This project deals with the crippling urban fragmentation of downtown of St Louis and the social alienation of its low-income and homeless communities.
These two problems are intertwined in the example of Tucker Tunnel, an abandoned passenger railroad tunnel constructed starting in 1931 measuring 35 feet tall by 100 feet wide, extending half a mile half-buried in downtown North St Louis. This long-abandoned train line leaves a large, unseen void in the urban fabric of the city.
In recent years, this tunnel had become a makeshift refuge for 30 to 100 chronically homeless individuals in the St Louis area. This community was loosely self-governed and operated on a system of co-reliance for obtaining food and supplies, with the additional assistance of local religious and volunteer groups.
This graduate thesis explored the design of a community center that would specifically serve this community, not as an institution but as a collaborative experiment in nurturing a community in its natural place. The building is designed as an extension of the territory of the tunnel, apart from the street. The street is public, unprotected, whereas the tunnel is more or less invisible.
A spirit of invisibility extends through the building design itself, one that respects the privacy of the community while also demarcating its own territory. It stakes a claim to the urban void that only those inhabiting it could see.
The Tucker Tunnel was destroyed June 22, 2013, eighty years to the day from its completion in 1933. The tunnel structure was dismantled and filled with large foam blocks in order to construct an I-70 offramp into downtown.
Professor: Heather Woofter, Washington University in St Louis
Honors: Work Presented at Exhibition for Master of Architecture NAAB Accreditation Review 2012 at Washington University in St Louis
