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A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) begins by marking the building at 3721 Washington Boulevard, which has been slated for demolition. Painted gold through a community action by people with a relationship to the site, the building is at once honored and shrouded by the color—highlighting an intermediate moment the structure's storied life. These golden bricks signify the preciousness and value of both material and community, while also calling attention to individual, collective, and institutional connections within the shifting landscape of our cities. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is a continuation of PXSTL, a series of design-build commissions organized by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. PXSTL—an acronym that stands for the Pulitzer, Sam Fox School, and St. Louis—was founded on the belief that creative interventions have the power to serve as meaningful catalysts for urban transformation.

Deconstruction, demolition, removal, erasure. These actions reverse something that exists; they chart a course from presence to absence. After what is useful has been collected, the rubble is carted away to reveal a shadow, a scar, or a ghostly trace shaped by the remaining surroundings. To expose and embrace the steps by which demolition transpires, however, is to both resist invisibility and retain memory—to see that the materials belong equally to the past and the future. Throughout the decades, the building at 3721 Washington Boulevard cheated its own mortality, shape-shifting with the intentions of many owners and inhabitants. And yet, despite the defiant presence of historical structures, material substance often fails from the persistence of time. Deemed structurally unsound after 96 years, its exterior was painted gold in a communal gesture of honor and respect. Now demolished, the building enters into a cycle of loss and renewal, of disappearance and reemergence. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is a continuation of PXSTL, a series of design-build commissions organized by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. PXSTL—an acronym that stands for the Pulitzer, Sam Fox School, and St. Louis—was founded on the belief that creative interventions have the power to serve as meaningful catalysts for urban transformation.

In its earliest incarnations, our modern word “translation” was associated with mobility. Its etymology has a history of moving and removing. Of carrying over. Of conveying a thing from place to place. Over time and through the creative evolution endured by all words, “translation” came to mean the turning of one language into another—the magic of communicating across contexts and cultures. At the same time, we know that something is often lost in translation. But how do we measure that loss? And if meaning is lost, where does it go? The demolition of the building at 3721 Washington Boulevard is itself a form of translation—one that recalls the word’s migratory origins. This building is being returned to its material parts, and its bricks in particular will be carried—quite literally—to local community groups for design projects. The meaning of a building shifts through this action. Its bricks become as though words to be removed from one context and reconfigured in another, eager to be reborn. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is a continuation of PXSTL, a series of design-build commissions organized by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. PXSTL—an acronym that stands for the Pulitzer, Sam Fox School, and St. Louis—was founded on the belief that creative interventions have the power to serve as meaningful catalysts for urban transformation.

To shape something is an action that aims to impart order or meaning through form. Whether a child’s rudimentary compositions that seek to express excitement for the world around them, or sophisticated computer design software that is developed to imagine worlds not yet seen, the process of shaping is central to how we understand our relationship to place. On Washington Boulevard in St. Louis, where a building once stood, a green clearing now paves the way for a new set of experiences and possibilities with this city space. By shaping the land and planting grass in concentric arcs of varying shades, the artists have marked the topography to signal a shifting moment in its history. This monument of growing grass embodies the perseverance of life itself: pushing through, raising up, coming back. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is a continuation of PXSTL, a series of design-build commissions organized by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. PXSTL—an acronym that stands for the Pulitzer, Sam Fox School, and St. Louis—was founded on the belief that creative interventions have the power to serve as meaningful catalysts for urban transformation.

In the body, healing is a process that takes time. It often occurs out of sight, beneath a bandage or hidden behind hospital doors. Afterward, the reminder of healing is the scar—a mark on the surface, likely to fade but not to disappear. In the heart, healing also takes time. It often occurs out of sight as well, sequestered to those lonely moments when one feels the full weight of what or whom has been lost. And although there is not always a physical marker of the broken heart that’s healed, one cannot expect to be unchanged. In the built environment, buildings come up and down all the time. The loss of a building can go unnoticed or unremarked, but rarely does it absence fail to impact the community that it inhabited. Eventually the site may become something else, or the site can sit fallow in a seemingly endless stasis. In what way does the land need healing, though? How do we attend to the inevitable mark that a building leaves in its absence? By reflecting on healing as an act, a practice, and a way to think about building, we are equipped to pursue past memories and future goals at the same time—aware of loss, but looking forward to recovery. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is a continuation of PXSTL, a series of design-build commissions organized by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. PXSTL—an acronym that stands for the Pulitzer, Sam Fox School, and St. Louis—was founded on the belief that creative interventions have the power to serve as meaningful catalysts for urban transformation.

