Historic Preservation and Conservation Commons^™

The Adaptive Reuse Of Old Brainerd Junior High, Madison L. Christiansen

Honors Theses

This thesis looks at how Old Brainerd Junior High can be brought back to life in a way that supports the surrounding community in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Once an important part of the neighborhood, the building now sits mostly unused, reflecting how much of the city’s energy has shifted toward downtown. Instead of continuing that pattern, this project focuses on creating something meaningful within Brainerd itself. The proposal reimagines the school as a place for music, entertainment, and everyday gathering. It builds on Chattanooga’s growing presence in nightlife and the arts, while giving people a reason to stay, connect, and spend …

Brainerd Junior High Adaptive Reuse: Independent Senior Living And Community Center, Samantha E. Bowlan

Honors Theses

Brainerd Junior High's proposed adaptive reuse is Bell & Brick: Independent Senior Living and Community Center. The goal is to redefine senior living by integrating it with community engagement. Bell & Brick is place where older adults can enjoy independence while actively participating in community life, bridging the gap between generations. Public spaces are accessed on level one while apartments are on level 2 and 3.

Adaptive Reuse Of Old Brainerd Junior High: Community Driven Creative Spaces, Jenna Pumpelly

Honors Theses

Community spaces are becoming increasingly important and they are not just a fun space that someone can visit every now and then. They are actually a way of promoting health, welfare, and connection throughout a community (Francis et al., 2012). Creating what is called a “third space” is increasingly important in a world that is becoming more solitary. I propose that the Old Brainerd Junior High is a great candidate for a space like this. The arts are proven to be an increasingly popular way to bring people together. Creative spaces are an effective tool to foster community development. It …

Brainerd Junior High Adaptive Reuse: Transitional Living For Foster Care Graduates, Gavin J. Watson

Honors Theses

Brainerd Junior High is being reused as a transitional living and working facility for foster care age-outs in need of assistance as they learn skills of independence and confidence. The first floor serves the community of Brainerd with a variety of commercial spaces, offering the graduates onsite places for employment. The upper levels serve as studio and 1 bedroom apartments for 24 residents, with shared laundry and community building spaces.

Adaptive Reuse Of Brainerd Junior High: Creating Third Spaces, Nathan S. Shevick

Honors Theses

This thesis project explores how the transformation of a local building in the community can bring people together through adaptive reuse. The Brainerd Junior High School was built in 1930 and designed by Chattanoogan architect R.H. Hunt, who has designed many significant buildings in the area such as the Medical Arts Building, 2nd Presbyterian Church, Lookout Mountain Hotel (Carter Hall, Covenant College), Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Auditorium, the Chattanooga Bank Building, and many other beloved buildings in the area. The Brainerd Junior High School building was expanded in 1956 and 1959 and changed ownership and became the magnet school, 21st …

Adaptive Reuse Of Old Brainerd Junior High School: Fostering Community Through Art Education, Brooklyn T. Phillips

Honors Theses

The adaptive reuse project for Old Brainerd Junior High School aims to transform the historically significant building into a space that better serves the community, as it once did. The goal of this project is to create a space that meets the community's current needs while preserving the building's historical significance. ​ Research methods, such as interviews and surveys, showed that preserving and reusing the building is important to the community because the space holds many memories. When asked, the community mentioned the lack of arts and crafts centers available to Brainerd. With this information, the proposed use of the …

Environmental Psychology In Historic Preservation, Eva Kindall

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the adaptive reuse of the historic Brainerd Junior High School in Chattanooga, TN, as a catalyst for community revitalization. Initially built in 1930, the building served generations of students for 75 years. Currently, the main building is closed, while the additional buildings serve as the Midtown Community Center. Its architectural character, accessible location, and nostalgia present an opportunity to reimagine its role in the current economy. Adaptive reuse offers more than architectural preservation, but is a strategy to address urban challenges such as housing affordability, lack of amenity access, and cultural erasure. Through this project, the aim …

Greenhouse Scan-To-Bim, Mattheus Hsu-Ning Johnson

Architectural Engineering

This senior project focuses on the implementation of Scan-to-BIM software for capturing and modeling an existing building within Experimental Construction laboratory. The design of the project was to model the building using a 3D scan with the support of world measurements to document and create a digital model of the building. By doing this the project can evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and accuracy of integrating 3D scanning technologies into BIM modeling.

