Researcher ORCID Identifier

0009-0005-5990-8763

Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Environmental Analysis

Reader 1

Lance Neckar

Reader 2

Susan Phillips

Reader 3

Shawnika Perdue-Johnson

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2025 Mazzy S Rosenast

Abstract

This thesis explores adaptive reuse as a design strategy to repurpose aging warehouse infrastructure in the Inland Empire, specifically Rancho Cucamonga, in order to reclaim and reintegrate the urban fabric around community needs, rather than defaulting to demolition and erasure. As urban spaces become increasingly saturated, resources dwindle, and environmental concerns escalate, the need to creatively build and repurpose our urban fabric becomes a critical conversation among architects, urban planners, and designers. The Inland Empire (IE) - comprising Riverside and San Bernardino Counties - has been overtaken by the logistics industry, transforming its landscape into a patchwork of freeways, cargo truck routes, and warehouses storing goods imported from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Rancho Cucamonga (RC), one of the region's more affluent and progressively planned suburban cities, exemplifies the tension between industrial expansion and residential growth inherent in the IE. Industrial zones and residential neighborhoods are in close proximity, causing air, water, and noise pollution, landscape degradation, and displacement of people. Given these challenges, adaptive reuse, the modification of an existing structure for an alternative use, can be a strategy to combat these issues through repurposing buildings to better serve the needs of the community. This thesis is illustrated through Factory 104, a project proposal to adaptively reuse a warehouse built in the 1980s in Rancho Cucamonga. Repurposing the Inland Empire’s older and smaller warehouses can help mitigate the environment and social impacts of the logistics industry and foster more sustainable, community-oriented development.

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