Architecture Commons^™

The New Parallel: Urban And Agrarian Political, Environmental, And Architectural Landscapes Of The Demilitarized Zone, Robert Vincent Truka

Masters Theses

North and South Korea share the most heavily armed military border in the world. Technically both sides are still at war dating back to 1950. The 38th parallel, also known as The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is a 156-mile long by 2.5- mile wide border condition with over two million plus known landmines buried with-in its boundaries. The Juxtapositions of the financial, political, economical, and military modalities could not be more drastically different between North and South Korea. North Korea is a communist autocratic military dictatorship and has one of the worlds lowest Gross Domestic Products (GDP). South Korea is a …

Pro Bono Publico: The Architect As Developer, Daniel Hurshel Hodge

Masters Theses

The profession of architecture now encounters a precarious economic landscape because of the separation of economy and the value chain. Architecture has historically succeeded on the backs of its craftspeople and the intangible tangibility of its productions. Yet, in our current economic era, where everyone is disconnected from value creation and imbibes value through the medium of brand, architecture has responded with niche reforms and feeble assertions of legitimacy. What follows is a reevaluation of its professional values in a valueless climate. From the standpoint of the architect, coupling its systemic elements with that of the real estate developer may …

Integral Perspectives, Henry Brian Cheek

Masters Theses

Integral Perspectives is a method to architectural design that encompasses four different approaches. The four approaches, or perspectives, I chose to focus on include: Cultural, Experiential, Performance, and Systems. Designing with each of these perspectives in mind, I intend to create a more holistic and integral design solution. My thesis explores this methodology using the affordable housing crisis in Nashville, TN.

Institutions Of Transformation, Anthony Michael Dienst

Masters Theses

The multiple stages of a building’s lifespan must have a voice in any future adaptive reuse endeavor.

In order to envision the future, we must examine not only the past but also the unintentional ‘ghost spaces’ associated with the loss of the original function. The ