Architecture Commons^™

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

Visions For Waterville's Future: Perceptions Of Its Residents, Alex Wolansky

Honors Theses

Mills and factories in the United States have steadily been closing down as industry is outsourced in the globalized economy. Cities that were once prosperous face decay and often have no hopeful future outlook. Post-industrial towns face major unemployment and poverty and are not typically places for re-investment. But Rust Belt cities like Baltimore, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis are not the only post- industrial hubs that are struggling. Many small towns in rural areas once thrived from manufacturing and are becoming forgotten. Local governments, policy makers, urban planners, developers and scholars are working to figure …

Forgotten Infrastructure: The Future Of The Industrial Mundane, Whitney Ann Manahan

Masters Theses

The typical cycle of industrial use, disuse, and abandonment is no longer acceptable or feasible. This thesis investigates phased remediation and conversion of petrochemical structures and their respective sites with the intention of increasing both the socioeconomic vitality and environmental quality of the area.

The oil silo is an intriguing object and industrial artifact. Being close to one of these massive structures is captivating and there is something truly exciting and thought provoking about inhabiting a space that was clearly not meant for humans. These are qualities that provide opportunities to connect people with a site and create a place …

Wasted Land: Finding Redemption In A Post-Industrial Monument, Kristin Marie Karlinski

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the act of inhabiting the post-industrial landscape: about how a city with the remains of and scars from a previous era can begin to repurpose those remnants--both in a physical, as well as intangible sense. Proposing an alternative to the patterns of development that created such a landscape, it offers resistance to the entrenched values of privatization, commodification, and consumption.

The chosen site--an abandoned grain elevator in Buffalo, New York--sits at a nexus of converging landscapes: the grid of downtown to the north, a former industrial canal to the east, a stretch of barren waterfront land …

World Takes, David A. Schragger

Architecture Senior Theses

"The emergence of the derelict and urban flora is a result of a myriad of current economic, political, and social conditions. The combination of the two offers an opportunity to institute a performative hybrid architecture. The remediation of the site can be achieved through combining the systems of the industrial and the organism. Because urban land is no longer valued, one can use the spaces to begin to generate temporal emergent patterns. The industrial topography can be dissolved through structured derelict ecologies throughout the city."

On The Tracks: Design Strategies For Urban Shrinkage, Holli L. Janoski

Architecture Senior Theses

"Architecture has the capacity to assist the post-industrial city and support smart decline through the design of a low maintenance recreational network that adapts vacant space and excess infrastructure for public use. This network is composed of a series of interventions that capitalize on existing landscape conditions and material availability while promoting inter-connectivity, cross-connectivity, and activity."

Civic Architecture's New Setting In The Post-Industrial City, Donnie Garrity

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis argues that with a changing population and climate of a city comes the need to re-think how civic institutions engage themselves with their people. I contend that in order for civic architecture to regain its prominence in the city it needs to adapt itself to contemporary society and respond to its needs. The way in which this can happen is through program; if civic architecture can change its stigma by adopting new forms of program that respond to what its community needs, then the civic architecture will become more proactive in its community. Through a new way of …

Mps Movement Public Space, Matthew R. Kanewske

Architecture Senior Theses

"Portland provides an opportunity to examine the way this can relate to formal construction because cities' primary sites of public spaces will be integrated with the flows of movement, but this creates a dichotomy between the nature of site as a singular entity and the requirements of multiplicity required by a system. In this lies an opportunity for architectural invention of new forms of communicative public space."

The Void: Urban By Association, Brian Kessler

Architecture Thesis Prep

"I contend that a regional and now increasingly global scale dictates the development of the city. At this super-urban scale the specificity of architecture is impractical and too expensive, yet the city adn architecture still persist, because of the fundamental human desire for intimate social interaction. Architecture, stripped of its unobtainable utopian ideals, still maintains its significance as the literal and symbolic framework of the urban condition; the space of intense, physical interaction, leading to the literal procreation of humanity and limitless possibilities for new unforeseen activity."