Summary
The Simon Silk Mill has been a transformative urban revitalization project that now offers a unique integration of artistic influenced businesses and apartments in an industrial setting. It’s acknowledged as a national landmark, a feat that shouldn’t be discounted, it offers serene study spaces for Lafayette students, and provides a platform for small businesses to prosper. Though the mill has productive intentions for their small business tenants, there are many unwillful barriers that result in unexpected and unwanted problems. We focused on high energy costs that are associated with urban revitalization. To emphasize certain details we used Brick + Mortar Art Gallery and Design Studio as a case study.
We approached the case study by investigating Easton, the Simon Silk Mill, and Brick + Mortar through a variety of contexts to organize and establish our findings in a progressive matter. We found that there was overlap between the social, political, technical, and economic contexts we defined. Easton is a historical city that has continued to inaugurate a new artistic image that associates well with its community. With the Simon Silk Mill epitomizing this identification, the historical landmark’s policies intertwine with the social needs and wants of the community and business owners, like Mr. Hampton and his art studio.
There are several features of Brick + Mortar’s studio and gallery that lack energy efficiency, but make up for it in visual benefits. This tradeoff between aesthetics and energy efficiency has been the core of our study. It touches on all contexts of social, political, technical, and economic. Our in-depth investigation has developed the necessary information to pursue an economic analysis that can evaluate the cost of potential energy-related alternatives. This information can be used to explain the ‘energy efficiency’ side of the trade-off. ‘Aesthetics’ are purely opinionative and is for Mr. Hampton to decide. Therefore, it is at his discretion for what alternatives, if any, are eventually implemented.
Next Steps
The next stage in this Brick + Mortar urban revitalization project is securing funding and time to investigate the solutions we proposed and hopefully implement some. We quickly realized that performing an effective, comprehensive energy analysis requires a substantial amount of time and resources. As we gathered information throughout the semester, we tried to contextualize it into something that can be of benefit to Brick + Mortar. A project of this scope would require a significant amount of time. With the information becoming progressively denser, we thought about how we can make this project most effective. We decided that given our timeframe, we should direct our information to a new audience: a future group of Engineering Studies capstone students. By framing this project for future students and providing them with the necessary background information to understand the project, we hope that our energy analysis is beneficial to them. This development project would better be served as a year long project instead of a semester-long project. Our hope is that by after one semester of work, we were able to gather enough information for a future group of students to perform a true economic analysis to then provide the results to Mr. Hampton. In our report, we offer technical information, suggestions, and background knowledge that is necessary to know for future references.
When future groups of students conduct their analysis on Brick + Mortar, or any other revitalized building in Easton, they can use our work as a resource. We concluded that a payback analysis would be the most effective for this project. A payback analysis determines whether our proposed technical solutions will pay for themselves in a certain amount of time. This type of economic analysis would be the most effective for future attempts at this project because it would ensure that investments are justifiable by energy cost savings. For a payback analysis to be useful we would need to know the future cash flows that these investments bring in, in addition to understanding Brick + Mortar’s future profits and revenues. An increase in time and budget would allow future groups to use more sophisticated technologies to investigate our alternative solutions further. Tools to measure air velocity, for example, would be effective in improving energy efficiency by accurately measuring the amount of air leaking through the windows, walls, and ceilings. An important aspect for future groups to recognize is that regardless of which technical solutions are decided on or what level of energy efficiency is achieved, the owners of Brick + Mortar are the community members being served and therefore their needs and wants supercede any of our propositions.
Challenges
Urban revitalization is an endeavor that houses many difficulties and obstacles. Our case study with Brick + Mortar allowed for a more confined perspective and inside look on such difficulties. A 135 year old silk mill building turned art gallery and studio provided us with the necessary lense to preview the final product of a renewed and revitalized historical structure. In our attempt to hone in on the challenges that have been bearing a great amount of weight on Brick + Mortar’s financial expenses, we identified a variety of challenges that we encountered and future students will encounter.
Upon our first meeting with Mr. Hampton, we immediately noticed his passion for art. He chose to occupy the space at the silk mill due to its aged appeal and artistic atmosphere, two characteristics that continue to be of great importance to him. Unfortunately, the appeal of the aged infrastructure comes with many inevitable features that bear weight on their finances. Given the age of the silk mill, the buildings are energy inefficient. The windows and garage doors allow for noticeable drafts making it difficult to limit heat usage during winter months. Replacing the poorly insulated windows proves to be near impossible due to political barriers from the mill’s historical significance. Additionally, an exposed HVAC system allows for frequent dust collection that prevents the system from running efficiently. It’s aesthetically pleasing, however it does not present much practicality given the particular work Mr. Hampton does. The main challenges going forward are the mill’s historical significance preventing certain modifications and the owner’s value for aesthetics. Our framework can help limit these barriers for future groups on the project. By having a contextual understanding of Brick + Mortar and the Silk Mill, students can focus more on their analyses and waste less time facing challenges they didn’t realize were there.
You can review our bibliography here.