Cultural Sustainability through Architecture

Abstract

Looking at Washington D.C.`s Downtown and observing its domination by office blocks, which contribute little to street life on weekends, my thesis is dealing with the broad topic of cultural sustainability. I began my thesis thinking about a project dealing with ecological sustainability, but not long after starting to research, I gained the knowledge that the cultural aspect is often forgotten or minor. Thus the design got inspired through the idea of reviving a site in D.C. and to give the different occupants of the building the chance to sense, hear, see and eventually interact with each other. The project is giving an opportunity for architecture to get involved in people's life, not just as a room to live, work and study but to lead their interaction with each other and with the city itself. To create such a mixed used building I decided to connect three main characters of a city in one building: Work Space, which includes retail and office space, Living Space for students and professors and Education, which is a literature department library. A labour intensive model making process helped me to develop the design for a mixed used building where the different programs penetrate into each other`s realm and where the city is not excluded from the building but takes part in it.