Digital Commons Network^™

Interactive Music Experience, Gaetan Jacques

Gaetan Jacques

In February of 2012, alternative rock band OK Go released a music video for their song “Needing/Getting”. The video explores a creative way of playing music, by driving a car through a constructed, choreographed environment. A driving track was set up as a large musical instrument which was “played” by a car. Architects, musicians, and artist are looking for innovative ways to develop active relationships between people, music, and architecture. The traditional passive relationship of these three is static, a design that does not promote interaction or participation. If we consider, behind a performance, there is a great deal of …

Currency Museum, Costa Lopes

Building Case Studies

The metallic parasols generate shadow and urban scale.

Transformaciones En La Vivienda Histórica En La Zona De Monumentos De Santiago De Querétaro (Historic Housing Transformations In The Monuments' Zone Of Santiago De Queretaro), Yanet Lezama-López

Yanet Lezama-López

Providing Proteins To Belizean Residents Through Poultry Products, Ellis Freel

Poultry Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Belize is a food insecure, developing country. Although Belize has plenty of nutritious food in-country, the exportation of that food to generate income contributed to a distribution issue of that nutritious food. More impoverished areas of Belize do not have access to nutritious food because of the lack of affordability and high export rates. Diets with a lack of food, or lack of balanced, nutritious food can negatively impact growth and cognitive development, especially in children. Poultry is one of the only products in Belize not able to be exported. Implementing poultry into Belizean diets would affordably alleviate food insecurity …

Heritagutopia: A New Utopian Paradigm, Luca Donner, Francesca Sorcinelli

All Works

The progress of humanity has always, and sometimes even unconsciously, been confronted with the concept of utopia at the social, economic, political, and urban level. The strength of every utopian vision lies in the disruptive factor inherent in the idea of metamorphosis of the status quo. In the urban context, it represents the pillar on which the vision of modern society and its city are based and understood as potential and progress for mankind. Authors such as Bauman, Bloch, Calvino, More, Mumford, Tafuri, and others, have formed the theoretical framework of the dialectic on which this study is based. As …

Body As Instrument: Crafting A Spatial Representational Language For The Dancer's Body, Avery Boland

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project explored the intersection of dance and architecture using choreography, photography, and architectural principles through the development and application of a graphic notation system. Focused on the works of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham and photographer Barbara Morgan, the study tested the representation of the body in space through the use of Graham's choreography as captured by Morgan.

The results of the study demonstrated the effectiveness of the representational language in capturing the spatial dynamics of the human body in Martha Graham's choreography through the notation of “frame” and “plane”. Through a comparative analysis of the selected dances, the …

Reviving Historic Buildings - Adaptive Reuse Of The Jazzy Building, Mazze Stokes

Honors Theses

In the face of rapid urbanization and modernization, the significance of historic preservation and adaptive reuse has gained prominence as a sustainable approach to development. There is an intricate relationship between historic preservation and adaptive reuse, delving into the principles, challenges, and benefits inherent in this practice as they apply to the Jazzy Building on 619/621 Market Street in Downtown Chattanooga Tennessee. A mixed-use approach for the Jazzy Building is optimal, as it addresses the pressing need for expanded housing amidst Chattanooga's population growth, capitalizes on its potential as a tourist attraction, and aligns with the city's strong environmentalist ethos.

The Jazzy Building: A Revitalization Plan, Christine Bebawy

Honors Theses

The Jazzy building is located at 619-621 Market Street in Chattanooga, TN in the City Center downtown area. Both the interior and exterior of the building show signs of being vacant for a long period. The Jazzy building has significant historical value, especially the east and west facades that feature various ornamentations and details that testify to its significance. Although the building's interior has been severely damaged, it is still possible to salvage and reuse some of the materials. To determine the appropriate use of the Jazzy building, a market analysis of downtown Chattanooga research was referenced, along with a …

Synergetic Effect Of Viscosity Modifying Admixtures And Polycarboxylate Ether Superplasticizer On Key Characteristics Of Thixotropic Uhpc For Bonded Bridge Deck Overlay Rehabilitation, Le Teng, Ming Jin, Jiadi Du, Kamal H. Khayat

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Thin bonded ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC) overlay is an advanced technology for bridge deck rehabilitation. UHPC should be tailored to secure adequate flowability and high thixotropy to facilitate mixing and placement with a low risk of sagging of the material on sloped bridge deck surfaces. The synergetic effect between nano clay (NC) and polycarboxylate ether (PCE) superplasticizer or cellulose-based viscosity modifying admixture (VMA) and PCE on the rheological properties (yield stress, plastic viscosity, and thixotropy), cement hydration, autogenous shrinkage, compressive strength, and porosity was systematically investigated. The bond strength between conventional concrete (CC) representing existing bridge deck concrete and thixotropic UHPC …

