Architecture Commons^™

Law School News: Joyce And Bill Cummings Of Cummings Foundation To Deliver Keynote Address At Rwu Commencement 4-20-2023, Jill Rodrigues

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Preservation Through Design: Reclaiming Franklin Park's Place In The Future Of Boston, Junzhi Yu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This project is a demonstration of heritage landscape preservation done through a new design for Franklin Park in Boston, Massachusetts. Design from a preservation perspective requires sensitivity to the interacting forces between site history, existing conditions, and future needs, especially when engaging a historical landscape that was designed by a renowned figure like Olmsted. The goals of this project are to rehabilitate the Franklin Park site, securing its integrity and historical value, while allowing changes and future growth to take place.

Gentrification And Community Development Groups: Boston Area, Aqsa Butt

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Gentrification plays a significant role in the Boston area. Its influx of affluent residents benefits those who are economically stable. There is considerable increase in housing costs and in property value for locals that may contribute to their housing insecurity. Community Development groups assist lower income residents that may lack guidance, social, economic, and political power to address issues that arise with subsidized housing.

An analysis of vulnerable populations in Boston: elderly, poor, minorities, homeless, substance dependents, and the disabled, reveal a challenge for Community Development Groups: gentrification contributes to housing insecurity of local residents. The city needs to redefine …

Designing For A Resilient Waterfront, Laura Festa

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project will use soft infrastructure systems to create a more environmental, technical, and economically resilient waterfront development. The threat of rising sea level will become the framework for a flexible and holistic design between architecture, landscape, and soft infrastructure. By arraying the activities of recreation, ecology, and urban development along the waterfront and combining these design strategies with a soft infrastructure system, the coastline of East Boston has the potential to become a precedent for other urban waterfronts vulnerable to sea level rise. By rethinking the division between landscape and infrastructure to form a soft infrastructure system, solutions can …

From Progressive Planning To Progressive Urbanism: Planning's Progressive Future And The Legacies Of Fragmentation, Stephen Atkinson, Joshua Jorgensen

Conflux

Since the 1980’s numerous urban scholars have taken to proclaiming one city or another as being ‘progressive.’ Planning websites like American Planning Association, Planetizen or Progressive Planning Magazine are inundated with examples of progressive planning in action. The examples of touted progressive cities are many: Burlington, Berkeley, Cleveland, Boston, L.A., Chicago, Cincinnati, Portland, Minneapolis, Austin, Denver, and Seattle have all been championed as progressive cities. Most of them come with brackets: Boston was progressive [under Mayor Flynn]; Chicago was progressive [under Mayor Washington]; Burlington was progressive [under Mayor Sanders]. There is also no shortage of descriptors about what makes a …

A Profile Of Advanced Manufacturing In The Boston/Metrowest Region:Key Industry And Occupational Trends, Henry C. Renski, Ryan Wallace

Center for Economic Development Technical Reports

This report provides a detailed examination of Advanced Manufacturing in the Boston/MetroWest region. It is part of an eight-part series, each focusing on different areas of the Commonwealth. It examines recent employment and earnings trends; analyzes key occupations in Advanced Manufacturing’s subsectors, looking for common labor needs and comparing wages to similar workers in other industries; identifies the most common and critical skills needed by employers; and offers a detailed demographic profile of Advanced Manufacturing to highlight areas of critical concern for the future health of the industry.

With nearly 50,000 workers and over 1,000 businesses, the Boston/MetroWest region’s Advanced …

The Tectonics Of Turning The Corner: A New City Hall For Boston, Massachusetts, Hillary Barlow

Architecture Senior Theses

The corner is a unique architectural condition that serves as a rhetorical device through its role in the configuration of space. How architects "turn the corner" or the "problem" of the corner has long been rooted in architectural discourse however as Eisenman notes, "corners are elusive and thus rarely thematized in architecture. For example, when Rosalind Krauss said that architecture will always have four walls-that is, an enclosure-she never said that architecture has corners, either external or internal." The corner specifically can produce multiple layers of meaning since the corner can define form either as a series of edges, surfaces …

