Digital Commons Network^™

Dear City, Give Me Some Space; Creating Space For Ephemeral Forces In A City, Abinaya Sivaprakasam Thamilarasan

Masters Theses

Architecture of the past was regarded as a concrete entity, both in its materiality and approach, unresponsive to change within a city. Climatic and societal shifts greatly impact cities ill-prepared to adjust. How can the intractable architecture of the past become flexible? Does the current environmental devastation we’re witnessing demand architecture that can embrace, rather than neglect, such shifts?

Situated in Chennai, a densifying coastal metropolis in India, the adaptation focuses on two key shifts. Firstly, the climatic shifts: the alternating patterns of severe flooding, and periods of droughts. Second, the transient youth population within the city. They both share …

Astoria Houses: A Resilient Community, James Juscik

Masters Theses

As climate change leads to more intense and frequent storms throughout the northeast, architecture needs to adapt to be able to protect life and property. As we can see from Superstorm Sandy, and the more recent Hurricanes Ida, and Henri the current architecture and infrastructure is failing its purpose. Nowhere is this more true than in Astoria Queens.Among the New York City neighborhoods most impacted by climate change, Astoria has received little investment to make it more resilient. The Astoria Houses public housing complex becomes the perfect site to design a new mixed density, resilient neighborhood of the future.

Astoria …

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 …

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 …

Water Ceremony, Adriana Alva

Masters Theses

My thesis uses water – a medium – : as a way to follow an intuitive force to create space, as a tool to visualize larger systemic problems (climate crisis + water mismanagement) and for cultural expressions of healing ceremony.

Lost & Found : A Model For Retreated Landscapes, Madison Murray

Masters Theses

I feel as though it is crucial to structure this book in a way that takes you on the same journey I have taken through thesis, and life.

Growing up along the California coast has left me with an intense passion for environmental awareness and sustainability. I excelled in these courses throughout high school and eventually found myself taking more Environmental Science courses in college, during which I took a trip to India. There, I studied the environmental and economic effects of globalization. I remember stopping in Mumbai to witness the effects that clothing dyeing operations had on the downstream …

Rising Above Disruption, Paola Alexandra Mondino

Masters Theses

Climate change is real. Given the rising number of natural disasters affecting communities across the globe, this is a universal concern for all. From warming oceans to the decreasing of ice sheets and global sea level rise, we have problems. In the wake of increasingly frequent natural disasters, a community’s identity is abruptly interrupted repeatedly – an identity built upon history and traditions created over time, pulled apart over and over. When dealing with damaged communities post-disruption, another identity must emerge, shaped to incorporate the need for future resilience, while acknowledging the presence of the affected area’s past.

South Florida …

Architecture As Water-Human Mediator, Hui Bao

Masters Theses

Humans have developed a working relationship with water and the sea since ancient times. Sea level rise is going to challenge that relationship and change people’s lifestyle forever. To better adapt people physically and psychologically to their new life within or near the sea, it is necessary for the coastal building environment to mediate people’s relationship with the ocean, helping people get more comfortable with water.

The Boston fish pier is an icon of the Boston fishing industry. Climate change and overfishing are causing the decline of this industry and making the pier more and more desolate. Hundreds of years …

Embody Phenomenal Transparency : The Expanded Application Of "Phenomenal Transparency" In Landscape Architecture, Hongfei Li

Masters Theses

Phenomenal Transparency was first identified from cubism painting and applied to architectural analysis by Colin Rowe and Slutzky in 1963. In terms of the discussion of form, this spatial quality synthesizes and demonstrates complex orders and organizations in a structural way which could be comprehend through experience. From the perspective of modern physics considering the traditional space as timespace continuum, the intentionally ambiguous space creates simultaneous perception and actively mutual relationship between human and time-space which is the essential forum of Phenomenology in current context.

The thesis bridges the theory of “Phenomenal Transparency“, the theory of “Phenomenology” in aspect of …

The Long Forgotten City Element, Yun Chu King

Masters Theses

No cities should escape from their history and original features.

Taoyuan, also be called as a city of thousand of ponds, which has an unique landscape in Taiwan. This uniqueness is a victim of the city expansions. Instead of let this uniqueness undeveloped and being a part of victim by filled with soil as the land for the high-rise and high density developments, I would like to purpose a model water friendly community idea and a new living style to Taoyuan city.

