Digital Commons Network^™

Suppression | Liberation: Memorial To The Lgbtq + Holocaust Victims, Justin Difabritis

Architecture Thesis Prep

Architecture + poetry are powerful forms of creativity, both exemplifying beauty, symbolism, emotion, and experience through structure + form. This thesis is interested in poetic architecture and its ability to not only narrate, represent, symbolize, or express, but also eternalize, the story of groups, individuals, and events.

Through the analysis of, but not limited to, memorials, tombs, and monuments, a deeper architectural understanding will be offered, one of architecture’s ability to emotionally affect others as a means of remembrance.

This research will focus on the literal + symbolic narrative and experience of the LGBTQ+ victims of the holocaust, placing a …

Panopticon: A Privacy Revelation, Kexin Wang, Zhexu Yang

Architecture Thesis Prep

Our thesis project studies and analyzes the control of Surveillance Capitalism over people’s privacy, and how to make people realize the importance of privacy through the means of an architectural/design narrative. This concept comes from Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, which explains how tech companies collect extra data, capture people’s behavioral surplus and sell them to third party customers, such as advertising companies, thus the predictions about people’s preferences accordingly. In this process, technology companies can make tremendous profit by stealing users’ personal information and then …

Tectonic Thresholds: Reclaiming Space Through Geomorphological Design, Amreeta Verma

Architecture Thesis Prep

This research posits that a revitalization of indigenous earth architecture practices in a contemporary context can mitigate the immense waste and embodied carbon in the construction industry. Earth materials are the focus of this research because they are locally sourced, abundantly available, and can be reused or returned to the natural environment, when utilized in a circular consumption cycle. Designing for reuse reduces the impact of construction waste on the burgeoning issue of environmental degradation and resource depletion.

The structural viability and environmental enclosure capabilities of soil throughout its lifecycle will be tested in different forms derived geomorphically from the …

My Abject Body: Dissimulating & Disheveling Fleshy Matter, Taylor Hoople

Architecture Thesis Prep

Body (as subject) and space (as object) are polarized entities in modern discourse and design. The current epoch of hygiene, control, and mass-production/ consumption renders the body and the space(s) it inhabits as whole, discrete entities. In their totality, body and space are idealized opposites, failing to experience any messy overlaps or ambiguous in-betweenness. My feminine body is particularly subject to this dualism, being tightly bound to the legal and social patriarchal dominance over my body’s autonomy and appearance.

This thesis seeks to corrupt my hyper-aestheticized and policed body by making (with) abject( ion). Understood both as an ongoing condition …

Resembling Legitimacy: Restructuring The American Civic Architectural Myth, Estefany Lona

Architecture Thesis Prep

By looking at three case studies--Esposizione Universale Roma, the New Deal, and Red Vienna--this project demonstrates that the architecture within each context to be more than subjective constructions of political ideology. They grasp at the history of nations, tangible environments, and coincide with implementation of public policy.

Divided Cyprus, Nicola Kyverniti

Architecture Thesis Prep

Creating urban interventions in the city at different scales and sites strategically chosen to attract the city population would have the potential to expose the state of the urban fabric. Nodes designed to alter the perspective of the occupant. Exposure created through the language of architecture. Revealling dividing elements emphasizes the need for a true symbol of dialogue and freedom of discussion between the separated communities. At a global scale, conflict is not something that can truly be resolved or diminished. The notion of conflict occurs in certain locations at different periods, following the evolution of political, social, economic, and …

Architecture On Parade: Rejuvenating Venice Biennale, Fan Fang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is interested in speculating on new ways to exhibit architecture. As it is a culturally relevant event, the thesis will borrow strategies in other forms of popular cultural production to determine how to rejuvenate architecture exhibition. Parade and traveling circus are cultural rituals that have unique formats that give actual shape to culture. They present in a live and lively manner, and they travel among places to enlarge a wider audience.This thesis project seeks to learn from these cultural rituals such as the parade and the traveling circus to improve and expand current formats of exhibition and celebration …

Into Instrument: A Case For The Musical Tectonic, Alex Lievens

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will observe and investigate the relationship between musical objects and architectonic construction. It will begin to test relationships between musical notational systems and architectural notational systems. Musical instruments can provide key insights into how architecture might possess the same qualities of interactivity, action and personal value that musical instruments inherently own.

Big Urban Things, Nathan Geller

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project has evolved from an interest in architecture’s role and impact in the city, as well as a developing interest in the philosophy of Object Oriented Ontology. As a way to explore these interests, this project is about contextualizing Bigness through the writings of Graham Harman.

A Facade For San Lorenzo, Rod Barker

Architecture Thesis Prep

"A facade for San Lorenzo presents the opportunity to re-examine the issues of a city. It must deal with the existing structure of the city, address its history and past, as well as the present. It needs to have meaning for the citizens and visitors alike, meaning that creates images of the other parts of the city and the particular place. It needs to become a symbol not only for the complex but also for the entire city."