MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Industrial facilities were constructed for specific production processes which guided the design and use of the buildings. The architecture of these industrial works reflects these processes through its scale. In recent years, these buildings have fallen into disrepair and disuse. Often, the buildings are icons of their neighborhood due to their longstanding role in the community's culture and economics. Landmarks like this should be preserved for the community's future. This architectural thesis looks at how the process of adaptive reuse and preservation can re-scale industrial architecture for new use. In so doing, the design will study what the architectural response should be to the existing building to both respect the existing structure and redesign it for human interaction. This thesis uses a case study of the Lunkenheimer Foundry in South Fairmount, a neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio to understand both the existing industrial component and to propose a design for the future which inhabits the existing structure. The study is split into five parts. The first part overviews preservation, reuse, and what the theoretical response to both has been in the past. The second part gives information on both the industrial scale and the human scale and why each scale is designed. The third part introduces what the architectural response to reuse has been and strategies to use in design moving forward. The fourth part analyzes the site and existing building for design opportunity. Finally, the fifth part discusses how the design proposal connects to the existing structure. The resulting design proposal opens up the building for pedestrian inhabitation as strategic interventions float within the heavy existing structure to create architectural juxtaposition between the old and the new. The design shows that the proper architectural response to reusing industrial buildings is that which respects the original, allowing it to age in its own right, but adds new work do (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vincent Sansalone M.Arch. (Committee Member); Edward Mitchell M.Arch (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Memory represents who we are, our habits, our ideologies, and our hopes and fears, but it also gives an indication of who we will become. How do we move into the future and allow the weight of our past to not diminish, but grow? In 1970, no one could have, or would have, predicted the deterioration of Youngstown, Ohio less than ten years later. The downfall of postwar vibrancy built on steel and the backs of mill workers seemed improbable and impossible. The end of federally-funded rebuilding, and overall lack of federal policy, in 1974 coincided with the beginning of severe population loss and economic decline throughout the United States. These once dense, active cities quickly lost their life, relegated to mere shells of their former selves. Rust Belt cities are defined by extreme post-industrial population loss in a region strongly identified with production and industry. It is because of this industry, the lifeblood of the city and the support of its economy and working-class neighborhoods, that such an abrupt and startling loss was created in Youngstown. Rust Belt cities are a parallel universe where lives, economies, and industries shift but the city remains. Rust Belt cities are essentially unraveling. People connect to a place through their memory of it. Memory of the Rust Belt, the glory days and what has been, is very important for residents of these lost and often forgotten cities. The Rust Belt is a place of loss, despair, and ruin, but connecting with a city and its residents on a personal level is much more telling than simply looking at statistics. Hybridized building programs adapt to revitalize specific sites within the city of Youngstown, Ohio. This hybridization brings together unexpected urban conditions, users, social issues, and building functions. Divergent themes such as the planned and spontaneous, homogeneous and diverse, explicit and subversive, synthetic and organic, create architecture capable of combining unorthodox function (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Elizabeth Riorden M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2018, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Like many other Midwest rust belt cities, Cincinnati was born as a center of industry for a rapidly industrializing United States.Throughout the late 1800s and well into the 1900s, large industrial facilities emerged on the periphery of city centers.These building typologies became a prevalent layer in the history and building stock of these industrial cities. As the focus of the American economy slowly shifted from industrial production to service, significant amounts of those industrial properties dating from the industrial past, were left vacant and in disrepair or were often condemned and then demolished. Rich with memory of their city's booming industrial past, these oversized engines of American's will, now appear as scars in the urban fabric symbolizing the city's economic shift. In removing these historic icons, cities create gaps in their historical continuum. These gaps are now filled with constructs that are placeless and discontinuous with the memory of what was once there.

