Architecture Commons^™

Sponge Logics | Rethinking Thresholds Through A Porous Mass, Tanvi Sanghvi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the separation and distinction between the envelope and the mass in contemporary architecture is to be resisted. Architect and theorist, Greg Lynn, argues that mass “is not only the outward shape of a building; it’s also the projection of shape, plan organization, spatial and sectional type, and façade”1.This critical reevaluation of the mass, and its relationship to the interior spaces and the building’s face, is particularly pertinent to the modern construction in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The character of the historicist and postmodern buildings that make up Jaipur is made solely based on the applied façade. This …

Releasing The Unconsciousness | Visualizing The City, Taihui Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores how subway stations lost their identity as strategic node of connectivity which constructed the prevailing image of New York City. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Sigmund Freud famously compared the human mind to the city of Rome. He argues that both contain strata of memory and history which have accumulated over the years through a messy and ad-hoc process. Like Rome, New York City also has a layered history, albeit not as deep.

This thesis contends that the subway entrance serves as an experiential entre into the unconscious experience of the unknown elements of the past. …

Housing In Zurich, Switzerland, Edward Asfour

Architecture Senior Theses

Housing in Zurich, Switzerland

Britton Award Winner, Thesis Board.

Field Urbanism: Collective Form And The City, Pt. 3, Ann O'Connell

Architecture Senior Theses

This project employs a tactical approach to the design process. Spatial patterns and local relationships regulate form and program to facilitate these hybrid social constructions. The development of field elements re-organizes in terms of interrelationships and functions, creating infinite possible combinatory logics in the evolution of the neighborhood. These logics negotiate the threshold between figure and field, accommodating programmatic indeterminacy with architectural specificity to thicken and intensify, producing an alternative "collective" urbanism.

Field Urbanism: Collective Form And The City, Pt. 2, Ann O'Connell

Architecture Senior Theses

This project employs a tactical approach to the design process. Spatial patterns and local relationships regulate form and program to facilitate these hybrid social constructions. The development of field elements re-organizes in terms of interrelationships and functions, creating infinite possible combinatory logics in the evolution of the neighborhood. These logics negotiate the threshold between figure and field, accommodating programmatic indeterminacy with architectural specificity to thicken and intensify, producing an alternative "collective" urbanism.

Field Urbanism: Collective Form And The City, Pt. 1, Ann O'Connell

Architecture Senior Theses

This project employs a tactical approach to the design process. Spatial patterns and local relationships regulate form and program to facilitate these hybrid social constructions. The development of field elements re-organizes in terms of interrelationships and functions, creating infinite possible combinatory logics in the evolution of the neighborhood. These logics negotiate the threshold between figure and field, accommodating programmatic indeterminacy with architectural specificity to thicken and intensify, producing an alternative "collective" urbanism.

Parking, Alyssa Francis

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project re-conceptualizes the parking garage structure from a building type deemed as an utilitarian object, to a multi-functioning public service provider, to not only store cars for the individual but also as an infrastructured platform for providing urban amenity, providing much needed urban public space. This structure looks at the concept of garage to look beyond its normative function of purely car storage, and sees the potential of using the building both with and without vehicles, to ultimately act as a form of urban rehabilitation.

Compact Community, Abdulrazzak Alanjari

Architecture Thesis Prep

Small and compact spaces achieve a certain lightness

and “smallness” that large-scale architecture obviously

cannot achieve. The contention for my thesis is to explicitly

study the obsession with the large in Kuwait and

reasons for it, which might include climate, expanses of

land, and rapid oil industry development. By doing so,

a new typology for small spaces can be introduced in

Kuwait City and integrated into Al Sawaber Residential

community, the site, by expanding on certain elements

unique to the foreign labor communities and formally

creating spaces for that community, since they tend to

live with so little (space, luxuries, …

Dwelling In Density: A Study On High Density Residential Architecture, David Domke

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to propose an high density plan for Philadelphia by cataloging existing vacancy levels, define variously dense formal typologies within these vacancies, and strategically implement high-density architectures within the existing urban fabric to accomodate future growth.

Spatializing The Corridor, Mengru Li

Architecture Thesis Prep

The goal of this thesis project is to develop a model for a public corridor that would serve as the basis for the future development in the planning of a new district.

Active Density: Stimulating The Urban Domain In High-Rise Social Housing Developments, Heather Dela Cruz

Architecture Thesis Prep

I propose to retain the benefits of vertical housing and improve upon it by

up-zoning the block and building low-rise, high-density mixed-income structures

on the site’s perimeter. The new construction will include public amenities that are

lacking in the immediate area such as retail, restaurants, work space, and public

service facilities. Through adaptive re-use of mega blocks will be reclaimed. This

mixed-use approach to the expanded occupancy will also restore the diversity that

was lost when the towers were first built.

