UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Lock Haven, Pennsylvania has a 26.9% poverty rate, according to 2021 census data. Kimberly Cunningham, a master of architecture student in the College of Arts and Architecture’s Stuckeman School at Penn State, is working on a design to help alleviate some of the challenges that homeless people face.
She has been awarded the 2024 Professional Master’s Excellence Award from the Graduate School for her work, which recognizes a student’s excellence in their academic record and “the quality and impact of the student’s culminating experience, including creative works, performance and projects conducted in a professional setting."
Cunningham, who is from Williamsport, Maryland, earned her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Messiah University in 2019 and decided to go back to school to get a master of architecture degree from Penn State.
“Civil engineering and architecture both require problem-solving, and that’s what I find appealing about both [disciplines],” she said. “I can solve problems in architecture in a more creative way, less by the book.”
For her master’s thesis, she could design a building for any site. She chose a place not too far from home: a couple acres of land in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, where she currently resides, with a dilapidated church deemed unusable by the town.
“I try to keep my designs local to the neighborhood so that the building is already in a relationship with the neighborhood,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham’s thesis design centers around what she titled, “waste-based” or “regenerative” architecture. According to Cunningham, regenerative architecture encompasses using waste-based materials, operations that are economically efficient and reduce carbon consumption, as well as using a site deemed “wasted” by the community.
“[Waste-based architecture is] the idea that something once discarded can be repurposed for a greater need,” she said.
She also wants her design to support marginalized people, so Cunningham’s thesis involves designing a group home for homeless adults in Lock Haven, repurposing the currently unusable plot of land.
The building’s facilities will include support services and life skills courses, but the residents’ main task throughout the day will be attending a workshop where they collect recycled plastics from a nearby landfill and convert them into recycled fiber-fill to use for insulation, sound-proofing boards, walls and various other building materials.
“They would be gaining skills by repurposing their lives and the tangible waste that people have discarded,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham plans on sending her documents to the city of Lock Haven for future ideas to repurpose the unusable site. After graduation from Penn State, she aspires to work in real estate development, continuing to regenerate spaces.
“[Real estate development] would be the perfect combination of my civil engineering land development experience as well as my architecture knowledge to buy land or existing structures and then renovate or build new buildings on it and then sell that commercially,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham joins fellow College of Arts and Architecture recipients Allison Brault, master’s student in music, and Erin Stanek, master's student in theatre.