Digital Commons Network^™

Reinforcing Connection Within Collective Housing: A New Vision Of Red Steel City, Guangyi Niu

Masters Theses

Red Steel City is a historical residential complex built 64 year ago for the first workers of the Iron & Steel Complex in Wuhan, China, under the help design guidance of the former Soviet Union. Equipped with educational and medical facilities, this “City” nearly meets every need of the residents. Where residents worked boosted the development of steel, which is considered a prerequisite for industrialization, and where they lived became the template for the era when China was finding its footing in its incredible drive to industrialization.

The original plan of Red Steel City did not consider practical conditions like …

Migrating Architecture: Vernacular Futurism, Yichu Jiang

Masters Theses

The history of mankind is migration: while large migrations describe groups and communities, each individual has a unique life history of migration. When moving to a new place, singly or in groups, migrants need self-identification support to adapt to a new environment. As the built environment continuously interacts with human’s everyday life, architecture provides a stable environment, which helps to build individual perceptions in space and social relations. Therefore, architecture migrates with its population and evolves according to context.

Tulou, as a result of historical turbulence and massive migration in China, exemplifies such a phenomenon of migrating architecture. The prototypical …

Sensory Refreshment: Tcm Reconsidered, Ni Tang

Masters Theses

With the rapid development and expansion of our cities and the economic demand placed on residents, city dwellers are under more personal stress than ever. Long commutes, overtime work, irregular rest, unhealthy diets, urban pollution and noise all adversely impact wellbeing. These unhealthy conditions overwhelm the mind and make residents mentally and physically sub-healthy. Sub-health is a state between complete health and sickness, which is especially common in large cities. The sub-health rate in Shanghai and Beijing has reached more than 70%.

Chinese medicine can regulate the human body from a holistic perspective and help solve sub-health problems. Chinese medicine …

Living · Sharing · Connecting : Rebirth Of Longchang Apartments Heritage Community, Linhong Jiang

Masters Theses

The Longchang Apartments, which the British designed during the Shanghai Concession Period, is considered a building of great historical importance. However, the disconnected relationship between this historic building and the ever-developing modern society surrounding it becomes more and more evident over time. The backward living conditions of residents and management fail to meet contemporary needs, which intensifies various conflicts between different user groups within the historic site.

This thesis proposes a different way of living in high density within historic structures and explores a new program focusing on user groups’ behavior and interaction to activate the site. The adaptive reuse …

Fostering Cultural Understanding: Mirroring Ways Of Living In Providence, Ri, Usa And Beijing, Prc, Jiarui Tina Wu

Masters Theses

Over the last several decades, the relationship between the US and China has suffered twists and turns, rooted in different ideologies and social foundations. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent surge of anti-Asian violence in the US contributed to the exacerbation of this global controversy, triggering an undeclared Cold War. However, in history over hundred years, there was a real dialogue between the US and China through business trade. The high classes in the US were used to buy Chinese export commodities, such as luxury furnitures and porcelain, and similarly, Chinese merchants bought American goods, which caused naturally lead to an …

Ritualizing Of Space In The 21st Century: Fostering Of Communal Identity Through Celebration Of Tamil Culture, Mridula Swaminathan

Masters Theses

South India is known for its traditional belief systems and the numerous architectural manifestations of these beliefs. The scale and extravagance of temples and the palaces for the kings are an example of how important culture and ritual were in the past. Now some of these structures, such as the Thirumalai Nayakar Palace in the city of Madurai, the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu, stand in a modified societal context with no cultural or ritualized significance. Moreover, the host of this project, the Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal, situated in a city brimming with multiple sacred rituals performed along the city streets, …

Terminal: Through The "Windows" Of A Tram Car Museum, Yuyi Si

Masters Theses

The typical city museum is more concerned with the city’s past: focused on founding myths or historical events. The content is frozen and lacks engagement. Simultaneously, the city itself develops rapidly and shifts, just as the citizens move and change. To address this disconnection, it is necessary to create an active city museum that joins place, memory, and people by putting museum learning in context throughout the city and engaging audiences in their daily lives.

