Fiasco - From Religious Sanctuary to Art and Culture Complex

Abstract

Near the end of a building's lifecycle, many times when the building is no longer deemed useful, decisions are made whether to wait out a new tenant for the structure or to destroy it to make way for new construction. If the latter, while the building waits, its materials are left to the elements to decay away through natural weathering over time. To give these environments new life would not only reinvigorate the surrounding area with a renewed purpose, but is also a much more sustainable process of construction than simply demolishing and creating whole new structures.

To be able to capitalize on the structure, material, and identifying characteristics of an existing building is the goal of a well performed adaptive re-use project. This project outlines steps and the process in which an architect should complete as they go through the phases of construction for this process. The steps that I developed to complete this process are Observation, Preservation, Renovation, and Activation. Through the completion of this process a respectful interchange of ideas, character, and structure is shared between the old and new.

The host of this process of adaptive re-use is a Catholic school located in Pittsburgh PA, originally built in 1875. Over its long history it has seen many changes and additions to its original construction but has since been abandoned for over ten years. This thesis takes this building and explains the process of re use for taking this abandoned Catholic school and creating an artist residency and community complex.