Browsing by Subject "Repurpose"

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    Adaptability
    (2018) Fox, Hannah; Hudnall, Katie
    At the core of humanity is a driving force to create and change our environments to better suit our liking. In this century, the need fo hand-making in the developed world is becoming obsolete. As privileged Americans we no longer need to make utilitarian objects using these processes to stay warm or even to survive. Everything we "need" is mass produced in factories we will never visit, by machines most of us could not even begin to operate or comprehend. The most abundant of these commodities are made from plastic. An entirely unnatural and man-made material, plastic is used an discarded at a rate unmatched by almost any other substance. My thesis work utilizes recycled material, specifically polypropylene biohazard bags, to identify the destructive realities of human waste and consumption in contemporary society. By confronting viewers with grotesque overwhelming forms of melted plastic the work is a rumination on human adaptation to technologically-driven wasteful consumerist life in the 21st century.
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    “This Great Building Belongs To Everyone”: Interrogating Claims About Inclusiveness and Exploring the Role of Nostalgia in the 1970s and 1980s Historic Preservation Movement at Union Station in Indianapolis, Indiana
    (2022-05) Butterworth, Alexis Victoria; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Scarpino, Philip V.; Rowe, Stephanie
    Union Station is a unique historic building in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The station, which first opened in 1853, has connected the history of the evolution of travel and the city of Indianapolis and, in the late twentieth century, became deeply embedded in local conversations about national issues at the intersection of race, historic preservation, and urban renewal. The station was a place of Black exclusion from public spaces throughout its existence, first as a train station, and later when it was repurposed as a Festival Marketplace. In preparation for the opening of the Festival Marketplace in the 1980s—complete with shops, restaurants, and a hotel—the developers invited people to write to them to preserve personal memories of experiences at the station from the era of train travel. Indiana residents, both white and Black, as well as Indianapolis city officials, and redevelopers of the station showed nostalgia for earlier eras when the station was active. This nostalgia, I argue, played an active and productive role in the process of saving Union Station. Importantly, those who contributed a letter to the “Remember Union Station” project were overwhelmingly white. Out of eighty-six letters, the race of seventy-three of them can be confirmed. Of those eighty-six, only two have been identified as Black. The two Black letter writers used the opportunity to contribute to the “Remember Union Station” campaign as a means to remember and claim the right to belong in Union Station for themselves, their families, and Black communities. As this project shows, the Indianapolis Union Station has always been more than just a building. It is a space that captures a part of the complex history of the city of Indianapolis and can hopefully provide more links to the past, present, and future for Hoosiers and visitors alike.