Architecture Commons^™

Adaptive Environments For Enabling Senior Citizens: An Holistic Assessment Tool For Housing Design And Iot-Based Technologies, Matteo Zallio, Damon Berry, Niccolò Casiddu

Conference papers

The population of older adults will continuously increase over the coming decades. As they get older, people will require assistance and regular monitoring, with higher costs for welfare system and families. Two vital aspects of a healthy lifestyle, are domestic autonomy and maintenance of relationships within the neighborhood. This leads to an interesting research issue: “Could houses and appliances have the potential to improve autonomy and quality of life of citizens? Which methods and tools could enhance wellbeing and healthy conditions? The house has the potential to be a safe, adaptive environment, integrated with technologies for life support. This work …

The Shenzhen Activist Program`, Hyunggyu Kim, Jae Hyun Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

There is a gap between being an architecture student in western countries and working as an architect in underrepresented communities. Architect Teddy Cruz defines the role of an activist architect as "expanded mode of practice", and the task of "deigning the protocols or the interfaces between communities and spaces".

This thesis contends that architecture schools need to continue to embrace the widely-accepted norm of studios studying abroad and working in an international studio. Current study abroad programs tend to skew towards being touristic field trips and there is not a curriculum or programmatic investment in cultivating relationships between the visiting …

Aftermarket Supermarket | A Speculative Retrospective, Alexander Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

In the preface to Delusive Spaces: Essays on Culture, Media and Technology, media theorist Eric Kluitenberg writes that “the delusion of the new”1 pollutes our theorizations of new media. This sort of technocratic fetishization of emergent technologies can only amount to a surfatial investigation of its effects or capabilities. Architectural investigations of virtual reality and other new media systems suffer from this tendency as well. Content-based experimentation and criticism obsess over the simultaneously exciting and daunting prospects of what we can now do or make with recent digital developments. There’s definite value in such endeavors, but frankly, in the grand …

A Generic Benchmark For A Mini-Split Heat Pump System, Yuchen Wang

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Thesis, and Student Research

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) accounts for half of the building energy consumption in the U.S where Mini-Split Heat Pumps (MSHPs) are an emerging type of HVAC system. Their utilization has greatly increased by 34% from 2009 to 2013 and high potential EER is recognized for MSHPs. However, there is limited research involving MSHPs systems, and there is no generic benchmark for system testing and modeling. The available simulation tools such as VapCyc, GreatLab, and CYCLE_D are either too complicated, difficult to access, or not freely available. Therefore, an accurate and public share generic benchmark is essential and will …

Lightweight Material Prototypes Using Dense Bundled Systems To Emulate An Ambient Environment, Chris Knapp, Jonathan Nelson, Andrew Kudless, Sascha Bohnenberger

Jonathan J Nelson

This paper describes and reflects upon a computational design and digital fabrication research project that was developed and implemented over 2014-2015, with subsequent development continuing for applications at present. The aim of the research was to develop methods of modelling, analysis, and fabrication that facilitate integrative approaches to architectural design and construction. In this context, the development of material prototypes, digital simulations, and parametric frameworks were pursued in parallel in order to inform and reform successive iterations throughout the process, leading to a refined workflow for engineering, production, and speculation upon future directions of the work.

Lightweight Material Prototypes Using Dense Bundled Systems To Emulate An Ambient Environment, Chris Knapp, Jonathan Nelson, Andrew Kudless, Sascha Bohnenberger

Chris Knapp

This paper describes and reflects upon a computational design and digital fabrication research project that was developed and implemented over 2014-2015, with subsequent development continuing for applications at present. The aim of the research was to develop methods of modelling, analysis, and fabrication that facilitate integrative approaches to architectural design and construction. In this context, the development of material prototypes, digital simulations, and parametric frameworks were pursued in parallel in order to inform and reform successive iterations throughout the process, leading to a refined workflow for engineering, production, and speculation upon future directions of the work.

