Architecture Commons^™

Teaching Tools For The School Of The Built Environment, Benjamin Laurance Kaufman

Honors Projects

The goal for this honors project was to better the architecture program at Bowling Green State University. Currently, one of the challenges the program faces is a lack of knowledge/understanding about how the built environment is constructed. This project helped to fill that knowledge gap by creating learning/teaching tools that will benefit future classes of architecture students. This project was the result of an interdisciplinary study among the architecture program and the construction management program at Bowling Green State University.

Hurricanes And Housing: Highlighting The Ongoing Impact Of Hurricane Michael And The Post-Disaster Housing Problem, Mary Beth Barr

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Hurricanes impact individuals and communities on many levels - emotional, physical, mental, financial - to name a few. Every time a hurricane occurs, lives are drastically altered forever. One of the ways that hurricanes impact individuals and communities most powerfully is through the effect that they have on housing. Unleashing uncontrollable damage to infrastructure and the built environment, hurricanes exacerbate housing problems that exist and create new ones where they did not exist before. Hurricane Michael, which catastrophically impacted the Florida Panhandle in 2018, is a case study in which the impact that hurricanes have on housing is prevalent.

By …

A Comparison Of Preferences: Testing The Correlation Between The National Register Of Historic Places And The South Carolina Picture Project, Vito Scocozzo

All Theses

Current affairs relating to the architectural stylings of federal buildings have sparked discussions regarding the preferences of the American people for different styles of architecture. Studies have identified a disconnect between the preferences of the general public and professionals who work with the built environment. This thesis seeks to continue these discussions and better understand how they relate to historic preservation by answering the following question: Do the historic resources and buildings nominated to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) by historic preservation professionals directly compare to the historic resources identified by a wider public base as represented by …

Construction Of An Apartment Building And Parking Garage, Kirsten Wilson, Kirsten R. Wilson

Honors College Theses

Construction projects are known far and wide to all people. Buildings we need for daily survival would not exist if it were not for the construction industry. Our homes, healthcare facilities, groceries, and other necessary amenities would be gone if it were not for the structures they are housed in. This project aims to simulate the lifespan of a construction job from the design phase to the preconstruction phase and stops at the final presentation before an agreement to start construction.

To create the simulation for the students, a fake RFP, or request for proposal, was created and given to …

Tall Timber In Denver: An Exploration Of New Forms In Large Scale Timber Architecture, Andrew P. Weuling

Masters Theses

Wood has been utilized by humans for thousands of years in the construction of our built environment. More recently, our expanded understanding of the material and the advancement of engineered wood have allowed us to use wood like never before. Concrete and steel, however, have emerged as the main materials used in large scale construction in the late 19^th and 20^th Centuries. As we are battling and searching for solutions to climate change, the importance of wood in large scale construction has increased as not only is its carbon intensity is lower than steel and concrete, but its …

Exploring The Use Of Grid-Scale Compressed Air Energy Storage In The Urban Landscape, Connor S. Slover

Masters Theses

Energy storage is becoming a crucial element to the renewable energy grid, and new facilities will have to go somewhere. This thesis will propose to co-locate compressed air energy storage on a site with residential units, and a community park.

This thesis will make the argument that co-locating a compressed air energy storage system with residential units could create a new start for the communities most harmed by fossil fuel infrastructure. This thesis will propose a design for a site in East Boston; a community badly scarred by heating oil and natural gas storage; with the goal of creating a …

An Architecture Of A New Story, Nathan Y. Lumen

Masters Theses

As the world reckons with an uncertain future at the hands of global climate change and biodiversity loss, the question of how to proceed seems ever more urgent. Approaches to sustainability in design tend to focus on technological solutions to what is often presented as a technical problem. This approach overlooks the ways in which the forces that have led us to this point are born out of our cultural story of what it means to be human, what the natural world is, and what our relationship is to it. This is the story that has permitted if not encouraged …

