Architecture Commons^™

Currency Museum, Costa Lopes

Building Case Studies

The metallic parasols generate shadow and urban scale.

St Louis Modern Residences As Cultural Sites, 1938–1951, Mariana Melin-Corcoran

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

In the 1930s and 1940s, the modern architectural style was first introduced in the United States through exhibitions and publications. The style was also introduced through the works of prominent architects, in particular through their own homes, where they were not beholden to a client. This investigation examines six modern residences in St. Louis during the foundational years of the style, analyzing their architectural, social, and cultural impact as their distinguished local designers navigated new ideas of modern living in the region. These modern houses primarily acted as private homes, but they were also works of art that intrigued and …

Cahokia's Hidden Landscape: Mound Building And Landscape Modification In The Ramey Field, John Grant Stauffer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cahokia is the largest known PreColumbian settlement north of Mexico and includes over 100 documented earthworks, generally called “mounds.” Additionally, it contains several plazas and occupation areas, or village areas, that are divided into management units called tracts. The Ramey Field is one such tract that includes mounds, plazas, village areas, and portions of large palisade walls that enclosed the central core of the site. The research findings presented here focus on the timing and scale of landscape modifications that included construction of multiple mounds and an East Plaza that co-existed with three other plazas oriented to the cardinal directions …

Mosque Architecture And Identity: A Study Of The Autochthonous Mosque In China, Yutong Ma

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

This thesis argues that an autochthonous mosque architecture exists in China, and this historical type adequately serves as a reference for contemporary mosque building in southeastern China in light of how it responded to the Chinese cultural and urban contexts. Many Hui Muslims and architects in this region refuse to consider historical mosque architecture built in traditional Chinese architectural style as their cultural references in constructing new mosques, as they believe that the traditional Chinese architectural language is insufficient to express their identity as Muslims. Instead, they prefer a collection of symbolic architectural elements to be used in mosque architecture …

Neighborhood Form And Social Cohesion: What Can We Learn Before And During Social Distancing, Wei Liu

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

Creating a more sustainable urbanism is among the most pressing issues facing the world. Social sustainability is often overlooked as a pillar of sustainable urbanism. A cohesive community, a core component of social sustainability, is an essential social resource in developing a fundamental unit of sustainable urbanism. Social cohesion has the ability to help communities navigate and overcome crisis, a quality of a cohesive neighborhood that has been brought to the forefront during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While the urban planning and design literature provides insights into the role of physical form in social cohesion more research is still needed. …

Art And Empathy: Self Discovery In A Dark Forest, Younser Lee

Graduate School of Art Theses

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 million people report feelings of depression, anxiety, and stress as the world moves at an increasingly rapid pace and faces unprecedented challenges. However, many ignore these negative thoughts and fail to acknowledge them as a serious issue. My art, which shares my own experiences, creates safe, cathartic places for viewers to think about their own emotional experiences. Crucial to this process is my use of daily objects and the creation of individualized, participatory, and multisensory experiences.

My art relates to daily life and the negative emotions that we experience daily. I …

Sustainable Diets For Planetary Health: A Study Of Indigenous Based Agri-Food Systems In A Community Of The Central Highlands Of Ecuador, Carlos Andres Gallegos-Riofrio

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In order to explore the psychosocial and agroecological dimensions of sustainable diets and their roles in the rural Andean community of Caliata in the Ecuadorian highlands, I conducted a community-centered participatory mixed-methods study. Thirty-nine focus groups and ten key informant interviews were conducted, recorded, translated, transcribed, and analyzed using three-stage coding. The information was triangulated using participant observation, local records, and descriptive statistics from a survey of 57 female household heads, which included a modified 48-hour dietary recall module. Rural appraisal research assessed agroecological dimensions. Ten purposively selected sites were studied alongside local informants in order to obtain diversity indexes …

The Meeting Of Water, Trash, & Us, Xue Ying

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

The sewer system is an integral part of an urban context. It separates types of wastewater, while also making our city cleaner and more beautiful. However, these pipes clog and back up, loosening the functional system. As a result, we now face unseen daily accumulations of trash and flooding. Due to the dynamic topography in this old part of the city, the Gateway Mall is a great place to highlight the sewer system and play play with the rules of the old sewer system. Humans have built up thousands of plastic and concrete pipes underground to move the wastewater. In …

