The thesis is the culmination of all my design work at James Madison University. My project is entitled The City of Lost Children and has its basis in the KLV [Kinderlandvershickung in German] which was a WWII phenomenon in which children who lived in major cities were sent away from their families into the countryside to avoid bombings. While this process was proactive in keeping children alive, when they returned to the cities, many parents were found dead, leaving hundreds of thousands of stranded orphans. The City of Lost Children picks up here. Surrounded by millions of trees in the Southern corner of Germany’s Black Forest, The City of Lost Children stands as an orphanage for any and all kids in need of a home, featuring places for them to learn, live, and grow. 

 

This project started in Fall 2015 with the Pre-Thesis drawings. This was a series of 12 drawings meant to explore and further develop the thesis question. At the start of Spring 2016, after extensive research and searching, three drawings were developed about the KLV. These fed into site mappings and a drawing of the Norwegian Spruce, a tree native to Europe and found exclusively in the area of focus in the Black Forest. Nonnenmattweiher Lake, the exact site of The City of Lost Children, is near Badenweiler, which houses the closest train station. 2.5 miles away by bus or car sits the City of Lost Children, an orphanage composed completely of treehouses that float up from the ground to the treetops as a place of sanctuary for the lost children of Europe.