Architecture Commons^™

Body As Instrument: Crafting A Spatial Representational Language For The Dancer's Body, Avery Boland

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project explored the intersection of dance and architecture using choreography, photography, and architectural principles through the development and application of a graphic notation system. Focused on the works of modern dance pioneer Martha Graham and photographer Barbara Morgan, the study tested the representation of the body in space through the use of Graham's choreography as captured by Morgan.

The results of the study demonstrated the effectiveness of the representational language in capturing the spatial dynamics of the human body in Martha Graham's choreography through the notation of “frame” and “plane”. Through a comparative analysis of the selected dances, the …

Photography, Architecture, And Environment: An Architectural Analysis Of Edward Ruscha’S 26 Gasoline Stations, Rebecca Tonguis

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

This presentation explores Edward Ruscha’s photobook 26 Gasoline Stations through an architectural lens. Specifically, it treats Ruscha’s work as historic evidence of how consumption, industry, and commodity have infiltrated all kinds of environmental contexts through architectural manifestations. Known for being the first artist’s book, 26 Gasoline Stations ambiguously exists as both fine art and documentation of everyday conditions, with the overall graphic character highlighting its perceived focus on overarching narrative. Since gasoline stations are the primary subject of each of the 26 photographs, the subject of this work is arguably architecture, suggesting that the historic relationship between mass gas consumption—or …

Geometry Through Architectural Design, Maureen T. Carroll, Elyn Rykken

LASER Journal

In her 1912 geometry book, Mabel Sykes surveys complex and beautiful architectural designs from around the world to inspire exercises on geometric proof, construction and computation. In over 1800 exercises, Sykes analyzes geometric patterns from ornamental and structural features found in tile mosaics, parquet floors, Gothic windows, trusses and arches. As Sykes' writes, ``Geometry gives, as no other subject can give, an appreciation of form as it exists in the material world" . We have chosen four examples to illustrate how her appealing designs and the accompanying exercises of this hidden gem can be incorporated into any geometry course.

Translational Placemaking: The Diasporic Archive, Alia Varawalla

Masters Theses

Globalization and mass migration has propelled a hybrid existence, as individuals that occupy multiple geographies we live in a constant state of translation. Our museums and cultural institutions are in opposition to this; static, preserved and de-contextualized. At the intersection of printmaking and architecture, this thesis proposes a living archive to document the collective migratory journey across sites, materials, and hybrid identities. A network of centers for knowledge sharing and production centered on India and its diaspora. As art practices and people migrate, cultural production evolves with its context, gaining new meaning as it changes hands generationally and globally.

Cohabitation X Adaptation, 2100: A Climate Change Epoch, Kyle Andrews

Masters Theses

Some seventy-seven odd years in the future, the world as we know it will only be recognizable by those who are willing to accept it. The bustling metropolis of Boston Massachusetts has been transformed to appease the tides of Mother Nature as a consequence of human intervention. In the decades prior, humanity viciously fought to contain the effects of climate change, until many realized the colossal undertaking of such a battle. Municipalities across the globe had begun to accept that fighting the earth was no longer an option. Instead, the only hope forward was to adapt to a reality in …

A Study Of Dwelling, Julia Mcarthur

Masters Theses

In teasing out natural phenomena in the unbuilt environment, through admiring beauty, and emphasizing the ordinary, meaningful moments can be brought about that can cause you to be more present with yourself and the world we live in. It is important to qualify that these spaces that encompass “ordinary” moments are not intended to be “idealized spaces,” but a domain that reconciles the chaos from the peaceful and the stress from the calm that is ever apparent in our daily lives. My thesis asks: Through critiquing the modernist condition of a prescriptive ideal space, how can we better understand how …

Archi-Comics, Timothy Gatto

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Humor in architecture is not at the forefront of architect’s minds, this comes from architects need to be deemed serious. This way of thinking is what has backed architects up into a corner banal and stagnant architecture. Architecture is the art of context, everything in architecture is referential. Humor is foundationally the exact same way, the incongruity theory makes humor possible by putting a concept into context with things and finding contradictions in the process, thus developing a joke. Each of these arts, humor and architecture, are that of context and when architecture is delivered like humor, it points out …

Two Churches, One Vision: Sacred Architecture As A Reflection Of Benedictine Values And Liturgical Reform, Katheryn Wethli

Obsculta

This piece compares the architecture of the worshipping spaces of Saint Benedict's Monastery's Sacred Heart Chapel and Saint John's Abbey Church; presenting how the worshiping spaces uplift their monastic communities’ Benedictine values and demonstrate their monastic call towards evangelizing the Gospel in the modern world, highlighting the liturgical reforms of the mid-20th century.