The Tectonics Of Turning The Corner: A New City Hall For Boston, Massachusetts, Hilary Barlow

Architecture Thesis Prep

"In today’s society, the relationship between architecture and political

behavior is largely undetected. Such is the case with Boston, Massachusetts’

present City Hall, where the brutalist structure was once believed to broadcast

Boston’s power and importance however time has shown it to be an unengaged

object in Boston’s historical landscape with a plaza devoid of activity. This

project proposes a new city hall and plaza design for Boston that proves through

the lens of the corner, physical architectural attributes can make Boston’s City

Hall a successful civic space that embodies Boston’s history, democracy and

public."

The Architecture Of The Profane, Dylan Forester

Architecture Senior Theses

"I contend that it is vital to understand this shift in the role of secularization in order to anticipate what the implications of such changes will be for an ever-growing secular-minded society in the future. Furthermore, it is my contention that this movement must be realized through a new nondenominational architecture - a spatial manifestation that provides a universal setting for both contemplative and spiritual action; a sanctuary that provokes the tension between singularity and multiplicity."

It Takes A Village: The Decentralized School, James Ben Harrison

Architecture Senior Theses

"I contend that architecture should act as a threshold that mediates between education and community in order to create a "decentralized educational facility" that revolves around the concept of educational space, that Jhn Dewet describes as a communal environment which fosters interaction. The resulting programmatic overlap will create something that is more than a school, by incorporating existing community accessible activities that work with the school. This intervention will create an opportunity to enhance the performance of the school and redefine the educational situation as [school as community] rather than [school or community]."

New Urban Living: High-Rise Vertical Farming In A Mixed Use Building, Boston, Ma, Zachary Silvia

Architecture Theses

The focus of the project is the combination of vertical farming and living in a structure that provides for itself and the surrounding community. Essentially, the result is communal living through vertical farming. To raise awareness and invite surrounding neighbors and workers into the process, the first four floors are dedicated to social interaction and a display of the systems at use. Along the path from a public market, to a café, and finally to a gathering space, visitors walk along a ramp/display of the aquaponic system.

Cycling Without Spandex: A Transdisciplinary Approach To Design, Jess Garnitz

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Engaging with other disciplines is important to designers today as the nature of problems and issues are becoming more complex."

"The problem of integrating bicycles into our city streets is inherently a problem that requires transdisciplinary work. This is because of the complexity of the problem and the numerous areas affected through the integration. The problem is like an interconnected web of relations. There are issues relating to wayfinding and understanding how to get from destination to destination, which relate to issues of speed and non-verbal communication."

The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway: Making The Vision A Reality, Alec E. Zebrowski

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The $15+ Billion "Big Dig", replaced Boston's deteriorating six-lane elevated Central Artery, known as the Green monster, with a widened highway tunnel running underground through Downtown Boston and crossing the Charles River, creating more than 27 acres of new land area for reuse in Downtown Boston.

Today, a significant portion of the land has been turned into a system of parks known as the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Since its completion in 2008, five civic and recreational developments planned for the Greenway have been abandoned due to poor funding, rising construction estimates, and a general lack of support. Disconnected, under-programmed …

An Analysis Of Defensible Space And Crime Prevention Through Design In Crime Hotspots Of Select Boston Neighborhoods, Mario Teran

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

There is a lack of emphasis in the planning world, both academically and in the field, on preventing crime. Defensible Space and Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) has been the two main approaches taken by planners and criminal justice officials that is design-based and that has brought some level of collaboration between the two professions. This study will analyze the built environment of select crime hotspots in the city of Boston from a design-based crime prevention perspective in order to draw correlations between high crime areas and elements of design-based theories.