This community consist with the one family houses which is the typical living style in this surrounding area, …

Throwing Architecture To The Sea : Discipline Out Of Context, Andrea Kelly

Masters Theses

Architecture as a discipline has the ability to absorb and become other disciplines, often blurring its own boundary. Architecture as a practice is a response to dynamic forces of our world and is embedded in everyday entanglements. Yachts present a unique opportunity to explore these characteristics of architecture.

As a floating vessel meant to travel and spend a significant amount of time out at sea, the project is site-less and out of context to our physical built environment, allowing for opportunities to explore autonomy in the discipline. At the same time, it is entangled in human activity, engaging discourse of …

Chaos And Order, Jie Du

Masters Theses

Water is my natural place to start seeing what exists in nature. Water has different states as it travels in nature from the ocean to the sky, from the sky to the land, and from the land to the ocean. My thesis lives in this cycle: I create in this cycle from the water cycle governs and highlights all nature has to offer.

Water has a variety of forms. It stays in visible and invisible state. It is the matrix for us. We live in nature, but we rarely pay attention to nature. Because it is hard to care about …

Building As Reef, Anna Morataya Quan

Masters Theses

We are in a new era, one that will require the most radical transformation that coastal communities have seen yet. Starting mid 21st century, subsequent generations will be witness to a time in which sea level rise manifests within the urban fabric, not only in the form of storm surges, but also in an increasingly permanent manner within the projected floodplain. Rising tides will create a shift from solid ground plane to a fluctuating one. Encroaching sea levels will bring marine life and hydrologic conditions that the built environment hasn’t been designed or prepared for. Urban circulation, infrastructure and ultimately …

In Between Forces, Jungyun Lee

Masters Theses

In order to live, humans make buildings in nature and live in there. This fact has not changed since the birth of mankind. It means to live in a certain space, because a medium of building is necessary for man to survive safely in nature. Based on these mediators mankind has been living. In addition, villages and cities were created and continued to grow in size. As a result, the building, which is the mediator, has been different in shape and size. In an expanding city, are city and nature now balanced? How do we balance it? How can we …

The Flood : Another Note Of Humanity, Muyi Fan

Masters Theses

Site is an inhabitable system, in which forces are generated by sets of rules which dictate all the natural and human histories, perceivable and unperceivable. The manipulations of these existing forces are always based on the comprehensive understanding of this system, rather than the willing of a single (group of) inhabitant(s) of occupying, ruling and colonizing. This process is always suggestions rather than solutions, and allows further editing. Through continuous manipulations, site is evolving.

Living On The Edge : Failure By Design, Odile Schlossberg

Masters Theses

This Thesis Project starts a conversation between the coastal edge and the built environment in order to develop a new approach towards transformable architecture design.

Erosion has an inevitable impact on coastal inhabitation. Over time, the water edge erodes and the shoreline retreats, pushing back development or causing existing buildings to collapse. Raised architecture has been a proposed solution to mitigate the impact of oceanic forces on buildings, but I believe there can be a different alternative to this approach.

Erosion could be seen as a ‘transformation that takes place over a period of time’, rather than as an environmental …

Borderscape : Weaving Political Boundaries In The Amazon Through Water Performance, Lucila Silva-Santisteban

Masters Theses

This research project is about how to connect political bordering urban systems through the natural structure for a coherent occupation between the built environment, ecosystems and resources following the Landscape Architecture lens that can address different scale systems simultaneously to create a holistic approach between them. And the proposition of a new type of landscape of this threshold territory as its own kind. Specifically looking at the bordering cities in the heart of the Amazon Region in South America that fall between Colombia, Brazil and Peru.

Why the Amazon?

Not only because of the usual fascination, but because of the …

Above The Urban Surface, Xirui Zhang

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to solve inland urban flooding in residential communities of southwestern Washington D.C. by refining the current urban surface there.

By learning from the natural mountainous surface of the area, this study proposes a plan to add a new layer of urban surface above the original highly developed ground, in order to collect, recycle clean rainwater, and reduce the stress on the urban sewer system. The conclusion of the design strategies rebuilds a sustainable urban infrastructure system for the decaying urban residential area, with influence from the disciplines of both landscape and architecture.