Architecture Commons^™

From The Church Of Disco To Waterfront Ruins: An Analysis Of Gay Space, Liam Nolan

Senior Projects Spring 2019

My senior thesis is an analysis of gay space from the late 1970s to 1980s New York, and I’m questioning how themes of private vs. public, accessibility, race, and economic status dictated where one searched for gay self-expression and community in the built environment. In order to understand how queer spaces functioned architecturally and socially, I’ve chosen to research two opposites: The Saint and the west side piers. The former was a private club in New York City from 1980-1988 and was considered to be the “Vatican of Disco” with a planetarium that could hold over a thousand men, two …

Audio To Architecture: House Music As A Form Generator, Polina Timchenko

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Contemporary music undergoes similar process of creation to that of the design process through computation and variation. House music as a representation of contemporary culture has a layered structure that allows specific characteristics to identify it as house music. Song components can vary and mix in different orders that form new dynamic compositions. I am going to explore the idea that every house music component can be translated into geometry with the use of parametric design techniques.

Surveilled, Rachel Swetnam

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Debord's "Society the Spectacle" and Delouze’s Deleuze's "Society of Control" both imagine a dystopian future for humanity in a world governed by excessive self-advertisement and mass surveillance. This thesis begins with the observation that, sadly, their two visions have become a reality. Current technologies log our movements through GPS satellite data, and photographs taken by closed-circuit security cameras, or by passers-by on a public street, are constantly cross-checked against databanks of previously-compiled biometric profiles. Every movement and transaction is digitized and recorded, accessible to ever-widening networks of information exchange and surveillance. These data-networks are altering the manner by which people …

Adhocracy, Sara Denney

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Adhocracy Sara Denney The Situationists of the 1960’s were cultural revolutionaries critical of passive consumerism and encouraged the reawakening of everyday life. In the spirit of the Situationists, and operating as an “ad-hocing” machine, this project proposes a machine to repurpose objects of everyday life -- reimagining what things might become and transcending limits of their inherent definitions. Why can’t a stroller be a shower head? Categories by default create opposing forces within a situation. Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet who influenced situationist thought, coined the quote “Il faut changer la vie”, “we must change life”. By freeing things from …

Fault, Katharine Fritz

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

3,000 people died, 80% of the city was destroyed. On the morning of April 18, 1906 an estimated 7.9 magnitude earthquake echoed through the city of San Francisco. Waterlines, having been destroyed during the quake, resulted in a fire that engulfed the city and burned for 3 days after.Its epicenter was 3 miles off the coast of city surging waves of destruction from this center, this is the site of the first phased memorials designed along the San Andreas Fault system. This kinetic landscape of the San Andreas Fault stretches the length of californias coast continuously destroying and taking lives, …

Bio-Architecture Feedback Loop, Nicole Samuelu

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Biomimicry is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. There is an incredible opportunity for architecture to use biomimicry as a model for design in which a resulting architecture can become an operating part of its environment. While this project will consider the efficiency and beauty of nature, those elements will not be the focus. This thesis will aim to create a more cohesive relationship between architecture and its environment by treating the human-made structures as if they were a participating member of its habitat and part of the …

Architecture Of Adaptation: Structure In Nature, Salman Sajwani

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The concept of a piece of architecture taking on adaptive qualities is based on the ability that a system can effectively respond to the environment and the evolving programs. Architects strive to create designs that respond to external changes, creating a challenge with kinetic and the immovable aspects of a building, which can be identified as the systems of walls, ceilings, and columns. This system however, creates the foundation of a successful built environment but also hinders the adaptive and flexible qualities. These systems are implemented permanently and confined to the site and program that has been defined to them. …

Transfused Architecture: Ascent Of A Developing World, Sandy Ferrier

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Because there is a lack of adequate health care facilities in developing countries, there is a substantial amount of unrealized, optimal health gains and effective, architectural interventions which are not fully realized. With 80% of its population living below the world poverty line, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. The United Nations Development Program’s 2014 report shows the extents of poverty at 75% mainly in the rural areas of Haiti. Only 25% of households benefit from adequate sanitation, thus people become more susceptible to infections and diseases. Reoccurring natural catastrophes have also dented the country's …

