new possibility for communities and cities across the nation grappling with the question of how to revitalize people and spaces stifled by decades of disinvestment, systemic and systematic racism, poverty, and perpetual cycles of violent crime.

The rehabilitation of the [Re]Construction House was, first and foremost, rooted in the historic preservation of found objects throughout the home that reflect the rich history of the structure and the people who once called it home. These materials share the story of the home’s evolution and devolution, and its place amidst the greater historical context of the South Side of Chicago.

Married to the process of historic preservation is SWF’s philosophy of “turning wastes to resources.” The project utilized materials that were accessible based on the resources and human infrastructure available.  Reuse of the materials from the Radical [Re]Constructions exhibit (Sep 2017 – Dec 2018) at the Smart Museum of Art exemplifies this process. Charred wood from the exhibit now frames windows and doors throughout the home and the cabinets from the Smart Museum’s former cafe have found new life in the kitchen.   

Experiential education was integral to each step of rehabilitation - demolition, framing, drywall, painting, furniture making, and every step along the way through completion. Sweet Water Academy Mentors and Peer Mentors led youth Apprentices and Fellows to bring the home back to life project-by-project. 

Sweet Water’s Regenerative Neighborhood Design (RND) Team and Humans-in-Residence joined in the project by engaging in a collaborative, art-infused process to inform interior design and create designed objects from idea > rough sketch > hand drawings > renderings > implementation > realization. The bathroom vanities reflect the combined process of experiential education and art.

The [Re]Construction House demonstrates that housing rehabilitation is possible outside the constraints of traditional re-development.  A cultural mesh of artistic philosophy ranging from Wabi Sabi and Shou Sugi Ban to the African American art vernacular of the Deep South has been applied to designed objects throughout the home’s interior. The home now serves a model for Regenerative Neighborhood Development that is eco-logically sensitive, preserves history, and does not compromise design, but instead democratizes it and creates the conditions in which artists of color can organically emerge and grow.

Inaugural Exhibit at the [Re]Construction House Gallery

The inaugural exhibition at [Re]Construction House - People, Energy, Light, Power: the [Re]Construction of Ethos - runs through March 2020.   

People, Energy, Light, Power: the [Re]Construction of Ethos is a multi-year living exhibition rooted at Sweet Water Foundation’s Commonwealth that celebrates the transformation of a series of empty spaces and commissions the [Re]Construction House. The commissioned work of the [Re]Construction House, itself, represents the potential of transformation when a diverse group of people - SWF apprentices, community members, and artists from around the world - engage in the process of transforming a shell of a vacant house into a vessel of hope.  

Artists from within the Sweet Water community were invited to contribute works that involve explorations and investigations in such topics as architecture, education, urbanization, race, identity, gentrification, and the transformative processes of community economic development through intersections of food security and sustainable design innovation. These works explore the role of art and social praxis as a key component of community, urban design, urban agriculture, and sustainability with a particular concentration on the creation of a new paradigms for Regenerative Neighborhood Development.

At Sweet Water Foundation, art is not a statement about an abstract or theoretical notion of social practice, it is an essential output of one’s life work.  The Humans of Sweet Water are Solutionaries and the works of the People, Energy, Light, Power: the [Re]Construction of Ethos exhibition are expressions of new solutions and potential futures that are possible via the practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development.

At this time, [Re]Construction House is open by appointment only with open house hours starting in Spring 2020.  Please contact info@sweetwaterfoundation.com to inquire about scheduling a tour.