Detroit: Revitalizing Urban Communities, David N. Fite

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between architecture and planning in Detroit. The relationship between these two disciplines has reinforced gross inequality in socioeconomic status over many decades. It has been compounded by racism which planning policy and Architecture exploited during the 20^th Century for private interests. This impacts the built environment at all scales. Today division is reinforced through small details such as how handrails are placed on benches, but it extends to planning metropolitan areas, and how they are divided up into city and suburb. At the scales between, both architecture and planning reinforce the segregation within their …

Firesafe: Designing For Fire-Resilient Communities In The American West, Brenden Baitch

Masters Theses

The perception that wildfires are completely preventable has caused many structures and communities to be built in locations that will inevitably experience an uncontrollable fire event, risking human lives and infrastructure. Modification of built environments into fire-adapted communities has been explored in this thesis, through multiple strategies. Central to this analysis is the idea that sustainable human developments could adopt a form of biomimicry and indigenous design informed by the adaptions of plants, animals, and native groups that endure and even thrive with regular cycles of fire. This possibility has been assessed through the scope of fire adaptation strategies available …

Zoologijos Sodas, Arjun Elvis Urbonas, Dara Lin, Jesus Ramirez Zambrano, Samantha Ung, Robert Milkovich, Jakob Olsen, Azuolas Skucas

Architecture

50'x50' glass house in Palm Springs.

The Nolan House, Keiko-Ann K. Sanders, Gilbert C. Munoz, Michael A. Bahr, Titas Kalvalnis

Architectural Engineering

As a precedent, The Green Team analyzed the history of glass architecture, literature, and culture. Based on our research, we found that glass is often depicted as breakable, delicate, and a way to expose or display aspects that would otherwise be hidden. We challenged ourselves to incorporate safety and privacy into our glass house as a way to combat the pre-existing notions of glass in architecture.

Reconceptualizing Mies' Glass House, Araceli Avelar, Armando Castaneda Jr, Madison Lam, Ignatius Malari, Alejo Favero, Augusta Orlauskaite, Ella Gleason

Architectural Engineering

Our team used the glass house studio to explore class stratification, particularly using the glass as a reflection of class dichotomy in our society. The glass and Miesian design approach glorifies the clean cut, picture-perfect utopia only accessible to the wealthy few. But reality proves that there is more to this. As architects and engineers, we should strive to create environments that may uphold our values of equity and diversity and ultimately serve all sectors of society.

Continuous Extremes: Architecture Of Uncertainty In Poland, 1945—, Cayce Davis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

In this thesis, architecture situates between extremes. The dichotomies of destruction and construction, mobility and fixity, performance and reality, inside and outside, and form and time frame architecture and the processes through which it is made. The context is Poland in the fallout of the year 1945, when Warsaw’s unique, nearly total destruction and the ascendance of a new communist regime raised the political stakes of architecture. The thesis focuses on a cast of characters in architecture and related artistic disciplines—individuals haunted by the traumas of their own pasts, negotiating a Polish state that created oppressive limitations through artistic mandates …

“Don’T Make Fun Of The Residents!” Revisiting The Sunbelt’S Vanishing Communities: Mobility And Suburban Development, 1900-1990, Jerry D. Wallace

History ETDs

“Don’t Make Fun of the Residents” examines home ownership and suburban development over the last one hundred years in the borderlands, American West, and Sunbelt regions. In this dissertation I argue that mobility shaped urban planning, neighborhood design, and architectural identity in the Sunbelt over the course of the twentieth century. “Don’t Make Fun of the Residents” places architectural identity at the center of this dissertation discussion to understand the origins of the Sunbelt as a geographic and intellectual space. I focus in particular on smaller cities in the intermountain West---New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and California---an area that has …

The Adobe Frontier, Christopher J. Gauthier

Theses and Dissertations

The Adobe Frontier is a documentary film about Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello—together known as “Studio Rael San Fratello” —and their work connecting contemporary technology with the legacy of pottery making and adobe architecture in the Southwest United States.