A Period Examination Through Contemporary Energy Analysis Of Kevin Roche’S Fine Arts Center At University Of Massachusetts-Amherst, L Carl Fiocchi Jr

Doctoral Dissertations

Studies of buildings belonging to a subset of Modernist architecture, Brutalism, have included discussions pertaining to social and architectural history, critical reception, tectonic form and geometry inspirations, material property selections, period technology limitations, and migration of public perceptions. Evaluations of Brutalist buildings’ energy related performances have been restricted to anecdotal observations with particular focus on the building type’s poor thermal performance, a result of the preferred construction method, i.e. monolithic reinforced concrete used as structure, interior finish and exterior finish. A valid criticism, but one that served to dismiss discussion that the possibility of other positive design strategies limiting energy …

Research And Study Of Fashion And Costume History Spanning From Ancient Egypt To Modern Day, Kaitlyn E. Dennis Miss

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Through a generous donation to Morehead State University, research has been conducted on thousands of slides containing images of artwork and artifacts of historical significance. These images span from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the inaugural dress of every first lady of the United States. The slides are in the process of being recorded and catalogued for future use by students in hopes of furthering academic comprehension and awareness of the influence of fashion and costume history through the ages. Special thanks to the family of Gretel Geist Rutledge, faculty mentor Denise Watkins, as well as the Department of Music, Theatre, and …

Architectural Intervention: The Resilient Community Center, Matthew A. Baumgartner

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

In the city of Centralia, Illinois, several issues govern the city’s future, all stemming from the same major problem: the economy. To intervene, this community center proposal aims to encourage economic development and growth in the city, assisting small businesses with starting and expanding in the region.

Buildings As An Assembly Of 3d Printed Components, Stephen S. Lauer

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

This project aimed to design a series of components that would be assembled to become a house. The design is a house that is printed in a series of modules and assembled using a series of printed connectors for not only attaching the modules but also used in other various details.

Influence Of Ground Granulated Blastfurnace Slag On The Thermal Properties Of Pcm-Concrete Composite Panels, Dervilla Niall, Oliver Kinnane, Roger P. West, Sarah Mccormack

Conference papers

The thermal mass of concrete within a building can be used as an energy storage system and hence reduce the demand on the auxiliary heating and cooling systems in the building. The heat storage capacity of concrete can be enhanced by adding phase change materials (PCMs) which provide a high latent heat storage capacity. However the addition of PCM to concrete reduces the conductivity of the concrete due to the low conductivity of the PCMs. This hinders the efficient utilisation of the additional heat storage capacity provided by the PCM.

It is generally understood that the use of ground granulated …

Plastic Fantastic: The Fiberglass Boatbuilding Industry In Holland, Michigan, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Plastic Fantastic: The Fiberglass Boatbuilding Industry in Holland, Michigan is a chapter concerning the use of fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP) to build boats starting in the 1940s. In the 1950s boat builders discovered that fiberglass would allow them to design boats that would lead to new boat sales and increased profit margins for years to come. This technology steadily spread throughout American boat manufacturing plants, including Holland, Michigan, placing the town among the leaders in the industry.

Soft Skills For Digital Designers, Shelby Doyle, Nick Senske

Shelby Elizabeth Doyle

Computer-Aided Drafting and Design (CADD) technologies have become commonplace in architectural practice as tools of efficiency and production. For these very reasons the introduction of CADD in early architectural curricula has been fraught with anxieties along a continuum: from the undoing of creativity through positivist and reductionist logic 1 to a firm belief that these technologies will revolutionize the way architects practice and think about design. 2 At the same time, there is a presumption that students who have grown up with digital technologies are “digital natives” who possess special aptitudes or insights which are disruptive to learning computing. The …

Speculative Future Metabolic Architecture, Haley Erin Moore

Masters Theses

Speculating the implications of a metabolic architecture provides a platform for thinking about a new way of future building. Disaster scenarios such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, nuclear fallouts, and others are unavoidable events. Instead of building compressively, meaning building to defend against scenarios such as disasters, the future should include building in the way a natural system behaves, in flux, with material dependencies, and as an output produced from the exchange of materials, reactions, or responses that occur in a metabolism. Architecture must be thought of as an output of a metabolism, an altered input, where this output is unknown …

Building Hope: A Community + Water Initiative, La Villa De San Francisco, Honduras, Christopher D. Mansfield

Masters Theses

It is my contention that through activating participatory design and community engagement strategies, in conjunction with innovative construction methods that address issues of resource scarcity, the standard of living and level of accessibility to critical resources in impoverished portions of Honduras can be drastically improved. The newly provided model of construction can be done it such a way that it is cost effective in its building method, and provides highly sought after scarce critical resources. This allows participants to allocate more of their finances towards other necessary resources they normally would not be able to acquire.

