Architecture Commons^™

Illusion: Immersive Experience, Tessa S. Trowbridge

Theses and Dissertations

Can society learn from art, and if so, what type of knowledge can be gained from art? It is currently understood that art and design can help humans explore, discover, and understand philosophical and imaginative topics. There is a general agreement that art can create insight and awareness in ways that logical and rational statements cannot, and from these unique interactions, humans can see the world with a new perspective (Worth, n.d.). This thesis will investigate the claim that art can inspire human imagination and allow viewers to gain insight into a surreal reality using designed, physically immersive spaces.

Immersive …

Designing Multi-Sensory Environments: A Powerful Tool For Steam Learning, Tonya D. Miller

The STEAM Journal

Architecture and design are natural facilitators of STEAM learning. This article discusses an interior architecture project requiring students to design a multi-sensory environment within an existing classroom space. The project uniquely addresses the STEAM disciplines and challenges students to explore creative problem-solving to develop unique designs.

Melting Away - Ilha Formosa, Hao-Chun Chang

Masters Theses

Taiwan lies in warm, tropical water, and fishing has long been an important part of its economy. Both the Han Chinese from the coast of China and the Westerners in Europe brought commercial trade and cultural exchange between the East and the West through navigation over the past 500 years. For most of this period, people have assumed that our vast ocean was limitless and immune to human impact. It’s only recently through the struggles of fishermen that we come to realize the devastating effects we have already had on the sea: global warming, plastic pollution, and overfishing. As Callum …

Community Pop-Up Galleries : The Instruction Manual, Mary Iorio

Masters Theses

The art world has historically been controlled by the wealthy and privileged. The institutions that have benefited the most have received criticism in recent years over the lack of diversity amongst their audience and artists represented on their walls. Community galleries can make up for the deficiencies of major art institutions and give voice to those who will not be noticed in traditional spaces (i.e. museums, galleries, auctions). This book details the process of creating a pop-up gallery that will serve the community through displaying, publicizing, and selling artwork. The process begins with organizing a committee to oversee the space, …

Contextualize, Jiaai He

Masters Theses

Museums, as a continuation of the urban environment, enrich people's recreational life and also carry the mission of education. Museums protect culture outside a textbook and make history closer to people’s lives. However, the present museum has not reached an ideal state for the expression and embodiment of cultural objects.

Time and history shape the objects, and the objects inside a museum record and memorialize the period of their creation. Stories and contest behind cultural objects’ creation are integral to knowledge and understanding. What do we remember after a museum visit? Displaying the full range of historical content to the …

Realistic Utopia : Utopian Architecture Exhibition At Arcosanti, Xiao Fang

Masters Theses

Many people believe that only when a design is built can it be called architecture. Architecture, however, was never solely about built form. And unlike other types of design, architecture depends on imagination and visualization: only the architect knows how the space works before it has actually been built. Thus, it is necessary to test the design on paper before it has been realized and many times architectural designs are heavily modified or abandoned for economic, political or environmental reasons.

Meanwhile, architects also design spaces knowing they will never be built, to exercise ideas or push toward new realities. From …

Re-Occupation : Buildings, Ideology And Decolonization In Northeastern China, Ziyu Wei

Masters Theses

Buildings often survive longer than a single human generation, and many witness significant transitions from generation to generation. When we approach varied eras that have washed over an unchangeable building like tides eroding a bank repeatedly, how can we distinguish the building’s primary identity and judge its fate?

In Northeastern China, a Japanese dormitory survives as a witness of Manchurian colonization, early socialism and the economic recession that caused its abandonment until today. The city also suffers a swiftly aging population and brain drain as the brightest of the youth move away. How can an intervention build dialogue and revive …

Envisioning Work : An Autism Friendly And Anxiety Free Office, Naixin Ren

Masters Theses

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. It is estimated that worldwide 1 in 160 children has ASD, and in China, about 1 in 69 children has ASD.

There are many successful educational environments specially designed for people on the spectrum to support learning, understanding, and behaving. However, after graduating, it is usually very hard for people on the spectrum to move toward independence because there is a huge difference between school environments and office environments.

Most office environments are designed to meet the …

Exploration And Autonomy : Wild Children In The City, Xiaojie Li

Masters Theses

From 1980 to 2000, China adopted a teacher-centered kindergarten model with the main purpose of imparting knowledge, leaving children in a passive learning environment. Since 2001, this system’s adverse impact on child development has become clear to preschool educators. As a result, teachers have begun to consider kid friendly environments and games. However, even these games were arranged with a top-down, teacher-centered structure.