Dalian in Liaoning Province, China, is recognized as a historical and tourism district with a unique city fabric and collection of architectural styles. The city …

Augmented City, Xing Huan

Masters Theses

Racial hatred, diplomatic conflicts, financial wars, environmental destruction, Covid-19 raging. In this imperfect world that doesn't run in the way we want, we may grow numb, weary, and look for alternate realities that act as a relief from these increasingly bizarre events. And due to the current pandemic, ordinary individuals forced into isolation in a strange foreign city risk losing their psychological identity as well as their connection with the society. The city becomes a metaphor of this alienation as, in some cases, it lacks a sense of belonging by already built urban structures that disenfranchise both the individual and …

Going Back, Zhiyi Hilary He

Masters Theses

The acceleration of social urbanization and education universalization in the past 30 years of China has promoted the popularization of mandarin among the public. Meanwhile, the dialect, as a unique regional language, is gradually dying away. In the city where I grew up, Taizhou, only the elders are likely to speak Taizhou dialect frequently in their life, while others prefer to use mandarin rather than dialect. The truth is the usage rate of dialect has gradually decreased from generation to generation. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide an opportunity for the public to “dialogue with the past” …

Adaptive Reuse As Evidence Of Scientific Progress: Recontextualizing A Space For Growing Knowledge, Kayci Gallagher

Masters Theses

With the constantly evolving initiatives of astronomical exploration comes the obsolescence of instruments conceived to support research; a sure sign of the scientific process. However, architecture constructed to shelter these constantly shifting tools often remains fixed, growing incapable of supporting advancing technology. Typically, these shelters are sidelined in favor of new infrastructure. Many optical observatories around the world face this issue and must choose between preserving the past or abandoning the site altogether. That these buildings are no longer needed for revolutionary research shouldn’t be disappointing: it is a signal of human achievement, and the scientific process requires a more …

Posthuman Ecologies, Christine Chang

Masters Theses

As we move further into the Anthropocene — an epoch of geologic time where human activity has caused significant impact on the planet’s natural systems — we can no longer ignore the environmental consequences of our actions. The artificial disconnect between humankind and wilderness has caused us to create built environments that reinforce a false separation from natural landscapes.

Modern architectural movements push us towards surroundings that create disconnect from our sensory relationship to matter and temporality. We must engage with the inevitable decay of the built environment to restore our neglected senses. Reconnecting architecture to local ecologies through adaptive …

Whores, Sluts, And Bitches; The Perceived Limits Of Sexualisation And The Affects On Space, Chloe Jenny Bennie

Masters Theses

Perceived sexualisation changes depending on multiple factors, this thesis is looking specifically at how tools and accessories are used in conjunction with altering power dynamics within a carefully orchestrated space to change how a person wants to be looked upon.

Architecture Of Aging Care: A Field Through Architectural Innovation, Eve Huining Guo

Masters Theses

A thesis is original.

A thesis for me is the process of finding my hidden voice toward society and making it stands in my own language. Not saying the first or second language I speak, but the unique language that I have created after years of learning and experiences in both the Architecture field and across the other disciplines. A thesis then introduces it to the world.

A thesis is living in the present, it reveals the current stage of my perception of big concerns towards the world-scale phenomenon and my focus towards how it relates to the individuals like …

Preserving Modern Architecture & New Railway Infrastructure In New Delhi, Yash Sahai Gupta

Masters Theses

New Delhi/ Naiee Dilli is one of the cities in the world which has been destroyed and rebuilt 10 times since 3100BC. Starting with the name of Indraprastha and ending with Lutyens’s Delhi in 1911AD. Currently, Delhi still shows the footprints of all the 10 destroyed cities. The major change happened during the Lutyens’s planning and after the post-independence where India started getting engaged with the new construction technology with industrial materials which were introduced by the colonizers. The architecture of post-colonial Delhi was to change the image of a growing city to a developed city. An era where Indian …

Water Inspired Places, Jiaqi Zhang

Masters Theses

How to abstractly reconstruct features of "water" in the digital realm and create new way of visual expression through virtual spatial experiences?

Just like painters using brushes, poets using rhymes, musicians using melodies and dancers using body movements, this project tries to explore the possibility of digital tools for designers to develop a new apparatus of art making process.

Choosing WATER as the main subject is based on its ubiquity and neutrality. When we encounter a body of water, we see a manifestation of natural forces, a reflection of ever-changing environments, and a testimony of human intervention. There are lots …

In Service Of _____; An Inclusive Architectural Collage Practice, Blair Ramsey

Masters Theses

This Thesis asks these questions: who do we serve as architects, what does engagement with marginalized communities look like, what tools and methods are used to represent this process and these communities, and overall, how can architects create safe and inclusive space?