A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is the first joint commission for Chicago-based artists Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez. The project activates an empty land parcel as well as an adjacent building at 3721 Washington Boulevard, which was slated for demolition. The project is organized to unfold in five stages: Marking (painting the building gold), Subtracting (demolishing the building and salvaging materials for later use), Translating (distributing the materials within the local community for design projects), Shaping (reshaping the topographical contours of the landscape), and Healing (regenerating the green space). By choreographing the process in this way, the artists invite us to pause and evaluate the life cycle of the urban landscape. Drawing inspiration from classic tropes in blues music about hope and unrequited love, the work’s title is meant to evoke the cycle of loss and transformation that characterizes the built environment. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is ongoing through fall 2017 and is located at 3713–3721 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108, across the street from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. To experience the full scope of the project visit awayaway.site for interviews with the artists, essays, and behind the scenes videos.

A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is the first joint commission for Chicago-based artists Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez. The project activates an empty land parcel as well as an adjacent building at 3721 Washington Boulevard, which was slated for demolition. The project is organized to unfold in five stages: Marking (painting the building gold), Subtracting (demolishing the building and salvaging materials for later use), Translating (distributing the materials within the local community for design projects), Shaping (reshaping the topographical contours of the landscape), and Healing (regenerating the green space). By choreographing the process in this way, the artists invite us to pause and evaluate the life cycle of the urban landscape. Drawing inspiration from classic tropes in blues music about hope and unrequited love, the work’s title is meant to evoke the cycle of loss and transformation that characterizes the built environment. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is ongoing through fall 2017 and is located at 3713–3721 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108, across the street from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. To experience the full scope of the project visit awayaway.site for interviews with the artists, essays, and behind the scenes videos.

A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is the first joint commission for Chicago-based artists Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez. The project activates an empty land parcel as well as an adjacent building at 3721 Washington Boulevard, which was slated for demolition. The project is organized to unfold in five stages: Marking (painting the building gold), Subtracting (demolishing the building and salvaging materials for later use), Translating (distributing the materials within the local community for design projects), Shaping (reshaping the topographical contours of the landscape), and Healing (regenerating the green space). By choreographing the process in this way, the artists invite us to pause and evaluate the life cycle of the urban landscape. Drawing inspiration from classic tropes in blues music about hope and unrequited love, the work’s title is meant to evoke the cycle of loss and transformation that characterizes the built environment. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is ongoing through fall 2017 and is located at 3713–3721 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108, across the street from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. To experience the full scope of the project visit awayaway.site for interviews with the artists, essays, and behind the scenes videos.

A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is the first joint commission for Chicago-based artists Amanda Williams and Andres L. Hernandez. The project activates an empty land parcel as well as an adjacent building at 3721 Washington Boulevard, which was slated for demolition. The project is organized to unfold in five stages: Marking (painting the building gold), Subtracting (demolishing the building and salvaging materials for later use), Translating (distributing the materials within the local community for design projects), Shaping (reshaping the topographical contours of the landscape), and Healing (regenerating the green space). By choreographing the process in this way, the artists invite us to pause and evaluate the life cycle of the urban landscape. Drawing inspiration from classic tropes in blues music about hope and unrequited love, the work’s title is meant to evoke the cycle of loss and transformation that characterizes the built environment. A Way, Away (Listen While I Say) is ongoing through fall 2017 and is located at 3713–3721 Washington Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108, across the street from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. To experience the full scope of the project visit awayaway.site for interviews with the artists, essays, and behind the scenes videos.