Biodive, Morgana Faucett

Graduate Theses

Humans exist among an intertwined series of ecosystems and environments. As a species, we curate the spaces, these environments, that surround us to suit our internalized visions of the world. While such curation is not inherently negative, humanity’s industrial process of constructing our visions is not always handled with sustainable methods. This paper analyzes my creative work through the framework of architecture’s role in climate change and human impact, highlighting past and present building practices. Solutions for future practices will also be considered, specifically targeting the questions of construction material, building function, and repurposing of older buildings to achieve a …

Turning Green: Envisioning A Sustainable Future For Bowling Green, Kiana Fitzpatrick

Honors Projects

This project examines how smaller cities and communities can become more sustainable.

Adaptive Reuse Of Frosty Morn, Veronika Kalugina, Rebecca Tonguis, Heidi Gabriel, Peyton Kauffman

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Frosty Morn, a former meat packing facility in Clarksville, TN, is now abandoned, dilapidated, and partially demolished. The site sits within the Red River District neighborhood, which consists of a diverse community of artists. The Red River District has been identified by the Clarksville Mayor’s Office as an area with potential for growth, catalyzed by repurposing the Frosty Morn building as an icon and beacon of the community. Highest and best use research, in addition to community voices, indicated programmatic needs of a farmer’s market, makerspaces, small business incubators, park space, and live/work units. Our presentation will describe how this …

Michael’S Mouth, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

“Michael’s Mouth” examines the virtuoso performance of small mouth sounds (“um,” “ah,” etc.) in MOS’ 2006 video, Alternate Ending 1: The Glimmering Noise. In this performance, “Michael” deftly uses non-words to advance a non-discursive argument about architecture as a form of attention in the post-critical imaginary.

In-Between Spaces: Atmospheres, Movement And New Narratives For The City, Paul Alexander Stoicheff

Masters Theses

We often think of architecture as distinct buildings, yet as we move through the city we continuously pass through a built environment that is a collage of buildings. These spaces between buildings are underestimated as influences on our experience of everyday life in the city. Considering architecture as linked existential experiences through spaces rather than confined to individual buildings is more in line with our experience of the city as a series of interconnected spaces and places. Rather than describing a single, static architecture through words, how can we express this linked experience of spaces dynamically through narratives? Can writing …

Micro-Metropolis: Space, Work, And Waste In The Maquettes Of Constant And Bodys Isek Kingelez, Shoshanah B. Rosen

Theses and Dissertations

Constant Nieuwenhuys and Bodys Isek Kingelez both create futuristic utopias in the form of architectural maquettes. This comparative study explores each artist’s reverence for technology, global connectivity, and new forms of economic production. It argues that these utopias represent desires endemic to late modernity and capitalism, including consumption, nomadism, automation.

Genius Loci: Capturing The Distinctive Roman Spirit Through Pochoir, Carlee Mcguire

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone explores the concept of genius loci through photographic and artistic exploration and does so through a lens of study set on Rome, Italy. The first major goal of the process has been to discover the elements, moments, physical textures, and other design elements that comprise the genius loci of a city or space. The second goal has been to partake in a process that can be used by myself and other designers in efforts to make more conscious design decisions — gaining a better understanding of ‘sense of place’ can assist designers in straying from globalized, placeless design.

Urban Portraiture: Capturing The Personality Of Place, Hannah Gray

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone aims to develop a prototypical process using digital photography to document the essence of place. A final visual narrative element is created with the intent of being utilized by architectural designers to draw inspiration and understanding from the setting in which they are designing. The process involved four distinct phases that culminated in a single narrative montage. These four phases included the actual photographing of the city, evaluating and taxonomy of the photographs into categories that best embodied the spirit of the place, the altering of individual photographs into their essential parts and pieces, and the process of …

Neo Development Of The Workplace Environment In Response To Evolutionary Social Changes, Dafne Odette

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study is to identify the needs and wants of remote workers to support their health and well-being in response to evolutionary social changes. Many workers were once tethered to live in the city where their job office resided. Additionally, economic forces have long been a deciding factor in where one lives. The COVID-19 virus of 2020 provided an opportunity for many people to work remotely to control the virus (Latham, Higgins, & Judish, 2020). This has allowed people to retain higher salaries while living in rural areas where the cost of living may be lower. In 2021, some businesses …

Indigenous Architectural Structure, Catherine Romsey

Art & Art History Student Scholarship

Catherine Romsey '23
Major: Management and Marketing
Minor: Studio Art (Digital Imaging)
Faculty Mentor: Professor James Janecek, Art and Art History

The investigation of structures by an indigenous community combined with modern construction applications, resulted in an exciting enclosed space situated on the Providence College campus.

