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| dc.contributor.author | Gladd, Rebecca | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2024-08-16T12:28:54Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2024-08-16T12:28:54Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-08-16 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10429/2585 | |
| dc.description | Adapting The Narrative focuses on ways and methods to promote adaptive reuse within the context of Detroit. The goal and intent of adaptive reuse are “to sustain the value of a building to a place or community while ensuring its future usefulness” (Deniz Ikiz Kaya et al. 2) by reusing a building for a different use or significantly modifying the structure. Therefore, adaptive reuse is a strategy that promotes the reuse of existing structures that benefit people, the planet, and economic principles. Thus, it is generally considered a sustainable method. However, adaptive reuse is only practical in theory. This is due to the current limitations of adaptive reuse: lack of policy around this typology, red tape, and society's perception. Many researchers, such as Deniz Ikiz Kaya and Ren Lianping, discuss this phenomenon. Generally, there is a lack of policy surrounding adaptive reuse. Denix Ikiz Kaya et al. note there is “…a lack of integrated vision that investigates the factors, enablers, and associated policy-related instruments that support and accelerate adaptive reuse practice holistically at a wider scale” (3). When thinking of adaptive reuse in policymaking/support systems, there is not much supporting policy, nor do these systems look at our entire context holistically. Red tape, a term to refer to excessive policy that prevents/does more harm than good, discourages the choice of adaptive reuse. Often, this makes the pursuit of this type of process nearly impossible. Some red tape features include being time-consuming, financial constraints, obtaining permission, zoning issues, and limitations in existing frameworks (Ren Lianping et al.). The most significant limitation is not policy but society’s perception and understanding of adaptive reuse. Most of the public does not even know what adaptive reuse is – or that it is an option in the built environment. They do not understand or see demolition’s socioeconomic consequences on the environment and the community. It becomes an issue of value – many people do not consciously see buildings as inherently valuable. If this narrative can change, it could shift America’s current consuming, destructive culture into a more intentional, reusing culture. Assmann states, “… cultural memory creates a framework for communication across the abyss of time” (97). In preserving and remembering, culture can be an active rather than passive state. When we look back in time, we retrieve these messages: “Thus on the threshold of our space, before the era of our own time, we hover between awareness of being and loss of being” (Bachelard 58). Between these moments, history and culture are shared and tied to the individuals. The reality is that “cultures create a contract between the living, the dead, and the not yet living” (Assmann 97). Detroit and most of America often struggle with this loss of culture, and to continue the connection between life and death, past and present, - these monuments, buildings, and life stories need to be preserved and used to enrich the culture around it. Adapting The Narrative explores how adaptive reuse is encouraged or discouraged in Detroit. It looks at the deeper level of reuse, sustainability, what people deem valuable in the built environment, the notion that buildings have inherent value, what inherent value means, and how this concept could encourage adaptive reuse in residential Detroit. This thesis critiques the existing framework supporting adaptive reuse and proposes potential solutions to further the current discourse of adaptive reuse and drive new policy. The intention is to create a dialogue and understanding behind the realities and implications around adaptive reuse today – to educate (laypeople, professionals, developers, investors, policymakers, etc.) in hopes of ‘Adapting The Narrative’ of how people see and interact with existing buildings. These efforts and explorations aim to promote adaptive reuse in a culture where new is always the best. This work’s relevance is that “the building and construction sector… account for 39% of energy-related to carbon dioxide emissions” (Baker, Hannah, et al. 178). The built environment is responsible for less than half of the yearly energy consumed. Not to mention that the industry is also the leading culprit in natural resource depletion. As professionals in this industry, we are responsible for stewardship of the built environment. Our job is to do our best to mitigate these numbers as architects, designers, etc., have a direct hand in this outcome. In fact, being sustainable is directly tied to this kind of design philosophy. David Homegreen calls this design philosophy Permaculture. It is also known as the Triple Bottom Line in the business world – which works in 3 dimensions: people, planet, and profit. Essentially, everything should be run by caring for the earth, caring for people, and ensuring a fair distribution of resources. It is a holistic approach in everything from design to implementation and maintenance. Adaptive reuse is a holistic solution to mitigating these effects; however, it is not viable practically due to several factors, including red tape, lack of policy, and perception of society, as previously discussed. This thesis looks at mitigating these limitations and how education, policy, and sustainability methods can encourage adaptive reuse and change how people go about demolition, rehabilitation, and construction. This is particularly relevant in Detroit because of the unique opportunity Detroit has. Detroit is the only city in the country that is titled UNESCO City of Design. Yet, 20% of the city’s structures are vacant, with thousands of buildings being demolished and slated to be demolished yearly. The city – on the brink of decay and desolation has been making a comeback in recent years and now has a chance to be a leader in sustainability as well. Detroit should seize this opportunity to showcase and use adaptive reuse as a catalyst for revitalization. Adaptive reuse can bring new jobs to the city, activate spaces, and reignite community groups. Adaptive reuse is flexible and allows wanted and necessary programming to exist in areas previously lacking – for example, it could provide affordable housing or local libraries, fresh produce markets, etc. Why do we choose to value one building over another? If we can get people to see the intrinsic value of a building, it changes the present narrative, thus encouraging