Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Floor Plan
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Floor Plan
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Unit Plan
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Interior Rendering
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Elevations
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Elevations 2
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Exterior View
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Section
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Exterior Perspective from Bridge
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Sustainability Strategy
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment: Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification – Axonometric Drawings
Redesigning Reuse + Redevelopment
Minimizing the Impact of Gentrification as Caused by Unbridled Development
Master of Architecture Thesis Project
Development drives society and serves as the foundation for architectural discipline.
However, unrestrained development initiated without considered and deliberate thought has led to gentrification in low-income neighborhoods. Such development often results in a subsequent rise in area prices, displacing former residents who are no longer able to afford higher payments.
How can we, as architects and designers, work with the cyclic nature of development to ensure that buildings will have a continuous use that is beneficial to both current and future community residents without causing undue hardship? While the redevelopment process is cyclic with regard to the built structure itself, the cycle is broken when the initial building use is abandoned during the design process. As architects and contributors to the development cycle, we must realize that the program is at the heart of many of these issues. As established programs are eliminated and replaced with non-related use, we lose social and cultural history and ignore the needs of the current neighborhood demographic.
This thesis analyzes the traditional Cradle-to-Cradle (“C2C”) design concept and its application to architectural program, as well as the more traditional use of C2C as a materiality study. C2C asks designers to separate “technical” materials that are reusable from biological materials that can decompose and become nutrients in a natural metabolic cycle that creates new input materials. Within the established foundation of this concept, there is no waste. All elements are reclaimed. C2C and the holistic approach to reuse should be applied to architectural program as well as the built environment.
By applying the C2C methodology to architectural program and creating an adaptive reuse cycle that envisions the reuse of whole building systems rather than merely the physical structures, we begin to mitigate the effects of gentrification within redeveloped neighborhoods. Within this adapted C2C cycle, we can begin to create a system wherein every element of building design can be truly sustainable, thereby breaking the current cycle of unwavering re-development.