Collage is the critical mechanism for how this work is done and how I wish to practice in the future. Collage is used for documentation, representation, communication, and participation. All in the hope of designing a space with and for the queer community. Vital to the work is the idea of sampling from an existing image-based media that …

Nossa Quadra, Nossa Historia: The Power Of Collaborative And Communal Outdoor Spaces As A Tool For Belonging & Agency, Rebecca Maria Pepl

Masters Theses

Brazil - a country with a history of colonization, slavery, precipitated industrialization, rapid urbanization, superimposed european modernism (architectural and ideological), unstable politics, growing inequity, socio-economic stratification and overpopulation combined with a lack of adequate housing for the wider population. The government has been trying to solve these issues with standardized, unsuccessful social housing projects along the periphery of the city, disregarding the population’s lifestyle and neglecting their visions. This perpetuates existing discriminatory divides, enforced through architecture and infrastructure.

This thesis attempts to improve the quality of life of the residents in the Cohab Neighborhood in Recife, which is one of …

Segments Of Reality: Interface / Space / Movement, Yuan Tao

Masters Theses

The French anthropologist Levi-Strauss holds that the world we perceive is intrinsically one whole. However, the structure of the human mind has something in common which will turn differences in extent into differences in kind. The process we understand the world around us is by dividing reality into categories. The more subdivisions we have the more detailed we understand. And the process will never end.

What about architecture? We also have ways to piece the architecture as a whole for designing purposes or to understand it.

As architects, we try to diagram, find various ways to visualize design methods and …

The Bridge / The Stream / The Home: Interactive Social Housing Typology In Wuxi, Weiyi Xia

Masters Theses

Wuxi is a city built on the regional river system. For thousands of years, the city layout developed along with the river channels. The rivers served people’s daily living, farming, and transportation needs. Social life among residents had also developed at the communal and transitional space along the rivers, mainly at the intersections where the bridges were. As Wuxi’s industry and commerce developed rapidly in the 20th century because of the convenient water transportation system, Wuxi’s urban area expanded widely in a short time. However, Wuxi’s overwhelming urban expansion happened too fast and lacked sophisticated urban planning consideration. This decision …

Urban Tree Community: Living With Tree Spirits, Xueying Chen

Masters Theses

In my thesis, I want to discuss the problem of how to use landscape design to change people’s attitudes toward nature through demonstrating the interconnectedness of all living and non-living parts of the Earth, and with hope, changing people’s behavior—starting with studying trees in the urban area and people’s relationship with them.

The project aims to introduce a new lifestyle for people living in the urban areas to engage more with trees by developing more opportunities for people to interact with trees through design. I hope to build an urban tree community where people live with tree spirits and make …

Holding: Speculative Infrastructure For Fire Mitigation, Ian George

Masters Theses

This thesis proposes permanent and deployable infrastructure and devices for wildfire mitigation at different scales. Designed with consideration to the conditions in the western United States, but primarily Oregon.The primary approach to infrastructure is designing water retention systems for fire suppression and prevention. Some strategies are familiar and proven, while other proposals are new, but build off of existing practices. Interventions need to be site specific, so the types of proposals will vary in scale, location and timeline.The infrastructure should be adjustable, because the needs of a region may change periodically. Landscape systems take time to establish. Speculated infrastructure is …

Virtuality, Reality, Community, Siqi Rao

Masters Theses

With the popularization of the Internet and the development of technology, virtuality has penetrated into our lives and has taken up an increasing proportion of our time. However, while bringing convenience and benefits, virtuality also brings many problems, such as polarization, radicalization, cyber violence, and social isolation. In the face of these problems caused by virtualization, this thesis studies the importance of the sense of place in a community and uses some virtual technologies to enhance real-world relationships, working to alleviate problems caused by virtualization. At the same time, it explores the role of virtual tools in shaping the sense …

