Architecture Commons^™

Architecture Of Mutual Permeation, Bolin Briscoe Evans

Masters Theses

“Human life is not intended to oppose nature and endeavor to control it, but rather to draw nature into an intimate association in order to find union with it...this kind of sensibility… de-emphasizes the physical boundary between residence and surrounding nature and establishes instead a spiritual threshold... While screening man’s dwelling from nature, it attempts to draw nature inside.” --Tadao Ando¹

The result of humanity’s dominant approach to nature has led us to separate ourselves from the natural environment, both physically and spiritually. As J. B. Jackson explains, “we have persisted in separating man from nature and …

City, Interrupted : A Study Of Infrastructure And The Urban Condition, Seaneen Lucretia Murphy

Masters Theses

Urban renewal and revitalization, considered an essential component to the rebuilding and reshaping of most promising communities, customarily attaches with its definition a “for the common good” connotation. The efforts of city and regional planners with local governments concerning renewal projects is one of offering great change and providing potential to a sector of a city that had not previously been successful; one where every member of the community seemingly would benefit from such projects. The strategies, when executed, most specifically concerning the Eisenhower Interstate System, sought to create affirmative change within the infrastructure of metropolitan areas and provide a …

Reviving Community Identity Using Movement In And Through Public Space, Nekia Strong

Masters Theses

“…the interweaving of human patterns. They are full of people doing different things, with different reasons and different ends in view, and the architecture reflects and expresses this difference...Being human, human beings are what interest us most. In architecture as in literature and the drama, it is the richness of human variation that gives vitality and color to the human setting…” – Raskin (Jacobs 229)

This thesis asserts that the greater opportunity for people to interact socially, the greater sense of identity a community has. Over time, as historically defined public space has been in decline, so has the level …

Ethics In Architecture: The Application Of An Ethic Of Care In The Design Of A Cancer Treatment Center, Emily Lynn Hardin

Masters Theses

The project chosen for this thesis is a healthcare facility, specifically a Cancer Treatment Center, as it is a paradigmatic project for application of an ethic of care. Moreover, healthcare facilities are not given due attention in architectural discourse and education despite the importance of their role in society. While healthcare specific organizations have begun to recognize and research the effects of built environment on health, this newfound concern seems to be generally limited to those organizations. Broader discourse involving other related professions, i.e. architecture, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc., could benefit research as healthcare entails not only the treatment of …

Urban Hubs: Closing The Space, Time, Continuum, Edward Brinson Martin

Masters Theses

“It is known that the names of places change as many times as there are foreign languages: and that every place can be reached from other places, by the most various roads and routes by those who ride, or drive, or row, or fly.”

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

In this thesis, I will be exploring the role that architecture and urban design can play in transforming human behavior. I will develop the idea of a multi faceted transportation hub as a means to encourage people to use alternative modes of transportation, and through that development, evaluate influence fields as a …

Light, Place, And The Temporal Experience: A Proposal For A Live Work Building In Nashville, Tennessee, Robert G. Thompson Iii

Masters Theses

“An architecture must have the religion of light. A sense of light is the giver of all presences, because natural light gives the mood of the day. The season of the year is brought into a room.”

Louis Kahn

The understanding and manipulation of natural light lie at the heart of any architectural project, but it is also a universally available, physical manifestation of the passage of time. Natural light signals the times of the day, providing different qualities of light as the sun penetrates the atmosphere at different angles. Seasonally, the summer sun shines high in the sky through …

Flexible Integration, Chun-Yi Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exploration of mixed-used and mixed-density housing through modular design to uncover the possibility of architecture creating a diverse and integrated community that respects the people, local culture and historical traditions. The program of the investigation is a co-housing community in the hurricane devastated city of New Orleans. The construction will be based on the modular design that will give the residents the flexibility of organizing spaces and give them participatory ownership of their home and community. The hurricane disasters will be investigated to understand their impact. The ethnographic information and the demographic trends will be used …

Understanding Space Through The Experience Of Dance, Sandra L. Restrepo-Tovar

Masters Theses

(Thesis Statement)

"Space, said choreographer George Balanchine, 'is everything'. A symphony can be enjoyed live or on record, a play can be seen or read, but dance emerges through the single medium of space. Without space, dance does not exist. "

"There are ceremonies that determine space, and spaces that determine ceremonies."

