Building Resilience: Adaptive Reuse as a Catalyst for Community Transformation

Kamila Diaz Calderon

Co-Presenters: Rida Sajjad

College: Michael Graves College

Major: MARCH.ARCHITECTURE

Faculty Research Mentor: Alicea-Chuqui, Venesa  Syed, Maria

Abstract:

This research is rooted in the adaptive reuse of a decommissioned youth detention center in La Pica, Jayuya, Puerto Rico. Through a community driven project titled Sembrando Semillas. The work positions architecture as a tool for collective learning, healing, and care, supporting both the wellbeing of residents and the restoration of the existing structures. Situated in Puerto Rico’s mountainous interior, the site carries layered histories of colonial governance, agricultural labor, economic marginalization, and disaster recovery. The research therefore begins with documentation and analysis of the existing structures, site conditions, and environmental systems, alongside oral histories, cultural practices, and patterns of resilience within the surrounding community.Rather than proposing a new building intervention, the project develops a distributed network of spaces for cultivation, education, wellness, and gathering. Programmatic decisions are informed by the operational needs of participating nonprofit organizations as well as community priorities for food access, health resources, youth programming, and cultural preservation. Drawing from vernacular construction, local materials, and collective building traditions, the design introduces incremental interventions such as gardens, shaded workshops, classrooms, kitchens, and care facilities that can evolve over time through community participation.Through site research, community engagement, and design, Sembrando Semillas frames adaptive reuse as a regenerative practice. The project reclaims a former site of confinement into a living classroom that nurtures intergenerational knowledge exchange, ecological stewardship, and cultural continuity, demonstrating how architecture can support long term resilience in rural Puerto Rico.