Using GIS, a kernel density analysis is conducted …

Graffiti Gallery, Mike Delvalle

Architecture Theses

This project is an architectural exploration of the ability of architecture to enhance the lives of those belonging to stigmatized subcultures, in this case graffiti artists, Skateboarders, BMXers, and Rollerbladers. To do this there is a focus on achieving a spatial justice for these social groups by creating public space that is in fact public, uninhibited by the processes of inclusion and exclusion that plague nearly every public space. More importantly than achieving spatial justice, however, is creating a societal awareness of the positive attributes of these subcultures. After all, it is society that has control over how public spaces …

Architecture Cover To Cover [Entry To Exit], Ryan Kowalczyk

Architecture Senior Theses

"By making an architecture that offers successive ideas to complete a coherent whole, the true art of architecture can be re-realized."

Tune In: Berklee College Of Music, Center For Music Technology, Boston, Massachusetts, Nicholas Proto

Architecture Theses

The design proposal is a center for music technology for the Berklee College of Music. The technology of music will blend with the technology of design to create a new, different place. The concept is to develop generative proposals that break the norms of “everyday life” through the creation of digital tools and processes. The ability to “disrupt someone’s lifestyle” is not done out of negative intentions, but to inspire one to break out and experience something new and exciting. Digital technologies enhance the process to provide key information in order to design and construct.

Boston Modern: Spirit Of Reinvention, Christine Madrid French, Elaine B. Stiles

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, with the Boston Preservation Alliance, Boston Landmarks Commission, Boston Society of Architects, Common Boston, DOCOMOMO US/New England, Historic New England, and Preservation Massachusetts hosted the 2-day Boston Modern Module on June 29 and June 30, 2010. The Module included production of a full-color booklet highlighting significant modern and recent past resources in and around the city of Boston.

Adaptive Housing: Transformation And Growth In The Urban Environment, Kevin Mowatt

Architecture Theses

The proposal for an adaptive housing project and its chosen location arose from two obstacles that all modern cities and the world as a whole, face. The urban environment is revered for its cultural amalgam of people and wide range of demographics; however with this density and diversity comes a shortage of one type or another of commodious housing. Additionally and consequentially, the city must expand and build new buildings, leaving older, unsuitable building vacant. An adaptive architecture would allow families to grow and demographics to shift within the established community, all the while reinvigorating that second obstacle the city …

Fort Point Channel: Maglev Transit Hub And South Station Expansion Master Plan, Steven Seminelli

Architecture Theses

This project entails the design of a Magnetic Levitation (or ‘maglev’) transportation hub that interacts with the urban environment of Boston, becoming a modern terminal for this new form of travel as well as a threshold into the heart of the city. Included is the focus on the junction of many scales of transportation (i.e., maglev, train, metro, bus, pedestrian…) currently present at South Station, while stimulating a community with many levels of commercial development and social interventions.

Architecture Raising Awareness Of The Wider World: A Centre For Haiti In Boston, Thomas Burns

Architecture Theses

This project proposes a Centre, an architectural space that will help the people of Haiti, (many of whom live in and around the city), while also educating and engaging others in Haitian culture and reality. This Centre includes a combination of programmatic elements within an appropriate urban setting. The site of this project is in Boston’s Back Bay at the intersection of Commonwealth Ave and Clarendon Street, in between Copley Square and the Boston Commons. With the objective of raising public awareness, this site has the ideal balance between the tourist and local community use. This Centre

Empathetic Design: Transitional Shelter, Anne Marie Loiselle

Architecture Theses

Empathetic design is a concept that can be applied to any building type, anywhere. Empathy has implications in all aspects of design from scale, to materials, to organization and circulation. Empathetic design needs to adapt to the people it is built for, and the context it is built in. It is understanding of the needs and concerns of its occupants and provides a bridge to connect people to space. This project explores the concept of empathetic design as applied to a TRANSITIONAL SHELTER. This shelter is so named because it provides more than a temporary place to sleep. It is …