Bernard Tschumi

Architecture can be experienced in various forms. Though we often consider sight the primary means through which architectural space can be understood, one would also argue it is more relevant to examine how the whole body responds and "sees" space. Movement is an important …

Thresholds, John Charles Sanders Mixon

Masters Theses

This thesis is an attempt to expand the meaning of the threshold in order to conceptualize and design architecture that is able “to reconcile conflicting polarities” (Smithson, 96). The program of the investigation is an art center for community and learning to be used by professionals, students, and the public. A senior year public highschool school program, professional art studios, and a community center are designed for a site in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on two blocks on either side of Jefferson Street at the base and below the Jefferson street Bridge. The threshold is explorded as a conceptual and physical …

Connecting Self-Contained Urban Neighborhoods, John Daniel Lattimore

Masters Theses

(Thesis Statement)

The world today has physical, social, and economic problems that can be solved, at least in part, through architectural design. This thesis argues that designing our neighborhoods with equal weight given to the environmental, social, and economic issues can help solve larger global problems. The goal of sustainability can happen if we create neighborhoods that contain basic needs in all these areas for their inhabitants without jeopardizing their necessary connectivity to other neighborhoods and the larger urban fabric.

Photography In Architecture: The Transformation Of Reality, Haley E. Chapman

Masters Theses

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." - Alberto Giacometti

"...representation itself is not a reflection of some "reality" in the world about us, but is a means of casting onto that world a concept - or a subliminal sense - of what reality is." -Ackerman, 121

Photography informs our perceptions of reality. Through various themes or techniques of transformation, the photograph exposes reality as an abstraction of itself and alters the way that we see and understand our surroundings. This way of seeing, or "photographic vision", is especially …

Sustainable Expression: Combining The Past And The Present To Create A Viable Vernacular, William Thomas Brown

Masters Theses

This topic will involve an analysis of architecture of the past to reveal how sustainable design techniques were dependent on the natural environment of a specific climate region. This analysis of ancient building strategies will examine similar climate areas to the Southeast United States and combined the information with modern 'green' technologies. The final result being a building whose expression reflects a new regional vernacular. Before the age of electric heating and cooling systems and thermal insulation, buildings were designed to take advantage of their natural surroundings. In fact, these structures depended on its natural surroundings and this dependence informed …

Body & Context In The Discovery Of Place, Beth Ann Fry

Masters Theses

(From the Thesis Statement)

"Sensations of experience become a kind of reasoning distinct to the making of architecture. Whether reflecting on the unity of concept and sensation, or the intertwining of idea and phenomena, the hope is to unite intellect and feeling, precision with soul."

-Anonymous

This thesis investigates a methodology of using ones senses to experience, observe, and understand a place as a layered system with the intent of discovering the essence in order to create successful urban design that is connected to place. The layers Nature, Infrastructure, Built Structure and Culture, will be observed and considered through multiple …

Architectural Microcosm: From City To Building, Qi Jin

Masters Theses

STATEMENT OF THESIS/HYPOTHESIS

This thesis explores the reciprocal relationship of the building and the city. I argue that the building can be a microcosm of the city, as Alberti has said: " . . . for if a city, according to the opinion of philosophers be no more than a great house, and on the other hand the house be a little city . . ."¹

In demonstrating the interrelationship of building and city as reciprocals, I have analyzed three precedents, which will inform my design approach. Based on Kevin Lynch's analysis², I have identified five fundamental …

Constructed Sites Ad Collective Memory: A Proposal For Lower Manhattan's African Burial Ground, Jessica Lauren Wright

Masters Theses

Architecture should be a derivative of site. As constructed sites, Archaeological sites pose an interesting dilemma with architecture: How does one approach an archaeological site with architecture? What operation best suits the site? The African Burial Ground is an exceptional example of a constructed site as well as the expression of the public’s desire to remember and signify this sacred site. Public request for these associations should result in site-derived architecture. Facilitating architecture as a derivative of site produces an expressive built form of culture, history and temporality.