The project included taking data from a recent scan of the Experimental Construction Laboratory. We then took these scans and imported them to Autodesk Revit to develop a detailed …

Lidar At Poly Canyon, An Binh Chuong

Architectural Engineering

Poly Canyon serves as a living laboratory that reflects Cal Poly’s “Learn by Doing” philosophy through a collection of student-designed and student-constructed structures. Among these is Fratessa Tower, a reinforced concrete observation tower distinguished by its tripod support system, cable-suspended observation deck, and steel spiral staircase. The tower’s unconventional geometry and exposed structural system present unique challenges for documentation, making it well suited for evaluating modern reality-capture and modeling techniques.

This project focused on creating an accurate as-built Building Information Model (BIM) of Fratessa Tower using LiDAR-based scanning, field verification, and Autodesk Revit. Point cloud data were processed to reconstruct …

Caed Shop Entrance Wall Construction, Mason Neil Mitchell, Benjamin Joseph Rohrer

Architectural Engineering

This project involves the demolition and reconstruction of the CAED Support Shop Wall at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. The project was designed as a multidisciplinary project, combining architectural engineering and construction management students who collaborated on the rehabilitation of an existing structure. This project aimed to use “replication” as a means of historical preservation and restoration, specifically in the fabrication of custom CMU members.

Adaptive Reuse As Sustainability: Reconciling The Crises Of Functionalism And Environmental Conservation In Copenhagen And San Francisco, Samuel J. Fernandez

Master's Theses

Sustainability is the buzzword for modern global development. In the age of rapidly growing populations, unsustainable building practices, and an ever-present climate crisis, there must be a reorientation in global urban development practices. While experts tend to tout one sustainable initiative as a catch-all solution to the above crises, a multidimensional problem cannot be solved with a one-dimensional approach. In other words, sustainable development can only be achieved through a combination of different practices and approaches. This case study seeks to present adaptive reuse as a viable reaction to the climate crisis, but one that requires a combination of other …

Soft Bodies, Hard Frames, Emily Zhang

Masters Theses

Silk is delicate yet strong, responsive to light and air, dependent on living processes and careful labor. These qualities position silk not only as a material object, but as an instrument capable of organizing space. Rather than functioning solely as a surface or decorative textile, silk can operate as a spatial generator, shaping enclosure, movement, and environmental conditions.

For centuries, domestic courtyard houses in the Jiangnan region, located south of the Yangtze River, evolved alongside sericulture, forming spaces that were attuned to the environmental and material requirements of silk. Architectural elements such as courtyards, screened openings, flexible interiors, and canal-directed …

Jadughar: The House Of Magic, Dhruvi A. Shah

Masters Theses

Jadughar or the House of Magic is what people call a 'museum' in parts of South Asia. The practice of museum making, at its origin, is the act of collecting, preserving, interpreting and representing a culture’s tangible and intangible heritage to make it accessible to diverse audiences. Since the early 19th century such practices have been performed at various kala bhandars (art centers) in India, without the need of a formal or institutional organisation. The British introduced the model of a ‘museum’ in South Asia, with the aim of not only preserving ethnographic collections, but also showcasing their power and …

Where The Walls Came Down: Reimagining The Disaster-Induced Modern Ruin, Zhenmi Tang

Masters Theses

In contemporary society, large-scale destructive events are continuously generating a new architectural condition: the modern ruin. Unlike historical ruins shaped and legitimized through time, the remnants left by war, wildfires, and other natural disasters remain embedded in lived reality and collective memory. These environments are not distant artifacts of the past, but recently inhabited spaces whose material presence and social meaning remain active. However, prevailing reconstruction practices tend to prioritize complete demolition and site clearance, followed by rebuilding on restored empty ground. While this approach provides reliability in terms of safety, engineering, and regulation, it often interrupts the material and …

Stinkin' Lincoln, Carrie Anderson

Masters Theses

Stinkin’ Lincoln is a study of the different modes of architectural preservation in the town of Lincoln, Maine, and how historical precedents of building reuse can inform new strategies for workforce housing as the town revitalizes its mill. After an explosion at the Lincoln Pulp and Paper Mill in 2015 left the town of Lincoln devoid of its signature scent and created millions in environmental damage and job loss, Lincoln is finally taking steps to reintroduce industry into the space of the mill with a new biofuels refinery. This influx of economy requires additional workforce housing, something the town is …