Head Space: An Exploration Into Design Code, Gaylon Lerch

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores the field of medical research for data to support the assertion that today’s coding standards are not performing in a way that fully addresses the needs of occupants of the built environment. This thesis will pull from the fields of psychology, physical medicine, and architecture to establish what current codes are, how they are deficient, and how they can be rectified, improved upon, or added if not already existing. The method used to establish the criteria of basic needs for healthy human function is established through understanding of how light, sound, and overall spatial quality effects the …

The Aesthetics Of Memory, David Trinidad

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The Aesthetics of Memory is an exploration into the role that Architecture plays in the Resolution of Trauma and Loss. The thesis explored the various places that Architecture is involved, broad research was done on hospitals, graveyards, and then eventually focused on Memorial Design. Memorials serve a unique purpose; much the same way music organizes our emotions at a visceral level Memorials make tangible the emotions around loss/trauma events. The goal was to leverage this unique capacity of memorials to create a space for “Rolling Loss”. A space dedicated to the universal human experience of Loss, a space where people …

H2opulent, Reese Zimmerman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This project is an experiment on resilience, in an attempt to set forth guidelines for a new architecture that is designed with water, for water, and against water. The intent of this project is to create a self-sustaining architectural model that will exist entirely detached from dry land in order to mitigate the affects of flooding and water level rise.

For this project I am analyzing projects in three categories: land, water and hybrid. Land includes projects built along the coast on solid ground, water includes projects that either float on top of the water or are built on stilts …

Creating A Home: Designing A Supportive And Meaningful Intergenerational Environment For People With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities, Sally Murtadhi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

According to the CDC, Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I.D.D.) face numerous issues that prevent them from being self-sufficient such as, lack of accessible environments, lack of employment opportunities, and a negative stigma in society. Due to these obstacles, individuals with I.D.D. are isolated and dependent on direct family members which contributes to poor well-being. The aim of this thesis is to create design solutions that will allow individuals with I.D.D. to live meaningfully and independently. This topic will be approached in two parts: a research and design component. The research component includes: 1) Analyzing obstacles individuals with I.D.D. …

Building With The Floods, Kim Khanh Quan

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Throughout Vietnam's wet season, flooding is a reality that residents face annually. Vietnam's wet season is known to cause serious detriment to communities, and severe weather conditions are becoming more frequent due to climate change. The annual high tides are rising every year. Flooding within dwellings can already reach up to waist or shoulder height and even beyond. Blocking the floods with dikes and other structures can only help to an extent. Water will go somewhere. Elevating a structure also has a limit - many residents have already elevated the ground level of their home to the maximum height that …

[Aero]Tecture: An Exploration Of The Relationship Between Natural Air And The High-Rise Office Typology, Matthew Williams

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores the relationship between natural air and high-rise office typology and questions “has air been neglected as an essential element of spatial design, and if so, what are the consequences of such neglect?” Pre-1900, office buildings relied on natural ventilation to function. With the advent of technology such as air conditioning in 1902, accompanied by innovations in standardized steel, artificial lighting, and hydraulic elevators at the turn of the century, office buildings got bigger, taller, and deeper for economic benefit. The resulting architecture of high-rise offices supplemented natural air with mechanical air. The thesis concludes that several complications …

Preemption: Using Design To Enhance Student Safety And Promote Student Wellness, Tobias Lewis

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

On February 14th, 2014 we witnessed one of the most horrific tragedies in American history.16 year old Nikolas Cruz walked freely through the doors of Stoneman Douglas High school, armed with an AR-15 semi- automatic rifle, and ruthlessly shot 34 and killed 17 individuals. This including 3 teachers and 14 students. In the past 10 years there have been at least 239 School shootings nationwide. Of those shootings, 438 were shot, and 138 were killed. Being appalled by these number I began to ask myself why? Why so many?. Some statistics have linked school shootings with the mental trauma of …