An education revolution has emerged that aims to release the freedom of children by prioritizing their needs, paying respect and trust to exploration, as well as giving children choice. One pioneering philosophy applying this principle is Anji …

Re-Source : Re-Source Your Resources, Raquel Swartz

Masters Theses

Humans are using all of the earth’s natural resources and releasing unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, endangering the planet’s viability. The implementation of sustainable design is no longer a luxury, and though eco-conscious construction and architecture have gained traction and have proven to reduce the built world’s contribution to the carbon footprint, interior design lags behind, even though it too, can reduce the industry’s negative impact. If architects and interior designers further consider the interaction between humans and objects with interior space through the awareness of sustainable practices, materials, and finishes, the built world’s contribution to the …

Re-Connect, Xin Ren

Masters Theses

We live in an era of contradiction: the order of the external world always stands in an ambiguous relationship to individual autonomy. In this time of high industrialization and fast paced efficiency, the development of technology has not only greatly reduced the distance between space and time, but also causes the over-coupling effect in social division: institutions are formed with a dangerously strong and stable dependence on each other. This excessive reliance on one another weakens their independence and resilience. Meanwhile, in this hyper-connected society, access to instant satisfaction through consumption and fragmented entertainment is the norm. Similar to the …

The Ultimate Task Of Public Libraries : Introducing Architecture As Pedestal, Elaine Wu

Masters Theses

Most cultural institutions are housed in one of two kinds of architecture: either to show off the structure or building style or to appreciate the preciousness and identity of the object(s) it contains. The first kind focuses more on the architecture itself, and its function is not defined by the outside appearance. For the second kind, the architecture aims to serve as a support or pedestal, where the form is a result of needs based on different objects contained.

For libraries, architecture should never be the protagonist. Libraries should champion the aura of books, just as museums exhibit their collections. …

Behind Appearance : Hidden Dimensions In The Work Of Wassily Kandinsky And Paul Klee, Ning Ding

Masters Theses

What is the feel like to be a successful artist?

Works being appreciated,being valuable,become famous all over the world?

But what is under? What is behind? The audience seems never to know the story as well as the artworks.

Take an example. When you look at The Scream of Edward Munch, what do you see?

A melting image, a disgusting face, or the derived emoji, which is so popular on the SNS?

What's really behind the painting is Edward Munch's illness, and decades of struggling under sickness, madness, and death.

Most times, when the audience enjoys painting, the imagination can …

Living Under Surveillance, Fan Jia

Masters Theses

Our first impression about surveillance will always likely relates to with advanced technology. However, advanced technology is the means that only awakens our consciousness of surveillance but is not the birth of surveillance. It has been embedded in our lives in our lives all the time for generations. Before the age of technology blooming, surveillance was carried out by the human eye, and this mode continues always. My thesis starts from our daily relationships, and analyzes how surveillance happens around us within those relationships and people interactions.

This thesis proposes a surveillance system in a specific city: —Washington D.C., which …

Remembering Culture In The Modern Era : Cultural Center Spa Grössling, Alex Trajanov-Godmas

Masters Theses

Review and explanation of the important questions. Culture, tradition and heritage are important terms in a country’s history. Once these terms are no longer present or forgotten about, the country suffers, therefore this problem needs a solution.

Tea Journeys : Exhibition As Experience, Liujun Liao

Masters Theses

In the past, the public came to see the exhibition because it was a rare opportunity to learn about the culture on the other side of the earth.

With the development of science and technology, exhibition forms are becoming more and more diverse. People can see more exhibits and smaller details without leaving home.

Therefore, I would like to ask: " When it becomes so convenient to get information in modern life, is there any reason for people to enter the exhibition hall?" "When people go into the exhibition hall, what do people really want to get? ”“What can be …

Field In Adaptive Reuse : Discussion Of The Existence Of The Field And Its Influence, Yilun Shao

Masters Theses

In a building like a pavilion, the walls are abstracted into pillars, and this hollowed -out design aesthetically reflects the concept of negative space in Asian aesthetics. The creation of the field is not by the enclosure of wall, but through the radiation of the pavilion’s spirit to create a negative space with fuzzy boundaries. If the spirits which dwell in the pavilion cannot radiate outward but must be contained within, visitors will not see this buildings, but sculptures form.

What is fascinating about architecture is that it can divide the space so that people enter and feel the effects …

Integration As A Catalyst For Change : School For Rohingya Children, Naeera Ali

Masters Theses

Ruplal house, built during the rise and growth of the merchant class in Dhaka, is now neglected and decaying. How can this space be repurposed as an education center for refugee children, become a long term stratergy for basic education that provide relief,hope for the community of refugees and revive the dying heritage of Old Dhaka?

The Rohingya refugee crisis is said to be the world’s fastest growing human rights disaster. The Rohingya are an ethnic group consisting of a majority of a Muslim population who have lived in the Buddhist majority country of Myanmar. Due to ongoing violence the …

Architecture As Magnet : Extension To Fort Adams, Mingyi Hu

Masters Theses

According to a study from KADK (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture), social interaction mainly depends on whether people have common interests, such as the economy, politics or ideology.¹ However, it is difficult for some who feel they have different experiences or beliefs to interact within a group, which will affect their psychological state. These people need a physical environment designed to create conditions for more extensive and effective communication opportunities.

Architecture can provide a platform to help people gather together, share ideas, and create a sense of community. Architecture that holds visitors in an enclosure …

Playfulness : Exploring Experience Through A Trajectory, Yingjing Qu

Masters Theses

People of all ages feel from time to time a lack of freedom because of spiritual, physical and material constraints. The young are anxious about the future, while the old are bound by the body and both feel the pressure of the social and economic context. The desire to escape the social order makes public space
a window to catharsis. People’s behavior in public spaces like streets, surrounded by strangers, tends to be more uninhibited.