Eco-Waste: Household Waste Material Flows In A Circular Economy, Erqi Meng

Masters Theses

The thesis aims to contextualize household waste on the more complete material flows it belongs to, including reciprocal relations between its landscapes of production and landscapes of landfill. Current one-way processes of waste treatment are repositioned within more circular economies which, it is argued, may also bring ecological benefits to our cities. The study focuses on a local community at Mount Hope district in Providence, RI. As part of a wider landscape framework that includes a study on consumer behaviour, a series of modular strategies are developed based on this community’s main characteristics, with an eventual goal of integrating community …

Regional Food Self Sufficiency: New Visions For Productive Landscapes, Yiling Wang

Masters Theses

Food is an important resource for the survival and development of civilization. Its potential is so huge that it affects physical and mental health in an individual sense, and it affects landscapes and even public relations in a social sense. For most people, having food is never a problem that the importance of food is overlooked. However, the right to food is not equal. There are still a considerable number of people have low food access, which means…, and they may also be forced to be in an unbalanced diet leading to health problems such as obesity. A large amount …

Community Steward Of The Deep Bay: Staging Lau Fau Shan For Resiliency Through Collective Participation, Lauren Tam

Masters Theses

This thesis explores tensions of utopian ideals through the lens of stakeholders living and working in the Deep Bay coastal region of Hong Kong, Using Lau Fau Shan as my case study, I have worked on ways to build socio-ecological resilience through bottom-up strategies of community engagement through first hand experience of interacting with a local oyster farmer. In understanding how the different forces of climate change and development pressures are currently impacting the community and the daily workings of the fishing community, my goal is to demonstrate how design can advocate for the importance of community driven strategies to …

Optics / Perception / Experience: Regenerating Agricultural Landscape Through Railways, Tianyi Xie

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between two large infrastructure systems: the railway and agriculture. It’s becoming increasingly important as unhealthy nation-wide industrial agriculture is destroying people’s health and decreasing the long-term capacity of sustainable production of food. In the discipline of landscape architecture, there is a necessity to reform our thinking to match the modern-day development in population growth, transportation and mass production. There exists vast farmlands outside our city, which support our city life with energy and food sources. How could we get people to understand its significance? In chapter I and II, the history of agriculture and railway …

Across The Boundary: Addressing Segregation Along Transportation Infrastructure, Ruochen Wang

Masters Theses

Across the United States, we can see examples of cities where highways and railways pass between two ethnic communities or through communities of color and are used to further divide and segregate cities. Increasingly we are seeing a new typology of landscape architecture projects to transform, redesign, or remove transportation infrastructure to help ameliorate the negative impact of transportation infrastructure on neighboring communities and support public uses. However, these projects often lead to gentrification, whereby surrounding housing prices rise, and the original residents are displaced or lose their sense of belonging. The goal of my research is to understand how …

A Better City For Her: Design Safer Public Spaces For Women In The United States And China, Geruihan Xu

Masters Theses

Gender dynamics in public spaces are important issues to study. Here, I challenge the patriarchy in the built environment because it intensifies the oppressed status of women in modern cities. Listening to women’s concerns is the first step of doing so. Meanwhile, I am aware that different socio-cultural backgrounds would affect women’s attitudes, preferences, and other aspects of public spaces. Thus, the thesis will be discussed in the contexts of mainland China and the United States due to the limitation of my experience.

In this thesis, I want to find out what are the needs of women in public spaces …

Healing Through Architecture: Role Of Architecture In Promoting Healing In Cancer Care Settings, Vrindha Vijay

Masters Theses

Architecture creates the ambience and frame of mind for the carer, who then passes it on to the patients. It is the physical space that provides us to feel a certain way or experience a set peacefulness. Humans tend to react to spaces around them to connect emotionally and physically. And in that sense, Architecture is key. The focus, thus far, in most healthcare centers have been on clinical care rather than the soft services. Today, Architecture is striving to make a better environment that can contribute to patients’ healing, recovery, and well-being.

The goal of this thesis is to …

Filmic Landscape: A Performative Space With Multi-Medium, Zhihong Ke

Masters Theses

This thesis explored the idea of interdisciplinary study between film media and landscape architecture. Through the study of film theory in narrative and cinematography, and experimentation with multi-medium, in order to discover the contribution of media study and film theory in landscape architecture, and further explored a way to drive and reshape the perception and focus of humans’ experience in landscape, in order to develop a new typology of performative space with filmic experience.

The project was divided into 3 phases and 6 chapters. It started with the study of precedent cases in the field of film and landscape. Through …