School of Architecture

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https://hdl.handle.net/1911/62597

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Browsing School of Architecture by Subject "Adaptive Reuse"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Allegories of Repair
    (2024-04-19) Sanders, Christopher; Geiser, Reto; Finley, Dawn
    "Allegories of Repair" explores the complex dynamics of marginalized communities, focusing on West Dallas. Embracing Donna Haraway's "situated knowledges," the thesis proposes a resilient methodology to understand the intertwined context. Utilizing storytelling tools, the narrative unfolds, depicting the challenges faced by West Dallas, from industrial proximity to rapid displacement. This causes for the rejection of simplistic architectural solutions. Instead, a network of interventions is proposed, including adaptive reuse and small-scale creative spaces. The thesis emphasizes subtle acts of redistribution and reorganization to promote community care. Despite diverse outcomes, the interventions collectively contribute to fostering a new collective attitude in West Dallas.
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    Energetic Ecologies: Industry, Adaptation, and The Thermodynamic Paradigm
    (2021-04-22) Hernandez, Michael S.; Castellon, Juan Jose; Finley, Dawn
    Addressing the widespread problem of post-industrial urban decay is imperative for helping our cities become safer, healthier, and more equitable; however, a close look at prevailing methods of intervening in these sites reveals underlying socio-economic, ecological, and long-term energy concerns. Starting with an abandoned industrial site in Houston as a case study, this thesis offers an alternative approach: re-engaging industrial ruins through the lens of thermodynamics. In developing a low-cost, low-embodied energy public space with high social and ecological value, this project considers the broader implications of biasing the ambient, sensorial properties of energetic exchange in architectural design. From a thermodynamic perspective, industrial ruins hold immense value -- from the materiality of their structures, to the land they inhabit, to their surrounding urban and ecological contexts. Because of their construction, composition, and formal qualities, post-industrial sites can be extraordinarily thermodynamically active and embedded with energetic potential that can be re-engaged and deployed in a variety of ways. Detailed analyses of the energetic pre-existences and microclimate of the site lead to development of an integrated structural and material system that calibrates passive ventilation to generate atmospheric zoning. Atmospheres are further articulated using intensive properties like pressure, density, convection, and conduction. At each step, the project is tested and refined using CFD analysis. Conceived as an overlapping network of passively-conditioned public spaces, programming is not pre-determined, but evolves as a function of atmospheric diversity. The formal expression of the project emerges as a synthesis of the material, structural, atmospheric, and energetic qualities of the site. By integrating non-isolated energy modeling, lessons from systems ecology, and modern analysis tools, the thermodynamic paradigm can not only transform how we conceive of site-specific design solutions for industrial ruins – it has broad implications for how we design and build architecture in our increasingly energy-conscious societies.
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    Engagement with Aging
    (2022-04-19) Francis, Carolyn Mae; Finley, Dawn
    Both buildings and their intended uses have finite lifespans. Standard architectural practice typically favors a fragmented view of time, one that fails to acknowledge the unpredictability and tension that arises from the aging of materials due to neglect, weather or appropriation. Decay is often met with disposal or nostalgia-induced commodification, thereby affecting our social and cultural order by associating material decline with opportunities for further consumption. This project proposes an alternative approach to adaptation by considering the ways in which aging infrastructure can be a vibrant site of engagement with place through precise interventions that dialogue with rather than prevent entropy.
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    Existing, Enlivened
    (2019-04-03) Turnage, Lauren Katherine; Geiser, Reto; Finley, Dawn
    This thesis offers a more assertive strategy for the adaptive reuse of existing buildings where the original development is not looked at as a precious, identifiable entity but rather is evaluated for its spatial qualities and ability to accommodate new programs. These conditions can then be enhanced through the juxtaposition of added spatial typologies which allow for a range of contemporary programs to be addressed, site density to be increased, and a profitable economic status to be achieved.
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    Industrial Green. Providing an Alternative for a Shrinking City
    (2018-03-14) Plyusnina, Alina; Hight, Christopher; Wittenberg, Gordon; Colman, Scott
    This thesis proposes alternatives urban strategies for the phenomenal shrinking city. This proposal addresses the issues of urban decline through the nexus of industry, agriculture, and urban infrastructure. This thesis explores the urban conditions of the post industrial cities of American Rust Belt, focusing on Youngstown, OH. These cities have been losing population, social capital, and political power for decades. Current strategies targeting the decaying cities fail to address the problems of the population of shrinking urban quarters, whether these strategies are growth-oriented or pursuing the idea of planned recession. This thesis provides an alternative for a shrinking city exploring the notion of resilience, its interdependence, and relation to the identity of the city. Through establishing a closed loop economy, Industrial Green enables Youngstown to be equally ready to expand or contract.