Playing games embodies several benefits such as the increasing of one’s imaginative ability, mind-hand coordination, enhancing of creativity, passing time and ‘play’ characteristics of seeing …

Re-Activating Collective Memory : Museum As A Workshop, Sfoorti Sachdev

Masters Theses

Many of Delhi’s national treasures are dying due to apathy and neglect. With centuries of history embedded in these places, they lie in the heart of densely populated ‘urban villages’ and yet are isolated, increasingly subject to vandalism and encroachment - their cultural significance seemingly lost. In the last century, the collective memory of the communities around these monuments has been shaped by poverty, depression and an influx of immigrants with no prior connections to these places. This is clearly illustrated by the state these monuments are suffering.

Research suggests that sense of identity comes from a sense of place. …

Personal Trauma, Community Healing : Reimagining Sanctuary For Survivors Of Gun Violence, Eva Mccarthy

Masters Theses

of communities who suffer through high levels of gun violence experience post-traumatic stress disorder at rates equal to military veterans. At the same time, religious participation in the US has plummeted, and churches, once the center of many of these communities, have lost their value as support systems. These structures must become a new type of sanctuary for those dealing with pervasive, gun-related trauma. The reimagined typology will prioritize progressive, sustained benefit over revelatory moments of transcendence, by opening sightlines through a space of safety and support to the outside.

The decaying Bethel Holy Temple Church in North Philadelphia is …

[Super] Structure : Expanding The Network / Reclaiming The Path, Anna Albrecht

Masters Theses

In 2016, the Human Rights Council at the United Nations declared internet access to be a basic human right. In rural West Virginia, 30% of residents do not have access to reliable broadband internet. This lack of access limits economic development and opportunities and contributes to the divide between rural and urban communities. That divide has resulted in, among many things, a dearth of innovative design in rural America.

Often with technological and economic progress comes homogeneity, erasure, and environmental devastation; the latter has been endemic in the region since the Industrial Age. By reviving a network of fire lookout …

Road Home : Family Renovation In Rural China, Guijiadong Lin

Masters Theses

As a traditionally rural- based country, the countryside of China has undergone drastic changing settings since the hasty urbanization procedure and township development over last thirty years. One outstanding manifestation is how residents take shelter. The centuries-old dwellings with rich ornamentation or great historical value caught eyes of researchers, designers and developers, while the rising defective undertow in civilian houses is somewhat neglected.

Rural residences are no longer related to their local context, through wide acceptance of western styles and easy access to modern, standard non-regional materials. In the lower Yangtze River region (also known as Jiangnan district), where the …

Breaking Barriers, Opening Doors : Integrating The Formerly Incarcerated With Community, Ruoyi Song

Masters Theses

We have all experienced the trauma of building new relationships from little or nothing. Some of us were able to blend in quickly, while others remain outsiders or foreigners. As a student studying interior architecture, I believe that design can influence human behavior and help to reshape the relationship between communities.

485 Plainfield St, a historical building built for ice cream production is currently owned by an organization called “Open Doors,” who provides temporary housing and skill classes for the formerly incarcerated to re-enter society. Interactions between the surrounding community and formerly incarcerated are infrequent, and due to the lack …

Exhibiting Materiality : Object For Love Attachment Therapy, Yunhong Hu

Masters Theses

What is the interaction material culture and the monetary value of museum objects through by highlighting the opposite sides of exhibited objects’ value and design commodities’ commercial value, an exhibition aims to question and confuse the traditional understanding and distinction between museum objects and design commercial objects. Corporate museums serve as the reference for this discussion because they represent a hybrid of a traditional museum whose exhibited objects are also commercial products collected for their material worth. The exhibition space mixes traditional museum objects with retail design merchandise in order to encourage visitors to discuss the meaning of material value, …

Gassed Out, Toban Shadlyn

Masters Theses

As the automobile industry continues to evolve with car sharing services, electric vehicles and soon autonomous driving, the infrastructure that supports our present-day car culture will become obsolete. While the current advancement focuses on the future of car design and accompanying policies, there is a need to consider the evolution of our infrastructure from an adaptive reuse standpoint.

Among the different kinds of automotive infrastructure, gas stations in particular, are the most environmentally problematic yet advantageous due to their abundance. The conversion of gas stations, however, is not a new notion. While these sites have been renovated into cafés, restaurants, …

The Atascadero Printery, Kaylee Efstathiu, Jami Hahn, Tyler Pizarro, Elizabeth Townsend, Mark Luzi

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Threshold, Kristin King

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the nature of interiority and exteriority, the relationship between the centered inner self and the peripheral, the physicality of occupying the inside of a space or viewing that space from the outside.

Threshold, Kristin King

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the nature of interiority and exteriority, the relationship between the centered inner self and the peripheral, the physicality of occupying the inside of a space or viewing that space from the outside.