Baltimore Center for Making: A Public Interface for Creative Culture

Abstract

Our modern society depends on consumerism in order to match products and services with the people who need them; however, in its current form this process often comes at great expense to the finite resources of the environment. In addition, the global economy has created work places where workers are physically very distant from their peers, causing the individual to lose the empathetic face-to-face connections that are necessary for emotional fulfillment. Moreover, the work products of this information age are often ethereal, depriving workers of the satisfaction inherent in seeing the physical result of their hours of labor. This thesis imagines a civic institution that encourages different groups of people to share resources and empowers them to use their hands to make things in the material world. Hybrid site and program conditions create a palimpsest architectural proposal that seeks to galvanize the community of Baltimore around design and making.