Another Palace For The People, Kate Holbrook

Masters Theses

Coined the “Palace for the People,” the American public library was established as a free, democratic haven for the public’s literary and educational needs. Adapting to the changing needs of its patrons, the public library’s services have extended beyond book access to provided services ranging from tool rentals to warming centers, postal services, and more. As both an essential landmark of the physical city through its exterior and provider of social infrastructure on its interior, public libraries seek sustainable avenues to continue their tradition of gathering, idea exchange, and provision. Expanding upon the identity of the public library as a …

Growing Pains Inc., Abigail B. Jarvis

Masters Theses

In Mierle Laderman Ukeles' "Manifesto for Maintenance Art”, Ukeles describes an art practice that reveals the invisible labor of daily upkeep and care, describing development as “pure individual creation; progress; advance,” and maintenance as “keep the dust off the pure individual creation, preserve the new; sustain the change”.

Growing Pains Inc. is embodied in a collection of patterns that dresses and addresses the changes buildings of New Bedford Massachusetts have experienced. It is driven by an attention to stewardship and care for our buildings that have been with us through generations. This thesis is about Growing Pains Incorporated. It speculates …

Ark-Ipelago: Or, The Voluntary Prisoners Of Archaeology, Michel Song

Masters Theses

By the end of 2200, Venice becomes a submerged archaeological specimen. Ark-ipelago rejects defensive preservation, weaponizing heritage into an offensive spatial regime. An elevated macro-grid re-contains urban life within climate-controlled tubes, transforming catastrophic climate exile into a total voluntary exodus of planetary survival.

Strata: Portraits Of The Alvarado & The Southwest, Kayla R. Duncan

Masters Theses

History isn't the past; it is a continuing unfolding of the moment, yet we cannot feel time. We see traces of age through patina on copper, the wrinkles on a face from decades of laughter, or the holes in your favorite shirt. Similarly within architecture, what remains: ruins and fragments serve as layers that indicate the passage of time. In what ways are these layers exposed? Hidden? Erased? How do we determine what layers are worthy to be erased, maintained, or glorified as use of a structure or place continues to evolve through time?

The history of Albuquerque spans the …

Fragments Of The Grassland, Zihan Liu

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates Tibetan nomadic pastoralism in the Himalayan region, where habitation is inseparable from seasonal migration and environmental conditions. Focusing on Ganzi County in Sichuan Province, where nomadic and settled lifestyles coexist.

The research positions "documentation" as both method and design driver, provides a possibility that architecture can mediate cultural continuity and coexistence between Tibetan nomadic pastoralism and its surrounding culture. By transforming documentation methodology into a design methodology, the mobility of architecture has become into a spatial strategy. Through a mobile marketplace, the project enables ongoing exchange between nomadic and settled lifestyles and among diverse cultural groups, positioning …

Embodied River: Deliberate Unbuilding In Post-Dam Landscapes, Travis Kelley

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the possibilities and challenges that legacy hydro-powered dams and mill complexes offer. Through historical and contemporary analysis of New England’s 14,000 dams and of a particular site in Maynard, Massachusetts, the research delves into the factors that make these interventions so challenging. It begins from an assumption rooted in the ethical and environmental imperative to remove or modify legacy dams, which are those built for a purpose that is no longer being utilized, and rejects the existing binary of “remove” vs “preserve,” which is the dominant narrative in the dam removal conversation as it exists in 2026. …

Blight Pink: The Reclamation Of Vinegar Hill, Jalen J. Mickle

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Through critical analysis, speculative design, and spatial interventions, this project aims to reveal how the built environment and narrative structures co-produce the concept of “truth,” and how alternative practices can both challenge erasure and validate the Black American experience. Architecture, as a synthesis of form, identity, philosophy, and order, reflects and shapes societal hierarchies.