Audience Patina: An Enmeshment Of Architecture And Theater, Alison R. Kane

Senior Projects Spring 2022

This senior project entitled Audience Patina: An Enmeshment of Architecture and Theater explores the interconnections and juxtapositions between environmental topographies, liminal space, and imaginary dreamscapes. The project consists of interdisciplinary research used to create a large-scale installation piece, as well as the direction of the play The Stars Come Out at Night. This installation was created in conversation with the play, which was written by fellow theater department senior, Emily Kaufman-Bell. The play is the essential work that briefed the design around a dreamlike environmental imagery. The design and research explore how space and bodies communicate with each other …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings, …

Web-Based Ives For User Experience Evaluation In The Architecture Studio, Faithful Oladeji

Frameless

Research on the use of immersive virtual environments (IVEs) in architectural design has rapidly permeated the practice for the last few decades, largely driven by a single prospect: the possibility of sufficiently simulating the genuine interactions and experiences of a design well before it is actually built. The implications of this achievement when fully realized would revolutionize the profession, effectively igniting a new period of David Harvey’s space-time compression in the industry, such that IVEs would enable designers to, symbolically, cross temporal distances, and bring a legitimate experience of their final products to the present, at any point in their …

The Adobe Frontier, Christopher J. Gauthier

Theses and Dissertations

The Adobe Frontier is a documentary film about Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello—together known as “Studio Rael San Fratello” —and their work connecting contemporary technology with the legacy of pottery making and adobe architecture in the Southwest United States.

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

The Eight Grids: A New Method To Enhance Students’ Sketching Skills In The Schools Of Architecture, Mohamad Tohme

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Sketching is one of the required courses for architecture and design students in higher education since it is considered a necessary skill for architects and designers. However, the lack of visualization skills and practice, students were met with difficulties in grasping the complex concepts of this course, concurrent with the teachers’ lack of familiarity with the various methods. The aim of this paper is to find a new method that allows students to carry out their sketches by examining the problems faced by first-year undergraduate students at the Faculty of Architecture, Design & Built Environment in BAU, Lebanon. To achieve …

Manuscript For Aesthetic/Design Guidelines For Campus Master Planning Bethel University, Wayne Roosa, Eugene Johnson

Art and Design Faculty Works

This document is the manuscript version before graphic design and copyediting. Follow this link to see the final version.

The situation that inspired and drove these aesthetic guidelines for campus master planning were unique to the history Bethel University and Seminary. By the early 1960s, Bethel was outgrowing its site on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul. The opportunity to purchase 160 acres in Arden Hills arose and the leap of faith was taken to buy this land and relocate. But it was not that simple. More was involved than mere practical problems of too-little space solved by an abundance …

Aesthetic/Design Guidelines For Campus Master Planning Bethel University, Wayne Roosa, Eugene Johnson

Art and Design Faculty Works

Table of Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

The Need for Aesthetic Guidelines for Campus Master Planning The Purpose and Use of this Document

Aesthetic Guidelines: “Suggestions Concerning the Character of the New Campus,” by Eugene Johnson (1963) (original version without annotations) . . . . . . . 5

Eugene Johnson’s, “Suggestions Concerning the Character of the New Campus” (with annotations, a history of interpretation and use) Annotations …

Reimagining Abandoned Community Space In A Post-Pandemic Environment, Julia Drooff

Scripps Senior Theses

Earlier this year, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the demise of the Great American Mall by forcing temporary and permanent closures across the country. The low-end malls that remain are dealing with crippling debt and the closing of key department stores like JC Penney and Neiman Marcus[1]. With only super-luxury malls thriving, many of the standard malls set up in the eighties are just abandoned parts of a community. So, what should happen to these abandoned malls? And what role does that space now play in the post-pandemic community? Since malls began to shut-down pre-Covid-19 did the need for …

A Rejection Of Nature? Or The Natural World? An Objectless Inquiry Into The Writings Of Kazimir Malevich, Aidan Edward Galloway

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Innovator - Spring 2020

Innovator

05 - Message from the President

08 - The Past is a Prologue

15 - Shrinking World/Expanding Horizons

16 - The Nexus: News at Jefferson

20 - Jefferson Hits the Runway at NYFW

22 - A Game Changer

26 - Binge Swatching

30 - Breaking Down the Walls

38 - Coming Full Circle

44 - Question and Innovate

46 - Designer Health

50 - The Site is the Star

54 - Transcend and Include

60 - Reimagine

64 - Ram Roundup

68 - Class Notes

74 - In Memory

78 - Triva