Having gone over my initial ideas and themes from my concept map, I’ve decided on a few major points I’d like to address with my thesis.

The three themes I presented as my initial inspiration were:

• Sustainability (taking advantage of all the new “green” technology available
• Intimate Spaces (creating those “wow” or “pause” moments with spacial quality)
• Adaptive Reuse (This can be applied to a number of different sites, weather it is an old unoccupied building, or vacant lot. basically taking the opportunity to bring something back to life) People seem to be attracted to possibility of living in these old areas once they’ve been given modern amenities, I admit the mix of old and new (such as the White Stag building) is extremely attractive to me as well. My current studio is addressing the possibility of revitalizing Old Town (Including Chinatown and Japantown) what is now mostly vacant historic buildings and a neighborhood with a bad reputation could eventually be a thriving new hub of healthy urban activity

Although these ideas are important to me, and can all be applied to the proposal in one way or another, there are a few more specific concerns/themes I want to drive my thesis.

• Create an effective live, work, play environment
• Set a standard of clean and sustainable living within the city
• Bring back life to a once derelict site

My main goal for the project is to address the issue of the suburban sprawl that has led to many original city centers and other urban public areas within the city left underutilized and neglected, resulting in large suburbs becoming their own mini-cities in a sense which is a terrible model for sustainable living. Application of adaptive reuse has grown increasingly popular as a way to preserve and restore old unused areas and buildings. Although the South waterfront EcoDistrict I am interested in has no old vacant buildings to restore and reuse, it was once a heavily industrialized area that has been cleared out and is now a clean slate. This provides a huge opportunity to create an environment that models a new standard of  sustainable live, work, & play within the city.