Date of Submission
Spring 5-12-2026
Degree Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Ameen Farooq
Abstract
The decline of heavy industry across the American Rust Belt has left behind expansive, fragmented landscapes that are often treated as voids awaiting replacement. This thesis, Found & Forged challenges that assumption by repositioning the former U.S. Steel site in Lorain, Ohio, not as an absence, but as a layered urban condition with embedded cultural and spatial value. Found & Forged proposes a regenerative urban design framework guided by three interdependent pillars: Memory, Reconnection, and Resilience. Rather than erasing the industrial past, the project selectively preserves and reinterprets existing structures and artifacts to construct a living narrative of place. At the urban scale, it breaks down the super-block condition into a porous, humancentered fabric that reconnects the waterfront to surrounding neighborhoods, restoring both physical access and social continuity. Simultaneously, the proposal introduces adaptable infrastructural and programmatic strategies that address long-term uncertainty, positioning resilience as an ongoing capacity for change rather than a fixed outcome. Through phased interventions that combine adaptive reuse, new civic infrastructure, and community-driven programming, the project transforms the site into an active civic core that supports cultural expression, economic opportunity, and collective identity. Ultimately, this thesis argues that post-industrial sites should not be cleared and replaced, but reworked through a careful synthesis of what is found and what is forged—offering a scalable model for equitable and resilient urban regeneration.