Committee: Henry Hildebrandt M.Arch. (Committee Chair); Michael McInturf M.Arch. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2017, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Architecture

Cities with manufacturing roots still contain physical evidence of their once booming industries. Entire neighborhoods were built up around industrial facilities that now stand vacant and underused, often located near highways and railroads that make them very accessible, but undesirable. Midwest cities in particular have been forced to reevaluate the existing building stock and in many cases repurpose their structures and urban spaces for an ever-changing population with renewed interest in moving back to the city center. The size, structure, and location of industrial buildings present an opportunity to introduce housing to industrial neighborhoods at a larger scale. This thesis studies the previous home of the American Products Company, a 7-story building built in 1925 in the Camp Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati. The goal of the research was to develop a prototype for the reuse of industrial buildings throughout the Midwest. The design proposes the use of flexible elements in the residential portion of the building in the spirit of Alejando Aravena's incremental housing. Prefabricated spatial dividers can be moved and expanded to allow increased flexibility and customizability for all residents. The proposal also argues for the inclusion of a commercial element at the ground floor to engage with the surrounding community and bring residents closer to necessary resources. By focusing the design language around incremental and movable elements, the spaces retain as much flexibility as possible and allow each user to customize their space. This strategy returns control to the user, inherently resulting in greater feelings of ownership and satisfaction with one's home. This method for approaching mixed-use, mixed income development is designed to be applicable in previously industrial neighborhoods across the Midwest.

Committee: Aarati Kanekar Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jeffrey Tilman Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

There are an increasing number of abandoned industrial sites sitting vacant across the country. These industrial sites occupy valuable real estate, are often heavily contaminated with chemicals that leach into water tables, and can be derelict and unsafe due lack of maintenance. In addition to this, they create voids in the urban fabric that impede development and regeneration around them. Industrial buildings serve an important role in urban life as the former engines of production and economic centers of communities, but when their doors are shut, they are left to decay. They are not preserved because they lack the historical and symbolic significance that society requires to retain them. They must be reused instead, and in a manner that provides value to the urban fabric and communities around them. This thesis investigates formal, spatial and programmatic strategies for re-use and development, derived from a survey of extant and planned reuse projects, that allow abandoned industrial buildings to once again be assets in our built environment.

Committee: Patricia Kucker MARCH (Committee Chair); Nnamdi Elleh PhD (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

Deserted late 19th and early 20th century industrial buildings dot the United States landscape. Abandoned due to changes in industrial production, distribution, and subsequent urban flight, these discarded structures possess a heritage that can connect present day communities to the past and future. Pulitzer Prize winning poet and novelist, Robert Penn Warren expressed, “History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.” Because of this potential, these industrial buildings have an inherent value that will increase when a building is preserved. The search for appropriate new uses for these large, complex structures is a difficult task. For this thesis a value matrix was developed based upon Alois Riegl's Modern Cult of Monuments essay. The value matrix gives an evaluation method for precedent studies and to evaluate future uses on abandoned structures. After a new use or interpretation is discovered for the site, the search for a new syntax begins. This new syntax will be based on the rigors set by the existing structure to base new patterns and design work to further connect the new use to the history of the site.

Committee: Elizabeth Riorden MARCH (Committee Chair); George Bible MCiv.Eng (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

In the complex, fast-paced environment of this country, we have often disposed of building stock that could have been potentially adapted to meet our changing needs leaving environments with no connection to the past or local identity. This haphazard way of approaching our environment takes no advantage of our ability as sentient beings to truly engage in eloquent, sustainable combinations of the old and new. Through engaging the question of what we truly value in this country and how that can be defined through architectural quality, we look at a series of case studies that have successfully expressed a combination between the old and the new. This thesis defines some guiding principles inherent in successful resolutions. It does not give specified stylistic requirements but rather suggests that the old be fully understood, respected and engaged as part of a final combination with a clear hierarchy culminating in a unified expression. This set of principles will then be employed in the adaptive reuse of an abandoned industrial building into a contemporary mixed-use facility. The expressive dialogue between the old and the new is potentially the architectural expression of a new sustainable age.

Committee: Micheal McInturf (Committee Chair); Jeffery Tilman (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Architecture

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2005, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

As our society shifts from an economy based on industry to an economy based on information, many structures in the urban environment have become abandoned relics of a bygone era. The current practice of linear production, in which something is produced, used, and discarded, is no longer viable. Reducing consumption, recycling, reusing what has been produced, and being more responsive to the environment form the basis of a new way of thinking. Through adaptive reuse, many buildings of the industrial era can contribute to a more sustainable development pattern. Through the juxtaposition in the built form of the past idea of industrial progress and the current idea of progress through the concept of sustainable design, the redevelopment of the DP&L Third Street Substation as a fitness and wellness center would serve as a both a reminder and as an example.

Committee: Robert Burnham (Advisor) Subjects: Architecture