Architecture Commons^™

Reconnecting Mill Communities: An Architectural Intervention In Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Ronald Bujold

Masters Theses

For nearly a century, once prosperous mill communities throughout New England have struggled to adapt to ever-changing societal, cultural, and economic conditions. This project explores an architectural intervention for Fitchburg’s Rollstone Hill neighborhood, which seeks to reverse this trend by deploying a design strategy that begins with repurposing a 60,000 square foot mill. This strategy focuses on utilizing the fundamental and existing components of these planned communities—people, infrastructure, and economics—to cultivate the design and the relationships necessary to reconnect this neighborhood to the modern world.

Utopia In The Apocalypse: Creating A Framework Of Survival Systems, Bryan E. Toepfer

Masters Theses

As medicines continue to evolve, as well as our tendency to misuse and abuse them, viruses become more and more resilient. While the flu is largely an inconvenience which at its worst may result in a missed day of work, it bears the risk of returning to the days of old when it was a terminal disease. With the imminent risk of resistant super viruses emerging,New York Cityhas taken precautions to prepare for the worst case scenario. If deemed necessaryNew Yorkhas plans to completely quarantine and isolate the city from the world. This provides us with the perfect opportunity to …

Parametric Tools In The Design Process, Robert B. Marcalow

Masters Theses

The recent revolution in digital design tools is having a sea-change effect on the way buildings are designed. As the design process becomes increasingly automated, the focus of architectural expertise is shifting from the execution of drawings to the parametric definition of space and form. In other words, the architect will define a complex set of rules that, when entered into a program, create a building. This design process, coupled with digital fabrication, allows for control of the final product in ways that were previously impossible for designers. However, there is still much to learn about the ways these new …

The Community Cohesion Trail Of Brattleboro, Vermont, Patrick C. Kitzmiller

Masters Theses

The focus of this thesis is the creation of a series of architectural installations, bridges and gardens that link together via a pedestrian/bike path to connect the urban center of Main St. in Brattleboro, Vermont with the municipal park on the western end of town known as Memorial Park.

This thesis argues that the vast majority of community interactions take place along the sidewalks of the urban downtown, and in certain centers of activity in and around the area, such as Memorial Park. Thus, these two places have been chosen to test whether architecture can be used to bridge the …

Bridging The Gap: Community-Oriented Transit Development, Matthew C. Jones

Masters Theses

The bedroom community has become a prevalent and oft-criticized part of the modern architectural landscape. These suburban towns have continually grown radially outward from major cities across the nation since the end of the Second World War. While these suburbs have served to fulfill housing needs and wants of society, pressure to develop has often forced this growth to occur at a much more rapid rate than a traditional community. This rapid development has led to poorly implemented infrastructure, especially with regard to walkability and public transportation, which has fallen short of meeting the needs of users. These solutions in …

Reconsidering The Community Center - Restorative Strategies Within Existing Frameworks, John Gilbert Iii

Masters Theses

The overarching goal of this investigation is to determine how an existing building of spatial and programmatic rigidity can serve as a framework for designing a more integrated center for personal and community development. This project is an exploration of what a building can evolve into after its "shelf-life" has expired, with the aid of a reconsidered architectural vision. Formulated within criteria individual to its context, it is intended to be an investigation of possibility and the testing of a nascent potential, not an attempt to serve as a prescriptive, panacea solution. It is an examination of a creative vision …