Urban Engagement: Social Interaction Through Urban Spectacle, Philip Gleason

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Cinematic devices are utilized in film to distort and alter perception, layer events and situation, and manipulate the understanding of time. The translation of such ideas through architecture will lead to the development of a Cinema Center that will function as an extension of film into habitable space. The Cinema Center is intended to be a multi media experience capable of interrupting ones sense of time and place while altering emotion, and perception of the urban environment, much like ones reaction to film. The Cinema Center has the potential to energize the newly developed Boston Greenway by creating new connections …

Investigating The Heart Of A Community: Archaeological Excavations At The African Meeting House, Boston, Massachusetts, David B. Landon, Teresa Dujnic, Kate Descoteaux, Susan Jacobucci, Darios Felix, Marisa Patalano, Ryan Kennedy, Diana Gallagher, Ashley Peles, Jonathan Patton, Heather Trigg, Allison Bain, Cheryl Laroche

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In collaboration with the Museum of African American History, an archaeological research team from the University of Massachusetts Boston carried out a data recovery excavation at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. The African Meeting House was a powerful social institution for 19thcentury Boston’s free black community. The site played an important role in the abolition movement, the creation of educational opportunity, and other community action for social and political equality. The Meeting House was originally built in 1806, and renovations in preparation for the 2006 bi-centennial celebration prompted an investigation of areas of the property to be impacted …

Boston City Hall: Rediscovering The Civic Center, Joshua Simoneau

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Architecture can restore the civic center as the symbolic and intrinsic heart of the contemporary city through the integration of government and market centers."

Green Reintroducing Nature To The City, Andrew Cunneen

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The architecture of present day America reflects the way in which we give little consideration to the impact that built forms have on the environment. American cities are expanding beyond their former limits into the natural environment previously untouched by built form. It is important for us to foster a sense of environmental concerns in an age of increasing development and advancements. While technology continues to progress it seems that these advancements are applied to everything but architecture. We have designed ways to get more mileage out of a tank of gas, and created appliances that reduce our electric consumption, …

The Void: Urban By Association, Brian Kessler

Architecture Thesis Prep

"I contend that a regional and now increasingly global scale dictates the development of the city. At this super-urban scale the specificity of architecture is impractical and too expensive, yet the city adn architecture still persist, because of the fundamental human desire for intimate social interaction. Architecture, stripped of its unobtainable utopian ideals, still maintains its significance as the literal and symbolic framework of the urban condition; the space of intense, physical interaction, leading to the literal procreation of humanity and limitless possibilities for new unforeseen activity."

Unearthing Threshold, Maggie L. Cookman

Architecture Senior Theses

In addition to responding to its immediate physical context, architectural form has the capacity to reveal and celebrate history, promoting an understanding of the relationship of site and region to historic conditions no longer in their original form. Within the built environment, architecture has an inherent ability to influence the experience and perception of historical relationships. This can be achieved through prescribed interactions with the constructed form, beginning before one enters the building, and continuing through the program. The exterior begins to engage the visitor through both site and facade. The building itself, as well as its response to physical …

Unearthing Threshold: [Re]Creating History In Boston's South End, Maggie L. Cookman

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis contends that architecture can act as a unifier and agent of interaction by conveying historical conditions within a modern context, through which the awareness of historical relationships occurs. Through this thesis, the intention will be to investigate how history can be revealed through architectural form and one's perception of the juxtaposition of past and present."

Rituals Transforming Cultures, Cultures Transforming Rituals: Tea Importers' Headquarters + Interactive Tea Museum, Todd Rubin

Architecture Thesis Prep

Throughout tea's history, rituals have developed ranging from strictly obeying principles in Japanese tea ceremonies to loosely interpreting principles of tea such as drinking a bottle of iced tea in America. Locating a program to explore the historic, cultural, and political connotations of Boston, in its Inner Harbor, tea can be culturally transformed through a process of an interactive museum in conjunction with the headquarters for a tea importing company, which will explore cultural and ritual issues of tea. This exploration will further enhance these transformations of cultures and rituals that exist with the ever changing life of tea.