Adaptive Stadium_ A Microcosm In Understanding The Identity Of Brasilia, John Rolon

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis addresses the issue of readapting the National Mané Garrincha Stadium in Brasilia with the intent to start a dialog on what identity and culture mean and how its represented in terms of a city using Brasilia. My proposal focuses in on the interrogation of the past theory and practices that influenced the concepts and foundation of the city and blending in modern day cultural ideas and influences. The main idea in choosing to re-adapt the stadium is because of its history of abandonment in which in 2 periods in history where it reached a point were it was …

Germania: The Nazi Party And The Third Reich Through The Lens Of Classical Architecture, Maggie L. Smith

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the influence of classical architectural styles and principles on architectural projects in Germany during the Third Reich. My research focuses on major projects completed by the state and does not delve into private buildings or other structures. All of the data was gathered from scholarly publications of repute and photographs to determine how Adolf Hitler’s regime utilized Greek and Roman stylistic elements in an attempt to revive the power and culture of Germany during a time of strife, as well as how Nazi architecture reflected Hitler’s personal ambition as dictator. Additionally, the thesis doubles as an expansion …

Constructing Spaces, Deconstructing Meaning: An Examination Of Architecture And Labor At A 17th-Century New Mexican Ranch, Katherine A. Albert

Graduate Masters Theses

There are few archaeological studies of the architecture of 17th-century New Mexican ranches (estancias) due to the paucity of surviving examples. Even fewer archaeological treatments of architecture from 17th-century New Mexico consider the cost of constructing estancias in terms of resource and labor extraction. Using a variety of methods to analyze archaeological evidence from LA 20,000, as well as comparative research of reports from other 17th-century colonial sites, this study presents a hypothetical reconstruction of the three main structures at LA 20,000—the house, the barn, and the corral—and provides estimates of the total quantity of materials and labor needed to …

Collage, Perspective, And Space: The Consequences Of The Method Of Mies Van Der Rohe, Daniel Barker

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The method in which architects design space has the capacity to shape the manifestation of the built work. Architect Mies van der Rohe is one of the most noteworthy designers to exhibit this in his method of design: collage. This inquiry investigates the connection between the collages and the architecture of Mies van der Rohe, and how his use of collage defined the language of the architecture he created.

The investigation studied the collages and architecture of Mies van der Rohe through a design process investigation. Collages were made in the same language as Mies and used as a …

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

Border Town: Preserving A 'Living' Cultural Landscape In Harlingen, Texas, Shelby Parrish

Masters Theses

The preservation of cultural landscapes takes an understanding of a region’s shared history, their sense of place, and the sensory and spatial behavior of their appropriated spaces. That being said preserving cultural landscapes in urban areas can be especially challenging. They are constantly growing and evolving which requires special considerations to avoid suffocation of the space and the inhabitants’ spatial behavior. The practice of preserving cultural landscapes on an urban scale has been relatively lacking in the United States. The same preservation strategies are used for various types of cultural landscapes that have their own characteristics and stories. Different tactics …

Reimagining Abandoned Community Space In A Post-Pandemic Environment, Julia Drooff

Scripps Senior Theses

Earlier this year, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the demise of the Great American Mall by forcing temporary and permanent closures across the country. The low-end malls that remain are dealing with crippling debt and the closing of key department stores like JC Penney and Neiman Marcus[1]. With only super-luxury malls thriving, many of the standard malls set up in the eighties are just abandoned parts of a community. So, what should happen to these abandoned malls? And what role does that space now play in the post-pandemic community? Since malls began to shut-down pre-Covid-19 did the need for …

A Rejection Of Nature? Or The Natural World? An Objectless Inquiry Into The Writings Of Kazimir Malevich, Aidan Edward Galloway

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.