solutions like adaptive reuse. This thesis proposes that what makes a building inherently valuable is the presence of the building itself or embodied impacts, which is the energy that is put into the materials and processes making up the building. It explores and critiques how embodied impacts and other solutions can be implemented into policy to encourage adaptive reuse. Adapting The Narrative takes a post-positivist, contextual, and deductive approach. Due to the complex nature of the subject, this thesis looks at multiple scales from the city to the individual home. Detroit is used as its context and case study for the proposed program. This work uses a literature review, policy analysis, and interviews to understand and explore the limitations of adaptive reuse. Interviews, collages, and visual representations of research explored the definition of inherent value in the built environment, to which the answer is subjective and qualitative, often relating to the characteristics and history of the building. Identifying embodied impacts to measure inherent value in the buildings, this work explored this subject through a review of literature, experimental interventions, and tactics to help people understand the subject around embodied impacts due to the complexity and comprehension of all people at various levels. All this information was gathered and proposed into a program with criteria for more intentional demolition, implementing embodied impacts into policy, and exploring adaptive reuse possibilities. Within the context of Detroit, there is a concern about capacity within Detroit. One could argue that due to the 2/3rds of population loss over the years, Detroit has a significant lack of resources required to take care of the several thousands of vacant homes with no one to fill them, and rather demolition is the conservative solution to increasing capacity and focusing efforts elsewhere. There are also notes that you cannot adaptively reuse every building, as some lack structural integrity and are too far gone to be saved. While there is a concern about capacity within Detroit, the current solution is reactive rather than proactive. Detroit has unique opportunities, and its residents currently see the value in the city even with the blight. There is a way of preserving the history and culture of the city, not just in the midtown/downtown areas, but Detroit should focus on protecting those aspects in the residential neighborhoods themselves. Adaptive reuse can be a way of increasing capacity within the city. It can also be said that due to the inconsistencies around embodied impacts, they are not ready to be incorporated into policy, and embodied impacts do not denote the qualitative parts of inherent value and historic preservation. Embodied impacts are not viable; they are on the track to being feasible. Much research is needed to continue understanding and moving the subject forward. There is a need for a standardized method for measuring embodied impacts; however, this was not doubled for this thesis due to the time constraints and resources available. Instead, Adapting The Narrative looks at how to advocate and increase awareness and understanding around the subject. Embodied impacts do not necessarily denote the presence or qualitative aspects. Still, they are a way to measure and preserve buildings with no perceived meaning or history behind them – because buildings are inherently valuable. This research only looks at the residential scale of adaptive reuse and not the commercial scale. The proposed program works best under the umbrella of the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA), the primary owner of vacant structures in Detroit, which has programs for rehabilitation, auctions, and demolition (blight removal). The overall intent of this work is to encourage adaptive reuse through policy and sustainability methods. This requires the discovery of what limitations are currently preventing adaptive reuse. It attempts to answer how we define inherent value in the built environment. Why do we choose to value one building over another, etc? If we can get people to see the intrinsic value of a building, it changes the present narrative, thus encouraging solutions like adaptive reuse. This thesis proposes that what makes a building inherently valuable is embodied impacts. It explores how we can incorporate inherent value in the form of a program within the Detroit residential neighborhoods. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Adapting the Narrative focuses on ways and methods to promote the option of adaptive reuse within the context of Detroit through policy and sustainability methods. Adaptive reuse sustains the value of a building through a change of use and or significant modification of a building. The current critique of adaptive reuse is that it is good in theory as an excellent sustainable design method but unreliable in practice (Deniz et al.) (Baker et al.). This is due to several important limitations related to regulations and public opinion regarding such interventions. Often, this makes the pursuit of this type of process nearly impossible. How does one encourage adaptive reuse in a culture where new is always best, and the current perception of adaptive reuse is low? This study, Adapting the Narrative, intended to explore avenues of ways to encourage adaptive reuse through a multi-prong approach to provide a dialogue and clarity behind the realities and implications of adaptive reuse today – to educate (laypeople, professionals, developers, investors, policymakers, etc.) in hopes of adapting the narrative surrounding this subject. The research adopted a primary post-positivist framework and a secondary contextual framework. This multipronged research approach employs interviews, literary reviews, precedents, explorations, and case studies. This work proposed a program to encourage adaptive reuse within residential neighborhoods in Detroit. The program provides educational tools and points to resources to bring understanding in an attempt to showcase the inherent value in buildings. Despite these limitations, adaptive reuse offers meaningful solutions for increasing the holistic sustainability of the construction industry. Adapting the Narrative continues this conversation discussing the implications and possibilities of adaptive reuse. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Adaptive Reuse | en_US |
| dc.subject | Reuse | en_US |
| dc.subject | Policy | en_US |
| dc.subject | Embodied Carbon | en_US |
| dc.subject | Sustainability | en_US |
| dc.subject | Narrative | en_US |
| dc.subject | Detroit | en_US |
| dc.title | Adapting The Narrative | en_US |
| dc.title.alternative | Crafting Tomorrow’s Communities From Yesterday’s Spaces | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