Urban Systems Of The Refugee Camp, Julia Slater

Architecture Thesis Prep

Upon completion of my research I will design a system that allows the

flexibility needed by the people as well as the control the government

and NGO’s are responsible for providing. I will focus on the way playing

with the relevant scale can help to bridge the gap between indi

vidual

and group. Special configuration is a key component in forming

communal spaces. The integration of these spaces on every scale is

fundamental to achieving success. Issues of permanence can be addressed

though alternative building methodologies, and the lessons

learned from indigenous people.

Architecture Connects, Ryan Desilva

Architecture Thesis Prep

The envelope is the transaction zone between the ideal climate and the natural climate. The envelope has an important use as a driver for adaptive building use.

House As Mediator: Integrative Typology As Connector Between Land And Sea, Samantha Kudish

Architecture Thesis Prep

Rather than the water being an obstacle to coastal residential communities, water can act as an opportunity. Instead of barricading these areas from the water, integrating it with the area would create communities that are capable of living in unison with the ocean. This can introduce new typologies of housing that can withstand the continuing rise of sea levels. Blurring the line between land and sea by living with the sea will allow coastal regions to stay afloat, benefiting from ever-changing water conditions. A proposed new housing typology would introduce a new program to coastal neighborhoods, rather than putting up …

Sitopia, Cesi Kohen

Architecture Thesis Prep

In the projected future urban world where NAFTA doesn't exist, fresh/organic fruits and vegetables are produced within the urban realm. The goal is to create a symbiotic relationship between agriculture and architecture; analyze how spaces and typologies are challenged in order to accommodate farming; and systematize new spaces through restructuring of the code.

The Manifest Narrative, Kelsey Requeña Devries

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I posit that architecture can serve to expose the vital immigration, labor, and consumption processes underlying food production in the United States through a clear narrative made evident by techniques of sequence, mimesis, and composition in a functional monument containing an Immigration Advocacy Center, Community Garden, and Farmer’s Market for the city of Sacramento.

In architecture, narrative is the observation, interpretation, and implementation of ideas developed through stories. The architect formulates an observation about something in a society that exists or should exist in the form of a story, finds a time and place where the narrative is applicable, and …

American Picnickers, Yuxiang Luo

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This thesis investigates the eating practice of American commuters. The issue of food is addressed through a social lens, affected by spatial conditions. The project thus aims to reinvent the operation of roadside food business, through the design of a series of spatial conditions that activate new social relations.

Commuters’ eating practice is problematic; the drive-thru as a prevalent building and business typology has created spatial and social isolation for various parties in the society. The social isolation has two implications. On one hand, as drivers eat alone in the car, they are isolated from other eaters, thus degrading the …

2041: A Communal Life, Nathaniel Thomas Danciger

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I posit that an architecture of collective cultural spaces, shared human and animal habitat, and affordable local building techniques, implemented through the design of a co-housing community, would promote a collaborative and communal way of life in harmony with the natural landscape and offer a model for the future development of former agricultural and suburban sites in a manner preferable to the current practices of the American suburb. This project is concerned with redefining the way that people in the United States will occupy rural landscapes in the future. The site for this new co-housing model is a field outside …

Five Rings To Rule Them All / Olympus The Architecture Of The Olympics & Global Media, Harsha Royyuru

Honors Capstone Projects - All

900 million people across the globe tuned in to watch the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony on television. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) own broadcasting division circulated over 100,000 hours of coverage to respective national networks, extending the breadth of the Olympic telecast into every one of the 204 participating countries. At the conclusion of the Games, more than 1 billion views had been recorded on NBC’s YouTube webpage specifically designed for Olympic coverage. In a time when occupation of space via digital media is the preferred method of experience, what is the agency of the architect? Stadiums once designed …

Engaging Holistic Health Through Active Design In Public Space, Alec J. Hembree

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The design proposal for a health center and urban network of active pathways in Pittsburgh, PA is the cumulative result of two semesters of research and a partenership between myself and Emily Sholder (non-honors; B. Arch. May 2014). The ideas behind the research and design work included within originated from the pressing need to address physical health issues, educational shortcomings, and community disparagement present in many cities in the United States today. By addressing these issues at the scale of the individual, the school, and the urban environment through design in public space, we feel that architecture can empower people, …

Representing Rurality, Carolina Esther Jimenez

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Architecture is a system of representation. Architecture’s power is that through representation we may change previously constructed conceptions and misperceptions, and ultimately it can transform patterns of spatial inhabitation. Through words, images, drawings, and built work, we define modes of experiencing space. This project seeks to redefine Nebraska as a territory of critical social, political, economic, and physical importance through architectural representations.