A new community center …

From Shelters To Long Living Communities, Yakun Liang

Masters Theses

Disasters happen all the time, attention should be paid to refugees and help them build new homelands. Japan is an earthquake-prone area, every year there is at least 1 earthquake above 6 magnitude happens there. In 2011, Japan suffered from the 9.0 magnitude earthquake, tsunami and meltdown, the triple disasters. About 100 people died in the earthquake itself, and 20,000 people lost their lives in the tsunami, 465,000 people were evacuated after the disaster. Two years later after the triple disaster, more than half refugees still lived in temporary shelters. Efforts should be concentrated on the development of long living …

Lifelong Housing Design: User Feedback Evaluation Of Smart Objects And Accessible Houses For Healthy Ageing, Matteo Zallio, Niccolò Casiddu

Conference Papers

According to the latest research by the European Community and ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) surveys, Europe has the highest average age for its population. According to those data, in the near future, it could be necessary to move from a welfare model based on the centralization of care systems, to a system based on the distribution of certain healthcare facilities [1]. This means that the ageing population is ever increasing, thanks to better lifestyles, innovative medical care and wider access to different services. This work seeks to observe and analyse key implications of architectural and interior design features …

L’Architecture Des Premières Maisons Européennes D’Alger, 1830-1865, Asma Hadjilah

Artl@s Bulletin

Dès 1830, la présence française à Alger apporta un changement notable dans paysage architectural de la ville. La construction de maisons européennes en constitue le trait le plus manifeste. Leurs premiers modèles sont élevés au sein même de la ville ottomane, principalement dans sa partie basse. Nous tentons dans cet article d’éclairer certains aspects de ce type d’habitat. Pour ce faire, nous nous appuierons sur les trois outils de travail nécessaires à l’étude de l’architecture mineure, à savoir le parcellaire, le gabarit et l’ordonnancement. Par ailleurs, on interrogera le débat sur la circulation internationale des modèles et leur relation au …

Broad Street Plaza, Madison Lynn Busby, Jenny Nguyen

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Case Study: Epoch Estate Wines Production Facility, Kevin Christopher Marx

Architectural Engineering

The project will be a case study performed on Epoch Estate Wines Production Facility in Templeton California. The building is a cut and cover project which was designed to hug the existing oak trees on site. The building serves as a capstone to the Architectural Engineering curriculum because it seamlessly combines the four main structural building materials: steel, concrete, masonry and timber, while also including every lateral force resisting system into one succinct project. During the design of the project, meetings with the architecture of record and client representative occurred where discussion about design procedure and client’s needs took place. …

Is Zero Net Energy 2020 Actually Attainable, Perceptions Of Various Professionals Effected, Michael Aldridge

Construction Management

California has created a mandate that will require all new residential buildings to become Zero Net Energy by 2020. Some are already doing it others don’t know what it means, and some don’t think it will be possible. Those that already do it are doing it without any extra cost. All that is required is, on average, a 4KW roof solar panel system. This is something that easy to install and only requires a little more planning during the design phase. There are many other things that a designer and builder can do to successfully reach ZNE including focus on …

Bim And Communication: Implementation Of Building Information Modeling Into An Integrated Project Delivery Contract To Encourage Project Teams To Communicate, Kathleen Worden

Master's Theses

The objective of this thesis is to explore BIM, IPD and their implementation into a building project contract. The Integrated Delivery Processes is comprised of a collaborative team of Designers, Constructors, and Owners working side by side to create a successful project. BIM has been introduced as a technology into the industry, as a tool that these parties can use for better understanding the project.

