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Reconnecting Mill Communities: An Architectural Intervention In Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Ronald Bujold

Ronald Bujold

For nearly a century, once prosperous mill communities throughout New England have struggled to adapt to ever-changing societal, cultural, and economic conditions. This project explores an architectural intervention for Fitchburg’s Rollstone Hill neighborhood, which seeks to reverse this trend by deploying a design strategy that begins with re-purposing a 60,000 square foot mill. This strategy focuses on utilizing the fundamental and existing components of these planned communities—people, infrastructure, and economics—to cultivate the design and the relationships necessary to reconnect this neighborhood to the modern world.