This project began as an attempt to answer the question of what it means to belong to a place and in what ways do I personally find a sense of “home” away from home. But the nature of this question is also counterintuitive for me. Unlike my parents, I did not leave a country behind and I am not searching for traces of another country in Miami. Since my family is from Chile and Miami is a city heavily influenced by the Caribbean, many of the “hispanic” things or landmarks in Miami that I see on a daily basis are not things that resonate with me or my family at all. My sense of belonging in Miami takes the form of a cultural collage that has little to do with my actual background.

My version of home can only exist through the migration and cohabiting of people that differ greatly from me. I see this as a central part of my American identity. I have grown up in the remnants of other people who have undergone the pain of migration and who everyday go through the work of trying to make a place feel like home.

I began to investigate the following question: what are the things that give suburbs - a very standard building typology - a sense of place? What happens when you strip away the architecture and the cityscape and try to decipher exactly what elements give a suburb like Doral an identity?This project is about looking at the city as a collection of people's lived experiences and the languages, traditions, and objects that people bring with them.

Research

I began by photographing my suburb and cutting away any of the pieces that were typical only of Florida or that had roots in another country in order to incorporate into my initial collages.

Explorations

In the first five collages I began to construct spaces without the use of the physical cityscape and instead only with culturally charged objects and Floridian objects. The next five collages were led by found objects including supermarket pamphlets, hurricane preparedness pamphlets, and magazines. They address themes of suburbia, consumption, and car-centered urbanism. In the last five collages I began to incorporate more of the signs, products and grocery stores, cafes and restaurants that have played a memorable role for me.

Final Drawing