Digital Commons Network^™

Re-Envisioning Housing In Over-The-Rhine, Cincinnati, Daniel Porter Berger

Masters Theses

A new era of urban revitalization has recently occurred in several major US cities, many of which must deal with outdated or dilapidated urban housing choices in inner city neighborhoods. Many of these broken neighborhoods require new housing alternatives. The proposition of this thesis is how can urban architecture alter the economic viability of a neighborhood. How can new housing typologies help to rehabilitate a blighted neighborhood? What social and neighborhood problems can architecture actually address? These questions seek to address the problems that encompass Over-the-Rhine.

Working With Paul Rudolph To Make Rudolph Work: Reclaiming, Conserving, And Adapting Sarasota High School (1958), Katherine Marie Armstrong

Masters Theses

Sarasota High School, designed by Paul Rudolph in 1958, physically embodies the central ideas of Regional Modernism that developed in Sarasota, Florida in the 1940s and 50s. Covered breezeways, monumental sunshades, deep overhangs, and sliding glass doors promote natural ventilation and sun shading as ways to deal with Florida’s hot climate. As an example of progressive architecture of the time, it is a seminal work of Rudolph’s and significant to Sarasota’s architectural legacy of climatically responsive, modernist buildings that captured international attention.

Sixty years later, Sarasota High School is now unoccupied and in a state of disrepair. The school board …

Interactions Between The Urban Environment And “The Homelessness”: Observations And Responses, Jeffrey Charles Stahl

Masters Theses

Homelessness and people living on the streets is a phenomenon that is facing every major urban center in the United States. These people are a commonality in the urban landscape and are often seen a problem to be fi xed. Due to the interactions between the urban environment and persons experiencing homelessness, there needs to be a paradigm shift in how policy is written and how we design an intervention for these forgotten people. The goal of this thesis is to gain a clearer understanding to what it is like to survive on the streets: how dose someone fi nd …

Urban Transient Spaces: [Re] Appropriating Knoxville, Tennessee's World's Fair Park, Kathryn Dupree Greer

Masters Theses

Transient Space: An urban site that was developed for a temporary event or short-term program.

In this thesis, I will explore urban gaps created by transient events, such as the Olympics, World Fairs, and the World Cup. I believe urban environments created to accommodate for these transitory events present an interesting predicament for planners and architects. In several cases, these sites are not properly developed or programmed for post-event occupancy and create gaps in a city’s urban fabric.

I will specifically be examining World’s Fair Park in Knoxville, Tennessee. This site once hosted the 1982 World’s Fair, Knoxville International Energy …

The Architect As Developer, Samuel David Funari

Masters Theses

The current architectural landscape of strip malls and big box stores is the antitheses of what nearly every practicing architect avails to while in the security of the academy. Upon entering the real world of budgetary constraints and hard deadlines, it seems that most architects are content to simply earn a paycheck rather than produce meaningful work. This destructive method of designing is a result of a supposed lack of choices, and can only be combated when architects have more to lose than their principles. By architects playing the role of both designer and developer, it is possible to see …

Architecture As Pedagogy: Designing Sustainable Schools As Three-Dimensional Textbooks, Ester Ehrlich Schwartz

Masters Theses

The importance of school buildings has been recognized as a fundamental element of modern society. Today, roughly a quarter of America’s population, including our youngest citizens, spend the majority of their days in school buildings. Still, many of our nation’s schools are in disrepair, with systems in need of repair or replacement.

Over the years, strong evidence and research have shown that school building impact student’s health and their ability to learn. Green schools mean healthier environments for students and staff. Pragmatically, we also know that that green schools save money. Energy-efficient buildings help reduce energy costs, which in turn …

Revitalization Through Rehabilitation: Enhancing Communities Through Re-Use, Jason Stuart Pimsler

Masters Theses

The densification of an existing community through the implementation of sustainable design principles, such as adaptive reuse, promotes revitalization. The re-inhabitation of the proposed abandoned structure along the BeltLine can lead to further development of the existing arts complex. As part of this revitalization, linkages established along a citywide master-planned path provide nodal connections between the local art district and the artists of the Goat Farm and educate visitors of the significant industrial history of the area. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the positive impact that sustainable architecture, adaptive reuse and proper planning can have on a …

Enhancing Community And Place Through A Suburban Retrofit, Luke Daniel Murphree

Masters Theses

Suburban sprawl, characterized by low-density, scattered, single-use development, is an ever-increasing concern for the environment, economy, and sense of community and identity of cities today. Sprawling communities have been designed with poor neighborhood connectivity, a lack of walkability, and in isolation from public space, jobs, and schools, creating a place that is virtually devoid of social interaction and a distinguishing identity.

