Thesis Highlights

"Rehabilitating Charity"

Valentina Mancera and Natalie Rendleman, 2022

"Rehabilitating Charity: Systematizing Environmental Strategies for Community Wellness"

Charity Hospital’s legacy of public service begins in 1736 when it opened its doors to anyone seeking medical care regardless of income. It remained open as a public hospital for its entire lifespan, with management shifting to Louisiana State University in 1997. When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, Charity sustained some damage, but the hospital was ready to accept patients after only a few weeks of cleanup and repairs. However, there were no plans to reopen the hospital as it was condemned and replaced with a new private hospital which opened in 2015. Charity closed as a result of disaster capitalism, wherein private interests capitalized on the devastation of Katrina during reconstruction efforts. 

The surrounding community faces challenges associated with unaffordable housing and urban heat island effects, both of which contribute negatively to mental health outcomes. Charity Hospital’s closure disrupted a safety net of support for the public’s mental and physical well-being. The adaptive reuse of Charity into affordable housing with environmentally informed building strategies aims to rehabilitate its legacy of improving the wellness of the surrounding community. The placement of vegetation on the building façade works in conjunction with strategic subtractions from the floor plates to create a cooling cavity, thus buffering heat from the interior. This strategy cools the building and its surroundings, improves air quality, and creates a biophilic adjacency to thriving ecosystems at the unit scale and within the urban context. 

WORK