Reinvention through reuse : strategies for the adaptive reuse of large-scale buildings

The practice of adaptive reuse has grown in popularity in the United States over the past few decades, with now about 90% of architect-commissioned work involving some interaction with an existing structure. While the practice of reuse has existed informally in the form of garage-as-guest house or barn-as-garage conversions and so on, it is only since the late 1960s that architects and engineers have begun to approach it critically, as a design problem. It is often lauded for fostering the development of a sustainable built environment, however, it has its unique challenges. This thesis traces a brief history of the designer's role in the sustainable development discourse, with focused attention paid to the adaptive reuse solution. Furthermore, it attempts to identify the challenges and discuss how they each pertain to the architect, the preservationist, and the engineer. Through the examination of reuse case studies, a coarse classification of project typologies. The second portion of the thesis tackles a specific reuse problem in the Old Post Office in Chicago, Illinois. The Post Office was selected because of its heavily planned context, its historical and cultural significance, the real interest that has been expressed in its reuse, and its size.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Ozik, Dana

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andrew Scott and Jerome J. Connor.

• Architecture.
• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/37578

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37578