The different ethnic groups of a given neighborhood often live within their invisible cultural boundaries and rarely connect with other groups -- either due to language barriers or lack of common interests. Each group's story is different, reflecting their socio-economic, cultural and political backgrounds. Yet when living next to one another, they create a single fabric of the neighborhood. This fabric can be compared to patchwork -- a textile composed of many different pieces sewn together to form a new design. The way patches connect with each other, organized in groups, and communicate on two different levels -- as a single piece and as an integral part of the total design -- all present a strong parallel with neighborhood organization, and serve as source of inspiration for this project.;The connections between different groups of people happen on the streets, in everyday life, and public places play the key role in biding residents together. Answering the question of how to design a public place that would bring diverse communities together and grasp the spirit of the neighborhood to connect visually with the residents is the key design goal of this project.;Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.) serves as the neighborhood to study and create a design for. A constantly changing neighborhood, Columbia Heights presents a great mix of ethnic groups: situated between historically African-American neighborhoods to the east, the predominantly white neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant to the west, and the relatively recent but fast-growing Latino population to the south. Over the course of 20 years, the population mix has changed rapidly from 49 percent black and 13 percent Latino in 1980, to roughly equal parts white, black and Latino in 2000. The range of the residents' respective backgrounds makes this neighborhood one of the most diverse in Washington, D.C. Yet it seems that people there historically just happened to be in the same place at the same time. The neighborhood does not seem to create a sense of connection to its residents.;Gentrification in Columbia Heights that began in the late 1990s has improved the economic composition of the neighborhood, but at the same time watered down its local flavor by making neutral big-box stores, such as Giant and Target, the key visual markers of the neighborhood between 14th Street and Park Road. Of note, this neighborhood's historical center once was a commercial strip filled with private businesses that attracted shoppers from across the city.;Using patchwork as inspiration for this project, several modern artists' patchworks are studied to identify their strategies for creating a unifying language in design. The classical urban theories of Jane Jacobs and Christopher Alexander, as well as those of modern architects, are studied to develop spatial strategies for designing a public place. Using the methodology of "A Pattern Language" developed by Alexander, a study of the Columbia Heights neighborhood was conducted to identify the mixed-use program that the public place can offer to bring people together. Neighborhood visual observations, meeting with local developers (DCCH company), as well as interviews with local public artists (Karlisima and Joel Bergner), helped to clarify the sensibilities of different ethnic groups and identify directions to design the spirit of the neighborhood.;Local buildings (Red Apron, Room 11 of Washington D.C., and Counter Culture of NYC) are chosen as case studies for this project, which utilizes direct observations of their programs and design approaches. All of the buildings examined are adjoined townhouses, which in turn provides opportunity for an in-depth study of the connections between the buildings and the hierarchy of program in space.;While developing the program, the focus was placed on preserving the exterior diversity of the buildings, given their architectural and sentimental significance, yet unifying the interior via the natural flow of the program and transparent circulation between the buildings, creating moments of connection between the diverse community.
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