Architecture Commons^™

Green Blot District | Considering Low Density Neighborhoods, Tom Arleo

Architecture Senior Theses

By adjusting the texture of now declined early 20th Century outer-urban neighborhoods to adopt low density blocks, new zoning and its resultant architecture can produce an intricate spatial fabric that mediates between individual customization and collective suburban image essential to American detached dwelling. Overlapping functions, spaces, and surfaces offer a new cohesion necessary for developing physically and socially tight-knit communities in a thinning, object-made fabric.

This thesis rethinks suburban practices at the scale of the house, lot, and block, in order to speak directly to issues of building autonomy, non-spatial surface and volume conventions, and residential-program-only zoning. Creating the scheme …

Phasing Permanence Through Flux, Estefania Maldonadov, Andrew Filkoff

Architecture Senior Theses

The "post-industrial revolution" has, in its wake, given rise to a swath of cities suffering economic decline and social deterioration. These "shrinking cities" have experienced a loss in population to their surrounding suburbs and other dormitory settlements. Once thriving cities have been reduced to functioning as overdeveloped business parks where people come to work for five days a week - but then leave each evening to return to suburban ideal. It is unreasonable to assume that any masterplan alone can promote the future success of a shrinking city. Rather, this thesis contends that by dissecting the historical narratives and spatial …