Addressing The Abandoned Typology Of Mills, Terra M. Castresana

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

As anthropologists have shown, rivers are foundational to the creation of human settlement, and many cities design their urban fabric to interact with their respective rivers. Despite the scale of the Chattahoochee River, however, a typical visitor of Atlanta might not see the river as it is covered with highways and other infrastructures. Since the inception of colonial Atlanta as a railroad town in the nineteenth century, the urban design deviated from having the rivers be central to the city’s evolution as scholarship shows. Despite this structural arrangement, there was still an existing relationship with its rivers when waterways, most …

Kattam Choreography- A Facade Of The Virgin Islands, Kiyani J.M. Ottley

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Kattam Choreography reimagines a historic building in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI as a vibrant cultural hub that celebrates dance, memory, and commerce. Rooted in the embodied traditions of the qudrille folk dance, this project explores adaptive reuse as a performtive act—where architecture becomes a living archive of movement and heritage.

The design treats the building’s layered history not as a static artifact, but as a choreographic score. Quadrille’s spatial logic—its symmetry, rhythm, and communal gestures—informs circulation, program, and atmosphere. The building unfolds as a triptych: a dance pavilion, multi-purpose educational spaces, and a gift shop. Each element responds to …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

Federal Government Shutdowns And Gateway Communities: Impacts On Businesses, Communities, And Workers’ Perceptions And Attitudes, Dean W. Zakrzewski

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study aims to answer a presented gap in the literature on how gateway community workers and businesses are directly impacted by federal government shutdowns. Three gateway communities were selected as case-study communities for this research based on a set list of criteria, including size, proximity to urban centers, geographic context, and the prominence of their associated park. The selected communities are Bar Harbor, Maine; Estes Park, Colorado; and Moab, Utah. Community profiles were drafted for each community to understand them from a contextual level, including the breakdown of their workforce and other general descriptions of their communities. A combinational …

Tribute To The Dead Is Honor To The Living: Uncovering The Evolution Of Funerary Monuments In Black Cemeteries Throughout Charleston, Sc, Lorena Garrod

All Theses

Black burial grounds throughout Charleston have long been understudied, and their funerary architecture even less so. Within the City of Charleston’s Urban Growth Boundary, many undocumented Black cemeteries are threatened by development. Previous scholarship is scant, as these sites have gone without dedicated research for many years. As awareness of their historical significance grows, attempts are being made to document and understand Black burial grounds, both within the context of Charleston, but more so within the context of the descendant communities these burial grounds serve. To this end, this research asked the question, “What material and formal shifts can be …

The Carolina Rain Porch: A Southern Vernacular Considered, Jackson M. Dent

All Theses

The “rain porch,” also known as the “Carolina porch,” is a distinctive vernacular porch type concentrated in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region and sporadically found in neighboring states. Despite its strong regional identity, the form has received little sustained scholarly attention. This thesis presents a comprehensive study of the rain porch, examining its origins, chronology, geographic distribution, and architectural variation. Defined by an extended porch roof supported by free-standing columns set forward of porch deck, the rain porch represents a purposeful environmental adaptation within nineteenth-century domestic architecture. The research integrates archival sources, National Register of Historic Places survey data, mapping, …

Using Non-Invasive Metal Detecting, Ground-Penetrating Radar, And Light Detection And Ranging Surveys To Locate Non-Extant Structures On A Plantation In Charleston County, South Carolina, Thompson Mccormick Teasdale

All Theses

Many historic sites across the United States including plantations such as those in the South Carolina Lowcountry are increasingly at risk of development pressures, environmental changes, and the general loss of more ephemeral buildings associated with these sites. There is a growing preservation need to understand these more ephemeral buildings, especially their connection to enslaved individuals. However, with so many having been lost already or in the process of deteriorating, this area of study is increasingly becoming the purview of archaeologists who can study non-extant examples. Traditional methods of archaeological survey such as open-area excavations and shovel tests are not …

Demolition By Intent: Evaluating Charleston's Red X Placard Procedures, Enforcement Practices, And Communication Methods In The Loss Of Historic Structures, Jessica Stech

All Theses

This thesis examines whether the procedures, enforcement practices, and communication methods associated with the placement of Red X placards in Charleston, South Carolina, contribute to the demolition-by-intent of historic structures. Red X placards, also known as unsafe placards, are placed on the front façade of structurally unsafe structures by the Charleston Fire Department to inform first responders in the event of a fire or other emergency. Although these placards serve as a life-safety tool, they may influence how vacant structures are perceived by family or developer owners and the public.

Through using a qualitative approach, this thesis analyzes the outcomes …