Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Dwelling Beyond The Terrestrial, Sungkyu Yang

Masters Theses

One of the first places humans have lived outside of Earth is the International Space Station. However, the quality of life on the station is dehumanizing because it was designed to be a laboratory, not a dwelling. The condition of the existing space is monotonous and dooms residents to a boring and tedious life. The expression of beauty inherent in human nature is missing. The operation of the ISS as a space environment research laboratory is scheduled to end in 2024. This thesis explores how to utilize the adaptive reuse potential of the International Space Station to better understand human …

Evoking The Divine : From Secular To Sacred And Back Again, Dragos Tiberiu Alexandru

Masters Theses

While creating for religious use, designers should ask what interventions will transform the secular into the sacred. Spaces used for worship should have qualities that enhance the mission of the church and the religious activities occurring within. These qualities include the use of light to suggest spiritual illumination, acoustics to enhance the congregation’s experience of music and sacred speech, materials that projects beauty within believers , and an environment separate from worldly distractions.

The client for this project is a megachurch congregation. Most of these churches are disinterested or in denial of church typology principles, resulting in spaces that lack …

The Space In Between : Liminal Space, Wei-Chun Cheng

Masters Theses

Drawings are not just a representation of the architecture. We ask questions through drawings and solve questions by drawings. Every line on the paper is constructing a thinking, an idea. The moment you draw, ideas start to evolve. The way you draw reflects the way you think. Your drawings will function as a trigger to stimulate your brain to imagine the world differently.

This thesis is a journey of discovery through draw “boundary”. The site, architecture language, and program will emerge from the process of drawing.

Columns Of Some Kind : Kinetic, Structural, Formal, Periodic & Interactive Elements Of Architecture, Jhanani Palanismay

Masters Theses

Architects and designers exist within the matrix of artificial intelligence and animate tools, therefore we are faced with the task of examining what it means to ‘humanize’ architecture and foster a tangible and intangible interaction with the spaces we inhabit. The poetics of architecture is now interpreted through the degree of engagement with technological advancements.

As an architectural element, the ubiquitous column exists within the substrate of floor and ceiling. In designing an animate column while retaining structural integrity, an opportunity is created for dialogic feedback between the user and the built environment, thereby activating different spatial conditions.

The generation …

A Monument Thesis, Graham Rice

Masters Theses

Monuments are to something; people, events, memories, achievements, or tragedies. They are meant to freeze the moment of the builder and save it for the future. Monuments are an attempted cryogenesis, but monuments that preserve the past sever themselves from the present. They are cryogenic. They can be viewed, but are frozen behind the glass of time. All but the most potent of artifacts will fade at these low temps. Their relevance diminishes until they undergo a transmutation from an intentional object into a historical artifact.

These historic monuments are worthy of our suspicion. Do they replicate or preserve what …

Transporting Eating Architecture, Margaret Kiladjian

Masters Theses

For my thesis, I worked on transporting, or perhaps translating, the lavash practice. An Armenian flatbread cooked in a tonir •. A hearth symbolizing the sun in the ground. My disciplinary positioning is one of conservation and preservation.

I looked at the practice of Lavash at three horizontal levels: The land, the refectory and the table. Each of these levels informed me on where and how I would be transporting the practice. The village women, when making lavash, were living next to the field where the wheat is grown and harvested. They were using stone mills, which allowed the grain …

Decoding The Digital Border, Gian Villarruel

Masters Theses

We come to rely on computer hardware and digital software to generate and digitize the world around us and the degree of distortion latent in “street view” and public domain digital representations is rarely brought to the fore. Organized information made up of data scripts and RGB values within an intangible space have now become what many assume to be architecture. But where, between all that translation of information, does our sense of history and culture lie? What impressions remain and what memories are lost from the collective of digital representations when the only things left to define them are …

Shadow Theater, Yaodan Wu

Masters Theses

In this project, I try to explore the relationship between light and shadow, light and image. From exploring the formula of lens refraction, to observe unique path of object moves created by nature. I am always exploring and trying to use architecture in response to light and to sculpture light, and attract people to come to this space feeling light, interact with light. In this space, people, architecture, light and shadows are as the elements of mutual equality, influence in interaction, waving the space tighter.

Project is located in Pemaquid Point, Maine State. In the day time light are mainly …

Joy Through Layered Tension : Convergent Fire-Escapes Fulfill A New Community, Luca Rivelli

Masters Theses

The initial curiosity of this thesis was the exploration of the unquantifiable aspects of architecture. How can the emotional experience of one’s design process be manifested into something that physically embodies those sensations? How can the creator and the observer have a more intimate connection through emotional solidification?

