Project Details
- Project Name
- Worcester Blackstone Visitor Center
- Location
- Worcester
- Architect
- designLAB architects
- Client/Owner
- Blackstone Heritage Corridor/MassDOT
- Project Types
- Community
- Project Scope
- New Construction
- Year Completed
- 2018
- Awards
- 2023 AIA Architecture Award
- Shared by
- Andrea Timpano
- Project Status
- Built
This project was selected as a winner in AIA's 2023 Architecture Awards.
The Worcester Blackstone Visitor Center in Worcester, Mass., is an exercise in adaptability, change, and graceful reconciliation with a painful past. Situated in the city’s Quinsigamond Village neighborhood on the Blackstone River, the site has a rich but strained history stretching back to the 1700s; its previous occupant, a paper mill turned wire-rope factory, ceased operations in 1977, leaving behind devastating pollution.
What began as an adaptive reuse of the former mill quickly changed course when the building was destroyed by a fire during the design process. In response, the team at Boston-based designLAB architects scrapped its plans and embraced new ways to merge the past and the present without the physical remnants of the original structure.
The resulting 11,000-square-foot visitor center—complete with event and exhibition space—aims to support the revitalization of a village polluted by years of manufacturing, transforming a brownfield site into a sustainable community space. Wire-metal sun screens and reclaimed brick and wood from nearby factory sites pay tribute to the area’s industrial past, while a photovoltaic array that supplies more than half of the center’s energy orients the design toward a sustainable future.
PROJECT CREDITS
Project: Worcester Blackstone Visitor Center, Worcester, Mass.
Owner: Blackstone Heritage Corridor/MassDOT
Architect: designLAB architects, Boston
Landscape Architect: Landworks Studio
Civil Engineer: AECOM
Structural Engineer: Structures Workshop
MEP/FP: Architectural Engineers Inc
General Contractor: Daniel O'Connell's Sons
This article first appeared in the May/June 2023 issue of ARCHITECT.
Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
Rising like a phoenix from the ashes, literally. The new Blackstone Visitors Center, completed in September 2018, sits on the site of the former Washburn/Moen mill building, which burned to the ground in 2010. The 11,000 sf building sits within an 4.5-acre site with the building bookended by two large events venues. Connecting the two venues and running along the visitors center is a “heritage walk,” a 40-foot wide by 640-foot long pedestrian way that includes interpretive exhibits and a new pedestrian bridge over the Blackstone Canal. The heritage walk is marked by a series of “site frames” with lighting and infrastructure that span the walkway at the same height as the building, pavilion, and bridge to unite the entire site as a single volume. Throughout the building and site, materials and assemblies were chosen to connect with the industrial history of the area without trying to recreate any original fabric. The building facade and site walls are made from reclaimed bricks in gabion baskets from similar deconstructed mill buildings. The main exhibit hall of the visitors center is covered with reclaimed wood flooring. Wire screens reference the wire rope that was made at the original factory, while the building roof references the distinctive sawtooth monitors from the old Washburn/Moen building.