Language And Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Egypt’S Housing Narratives, Maram Gamal

Theses and Dissertations

The issue of housing in Egypt is an evolving historical phenomenon intricately tied to the Egyptian identity, and deeply embedded in the social and political fabric. Common language shapes actual realities and it forms an integral part of the cultural parameters. This research is a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the housing narrative across four consecutive ruling regimes with distinct political orientations. It deploys a two-stage CDA approach. The first stage involves ideological codification of the narrative to chronologically organize them into their ideological orientations and categories. The second stage historicizes data via a dual approach, namely integrating Norman Fairclough's …

Application Of Multidisciplinary Community Resilience Modeling To Reduce Disaster Risk: Building Back Better, Wanting "Lisa" Wang, John W. Van De Lindt, Blythe Johnston, P. Shane Crawford, Guirong Grace Yan, Thang Dao, Trung Do, Katie Skakel, Mojtaba Harati, Tu Nguyen, Robinson Umeike, Silvana Croope, Andre R. Barbosa

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

From december 10 to december 11, 2021, a deadly tornado outbreak struck across several states in the us, including arkansas, illinois, kentucky, and tennessee. This tornado outbreak resulted in at least $3.9 Billion in damage, more than 90 fatalities, and hundreds of injuries. Mayfield, kentucky, a small city in the eastern united states, was hit by a long-track tornado rated as an enhanced fujita 4 (ef4) scale and was one of the communities most heavily damaged during the tornado outbreak. Following the 2021 tornado event, an analysis was performed in the interdependent networked community resilience modeling environment (in-core) for the …

Placemaking And Placewashing In Manhattan's Chinatown: Capitalist Vs. Community Interests, Mary Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the late 1890s, there have been internal and external placemakers in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They take the form of city government, real estate developers, and community organizations vying for space, and seeking to define what this neighborhood should be, for whom it should serve, and how it should look. Sometimes these would-be placemakers operate with neoliberal goals and overt orientalist and/or racist views. They push those narratives through via media representations and as a tactic to attract tourism, but with little regard for how it affects the community. In this work, I examine connections between historic ideas of placemaking and …

Rehabilitation Of Existing University Buildings To Reduce Energy Consumption Through The Application Of Sustainable Design Standards (Case Study Of The Building Of The Modern Academy Of Engineering), Mohamed Mahmoud Hassan

Mansoura Engineering Journal

The research paper deals with the role of architects in finding solutions to the global energy problem, especially since the buildings sector, which consumes about 40% of the energy globally due to the design of buildings in a way that increases the building's energy needs by relying heavily on mechanical systems for heating and cooling and relying on industrial lighting completely During daylight hours, perhaps one of the most important energy-consuming buildings is the educational building. Therefore, the paper deals with the absence of a clear understanding among some architects of the need to move towards designing educational buildings in …

Domestic Exotic: Dispossession And Desire In South Florida 20th C Tourism, Emily Nelms

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Domestic Exotic, considers the conditions that led to the rise of cultural tourism in Florida and examines Yale University’s involvement in this economic phenomenon. Cultural tourism is defined as site-seeing attractions where performers interact with visitors under fabricated conditions. At these sites, ‘the spectacle of the other’ was demarcated onto specific bodies, creating a collective imaginary that helped to shape the infrastructure and public thought of Florida as a travel destination for Euro-American audiences. This document supports an exhibition at the Yale Peabody Museum titled, The Resonance of Things Unseen: Indigenous Sovereignty, Institutional Accession, and Private Correspondence (March 26 - …

Unsettling Climate: The Consequences Of Domestic Buildings Technologies Across The Spanish Empire, Alberto Martinez Garcia

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Upon their arrival in the Americas in the sixteenth century, Spanish colonizers encountered a tropical climate previously unknown to Europeans. In the four hundred years of their empire, the colonizers set themselves on a collision course of maladaptation, violence towards Indigenous people, and erasure of their knowledge. Unsettling Climate investigates the domestic constructions of Spanish colonization in the tropics during the colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. Using case studies from patio houses in Cartagena in Colombia and bahay na bato (houses of stone) in the Philippines, this project analyzes the relationship between the natural environment, domestic space, and …

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques Of Citizenship Politics In Northeast India, Samarth Vachhrajani

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques of Citizenship Politics in Northeast India studies the spatial and legal instruments through which Hindu Nationalism and its political front, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), operates in Northeast India. I document the means through which authoritarian power has been introduced into a democratic structure of governance. Emphasizing the role of architecture and spatial knowledge, I attend to how the violence of disenfranchisement and dispossession is legitimized under the force of law.