Suburbia constitutes roughly 75% of contemporary development in the United States. Many buildings in these suburban areas are either vacant or out of date, and demographic and market shifts indicate a growing demand for more diverse housing types and …

The Steel Tower: A 21st Century Tall Building, Peter Guldenshuh Duke

Masters Theses

This paper outlines the need for a new mixed use high-rise project for the commercial business district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The proposed tower combines commercial, laboratory, residential, and tourist program into one tower of roughly 1.5 million square feet.

As the new world headquarters for US Steel, the facility is sited and developed strategically in Pittsburgh's Golden Triangle. Its prominent location in the heart of downtown seeks to take advantage of the public transit in an effort to curb extraneous individual travel while further enriching the downtown experience. The building's height, orientation, and grounding are developed to relate to external …

Encapsulating History Of Place, Ashley Linn Lenentine

Masters Theses

Architecture has the ability to reveal the culture and history of a place, to support the community and educate society. The design becomes the vessel that retains the history of the place and increases cultural appreciation throughout society. This thesis looks to reinterpret how design responds to a historic context and incorporates culture and memory into the method for new design. A place is an accumulation of layers that tell a story of the past and overlay conditions of the present that enhance the experience of the place. The site, context, history, and culture can be identified as various layers …

A Nation In Its Prime: A Pentadic Study Of Walt Disney World's Main Street, U.S.A., Casey Guise

Masters Theses

The purpose of this paper is to consider the entrance to Walt Disney World, Main Street, U.S.A., as a rhetorical text and apply Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad. Background is provided on rhetorical theory and The Disney Company. Meanings are derived from messages interpreted using semiotics and symbolic interaction within the location. The significance of Main Street, U.S.A., as a replica of historic architecture and an illustration of revival architecture in creating emotive messages is discussed. Further discussion includes the implications of this study on corporations and the field of rhetorical studies in addition to suggestions for further research.

Characterizing The Internal Architecture Of Upper Bone Spring Limestone Turbidites And Mass-Transport Deposits (Mtds) Utilizing High-Resolution Image Log Technology, Jason J. Asmus

Masters Theses

Characterization of reservoir scale (less than 1 meter thick) turbidites and mass-transport deposits (MTDs) using conventional subsurface data is complex, due to millimeter-centimeter scale architectural heterogeneity exhibited by these deposits.

Limited studies of the Bone Spring carbonate turbidites and MTDs within the Delaware Basin subsurface emphasized the use of conventional wire-line log and seismic data to evaluate reservoir potential of such strata. As a result, limited resolution offered by these data sets do not allow for accurate characterization of reservoir, and sub-reservoir scale, architectural and compositional variations.

The present investigation integrates high-resolution (centimeter scale) electrical borehole image logs with conventional …

[Re]Connection, Taylor Hahn

Masters Theses

In this thesis, I argue for a place where people can go to regain perspective, and to reevaluate their interactions, both with other people and their environment. This proposal explores ways in which architectural design creates a setting where the built environment is intrinsically connected to systems and forms of the natural environment. The design project consists of a facility in McLean, Virginia, just west of Washington, DC, on the southern bank of the Potomac River, for the temporary stay of people suffering from depression: who feel alienated in a world full of connections. Cases of depression are higher than …

Perform + Function: A Proposal For A Healthy Public Housing Community, Brandon M. Harvey

Masters Theses

PERFORM+FUNCTION: Proposal for A Healthy Public Housing Community

Architecture exists in Place, the integrated context of both the built and natural environments, including socio-economic, cultural, and political climates that influence our growth, development, and survival. As architecture necessitates around human purposes, it is important that architecture is built for and sited in an environment compatible for human well-being. My thesis focuses on human habitation and its immediate relationship with human health, assessing the performance and functionality of Place that have an impact on human health. Using public housing as the vehicle of my investigation, I will seek the appropriate application …

