Rebuilding Urban Place: Negotiating Individuality and Belonging

• Main Author: Webster, Peter R.
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2013
• Subjects: Place-Making; Urban Planning; Urban Design; Scale; Participatory; Architecture
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/theses/1163; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2300&context=theses

vi ABSTRACT Rebuilding Urban Place: Negotiating Individuality and Belonging New London, CT September 2013 PETER R. WEBSTER B.S.,TUFTS UNIVERSITY M.ARCH, UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS, AMHERST Directed by: Professor Kathleen Lugosch The aim of this thesis is to test an approach for reconnecting ourselves with the urban fabric. By recognising the damage of urban renewal as more than simple blight but rather one that undermines our sense of place, we begin to appreciate the depth of the wound. It is not a matter of reconstructing what was taken away, but rather a process of rehabilitation. Re-establishing a viable sense of place requires the intertwining of both spatial form and social engagement. The project makes use of a parking lot located between the main street and a disruptive artery that forms a rift in the urban fabric. A spatial reorganization mediates the automotive scale of the rift and re-establishes a human one. A local organization, Hygienic Art, is poised to engage the rift with a new performing art center. Interactivity between the site and the client is reflected outward across the block and inward through the building. The center’s performance and service areas are designed to facilitate participatory events, which support the social interactions of the organisation and the extended community. This thesis examines how scale and materiality can nurture the individual and group experience, and how this might be tested at the scale of the city, street, organisation, event, parcel, and building.