Investigating Terms of Transition in the Ohio River Valley

As an existing condition, many of the landscapes of the Ohio River Valley and Appalachian region have been abandoned by both a market-driven economy and meaningful state intervention. Under-resourced, these communities now face another generation of disinvestment. Recently, local politicians and leaders within the Ohio River Valley from Youngstown, Dayton, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere have called for a Marshall Plan for Middle America to reinvest in these deteriorated communities. Similarly, the recent Bipartisan Infrastructure Law promises investment in the area. The encouraging side of these plans largely call for an investment into sustainable businesses, without a design or planning framework for the broader community, in contrast to earlier large scale government programs and administrations such as the New Deal. Even with admirable calls for investment, there is the danger of repeating problematic top-down planning agendas, and eschewing community needs in favor of private interests. Given this framework, this paper discusses the work of a recent upper level undergraduate architecture studio. Pedagogically central to our investigation is the design of institutions, and the role of the architect in relation to private and state actors. While many architecture studios begin with the assumption that adequate funding will support a student’s hypothetical design, we began our work researching the limitations of existing institutions, their funding streams, and their spatial extents. Working alongside community partners Reimagine Appalachia, we questioned the existing functions of institutions including local governments, industries receiving public dollars as part of harmful extraction economies, and the infrastructures that support these activities that are seen as normative. As a result, student designs included the redesign of institutional practices alongside their architectural interventions.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.112.89

Volume Editors
Germane Barnes & Blair Satterfield

ISBN
978-1-944214-45-6