Paper short abstract:

I consider three meanings for a single place, a mid-twentieth century residential suburb at the time of development, the same neighborhood at present day, and an online representation of that constructed landscape. I thus explore both place and tele-place as materialized and understood then and now.

Paper long abstract:

The site of three interpretations, a Greensboro, North Carolina neighborhood, stands in for the ubiquitous post-war American suburb - a site for the single-family house re-conceptualized and built to modern sensibilities and standards. Following an architectural lexicon of mixed pedigree, with Ranch, Classical Revival, and Modern style structures alongside one another, the structures collectively tell of post-war expansion in tangible, built form. Here we recognize Modern residences as discourses of non-conformity to tradition and the white-columned mansions of the Piedmont South.

The second place, built figuratively and literally on the first, consists of alternative readings of the same neighborhood from the current century. Through different cultural lenses, the landscape - with its now-embedded Modern structures - stands quite apart from the place and people who first made and inhabited it. Once forms of civil disobedience, the Modern structures now quietly speak of a heritage to be preserved. These two readings suggest a contestation of memories in the expression of separate identities that result from particular cultural practices in response to larger societal forces.

The third place - a digital representation - provides an additional site of exploration that draws on the sense of place in the physical realm, a memory aid to investigate identities all based on "realities" of the materialized neighborhood. Through this newer form of social discourse, we re-trod the thoughts and insights of the past but re-make the mid-century based on the available pixels and bytes, a sense of place experienced within ever-greater temporal-informational contexts and interpretive frames.