Bringing New Life & Character to Pickett Cotton Mill

Students:
 
This studio will unfold the reimagining of the historic Pickett Cotton Mill in southwest High Point through a rehabilitation that understands the mill’s authenticity, respects it past ‘voice” and expresses its future ‘voice’ within a revitalized Southwest High Point.  Your designs will be mixed-use projects incorporating a combination of “third places” as well as apartments, live/work units, artist studios, and a childcare center. A central focus to the studio project will be developing strategies and tactics for the adaptive reuse of a historic building based on a clear analysis of its existing “voice” and its larger context. Our approach will be respectful of the building’s historic character and will be guided in part by Graeme Brooker and Sally Stone’s book Rereadings Interior Architecture and the Design Principles of Remodeling Existing Buildings and by the theory of third places from Ray Oldenburg’s The Great Good Place: Cafés, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community.

--> During the course of this semester, you will document the existing mill and its context, analyze the site, write a program for your mixed use project, manifest deliverables across a range of media and techniques, research precedents, read relevant articles and books, and maintain a digital process journal.

Professor Jo Leminstol