At the beginning of 2020, I was fortunate to receive the Branner Traveling Fellowship through UC Berkeley’s department of Architecture, to be completed that summer. Though my plans were delayed as a result of the pandemic - and in the meantime I finished my masters degree and started a job - I am thrilled to finally be able to complete the research this summer. I will be traveling for about 6 weeks, and plan to document my travels here with the intent of reflecting on the sites I visit and organizing my thoughts as I go.

The basis of my research is the idea that war and mass social conflict have shaped the built environment and contributed to our relationships with public space. Spaces that represent conflict are often approached through either erasure or preservation; removed from the collective memory, or suspended in it. This project will explore an alternate approach: the potential for residual structures of conflict to be repurposed through adaptive reuse. The sites I’ll be visiting encompass a fairly broad definition of the term “conflict,” from war, to wartime or colonial occupation, to slavery or genocide. I aim to narrow my research by investigating projects that fulfil two main criteria: utilizing adaptive reuse to create publicly accessible, community-oriented spaces, and appropriately acknowledging the site’s historical context. I will also be visiting several sites that, while not necessarily fulfilling both of these criteria, present useful examples of either adaptive reuse or commemoration.

I look forward to exploring and sharing this project.