Adaptive Memory: Reimagining the Borscht Belt as Communal Agricultural Living & Recreation

Master’s Thesis, Parsons School of Design, 2023

‘Exceptional Thesis’ Class of 2023, awarded by MFA Interior Design Faculty / Leadership

Advisors:
Jonsara Ruth
Alan Ruiz

Adaptive Memory explores the abandoned Pines Resort in the Catskills as a communal agricultural living and recreational campus. It investigates the potential for a minimal intervention strategy using methods of adaptive reuse. Part of the once thriving “Borscht Belt” that was a recreational haven to the Jewish immigrant community in the mid-twentieth century (including to my own family), this project reimagines former hotel structures as spaces that offer a sense of community through farming and access to nature.