Drawings Of A House: Reading Multiple Authorships In Architecture, John Knuteson

Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design Theses & Dissertations

This thesis reconsiders the notion of authorship in architecture by examining the drawings, characters and stories surrounding the W.A. Glasner House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1906 and located in the Chicago suburb of Glencoe, Illinois. The house stands out in Wright’s body of work as his first project to assimilate the dominant horizontality of the prairie style with complex topography, and for its unusual residential program. Perhaps more importantly, the process by which the Glasner House was designed, drawn and modified reveals a critical way of viewing authorship in architecture by introducing the contributions of multiple different characters. …

Steam Illusion, Tianhao Xiang

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Nuclear power plants provide 20% of the electricity in the United States. Heat from Uranium and chain reactions turns water into steam to run the generator. Being close to water is an important element to select the site for nuclear power plants. Most of the water elements are concentrated in east of Gateway Mall. This factor combined with the underground nuclear shelter in 22nd Judicial Circuit Court help me determine my site. The inner design is a microcosm of the nuclear cooling tower, the design can provide a warm atmosphere in the winter for visitors but at that same time …

Beyond Coal: Facing Our Landscape Legacy & Seeing Our Renewable Future, Danni Hu

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Beyond Coal is a park design project located at the Gateway Mall in St. Louis. Coal has been an essential source of power generation since the 1800s. Coal is a non-renewable resource and causes environmental pollution in the process of using coal to generate electricity. Since the 21st century, there has been a shift from coal to renewable resources. In Missouri, however, coal still generates more than 70 percent of electricity. Coal ash from power generation is buried underground, threatening soil and groundwater resources. Climate change is further exacerbated by the large amounts of greenhouse gases produced by power generation. …

Forest Evolution, Mengying Li

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

The forest we enjoy today is very different from the forest 100 years ago in Missouri. Forests have undergone excessive cutting during the 19th century. After that, US and state governments implemented forest regeneration programs that ensure harvests for the future. Forest can be a renewable resource if we manage it in a sustainable way. The site is separated into three parts, each part applying different strategy: selective cutting and natural regeneration, selective cutting and replanting, clear cutting and replanting. I will plant far more trees than I remove. I use a 20’ by 20’ grid to visualize the density …

Partition & Connection, Lei Liu

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Shipping, the transportation of materials goods, is a worldwide industry that influences everyone’s life. Shipping is part of our lives. We consume large amounts of material goods, but this process also implies a huge transportation process. This is significant because the emission of carbon dioxide from shipping also contributes to climate change. On average each, person in St. Louis is responsible for enough carbon emissions to fill 3 largest size containers, by volume. Additionally, railways and highways divide our cities. These are connectors but also dividers, and I am choosing my location year railroads. My site is also near the …

Laboratory For Suburbia, Emily Bryan, Jess Deangelo

Studio Books, Office for Socially Engaged Practice

This publication is an atlas of interrogative art and design practices. As an outgrowth of the Spring 2020 Laboratory for Suburbia course at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, this exhibition in the form of a book maps a series of student projects that speculatively approach suburban sites and communities. Organized into “neighborhoods” of resonant practices, it traces connections between individual projects and invites the reader to engage with the propositions they make.

Supported by the Divided City Initiative, Laboratory for Suburbia is a paradigm-shifting art and design project addressing the political possibilities of American suburbs. Members …

For Cheryl: The Long And The Short Of It, Rachel Lebo

Graduate School of Art Theses

Short stories are an indirect way of creating a truth by showing instead of telling. They are a way to observe and communicate a single idea. A short story for me is a vehicle for hiding my truth behind a character, exploring myself in the safety of an identity that is not my own. When I read Chunky in Heat, author A.M. Homes and I hide together behind her character, Cheryl, and find solidarity.