The 21st Century Energy Hub, Farhaan B. Samnani

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Developing countries face problems like pollution, unsafe construction, poverty and lack of clean stable energy. These areas are the most in need of sustainable and net positive design since they lack the resources to design long-term solution. An architecture that can make energy affordable through onsite rapidly renewable resources, help reduce on site pollution and provide stable housing would be a welcome intervention. As we approach the new century, buildings will aim to become an energy hub. Cities do not look at a building as an energy source. Currently Energy production centers sit on the outskirts of the city. But …

The Work Of Living Art, Empathy, And The Creation Of An Aesthetics Of Perception In The Early Twentieth Century, Sarah Peil Winstead

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Adolphe Appia (1862-1928), theorist and pioneering voice of the New Stagecraft Movement in twentieth century theatre, was a transformative influence on the history of scenic design. This paper looks at the links between Appia’s theories in theatre scenic design and contemporaneous German aesthetic theory. At the time German theorists like Adolf Hildebrand and August Schmarsow developed an aesthetic theory, Einfülung or empathy theory, based on the connection between the human body and perception. I will argue this theory influenced not only Appia and his contemporaries it also shaped the landscape of mid-century theatre design. Appia’s own theories revolved around three …

The Psychological Impact Of Architectural Design, Natalie Ricci

CMC Senior Theses

The interplay between architectural design and human psychology is significant, yet it remains largely unnoticed or even ignored both in and outside the design industry. Moreover, the relationship between design and psychology is not only consequential, it is bidirectional. On the one hand, successful design has been shown to have clear psychological and physiological impacts; on the other, psychology, human experience, and the function of our neurological systems all play a significant role in what we perceive to be successful design. This thesis endeavors to create an understanding of how that complex relationship evolved and how it works in today's …

Rigs Of Refuge: Spatial Agency And Its Role In Conflict, Brittany Lauren Mcgraw

Masters Theses

Architecture is an inherently political endeavor. As such, designers should carefully consider the spatial dialogue that the built environment creates between those who control spaces and those who use them. In times of crisis, this dialogue often ceases to be an equal exchange, pushing users’ needs aside and exerting authority in the most expedient way possible.

This thesis proposes that amidst settings of conflict, hyper-responsive architectural systems can counteract landscapes of authority by returning spatial agency to users. As the means of providing such a system, oil rigs should be repurposed as a network of deployable crisis response hubs.

Logistical Bodies Of Fulfillment, Michael Steven Frush

Masters Theses

existence occurs in a spatial assembly of multiple scalar experiences that is intensified and brought to perception by the exponential advancement of a virtual extension.

the physical realm that human cognition experiences acts as a bound container influenced by natural law and trusted forces. the virtual realm exists as a medium through which linkages are made that suppose unseen law, forces, and connections. the human existence experiences an interface between the multiplicities of the physical and the virtual. as technologies advance exponentially the recognition of a multiple temporality is intensified by digital networks and spatial extensions. the trusting of physical …

[Un]Known Lines, Kimberly M. Faber

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

An exploration of the innate changes of the passing of time, was accomplished first by investigating nature’s way of documenting time through layers within ice cores in Antarctica and then through the design of architectural interventions that marked and documented the passing of time through the D.C. area on the National Mall through an exchange of storytelling. Theses interventions began to change + manipulate + document buildings in the D.C. area. The information was sent back to the National Mall and later the information (story) was sent to yet another area.

The Farmacy, Emilie E. Dunnenberger

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The human population has practiced natural, herbal forms of medicine since the beginning of recorded healthcare. Only in the past 150 years have our ideas of healthcare evolved to what we know today, a reactive and immediate response to disease and illness. Using the science of phytotherapy and the processes of herbalism, this network of spaces work together to offer a traditional form of healing in a modernized setting. Prototyped in the city of Philadelphia, The FARMacy works alongside existing buildings to treat patients through an alternative yet instinctive form of medicine.

Building (V.) Gastronomy, Zoe C. George

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Through experimentation and examination of the transformations of food, comes the architecture of food processes.

Food is not just a means of survival, it brings forth colors, textures, smells, and even memories that engage the senses and stimulate our brains.

Three experiments titled Pigment, Ferment, and Leaven examine these transformations, resulting in a series of devices designed to engage the user and invite them to look, touch, smell, taste and create.

Pigment explores how a solid form becomes a liquid that has the ability to dye or avor. The container is designed to observe the jour- ney of the liquid …

Wal-Seum, Maya Chandler

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Designed as a museum of contemporary American history, Wal-seum proposes a new prototype museum that re-presents the commodities of today’s America as historical and cultural artifacts of our time. The museum’s design also borrows from the spatial and organizational techniques of Wal-mart, a place that so many Americans visit time and time again, and which is truly American architecture.

