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  Our Increased independence on an inefficient built environment, developed in the mid 19th century to support industry and the automobile, has fractured cities, divided communities, harmed the environment, and separated people from the resources that originally established the cities. The bi-products of this dependence; highways, abandon industrial spaces, brownfields, poisoned rivers, and injured inner city communities are reminders that decades of planning for sprawl, industry, and suburbanization has fractured American cities that were once centers of industry and progress. My thesis began by questioning how can abandoned and obsolete infrastructural spaces be redesigned and reprogrammed to again become an asset for growth within the city? My project, titled BETA SPACE suggested reclaiming damaged infrastructural and manufacturing spaces derived from the industrial past of Rust Belt cities, and imagined strategies to reprogram them as new multi-functional urban infrastructure. My exploration aimed to utilize fragments of the past, and reprogram infrastructure with a new definition and increased use within the city as new social, environmental, productive, and public infrastructure. Cleveland Ohio, a city in the Rust Belt, was chosen as a testing ground for this thesis due to the effects of industrialization on the urban fabric, the symptoms that it caused in the physical aspects of the city, and the socio-economic conditions in the surrounding communities. The project addressed different scales and design methods; from urban planning and renovation of an abandoned subway line into a new pedestrian bridge, to architectural spaces that served economic, social, and environmental functions, all joined through new and existing pathways and landscapes.

Why?

My education in architecture led me to a thesis that explored the relationships and union of architecture, landscaping, and urban design in order to discover ways to heal the environmental, urban planning, and socio- economic issues that have arisen in many post-industrial U.S. cities due to the abuse of central locations by industrial practices. Through my personal research and explorations in school, I became inspired by the works of Archigram, and I imbued this interest in my thesis by exploring utilizing their fantastical infrastrucutural works mixed with modern practicality to solve real work prod feasibly by produced. My research challenged me to understand former infrastructural typologies and redefine them to take into consideration social, environmental, architectural, and commnity necessities in the modern age. I aim to continue this research in my professional career and carry it into future architectural and urban planning projects and explorations.

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