For this, Chapter 1, entitled 'Legislating Containment,' turns to the legal instrument of citizenship and studies the Goalpara detention center and multi-purpose criminal …

Daylighting In Buildings: Investigating The Relationship Between Daylight Levels And Building Compactness In Various Contemporary Architectural Types. [Efficient Typology Classification], Andrew Welch, Ermal Shpuza Phd

Symposium of Student Scholars

One of the key ways of improving the energy efficiency of a building is to enhance the daylight levels and reduce the need for artificial lighting. Good daylight levels are also associated with increased productivity and the well-being of a building's occupants. Daylight levels are often a direct function of the floorplate depth, where locations near the windows receive more daylight, and those deep inside the buildings receive less. As a result, shallow floorplates and elongated buildings are usually related to higher daylight levels. However, shallow buildings that have more natural light are also associated with greater construction costs due …

Architecture Of The Second Sense: Inclusive Educational Spaces For Students Who Are Deaf Or Hard Of Hearing, Lizzy Johnson, Robin Puttock

Symposium of Student Scholars

Educational settings in the United States are primarily geared towards hearing individuals, posing challenges for those with hearing impairments. In 2020, 95% of school-age students with hearing loss attended conventional schools, while only 47 schools nationwide catered specifically to the deaf or hard of hearing. This oversight in design leads to issues such as inadequate spatial acoustics and limited sign language space in classrooms. My thesis proposes "Architecture of the Second Sense," advocating for a holistic approach to educational design, particularly targeting pre-kindergarten through 5th-grade schools. Drawing from phenomenological principles and the five key DeafSpace design elements—Proximity, Sensory Reach, Light, …

Harmony In Nature And Community: The Biophilic Union Of Art, Design, And Well-Being In The Serenbe Art Farm Expansion, Kayla Metts, Denisse Rosa, Steve Cruz Rojas, Robin Puttock

Symposium of Student Scholars

How does the integration of biophilic design principles and the concept of Union contribute to the enhancement of community well-being in the expansion of The Art Farm Campus in the Serenbe Community? Serenbe, located in Georgia, is a renowned biophilic community that fosters connections between individuals, nature, and the community. Within this community, the Art Farm is a unique location that hosts various events, programs, and workshops centered around the celebration and exploration of the arts. This semester, third-year architecture students are collaborating with stakeholders from Serenbe, The Biophilic Institute, and the Art Farm to embark on designing proposals for …

Modernism And National Identity In Architecture, Ahmed Shaker, Ehsan Sheikholharam Mashhadi

Symposium of Student Scholars

This paper discusses a comparative analysis of the architectural views of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy and the Swiss French architect Le Corbusier in terms of aesthetics, national identity, and materiality. This analysis will be reviewed from various perspectives regarding politics behind their projects, their architectural visions, and an analysis of their main projects: Fathy’s New Gourna Village and Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh Capitol Complex. In the 20^th century, Fathy, emphasized on sustainability, vernacular architecture, social awareness, and the Egyptian identity. However, Le Corbusier worked on modern urbanism, functionalism, and the usage of industrial materials. In terms of aesthetics, Fathy …

Improving Healthcare Workers’ Biohazardous Spill Safe Handling Skills, Zeina Mhanna, Ahmad Tassi

BAU Journal - Health and Wellbeing

All healthcare workers (HCWs) are exposed to biohazardous material. Biohazardous material may come in the form of spills, posing a risk of infection to (HCWs) who are not trained on how to safely handle them. While international guidelines recommend training HCWs on how to safely handle biohazardous spills in order to improve their skills, there are no studies that tackled this recommendation. The aim of this study is to improve HCWs’ biohazardous spill safe handling skills through training, and to evaluate the association between the HCWs’ improvement level and demographical characteristics. The study was conducted in a Southern Lebanese hospital …

Politics Of Urban Design: Racist Agendas Built Into The Environment, Chassidy Titley

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Chloride Binding Mechanism In Seawater-Mixed Uhpc, Wei Zhang, Dawei Ding, Mengmeng Li, Tiao Wang, Hongyan Ma, Binmeng Chen, Hongxing Hu, Jizhou Chen, Xiaomin Liu, Dongshuai Hou

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The rapid development of marine concrete structures and the sharp shortage of freshwater resources contribute to the wide investigation of seawater-mixed ultra-high-performance concrete (swuhpc). However, few studies have investigated the chloride ions (cl-) binding mechanism of swuhpc. Herein, the chloride binding experiments and molecular dynamics (md) simulation were carried out to reveal the physically and chemically bound cl- mechanisms of swuhpc. The results of the experiments clearly demonstrate that the addition of silica fume (sf) led to a significant decrease in the capacity of cl- binding. Conversely, the incorporation of metakaolin (mk) resulted in a marked increase in the content …

