Digital Commons Network^™

Designing For Future Building Adaptive Reuse Using Adaptstar, Sheila Conejos, Craig Langston

Sheila Conejos

Designing future buildings with embedded adaptive reuse potential is a useful criterion for sustainability. Adaptive reuse is an emerging and significant design strategy that supports global climate protection and emissions reduction. Building adaptive reuse is a viable alternative to demolition and replacement; it entails less energy and waste, and can offer social benefits by revitalizing familiar landmarks and giving them a new lease of life. This paper describes the development of a new rating tool known as adaptSTAR, suitable for assessing future adaptive reuse potential at the time a building is designed. This paper reports on the methodology used to …

Designing For Future Building Adaptive Reuse Using Adaptstar, Sheila Conejos, Craig A. Langston

Craig Langston

Designing future buildings with embedded adaptive reuse potential is a useful criterion for sustainability. Adaptive reuse is an emerging and significant design strategy that supports global climate protection and emissions reduction. Building adaptive reuse is a viable alternative to demolition and replacement; it entails less energy and waste, and can offer social benefits by revitalizing familiar landmarks and giving them a new lease of life. This paper describes the development of a new rating tool known as adaptSTAR, suitable for assessing future adaptive reuse potential at the time a building is designed. This paper reports on the methodology used to …

Re-Connecting: Revitalizing Downtown Clearwater With Environmental Sensibility, Diego Duran

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many downtowns in North America have been severed from the rest of the city and from the contextual relationship to their surroundings. Sundered from their context, the ecological characteristics of a site are frequently taken for granted, and the disengagement of its public spaces erodes the downtown's character as well as the urban fabric.

Downtown Clearwater has lost the vitality and vibrancy that once characterized it as a lively district. Because of recent developments in the downtown area, public spaces have been lost between parking lots, high rises and a small number of sporadic residential pockets. Some of the most …

A Catalyst For Urban Renewal: Reservoir Number Three Environmental History Museum, Brian R. Fontaine

Architecture Theses

This architectural thesis investigates how architecture can have an impact on urban renewal by strengthening communities with an architecture which promotes human interaction through spatial and programmatic interconnections, as well as promoting relationships between people, their history, and context.

Piece To The Puzzle: Sustainable Elements Fitting Together, Heather C. Nelson

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Sustainability, green, and eco-friendly are very popular topics right now. Those words and many like them are being used in almost every industry. But it’s not just a trend, it’s a necessary movement. Using green building elements as a starting point for design, just as site, typology, and clients’ request are used, is how a sustainable building is created. These elements must be adjusted for every site because local materials, climate and community all play a role.

Deep investigation of the projects context is important. There are many factors of the site to consider. Physical aspects while important are just …

Rising Architecture, Erica M. Wiggin

Architecture Theses

Many cities have experienced shrinkage in their city centers, leaving behind abandoned lots and buildings throughout the city streets. The historic city of Providence was split after the construction of I-95, leaving the west side of the city separated and in some cases abandoned from downtown. Creating a couple living communities that work together to live sustainably by producing necessities such as electricity, clean water, food and medicine will be contributing to the quality of the city as well as improving their lives by learning, developing and teaching new means of living to the rest of the community in their …