To derive architectural form from the African Burial Ground I will use …

Place Not Of Place: The Moveable Home: A Critique Of Suburbia, Kristofer M. Nonn

Masters Theses

Home is an architectural construct, one which historically is a product of a specific place. However, as place has become progressively more and more generic, architecturally, socially, communally, so too has the concept of home become more generic and at odds with the individual person. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate an alternative possibility, one which is based on the person as the design impetus. What if home were not about place,but about person? It is the purpose of this project to formulate a response to a uniquely American history, one which is founded on individualism, nomadicism, and …

A Teaching Tool: Exploring A Cooperative Spirit, Education, And Cultural Influence Through The Arts, Carmen Rachel Scoggins

Masters Theses

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." -Eliel Saarinen

The creation of the built environment today is highly complex. Hundreds of different professions come together to create what is, I would hope, creating a better environment for people to inhabit. Sometimes, and actually quite often, the players in this process do not work together effectively, if at all. Once the construction is over, the grand opening has come and gone, and the users …

Architecture For The Lost Place, Jeremy Shipp

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how architectural production can deal with the history in a place. It describes how the idea of genius loci can define a place’s existence and how architecture can respond to a site that is disconnected from its history by a sudden loss of that which once defined it. I consider a place which has been physically transformed and whose population has been removed. These conditions invite a program to elucidate the site’s past, and architecture to interpret a state of absence. The project responds to the site’s history without pretending to manifest the historical place.

Civil Rights In Action: Creating Art On The Borderline A Visual Arts Cultural Center For Memphis, Tennessee, Melissa Anne Ruff

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore opportunities for communication in the racially divided city of Memphis, Tennessee. A center for the study of the visual arts is proposed for the platform of communication. This study contends that a well-planned and well-designed architecture can serve as a location for communication for people from divergent backgrounds.

The history of the racial divide and the contemporary racial separation are both explored in this study. Approaches to healing the wounds created through years of division are also investigated. This thesis contends that a building for the creation and study of the visual …

Urban And Regional Planning: A Review Of Three Rational Planning Processes, Mark Joseph Taylor

Masters Theses

The rational planning process is a widely accepted method to guide the profession of Urban and Regional Planning. After a literature review, limited and incomplete information was found concerning the rational planning process.

A comparison was conducted among three documented rational planning processes. A common labeling system identifying all the concepts within each process was developed in order to examine the steps within each process for similarities and variations. The three areas focused on are the sequential ordering, labeling and defining of steps within the processes.

The inconsistent sequential ordering, labeling and defining of steps detailing the rational planning model …

Anchoring Perception Through Tactile Orientation, David L. Bouldin Jr.

Masters Theses

The sense of touch concretizes our perception by adding a perceptual quality stronger than the other senses. This haptic dimension also encompasses a sense of orientation, balance, and movement in the spatial experience of architectural works. This important sense has been neglected and must be re-emphasized as a worthy architectural design goal. In urban settings, the other senses are bombarded with sensory input while tactility is often denied. Public libraries are in a position to serve the haptic dimension over the other senses because of the nature of their (dynamically changing) services. Special care must be taken to design a …

Subverting The Panopticon: Privacy In The Public Realm, Stephen Collins

Masters Theses

The Panopticon, designed by Jeremy Bentham in 1787, is an architectural device based on isolation of people and surveillance -knowledge focused in places of power. The Panopticon was influential as an architectural paradigm, easily adapted to varied uses. Bentham as did other utilitarian eighteenth century philosophers believed the built environment could fabricate virtue.

