Lyndsey Deaton

Welcome to the website for the No Place to Play exhibition. On this site, you will find the dates, locations, and times of our upcoming exhibitions as well as blog posts about our team’s production process. This is a traveling exhibition opening in April at the Monaghan Mill, Gallery in Greenville, SC. See the poster below for details about the event. In July, we take the show to the Redux Galler in Charleston, SC. In October, we are showing in Columbia, SC. Finally, in December we will conclude the series with a return to Clemson, SC.

The No Place to Play exhibition focuses on specific findings about gender taken from a large research study with the same name. The larger study was conducted by Dr. Lyndsey Deaton, a Professor of Architecture in the Architecture + Health program at Clemson University. The project links economic development policies to social inequality in gentrifying communities in South and East Asia by highlighting how spatial changes affect teenagers’ mobility and access to public space. The forthcoming book (2024) is written for concerned parents, policymakers, designers, and community advocates. In it, Dr. Deaton describes five years of living alongside seven dispossessed communities and builds a case for contextualized, community-driven design.

The exhibition was designed and constructed by a group of Clemson University students from a variety of majors including architecture, psychology, women’s leadership, and sociology led by Dr. Deaton. It is an artistic demonstration of the influence gender has on teenagers’ access to public space in post-displacement communities. The exhibition highlights  50 teens from seven communities in India and the Philippines. Walking through this exhibition, visitors will hear recorded conversations with teens and see maps and photographs they created to better understand how displacement affects teen socialization. Finally, join our team of Clemson students in considering the similarities between the teens’ experiences in this study and the urban public spaces around South Carolina.

We hope to see you at one of our events soon! Please continue to check back on our site for the latest information and follow us on the Clemson School of Architecture Instagram account @clemsonschoolofarchitecture

JANUARY 28, 2023

Dr. Todd Brown, 2021-23 Race and Gender in the Built Environment Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, joined us for a Saturday workshop! As an environmental psychologist, he reviewed our exhibition design and taught us how environmental cues—such as architectural design features and other physical properties—are used in the development of one’s sociospatial imaginary of urban space. Thanks, Todd!

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Today some of our team got to meet with Dr. Craig Wilkins, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. We talked about place, space, and the value of community-led design. Thanks, Craig!

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

We toured the Clemson Built Environment Laboratory (BEL) with Dan Harding and identified where we will start to build our exhibition. The BEL is a 12,000 square foot building and is the hub of built environment teaching and research on campus.  The focus of BEL is developing efficient building and bridge materials and systems. The Structural testing area (within BEL) is a 60’ by 100’ high bay facility with a 2400 square foot strong floor and is designed to test large structural members.  The lab is equipped with closed loop hydraulic and screw-driven actuators for applying loads, BRERWULF for applying static and fluctuating air pressures, an air cannon for missile impact studies, a universal test machine for testing small components, and data acquisition equipment to measure and record data (stresses, loads, accelerations and deformations).  In addition, the lab serves as the home base for mobile instrumentation lab for testing highway bridges. Find out more about the BEL here. Thanks, Dan!

MARCH 9, 2023

Today we built a prototype of our A-framed panels. These will be used to shape the experience!