In the final proposal, each department of Wal-mart becomes redesigned as an exhibit in the museum, showcasing ordinary objects, taking cues from the cultural agendas of those items, and calling into question the values therein (i.e. the endless cycle of comparison …

Living Space : Client - Based Design For Assisted Living, Michael K. Adams

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Designing an assisted living facility with the client in mind. This project aims to create a space which encourages growth and progression for its residents by focusing on community, access to nature, sunlight, open spaces, increased living space, and flex spaces.

By working with the existing community and by emphasizing a program which focuses on the physical and mental needs of the residents, this building seeks to inspire and allow the residents to pursue their passions a manner that honors who they are and what they require.

Eulogy To Architecture: The Three-Dimensional Collage City Of Nostalgia, Molly A. Evans

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

In our time of existence on the Earth, human beings have designed and realized beautiful things. As we face the challenges that confront us today, we begin to understand the fragility of humankind’s creations. Many of the world’s cities and buildings lie in ruins, gazed at by tourists, studied by scholars, while more lie buried in the ground for hundreds of years, some never to be rediscovered. Everything around us is an accumulation of knowledge and ideas built upon for centuries, now facing questionable circumstances. Of course, the more recent Aleppo and other Middle Eastern cities have fallen subject to …

Formal Displacement, Savannah Grace Dixon

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

On Craft, William Lentjes

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

Craft is a relationship - a dialogue - between craftsman, tool, and material. Craft begins with the intent of all of these loci, and all of these loci are rooted in Being.

Being is known through the consciousness, awareness, and perception of a subject. Being is the inherent existence and totality of "what is."

Being crafts us; Craft imbues Being.

This thesis re-examines the pedagogical approach of an architectural education. The focus is placed on craft through presuppositionless phenomenology.

In an age of endless mechanized production and spiritless materialism, the practice of craft can teach us to return to the …

Clothedral, Jacob T. Holmes, Andres Munoz, Sam Tenreiro Theis, Marta Blachowicz

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Measuring Rapid Stillness, Alexis Porten

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Excess Capacity: Shared Space Possibilities In An E-Commercial Suburbia, Christina Lulich

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Anyone Can Architect, Christine Wright

Honors Projects

Because people often assume that one has to know architecture in order to study it, this interactive text makes it more approachable. Anyone Can Architect is an interactive sketch book introducing the basics of architecture to anyone from middle- and high-school students who are starting to explore different fields of study to those already studying and practicing architecture who might want to have fun with some of the basic principles. Not only does this text provide useful definitions of terms alongside some well-known examples, but it takes readers a step further by asking them to complete some specific tasks that …

Expanding Hope In Payatas, Rhea Cristine S. Bautista

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Informal settlements, also known as slums or squatter settlements, are a way of life for millions around the world, especially within urban centers. The challenge is to provide a better quality of life, both physically and socially. This thesis provides a critical look into the conditions, limitations, strengths, and hopes of the community of Payatas in Metro Manila, Philippines, with recommendations of measures to support and strengthen the community, by building upon the community’s positive elements to develop social impact.

A Defense For Night, Emily Jean Bingham

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Block 271, Reviving An Industrial Artifact, Jared Thomas Pohl

Masters Theses

Vacant industrial sites are scattered throughout our cities all across the country. These sites, these remnants of industry, are occupied by a very interesting category of buildings. They are artifacts from an industrial era that served very unique and specific functions. These service buildings suffered programmatic failure and have lost their vitality. They have entered a form of hibernation, waiting for the post-industrial epoch to wake them up.

The building stock under investigation makes up a large portion of the city’s structures. Identifiable by their heroic scale, clean articulated lines and tendency to be vacant, these service buildings raise arguments …

Interactions Between The Urban Environment And “The Homelessness”: Observations And Responses, Jeffrey Charles Stahl

Masters Theses

Homelessness and people living on the streets is a phenomenon that is facing every major urban center in the United States. These people are a commonality in the urban landscape and are often seen a problem to be fi xed. Due to the interactions between the urban environment and persons experiencing homelessness, there needs to be a paradigm shift in how policy is written and how we design an intervention for these forgotten people. The goal of this thesis is to gain a clearer understanding to what it is like to survive on the streets: how dose someone fi nd …

The Vestiges Of The Sacred, Benjamin James Wathen

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.