School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

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    SCOTTS RUN MINERS' WALK: A COMMUNITY OF CURATORS OF THE COAL HISTORY IN SCOTTS RUN, WEST VIRGINIA
    (2012) Wilfong, Kiley; Bennett, Ralph D.; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    West Virginia's coal mining history is long and rich, with many cultures intersecting with the industry. As coal mining shrank from the industry it used to be, poor families were left in the once-prosperous coal towns, unable to afford to move to find better jobs. The natural landscape had yielded to the industry, and the remnants of mining remain, evocative relics of an earlier era. As the coal companies moved on, these towns and landscapes were left at a loss for how to move forward. This thesis investigates ways to revitalize an abandoned landscape and to engage people in their cultural history. Reading the remnants and fragments of industry, and the landscape as clearings, seams and runs, it proposes architectural interventions in six places on the site that are connected by various path types meant to encourage visitors to experience the culture and history of coal mining in West Virginia.
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    Cities of History: Preservation and Interpretation in the Design Process
    (2004-05-18) Hurtt, Eric Benjamin; Wortham, Brooke D; Architecture
    This thesis proposes the use of memory and interpretation in the preservation, urban design, and physical definition of a community. The study area is Southwest Washington D.C. The thesis will explore questions of preservation and intervention: How might theories of preservation shape the urban form of a neighborhood? How are narrative potential, historic significance and existing fabric mediated? What is the symbolic importance of memory and its architectural use? Southwest was an integral part of L'Enfant's plan for Washington. Currently it is severed physically and psychically from the rest of the city. The dominant symbolic importance of the Mall and post-McMillan Commission Federal Core development strategies de-emphasized the significance of the Rivers and the physical relationship between the Mall and Southwest. Urban renewal strategies of the 1950's destroyed most of the urban fabric south of the Mall, layering an essentially suburban street typology over the existing grid pattern. Although partially offset by an architectural Modernism unique in Washington D.C., the resultant system of disconnected streets and poorly defined open space provide no sense of center, little relation to the rest of the city, and no relation to the larger landscape. An intention of this project is the exploration of the significance of site and its evolving role in shaping the city. Design should encourage a dialogue between memory and the present. L'Enfant's plan for Washington is reinterpreted as establishing vital relationships between the natural and the urbanized, the symbolic and the mundane, the federal city and the metropolitan city.