The Lateran Baptistery: Memory, Space, And Baptism, David Tyler Thayer

Masters Theses

In the fourth century, the Lateran Baptistery was sponsored by Constantine the Great; it is the first extant free-standing baptistery known from the Roman world. In the fifth century, Pope Sixtus III renovated the baptistery through a newly-emphasized spatial hierarchy and the appropriation of some of Rome's most cherished structural elements and decorating themes. The result was a unique space that created a dialogue with Roman memory for the specific function of the baptismal rite it hosted. This thesis will analyze the spatial and symbolic forms, and the baptism ritual to show Sixtus III’s interaction with the Roman tradition of …

The Life And Death Of An American Block: A Dialogue With Entropy, Micah Daniel Antanaitis

Masters Theses

My goal in this thesis is to frame, through design, an existing environment in a manner that fosters the witness and embrace of the reality and beauty of decay—which acts as a marker of the passage of time. My intent is to engage in a careful renewal of a neglected, and largely forgotten, urban landscape, which does not ignore its temporal context. My hope is to explore the full potential of the life cycle of buildings and discover the lesson of mortality in modern American ruins.

Things fall apart. This is a simple truth about the physical world that humanity …

Inhabiting The Periphery: A Dialogue Between Individual And Site, Robert Oliver Kown

Masters Theses

What is a periphery? We can think about this word in more than one way. First off, peripheries are places that exist as spatial conditions in cities, They indicate edges and places that have been left behind. Spaces that have lost their meaning. But in this thesis I will use the word in another way as well. What does the periphery mean for us today? What are those parts of our lives that have been marginalized, and how can we begin to reclaim what has been lost? It is the aim of this thesis to address these issues of the …

(Re)Discovering Civitas: The L.A.Gora, Douglas Russ Newby

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was the development of an architectural methodology capable of re-establishing polycentric civitas in the City of Los Angeles. To establish a new civic design framework for the city of Los Angeles, research and analysis was conducted in many fields using several different methods. A review of literature pertaining to the historic establishment of civitas serves an analysis of the different forms of public space in Western civilization. An analysis of urbanism in Los Angeles was conducted using existing literature related to the topic, while an analysis of the neighborhood chosen as the site for the …

Transformation Of Industrial Space, Xin Jia

Masters Theses

By the 1970s the international markets had begun to change and the region’s industries were becoming less competitive. Mines began to close. Factories that had operated night and day fell silent. Their gates closed and they became “brownfield” sites in need of restoration.

For the over past 20 years, city planners regenerated these derelict industrial lands in different ways especially focus on renaturalizing them. Less attention is being paid to them as active and strategic roles in contemporary affairs. Today, people’s thinking about this issue demands more the character of sentimental stimulus- for either the re-creation or preservation of past …

An Architecture Of Amelioration, Geoffrey Russell Plagemann

Masters Theses

Scar: A lingering sign of damage or injury, either mental or physical.

Technological advancement scars the landscape. It has been our practice to ignore, or worse, hide these marks that have been made as society continues to advance. Industries past left us relics and ruins of bygone eras of promise and production. The time we live in has recognized the untenable failures of past generations, however there are methods of industry that continue to injure the landscape. We will leave our scars.

In this time we must rethink the scar, define it, and recognize its beauty. The first step of …

Architectural Sampling: The Integration And Manipulation Of Meaning, Jacob Stafford Thomas

Masters Theses

This thesis is an investigation into the appropriation and assimilation of meaning by examining the relationship between the technique and meaning of the musical sample and meaning and memory in architecture. As a previously recorded sound integrated into a new work, the sample has a dual identity as both detail and artifact. It is a detail of two or more wholes: an original condition and the new condition, and an artifact from the context of the work from which it was taken. In architectural design, each recognizable form and spatial arrangement is a sample from a prototype with its own …

Forces Of Time: Nature, Perception, And The Spaces Of Architecture, April M. Gray

Masters Theses

The words of Octavio Paz, from his Drift of Shadows, poetically describe the cycle of water in nature involving the erosion and weathering of stone by the force of water, further enhanced by the force of wind. This succession of events in nature is one of inter-dependency. It is also one of temporality: one element of nature perpetually affecting another, a temporality engaging elements either by impeding or by propelling.