Open Community : Break Up The "Superblock", Ke Xie

Masters Theses

This thesis proposes a redesign of the "superblocks" of Wuhan (China).

A Third Thing : An Exploration Of Black Hair In Architectural Design, Christina B. Schaller

Masters Theses

“African-American architects have been unable to articulate our own truth or vision of the future except as a reflection of the very culture that marginalizes us. We are so spent by trying to get into the system that there is little time remaining to critique the historical condition that make our climb so difficult. Rather than develop a self-defined praxis of architecture that would make a real difference in the lives of our people, we mimic the values and goals that have created our oppression.” - Sharon Sutton

By looking at traditions, art and architecture in the African American community, …

Archinaut : Archinaut Design Laboratory Office Manual, Joseph Echavarria

Masters Theses

Like all cities, they are built up of forgotten or neglected icons commemorating a certain event from the past. Over the years, some no longer have the same social impact they once had. There becomes a need when looking towards the future to preserve the icons of Houston and protect them from erasure.

A few native landmarks, some thriving more than others are replicated and reprogrammed creating a potemkin village within a new hyper urban environment. The new Houston, Hyper Houston, commemorates these icons by stripping the essential elements of these icons to produce these new altered icons of Houston. …

Facade Of Democracy : Realizing The Architecture Of The Fourth Wall, Johnny Yueh Han Lin

Masters Theses

This thesis project explored the scope of democracy and seek the opportunity to relate the research into the discipline of architecture. This one-year thesis journey started from “Democracy in Words”, “Democracy as a Rule of Drawing”, which seek to develop a representation system under the wide topic of democracy. The second part, “Behind the Democratic Illustration”, used a series of collages and drawings to understand a contemporary democratic crisis. And in the last part of the thesis “Reveal the Democratic Truth”, develop an architectural project based on the previous knowledge to reveal the predicament of the society through a counter-design …

Redundancy For Change, Kyuyeon Park

Masters Theses

We live in a world where efficiency is the best quality. A building is the same. We try to maximize the efficiency of the use of space and energy. However, is this design still efficient in the long term? Most modern commercial buildings are designed for a specific program such as residential or school and have little extra space or capacity to maximize the efficiency for now. It makes it hard for the building owners to change the building’s floor plan, programs, and facilities. Buildings should be able to change its program, structures, and mechanical services over time to adjust …

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 …

Woven Curvature, Yuhao Jiang

Masters Theses

It started with reading water,

I analog the water movement with water painting.(wet stripes on tracing paper) The wet strips attached on the tracing paper grow longer and shorter, Because of this surface tension, the surface creates certain wrinkle patterns(Wrinkle_from PIE root *wer” to turn, bend.”), which I call ‘breathing surface’ for its sense of life. It expresses the strength, durability, and continuity of water.

As I zoomed into the surface tension phenomenon, I started to think about a type of architectural experience which is a gradual change rather than dramatic. Through floor to floor, wall to wall, beginning to …

The Present, Ann Motonaga

Masters Theses

My thesis asks how can architecture create spatial experiences that hold us in the present moment? I investigated how good stories that follow a structure of constriction and release as defined by Christopher Booker, and that exists in the Japanese culture that engage the imagination and senses to allow us to return to the present moment. In addition, I looked at other forms of “constriction” such as paper and thread making, and the Buddhist philosophy of menmitsu that emphasized a slow process and being present.

Since the industrial revolution our lives have gotten increasingly more efficient. Because of this time …

Nostalgia For The Future : Home 2028, Junqing Yang

Masters Theses

to

People I met,

Places I have been,

the past

and future

From Architectural Design To Structural Analysis: A Data-Driven Approach To Study Building Information Modeling (Bim) Interoperability, Mohammed Aldegeily

Masters Theses

BIM has been playing an essential role in building construction projects in recent years. It was used to automate many tasks such as clash detection, 4D planning, and quantity takeoff, among others. However, the interoperability of BIM still lacks in many fields across the architecture, engineering, and construction domains. This research studies the interoperability between architectural design and structural analysis. The goal is to explore structural analysis of BIM models through data transfer processes between different software platforms via three types of paths: (1) Application Programming Interface (API); (2) “immediately connect,” which is the direct link between software programs from …