Rethinking the Starting Point: The Revitalization of Fall River

Abstract

Fall River, Massachusetts is historically known as a successful mill town from the industrial age, and was one of the world’s largest areas for cotton and cloth production during the early 1900s. Today, most of the city’s industry have been shut down, and their facilities have been demolished, re-purposed, or preserved for historic significance. However, an industrial campus along the Tauton River waterfront has been left untouched and underutilized by the community. In September 2018, the city of Fall River, MA proposed the Fall River Waterfront Urban Renewal Plan to revitalized three industrial waterfront districts. This thesis proposes that the Fall River Waterfront Urban Renewal Plan use sustainable design to achieve their project goals and transform the industrial waterfront from a polluted and abandoned district into a sustainable neighborhood. Using the Living Future Challenge (LFC) as the project’s framework, this thesis proposes step-by-step design interventions onto the South Waterfront District outlined in the Fall River’s Waterfront Urban Renewal Plan and demonstrates how sustainable design and technology can be used to meet the LFA’s performance goals as well as address the city’s needs for the project. This thesis is broken down into two parts: 1) The South Waterfront Masterplan Proposal, and 2) Adaptive Building Reuse Case Study for Existing Mill Buildings. The South Waterfront Masterplan Proposal integrates new construction with existing structures, and introduces sustainable infrastructure that connects all buildings and site features within the district to increase the efficiency of resource use and site maintenance. The Adaptive Building Reuse Case Study is a precedent for all existing mill buildings on the site. The case study is the building redesign of an existing mill building within the district and demonstrates how to apply high efficiency design interventions and technologies to elevate the building’s operational performance and ultimately advocate for adaptive reuse over new construction. This thesis serves as a precedent for similar, underutilized urban areas on how to utilize sustainable design and technology to achieve additional project goals. It is the goal of this thesis that large-scale urban redesign projects consider the various applications of sustainability and use existing built framework to build off of.