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Revitalizing Sweet Auburn, Georgia: A Foodcentric Biophilic Inspired Solution, Cason Lott

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Revitalizing Sweet Auburn, Georgia: A Foodcentric Biophilic Inspired Solution addresses the critical issue of food deserts and the challenges of maintaining a healthy balance in densely populated urban environments. It underscores the importance of easy access to essential resources like food for community well-being and highlights the strain on individuals. The thesis emphasizes the potential for sustainable solutions to improve urban living conditions, promoting both physical and mental health while ensuring stability and community. Furthermore, the thesis explores the integration of urban farming, community education, and sustainability with biophilic design’s natural elements to create an enriching community center that acts …

From Silence To Thriving: Architecture As A Voice For The Wayuu Tribe, Angie Son Pulido

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This research explores how stories, music, and patterns intersect to shape the built environment, with an emphasis on spotlighting the Wayuu tribe, a resilient culture facing extinction in the arid desert of La Guajira, Colombia. The Wayuu people have endured centuries of adversity, including colonialism, exploitation, drug trafficking, and internal conflict. In this place, water and food are scarce, and child mortality rates are very high. Despite hardships, they preserve a culture of resilience thanks to their tradition of oral storytelling. Drawing from the tradition of storytelling, the works of writer Gabriel García Márquez, particularly his Magical Realism, serve as …

[Re]Mapping Resilience: Reimagining Urban Waterfronts In The Face Of Climate Change, Brandon Bernard

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

By the year 2100, southern-Florida is projected to experience a 1-2 meter rise in sea level, resulting in the lower portion of the state becoming almost completely submerged under a new watertable.[14] During the 19th and 20th centuries, the city of Miami developed rapidly and the community and economy inevitably became intertwined with the water and its ecology. Due to the growing population and economy, urban developments soared and led to low-lying areas being filled in, open space along waterways were claimed for commercial and residential buildings, and man-made islands such as the venetian islands were constructed. As a result, …

Rock To Renewal - Depleted Quarry Revitalization, Daija Laney

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Healing the wounds of the earth and its people through the revitalization of depleted quarries Revitalizing depleted quarries is essential for healing both the scars on the earth's landscape and the adverse effects on local communities. Despite their necessity for construction, quarries often leave lasting negative impacts, diminishing the quality of life for nearby residents and harming the environment repeatedly. This thesis advocates for a comprehensive approach to revitalizing the depleted quarries by, integrating ecological restoration, economic redevelopment, and community engagement through an architectural lens. By implementing these restoration techniques and incorporating architectural design principles driven by ecological, social, and …

Cue The Paralinguistics: A Qualitative Case Study Of Teacher Social Presence, Molly R. Bowden

Doctor of Education in Instructional Technology Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand teachers’ rationale and practices as they establish a social presence in a 100% online learning environment in a high school setting, with a specific emphasis on paralinguistic cues and symbols, such as emoji, emoticons, and Bitmoji. This case study focused on the meaning and understanding of teacher social presence in the virtual setting, utilizing a variety of data collection methods. In-depth interviews were conducted, followed by digital document collection and a focus group interview; transcripts of both interviews and the focus group were analyzed in order to establish the specific …

The Dwelling And The Shed: Redefining The Homestead, Ryan Mattox

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The homestead is the frontier of exploration. It is the place that shows people can take care of themselves through self-sufficient means. This place also looks at making a more sustainable population. That is partly due to the individual needing to take care of the environment around themselves so that the environment can provide for them.

My thesis project will look to create a technological and sustainable residential module that can be replicated and modified to create community based on self-sufficiency by means of sustainability. To achieve this goal, my thesis will look at combining the architectural elements of the …

Modular Adaptivity : The Plug-In Apartment, Bryce Stegmayer

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Within current architecture, many buildings are seemingly just copies of an original design that hasn’t changed in the slightest in ages. It will be placed on a site and left there to fulfill its single purpose. When this purpose is done, the building will become vacant and will be an everlasting mark of how we don’t think ahead. I’ve come to know these buildings as “one and done” architecture. They are a contradiction to the concept of sustainability and lack any foresight for their future impact. This thesis is an approach to make a change to this previous way of …

Empowering Communities Through Food Entrepreneurship And Creative Placemaking, Bailey Kijek

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The City of Clarkston is one of Atlanta’s oldest and most diverse communities. The city is currently in need of tactical placemaking strategies to create quality public spaces that can serve and unite the members of the community. This thesis seeks to identify the needs of the city using a comprehensive site analysis and apply that knowledge to determine a program that is best suited for the community. To create an impactful design, applicable placemaking procedures will be identified through literature review and case study analyses. The data collected will inform a design procedural that will yield an outcome that …

