View Video of Building Implosion, Animated Explosion: UC Designs Tell Fernald's Story

If the settlers of 1819 were to today see the area we call Fernald Preserve, they’d certainly recognize the landscape, plants and animals.

That fact is a testament to the progress made in returning the site once written off as a Cold War environmental catastrophe to its original state of nature.

As Fernald and the wider region get set to celebrate the reclamation and restoration of the one-time site of a uranium processing plant during a week of events in mid-August, it turns out that it is design students and faculty from the University of Cincinnati who have (and will) shape the chronicling of Fernald’s complete history within an unusual visitors center set to open on August 20.

UC designs – video, audio and more – tell a tale

John Hancock – professor in UC’s

top-ranked architecture program

, part of the university’s

internationally ranked

College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning – was one of a large team of faculty and students who designed the Fernald Preserve visitor-center exhibits, situated within a reclaimed warehouse that makes use of geothermal heating as well as local and recycled materials.

He explained, “While we at UC can call ourselves the exhibit designers, it was really the community who led the design of this space. We went to community stake-holder groups in Crosby Township very early in the process to ask: ‘What do you want this center to do or to be.’ Everything flowed from that.”

The end result is both disturbing and hopeful and always engaging in the telling of “the whole Fernald story,” according to Hancock.

Video, audio, interactive and multimedia component are the tools used in telling this “whole Fernald story,” from the time Native Americans inhabited the site to the arrival of settlers and farmers to the uranium-production years and to the environmental cleanup until today.

• For instance, a Cold War room attempts to recreate a taste of the paranoia and fear characteristic of the years after World War II. Within the room, visitors can view a globe divided. Also, within that room, visitors’ movements can set off a realistic animation of an atomic bomb blast projected onto the room’s floor.

• That room also contains a 1950s-style living space where visitors can sit and view archival video from the era, including a civil-defense film titled "Duck and Cover" in which school children were routinely taught to drop beneath their desks in the event of a nuclear attack.

• Other rooms and exhibits pertain more specifically to Fernald, a foundry where uranium ore was processed for use in nuclear weapons and then for nuclear energy plants from the early 1950s to the late 1980s that later required a $4.4-billion Superfund clean up and conversion.

• A media room revisits and replays the national and international media coverage that the area received once the chemical contamination became known in the 1980s.

• In addition, narratives from individuals are told via archival video featuring eight stories from families who lived on the land before the United States government purchased or acquired the Fernald site via eminent domain.

• Finally, there are computer models reconstructing the 10 factory buildings that comprised Fernald at its height. These include photos and video of the activities within each structure. These computer models follow each building site into its current use as part of a nature preserve covering more than 1,000 acres encompassing forests, prairie, savannah and wetlands, all created using plants and grasses identified in an 1819 land survey of the area.

• The visitor’s center itself also features a solar wall that UC faculty and students helped to design that, during the summer solstice, will align the sun’s rays with the entrance to the center.

One of the many UC students working on this project was graphic design senior Elisabeth Quallen, 23, of West Chester, who worked as a two-person graphics team with fellow student Melissa Crutcher, 23, of Fairfield.

Quallen’s favorite part of the exhibit design involved her contribution to a wall mural regarding how the Fernald complex fit into the nation’s weapons-making matrix during the Cold War.

“I sifted through a great deal of technical information and received coaching on how uranium processing fits into the making of a nuclear weapon and how Fernald itself fit into the national-defense fabric of the time. I then was able to, with the help and input of the team, develop graphics that conveyed this information for the portion of the exhibit that portrays plant operations,” she said, adding that just this one aspect of the exhibit required about 40 hours of research and design.

That level of commitment was typical for the project, according to Ericka Hedgecock, visiting assistant professor of architecture, who served as a co-principal on the design project with Hancock. “Because everyone has a reaction to the Fernald story, the project became all-encompassing. With the many layers and points of view of the mosaic history of the 1,000-acre site, it had a ‘wow’ factor that was loaded with meaning for so many people,” said Hedgecock.

Among the UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning faculty and students who contributed to the exhibits within the Fernald visitor’s center are

• Marshall Brown, assistant professor of architecture
• Melissa Crutcher, graphic design co-op student
• Dion Dwityabaswara, graduate architecture student
• John Hancock, professor of architecture
• Ericka Hedgecock, visiting assistant professor of architecture
• Hank Hildebrandt, professor of interior design
• Jose Kozan, research associate and adjunct professor of architecture
• Cathryn Long, researcher and writer
• Elisabeth Quallen, graphic design co-op student
• Virginia Russell, associate professor of landscape architecture
• Ferenc Traser, research assistant 
• Michael Zaretsky, assistant professor of architecture

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