Museum of Diversity Jamaica

Project Context

The Museum of Diversity Jamaica (internal code name: Amaterra) is a permanent institution dedicated to Black and diaspora histories through immersive technology — Jamaica’s first of its kind. I served as sole conceptual designer. All research, design development, Revit and Rhino modeling, CAD drawings, 3D renderings, and schematic walkthroughs are my original work.

What Was at Stake

Jamaica’s first people, the Taíno, were nearly completely erased through colonization. Their culture, symbols, and knowledge systems were systematically destroyed. A museum dedicated to Black and diaspora histories that ignored the indigenous people who were there first would be quietly repeating that erasure — even with the best intentions.

Getting this wrong would not be merely a design mistake. It would be a political and moral one, embedded permanently in the building’s structure.

Structural Complexity

Fragmented history. Taíno history has no complete, continuous record. Designing from incomplete history without distorting, romanticizing, or appropriating it required careful and sustained research judgment across every decision.

Institutional values made spatial. The building had to operationalize MoD’s five core values — Duty, Inclusion, Vision, Equity, Respect — and make those values spatially legible, not just stated on a wall.

Future-proof flexibility. The building needed to function as both a traditional museum and a flexible media environment capable of evolving as technology changes — structure that doesn’t require renovation when the storytelling tools do.

Political grounding. Choosing the Taíno as the conceptual foundation is a deliberate statement: this museum begins before slavery, before colonization. That is a repositioning of where Black diaspora history starts, and it carries weight.

Specific Decisions I Made

I chose the broken Taíno sun — not a whole, perfect sun, but a fractured one — as the organizing symbol. A broken symbol used honestly is more truthful than a pristine one. The histories this museum holds are also fragmented. The form had to say that directly.

I used the fragments of the sun as the literal architectural floor plan. Each fragment becomes a distinct programmatic zone: Dialogue Rooms, Equity Labs, archive spaces, future labs. The geometry is not decorative — it generates the building’s entire organizational logic.

I made the gaps between fragments intentional. The voids between sun pieces become courtyards, light wells, and transition zones. Visitors physically move through absence as well as presence. The empty space represents what was lost — and holds it honestly rather than papering over it.

I designed all gallery volumes as flexible black-box spaces with no fixed technology built in, so the museum can upgrade its storytelling tools as technology evolves without requiring structural renovation.

I rejected a pan-African aesthetic using kente patterns or Adinkra symbols because this would center West African heritage over Caribbean and indigenous histories specifically — a form of erasure in its own right. I also rejected representing Taíno culture decoratively through murals and surface motifs. I made the cultural commitment load-bearing. Decoration is easy to remove. Structure is the argument.

My Judgment

Fragmented histories are not shameful gaps to be hidden or filled in with guesswork. They are the actual material of the work. The design had to make that legible spatially — so visitors feel the incompleteness as meaningful, not as failure or oversight.

Indigenous knowledge systems and immersive digital technology are not opposing forces. They are both methods of preserving and transmitting what matters across time. My design proves that a museum of the future does not have to forget the deep past to face forward.