The Connection

Providence, Rhode Island
Adaptive Reuse Project
2017

Whereas mining structures - one of the most common examples of underground architectures - have become nostalgic symbols of a Western industrialized past, a different trend has been characterizing the current architectural production: after the end of the Cold War, bunker, tunnels and ancient cisterns have been progressively turned into public attractions and have been absorbed into the official fabric of the city, being its spaces explored and colonized for specific collective events. By re-emerging from an invisible past, these architectures work as an active part of the cities' infrastructure, in the same way as any conventional square, garden, or communal space.

The site of the project is the combination of the East Side Railroad Tunnel with the Crook Point Bascule Bridge. Both the tunnel and the bridge belong to the same project, conceptualized at the beginning of the XX century, and based on the will to connect the Centre of Providence with the East Side. Both structures are nowadays abandoned and partially vandalized. Working on an integrated process of regeneration and dealing with a composite system of architectural signs allow us to face the complexity of the urban dynamics and to elaborate a general strategy of adaptive reuse that will combine different scales of intervention.