Date of Award
Spring 5-22-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Design (MDes) in Interior Studies / Exhibition + Narrative Environments
Department
Interior Architecture
First Advisor
Francesca Liuni
Second Advisor
Can Altay
Third Advisor
Jeffrey Katz
Abstract
This thesis proposes the adaptive reuse of the Heritage Park Visitor Center in Fall River, Massachusetts, as a community oriented environment for rest, care, and social connection along the Taunton River waterfront. Although the park provides public access to nature, the existing building does not support everyday forms of well being such as pause, reflection, quiet recovery, or informal gathering. In many public spaces across New England, wellness remains separated from civic life and is often treated as private, specialized, or secondary.
In response, the project rethinks self care not as a private luxury, but as a shared spatial condition that can be supported through interior architecture. The proposal introduces a series of programs—including community gathering spaces, a small clinic, healing classrooms, and areas for temporary stay and shared meals—to create a more inclusive environment for both local residents and visitors. These functions, however, are not the thesis in themselves; they are supported by a broader spatial strategy that organizes care as part of public life.
This thesis argues that interior architecture can support collective well-being by calibrating different visual and atmospheric relationships to water within public buildings, allowing rest and recovery to become part of shared civic experience. Open social spaces engage the waterfront through direct views, while quieter rooms use framed views to create calmness, focus, and retreat. In more enclosed areas, water is present indirectly through filtered daylight, reflected light, humidity, and tactile materials, so that the river is sensed atmospherically as well as visually. Through these graduated transitions between openness and enclosure, gathering and solitude, the project creates a restorative interior environment shaped by the natural rhythms of the waterfront.
By transforming the visitor center through these layered relationships between program, atmosphere, and water, this thesis positions care not as retreat, but embedded within public life.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Yaqi, "Healing in the Flow: Reimagining Public Well-Being through the Adaptive Reuse of the Heritage Park Visitor Center" (2026). Masters Theses. 1593.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1593
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