The following writings, paintings, and sculptures are collaborations between myself and the women of short story fiction. Those women being the authors, the subjects, and …

Concrete Poetry, Sara Ghazi Asadollahi

Graduate School of Art Theses

This text addresses my work as an artist and defines it in the context of the following subjects: The concept of ruins, which highlights the relationship between architecture and landscape; the formal and metaphorical dialectic between absence and presence in abandoned places; and the idea of dystopia, which emerges from that in-between space where the real dissolves into the imaginary. At the same time, my work is inspired by the visual culture of cinema and literature, principally within the science-fiction genre, and draws upon my observation of abandoned buildings in Tehran, my native city. These urban ruins are products of …

Situational Assemblage, Mikaela Gatewood

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

In this landscape-based studio, senior lecturer Jacqueline Margetts led a group of undergraduate architecture students in exploring ecological and public open space networks through the West End neighborhood in the City of St. Louis, focusing along the historic Hodiamont Tracks. The former streetcar line, which remains as a neglected service alley, will be converted to a Greenway by Great Rivers Greenway.

The studio was sited in the West End neighborhood in part due to its high number of native bee species, a vital component in maintaining biodiverse ecosystems and key indicator of environmental health. Students were charged with transforming sites …

Garden Intersection, Kai Smith

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

In this landscape-based studio, senior lecturer Jacqueline Margetts led a group of undergraduate architecture students in exploring ecological and public open space networks through the West End neighborhood in the City of St. Louis, focusing along the historic Hodiamont Tracks. The former streetcar line, which remains as a neglected service alley, will be converted to a greenway by Great Rivers Greenway. The studio was sited in the West End neighborhood in part due to its high number of native bee species, a vital component in maintaining biodiverse ecosystems and key indicator of environmental health. Students were charged with transforming sites …

Reproductive Benefits Of Sexual Cannibalism, Tobie Soumekh

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

No abstract provided.

Biodiverse Batway, Graham Mcallister

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

The little brown bat, Myotis Lucifugus, is the focus of this intervention. Not only is this tiny insect-eating bat an intriguing create in its own right, it is also an excellent pollinator and important contributor to the urban ecosystem; its droppings function as a superior fertilizer for plant growth.

A series of bat nesting boxes are placed on the verge between the Hodiamont Tracks and Laurel Street. Oak trees are planted within the paved surface of the inaccessible section of Laurel Street that runs parallel to the tracks forming a shady plaza and an active node. The oaks provide roosting …

Local Lavendar, Tiffany Zheng

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

In this landscape-based studio, senior lecturer Jacqueline Margetts led a group of undergraduate architecture students in exploring ecological and public open space networks through the West End neighborhood in the City of St. Louis, focusing along the historic Hodiamont Tracks. The former streetcar line, which remains as a neglected service alley, will be converted to a greenway by Great Rivers Greenway. The studio was sited in the West End neighborhood in part due to its high number of native bee species, a vital component in maintaining biodiverse ecosystems and key indicator of environmental health. Students were charged with transforming sites …

Gwen Giles Park Turtle Time Track, Martine Kushner

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

Gwen Giles Park Turtle Time Track

Gwen Giles park, the victim of misguided urban renewal efforts, still contains evidence of its rich ecological history and the significant role it once played in the community. The installation of a mile-long jogging track with distance markers and outdoor fitness equipment takes advantage of the altered topography and the rich bottomland soil; the legacy of a once-thriving prairie ecosystem.

The Catalpa tree, for which the park was previously named, is reintroduced, and a field of Goldenrod on the mounds becomes the catalyst for on-site biodiversity. Central to the proposal is the introduction of …

Birdscape Programming, Rebecca Shen

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

In this landscape-based studio, senior lecturer Jacqueline Margetts led a group of undergraduate architecture students in exploring ecological and public open space networks through the West End neighborhood in the City of St. Louis, focusing along the historic Hodiamont Tracks. The former streetcar line, which remains as a neglected service alley, will be converted to a greenway by Great Rivers Greenway.