Through case studies of IPD projects using BIM are observed, it was determined that although BIM was used, one problem faced is the lack of BIM standards included initially in a contract for in an …

De-Westernizing The Far East, Jericho K. Kakaio-Edwards

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Isolated by the Tibetan highlands which frame Yunnan’s northwest fringes, the ethnic minorities who call the region home live in rural settings ranging from rice-terraced fields to tropical forests; lifestyle unchanged for hundreds of years. However, with globalization causing an exposure to western standards of living, in conjunction with the country’s predisposition towards all things foreign, the people of Yunnan have begun forgoing generations of vernacular architecture in favor of modern materials and regionally defunct construction methods. Here, we will seek to address this foible of architectural development by offering theoretical construction methods for housing types found throughout the region, …

Coordinated Autonomic Managers For Energy Efficient Date Centers, Forough Norouzi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The complexity of today’s data centers has led researchers to investigate ways in which autonomic methods can be used for data center management. Autonomic managers try to monitor and manage resources to ensure that the components they manage are self-configuring, self-optimizing, self-healing and self-protecting (so called “self-*” properties). In this research, we consider autonomic management systems for data centers with a particular focus on making data centers more energy-aware. In particular, we consider a policy based, multi-manager autonomic management systems for energy aware data centers. Our focus is on defining the foundations – the core concepts, entities, relationships and algorithms …

Standupable Desks - Ergonomic Furniture For Primary Schools, John Walsh, Mark Ennis

Other resources

Numerous studies have shown how prolonged sitting at school can have a negative effect on the physical health and is linked with obesity in primary school students. More physically active approaches to learning have been shown to not only improve physical wellbeing but increase attention and improve learning outcomes. There is also an increasing movement to sit/ stand desking for office worker for ergonomic reasons.

This project is concerned with developing a sit/ stand school desk that would allow students to move between sitting and standing while in school. The desk should be suitable for primary school children aged between …

Collaborating With Catastrophe | A User's Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Farming, Patricia Cafferky

Architecture Senior Theses

“Collaborating with Catastrophe” contends that architecture has the capacity to visually manifest unseen forces through design’s reaction to them, allowing people to more fully comprehend and engage the intangible. Climate change, arguably the largest threat to modern day humanity, is not visible, existing only as a collection of data and patterns in a statistical construct. Taking stock of the present day failings of society in the face of crisis, this thesis then extrapolates a potential future dystopia precipitated by man-made pollutants in order to engage the problem at its most severe. Architecture is then able to make the toxic visible …

The Foreign Complex | A Cross-Cultural Vernacular, Dexter Cicchinelli

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis investigates transforming a decommissioned military site into a productive part of its host nation’s context. Okinawa consists of a group of islands that make up the southern-most prefecture of Japan. MAP It is situated midway between Tokyo and Manila, and called the “keystone of the Pacific” by military planners because of its strategic location. AERIAL FLIGHT MAP It was the site of the devastating Battle of Okinawa in WWII which prompted an ongoing history of military intervention and occupation. TIMELINE Immediately after the war, displaced Okinawans were put in camps while the military claimed land for bases. Some …

Redefining The Constraint | Designing Control To Support Rehabilitation, Jessica Borri

Architecture Senior Theses

The concrete lined cells of a contemporary prison do not lend themselves well to processes of rehabilitation. This thesis contends that it is time for architects to rethink the architecture of the prison. When an inmate knows he is being watched, he tends to exhibit positive behavior out of fear of the consequences of any action deemed to be negative. This thesis contends that by incorporating the apparatus of surveillance seamlessly into a prison's architecture it may be possible to provide spaces that feel more open and less oppressive.

One way to generate a feeling of openness is to create …

Where Wellness Begins, Chelsea M. Wheeler

Architecture Senior Theses

A public need for improved health has called into question the manner in which one's built environment has the ability to affect a person's health and well-being. Recent studies have revealed a correlation between health and residence, suggesting that the built environment has a significant influence on occupant health and well-being. As a result of such studies, Delos Living, a well-building consulting firm, has proposed a set of deign standards that can be used to promote occupant health. The problem with such methods is that there are processes of certification relying primarily on post-deign evaluations. This thesis seeks to align …

Free Encounters | Giving Form To The Informal Workplace, Ryan Williams

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the "office" as a solely economic construct is no more: Its utility as an engine driving productivity and the accumulation of capital has stalled in our present age of information where value is constructed through knowledge exchange and interaction.

Via the use of new technologies, millennial workers' transition from the college campus to the office has become more seamless and, this thesis argues, it is in this paradigm shift that it is possible to identify a blurring of the public and private spheres. The millennial worker-turned-freelancer's life exists forever suspended between work and play, place and …