The Knowledge Accident Situating The Built University Within The Virtual, Alanna Beth Rosenblatt

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract

The increasing un-sustainability of the built university and the rise of the apparent mass democratization or synchronization of higher education through the virtual Massive Open Online Course [MOOC] is occurring concurrently with the mutation of the historically grounded Accident into the Knowledge Accident. The standardization of higher education through the MOOC has created the conditions for the Knowledge Accident, the “integral accident”, of the built university. This is where we find the present state of the university, in a moment of crisis grounded in unconstrained "progress".

The current form of the MOOC, begun in 2011, has expanded and evolved …

The Regional Exchange: From Main Street To Shopping Mall To App Market, Chris Depalma

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The heart of our existence lies within regions. Loosely defined, these territories are defined by what we do, not by what we call them. It is where we live, work, shop and socialize, characterized by an infinite multitude of interactions with other people and environments. The concept of “regionalism” is best described as a set of overlapping factors that together characterize the shared interests and dynamics of its people and environment, whether social, cultural, ecological or something else. This dynamic, constantly-changing overlap is most apparent at the center of the region, and least so at its edges.

Regionalism is especially …

Fun-Ctional Mega-Structure: A Formula For What Is Beyond Necessities In East Asian Cities, Sooji Jung

Honors Capstone Projects - All

No abstract provided.

“Rationalization Takes Command: Zeilenbau And The Politics Of Ciam,” Excerpt From Building Culture: Ernst May And The New Frankfurt Initiative, 1926-1931, Susan R. Henderson

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Chapter seven, of Building Culture,"Rationalization Takes Command: Zeilenbau and the Politics of CIAM," addresses the New Frankfurt housing and settlement initiative at the onset of the depression of 1929. The shift into decline, saw some initiatives completed, others stifled, and new ones emerge. Thus the 1929 CIAM Congress held in Frankfurt began with performances of experimental music, poetry and dance, and ended with the consecration of the existence minimum as the new housing standard. Meanwhile, Ernst May pushed forward with a revised housing strategy based on the minimal dwelling, the existence minimum, and the superblock (Zeilenbau). The CIAM Congress …

Connection Through Discontinuity: Tactical Urbanism In Yongsan, Du Young Yoon

Architecture Thesis Prep

No abstract provided.

Residential Square In The 21st Century: Applying A Typology To Create A New Urban Morphology, Elizabeth Whittington

Architecture Thesis Prep

"As a low-rise high-density mixed-use typology, the reconsideration of the residential square can provide a new urban morphology that densifies residential zones, while providing safe public spaces. In addition, I assert that through its combination of juxtaposed functional uses, unit typology the language of the façade, the historical European residential square, can articulate the identity of residents."

Forum Contemperanueus: Re-Connecting Society Through Public Interaction, Jonathan Bruno

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This new typology will serve a great social significance

in any city it is placed in. Its ability to gather and withhold a

large number of people is its fundamental importance. Today’s

society has lost its interactivity. Through digital technologies,

more and more of us are glued to smartphones, laptops and

tablets. If this trend continues without any intervention, it will

result in us living “along together.” The public forum was the first

feature of any and all forms of “civitas” for thousands of years.

We are responsible for bringing this urban feature back to our

contemporary cities before it …

Housing Indeterminacy: Responsive Design For Diverse And Changing Households, Mark Sousa

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This project hopes to create a new outlook on the future of housing design. Ray Forrest wrote, “The pace of demographic change need not be that dynamic to outpace the capacity of markets or states to provide appropriate dwellings in appropriate locations. […] Dwelling placement or adaptation is always likely to lag.”2 The preceding statement reflects the belief that housing is static and rigid, and that dwelling replacement or major structural adaptation is necessary to accommodate a continually evolving population. On the contrary, responsive housing can release significant pressure on housing systems by anticipating change and providing a lower cost …

Corporeal Meeting Place: The Racialization Of The Suburban Demographic, Brandon Lee Maldonado

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The Modernist movement was able, through the industrial revolution, to eliminate the role of façade as load bearing member, fetishizing transparency. However, this new preeminence of visuality was not applicable to the suburban home, with its predisposition toward the creation and control of privacy. What separates the suburban condition from the urban, in addition to the role of the single-family home as purchasable symbol representing an ideal, is the front yard. Instead of a simple A-B division across a singular surface, the yard creates a “deep” façade, a series of layered spaces serving as filtration; sidewalks, fences, plantings, yards, and …