Desert Safe Haven, Deja Dortch

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The purpose of this thesis is to inform on the materials, technologies, spaces and structure needed to architecturally and sustainably achieve human comfort and create a mother nature-proof safe haven in the becoming harsh climate of the USA. All the while implementing minimum HVAC, using primarily passive and active systems towards a net zero home. Studies have shown there is a real threat with the rate in which the climate is changing. Temperatures are rising worldwide which is causing droughts, more frequent fires, glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise, more severe hurricanes and storms, etc. Sustainability is a way …

Proposing Iso 50001 Energy Management System At Hitachi Astemo Americas, Inc., Elizabeth Anderson, Anthony Apanian, Walid Khalid, Jennifer Tran

Senior Design Project For Engineers

Kennesaw State University’s Industrial Assessment Center (referred to as IAC) has assisted Hitachi Astemo with the creation of a plan to implement ISO 50001 at their plant in Monroe, GA. ISO 50001 provides a way for organizations to improve their energy use through the development of an energy management system (EnMS).

Student-Perceived Inclusivity In The Fyc Classroom: Embracing Multilingualism, Melinda Grant

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

The purpose of this study was to compare student perspectives on inclusivity in the first-year English composition classroom viewed explicitly through two distinct lenses: 1. a pre-post survey design that measures students’ perceptions of classroom inclusivity and 2. instructor-perceived observations that reflect upon methods of pedagogical delivery within a multimodal framework. The results provide a further understanding of how curriculum is being received in a diverse academic environment utilizing blended instructional modalities. While all students did not embrace purposeful means of translanguaging via code-meshing in classroom formative and summative writing opportunities, 100% of students surveyed indicated experiencing inclusivity in the …

Disease, Development, And Disorder: Examining The Effect Of Health On Subnational Development And Conflict In Sub-Saharan Africa, Dlorah C. Jenkins

Doctor of International Conflict Management Dissertations

Progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been uneven across and within countries - particularly in Africa, least developed countries, and low-income countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has threatened to reverse much of the progress made towards achieving the SDGs, especially SDG 3, which aims to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”.

The tendency for disease, underdevelopment, and conflict to occur concomitantly suggests potential causal mechanisms linking them. This study attempts to address two pieces of the puzzle: the causal effect of disease on underdevelopment and the impact of development on conflict risk. Focusing …

Black Holistic: A Response To Respiratory Health And Equity Through K-12 Environments And Community - Based Design, Azha Parker

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the causes of higher amounts of absenteeism due to asthmatic disease within African American students as it pertains to building-related illness and environmental harms. With this information, design decisions will be made to respond to asthma symptoms amongst students and introduce new outlooks towards health within the communities non-intrusively. Looking at Lakeview Elementary School in Portsmouth, Virginia as a case. This majority African American school sits adjacent to a preexisting landfill that has been capped before construction of the school. This site will act as an example, showing the relationships between …

From Displaced To Our Place: Educational Environments Can Promote A Community’S Health And Well-Being, Morgan Frederick

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Thomasville heights is a displacement neighborhood for people pushed out by Atlanta’s Urban Renewal projects. Thomasville Heights remains a casualty of a system of economic segregation. Under this system of segregation these neighborhoods are left in detrimental states. It is in places like Thomasville Heights where the phrase “place matters” becomes a call to action. A town of 6000 residents and only one elementary school, Thomasville heights is bordered by multiple freight yards, a cemetery, landfills, and Atlanta’s US penitentiary, just a 5-minute walk from that one elementary school. There remains a vast difference between that of low-income urban, and …

Reframing Urban Redevelopment Via Women Empowerment: Sustaining Existing Community In The West End Neighborhood, Dyesha Holmes

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Recent studies in England found out that people who know their family history are more resistant to stress and anxiety. (Bradley, 2016) This connection between family history and place history is important in understanding the connection individuals have to the places they grew up and know. However, gentrification poses a threat to inner-city neighborhoods and disrupts the cyclical relationships between history and culture that forms the character of their social community. Ruth Glass coined the term gentrification in 1964 to describe the influx of middle-class people displacing lower-class worker residents in urban neighborhoods. Gentrification is a matter of oppression; displacement …

Media Guide And Strategic Plan, Ella Greer

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

An MAPW candidate composes a strategic plan and media guide for a local government office.

Underground Atlanta Revisited, Salvador Jimenez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is commonly thought of as individual buildings, usually someone would think of an enclosure, that we often think of it as an "interior" space, while our surroundings outside of these enclosures are considered "exterior" space. Transitional spaces bridges the gap between solely interior and solely exterior. These spaces, in being transitional, take people from outside and, through the overlap of the outside nature and building, transfer individuals to a destination defined as inside. In doing this, transitional space helps to ease architecture's relationship with the natural environment, creating a relationship with each other rather than a conflict. This thesis …