Chaos And Order: Translating War Into Spatial Design, Falak Alam

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Wars and occupations happened all over the world throughout history. As Eyal Weizman has demonstrated in “Hollow Land,” architecture actually partakes in wars and occupations (Weizman 11). Architecture facilitates the occupation’s goals of control and dispossession through spatial and formal means. Weizman breaks architecture’s effects on the political environment down into six main categories: anchor point settlements, vertical architecture, uniform design, the dynamic battlefield, the spatial arrangements of settlements, and threshold spaces. These strategies exemplify the way design has been used in an effort to instill fear and erase identities of cultures.

Weizman’s book, along with Lebbeus Woods’ writings and …

Humanizing Affordable Housing: A Public Health Centered Approach To Affordable Housing, Eiman Mohamed

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

This thesis focuses on exploring housing as a determinant of health; thus, the aim is to investigate the historical and current influence of housing design and city planning on occupant health and population health in metropolitan cities. The thesis will primarily examine how housing affects the health of low-income individuals. Historically and presently, this demographic has been disproportionately affected by health issues stemming from overcrowding, substandard housing design, declining neighborhood conditions, and environmental inequities. The goal is to discern the dimensions and standards for healthy housing against which designers and planners can define health outcomes. By acknowledging the factors that …

Cover, Uncover: The Changing Face Of Architecture On Locust Street, Cora Trout

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

Locust Street was once a vibrant banking and commercial district in downtown St. Louis. Today, it is an untidy collection of new, old, dilapidated, semi-intact, restored, and vacant buildings punctuated by crumbling parking lots and garages threatening imminent collapse. To understand why, we must reassemble Locust Street. As St. Louis watched its wealthy, white population flock to the suburbs at mid-century, the revitalization of the decaying urban center became one of the city’s primary preoccupations. Beginning in the early 1950s, a calculated and conscious physical transformation of the central business district began, lasting through the 1960s. This essay, which integrates …

Interdisciplinary Couture: A Translation From Fashion To Architecture, Michael Toache

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Haute Couture or ‘high dressmaking’ is a term used for fashion designers to implement one-of-a-kind designs custom fit for an exclusive collection. Within the realm of design, there lies a relationship between fashion and architecture. Humans formed the earliest iterations of spatial boundaries by implementing weaving techniques made with plant fibers and posts. We created fences before we clothed ourselves. Weaving these boundaries or textile walls was instituted in some of the earliest forms of architecture still used today. The process of design that drives the creation of the spaces we inhabit today is created by the same beginnings as …

[A]Rchitectural_[I]Ntelligence: A Visual Design Journey Through The Lens Of Ai, Cameron Fiveash

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in architecture has revolutionized design thinking, providing architects with powerful tools for exploration and creation. This thesis examines the transformative potential of AI engines, particularly MidJourney, in enhancing architectural design processes. MidJourney's advanced image analysis capabilities offer architects a unique opportunity to study architectural forms through AI, fostering a symbiotic relationship between human creativity and machine intelligence.

The research explores AI's evolving role in the creative process, emphasizing its ability to augment human ingenuity rather than replace it. Architects can leverage MidJourney's AI engine to explore diverse design possibilities and discover innovative solutions to …

Reimagining Fire Tower Typology: Enhancing Safety And Creating A Sense Of Place, Chloe Bango

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This architectural exploration studies the transformative evolution of fire watch towers, shifting from their traditional role as fire safety devices to become inviting destinations for hikers and visitors. This paradigm shift not only embraces the functional aspect of fire prevention but also capitalizes on the inherent potential for these structures to serve as unique, inhabitable spaces within the natural landscape. The design philosophy integrates state-of-the-art wildfire detection systems seamlessly into the architectural fabric, establishing a symbiotic relationship between safety and recreation. The incorporation of cutting-edge technologies, such as advanced sensors, satellite imagery, and real-time data analytics, enhances the tower’s primary …

Decarbonized Design: Investigating Decarbonization Through The Design Of A Mass Timber Campus, Sophie Cronin

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The rise of carbon in our atmosphere is a leading cause of climate change, and one of the biggest threats to our planet. Though not the most toxic greenhouse gas, it is the most durable, therefore lingers much longer in our atmosphere. This leads to higher atmospheric temperatures, causing natural disasters such as melting ice caps, and rising sea levels which leads to displacement of people and loss of biodiversity. According to Architecture 2030 The global building industry emits 42% of the annual carbon emissions. I believe we need to take action as a part of the building industry to …