The techniques of the Panopticon were applied to the central task of fabricating normality, rather than the peripheral task of rectifying abnormality. Michel Foucault brought the moral engineering to the fore and showed that it was put in place to conduct 'normatively self-disciplining subjects.' As normative control …

The Surreal Strip Mall, Myles N. Trudell

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the surreal quality of sub-urban strip malls. Using the theories set forth in Robert Venturi’s Learning from Las Vegas and Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York, I present a proposal for the redevelopment of an underused strip mall in South Knoxville. The goal of this proposal is to use surreality as a tool to illuminate the absurdities inherent in many sub-urban development, and to create a civic/commercial center to serve the community.

Urban Spa: Capturing The Sensual Through The Filmic, Brian K. Chevchek

Masters Theses

Architects and film directors share in the mental task of structuring our being in the world and articulating the surface between ourselves and the world. This structuring and articulation occurs through a chiasmatic binding of the external world of the body and the inner world of the mind.

It is through the sensual qualities of architecture that perception is opened and awareness of ones existence in space occurs. This thesis investigates how the poetic images in film can inform and assist the production of an architecture that captures the experiences and encounters of the sensual.

Applying Information Technology To Decision-Making: The Epa Geobook Applied To Greenway Planning, Margaret Ann Ely

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role information technology could play in the planning process, by studying the role GeoBook played in its application to greenway planning. Technology has continued to advance through the years, so it is important that the planning process incorporates these technologies so as to become more proficient at making decisions. Because our natural resources are limited, we have the responsibility to steward them to the best of our ability and to make the most educated decisions possible. By incorporating modern science into land-use decisions, decision-makers can make more informed decision. This thesis …

Generation Of Architectural Form: Standardization And Adaptation, Sungmo Park

Masters Theses

“The form of an object is a diagram of forces; in this sense, at least, that from it we can judge or deduce the forces that are acting or have acted upon it; in this strict and particular sense, it is a diagram.” –D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form

Throughout architectural history, architects have made efforts to develop a diversity and efficiency of form to adapt to the natural environment. A prominent issue that has developed from this is what are the factors that have influenced and become form generators?

D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, in On Growth and Form, …

Putting The Pieces Together: Engaging The Part To Create The Whole, Matthew Paul Johnson

Masters Theses

Architecture shapes and defines the spaces of our everyday life yet we rarely pay any attention to it. The fact that we are not engaged with our surroundings has been called by some an atrophy of experience caused by technology and, more specifically, by the ever expanding ability to reproduce and distribute images and information on a massive scale.

For some, such as Walter Benjamin, this atrophy of experience is related to the decay of what Benjamin calls the ‘aura’ of a work of art. The aura is what allows us as human beings to connect and relate to the …

Mutualism In Architecture: An Architecture Of The In-Between, Vivian Ann Workman

Masters Theses

Architecture is a system of complex relationships. Embodied within architecture are ideas concerning built and natural form and how these two types of form interact to produce what we define as architecture. Built form without natural form is building. Natural form without building is landscape. It is this in-between area where architecture lies. Mutualism is a process by which two seemingly opposite organisms interact in such a way as to benefit one another. It is through this approach that architecture can aspire to be more than a building.

Mutualistic architecture, by its very nature, is a holistic system with the …

Weaving: Redesigning The Post Colonial Town Through African Cultural Traditions, Henry Walela Musangi

Masters Theses

“They [Africans] look upon their native arts and crafts primarily as the ‘locus’ of their national consciousness. In spite of a violent urge for the new, for progress and for high living standards, more and more of their valuable, innate culture and customs now are being reflected upon in new light, finding their own voice in the form of a new, healthy and surprisingly expressive art.”

“The ‘new’ is cleansed from any cliché imitating a style.

The ‘new’ does not evolve from cheap modernism.

The ‘new’ functions according to the climate and the situation.

The ‘new’ proves to have an …

Vision In Architecture, Sabrina Russell

Masters Theses

The way in which people see and perceive things varies with each individual. Although, it is possible to focus the individuals attention in a particular way causing them to have various perceptions of the same view. The gaze is an element that has been studied and analyzed in numerous medias. Each medium has found a way to manipulate or control the individuals gaze making it possible to convey a meaning or feeling through the use of this technique (see figure 1). In having some control over the gaze of the onlooker designs can be formulated that best stimulate the attention …