The studio was sited in the West End neighborhood in part due to its high number of native bee species, a vital component in maintaining biodiverse ecosystems and key indicator of environmental health. Students were charged with transforming sites …

A Street-Scape Named Remembrance, Michele Chen

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

On May 21, 1996, streetcars rattled through the West End neighborhood for the very last time as #15 Hodiamont line, the only remaining streetcar route in St. Louis, ceased operation. Memory, however, persists and this intervention honors the Hodiamont service by creating an ecologically rich trailhead to the track's new life as a Greenway. Streetcars are celebrated through embedded track lanes, vertical handhold like insect hotels, and transformable furniture along tracks inserted into Gwen B. Giles park. Existing pavement cracks at the intersection of the Greenway and Hodiamont Avenue are seeded with Virginia mountain mint. As the mint spreads the …

Grandparenting Center: Connecting The Generations, Jessica Deangelo

2019 Spring Shared Sites: Design for Intergenerational Aging

Site: Hong Kong

Grandparenting Center: Connecting the Generations

This building represents a Grandparenting Center, a place with a variety of activities where grandparents or older guardians can take children for the day. One in three older adults in Hong Kong are caretakers for children at least one day a week, and in most cases much longer. This center is a space where grandparents can connect with their grandchildren while also building a community of peers with similar responsibilities and demands.

A chief complaint of older adults caring for children is the physical demands of keeping up with a child. In …

Shared Sites - Design For Inter Gernerational Aging: Movement Around Water, Teresa Lu

2019 Spring Shared Sites: Design for Intergenerational Aging

Site: St. Louis

Environmental press plays an important role in both a person's physical and mental development. Research shows that children and older adults' walking speed are both in the lower range of all age groups and are quite similar to one another. Even for a healthy senior, their mobility will most likely decrease in a gradual but stable pattern as they age. A healthy environment should be able to encourage mobility in a safe surrounding, while a completely safe space is often unenterprising.

The program proposed is a physical health center with a pool in the center of activities. …

Intergenerational Touch, Heewoong Yang

2019 Spring Shared Sites: Design for Intergenerational Aging

Site: St. Louis

Intergenerational exchanges are becoming more and more important as the society ages. Throughout this studio, I have tried to figure out what are the walls between generations and how to tear down the barriers with architectural languages.

Between two generations, there are a lot of strong stereotypes which make more difficult to interact with each other.

If we just ignore these stereotypes and try to make them interact, it might bring many side effects.

According to research conducted by Taiwan civil organization, they tried to give a particular preparation stage before making two different aging groups meet. …

Cicada Grove, Helen Han

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

The gentle throb of cicada song is an essential element of hot summer nights. The annual performance not only reminds people of a carefree childhood, but also signals a rich ecosystem. The cycle of cicada emergence is emblematic of the natural cycles of growth and decay.

This project proposes a neighborhood hub—an epicenter of cicada habitat and social activities. Located in the heart of the historical West End neighborhood and sited between apartment complexes, parking lots, and a playground, Cicada Grove is both a productive garden, a gathering space, and a place of repose where the song of the cicada …

Musical Therapy Center For Parkinson's Disease, Howie Chen

2019 Spring Shared Sites: Design for Intergenerational Aging

Site: Hong Kong

Design Intention for Uncle Shan and Nephew Justin:

This simple space tends to establish a kind of space prototype for intergenerational people living and working together. The space is designed mainly for two of my relatives including my 68-year-old uncle—Shan, and my 7-year-old nephew—Justin. Shan has been retired for almost ten years and developed his stable daily schedule throughout these years, while Justin is still a young kid who always kept being curious about the exterior world and whose schedule might be more flexible. the space should serve them both and fulfill their spatial needs either simultaneously …

Greenway Development, Makio Yamamoto

2019 Spring Undergraduate Landscape Architecture Studio

In this landscape-based studio, senior lecturer Jacqueline Margetts led a group of undergraduate architecture students in exploring ecological and public open space networks through the West End neighborhood in the City of St. Louis, focusing along the historic Hodiamont Tracks. The former streetcar line, which remains as a neglected service alley, will be converted to a greenway by Great Rivers Greenway. The studio was sited in the West End neighborhood in part due to its high number of native bee species, a vital component in maintaining biodiverse ecosystems and key indicator of environmental health. Students were charged with transforming sites …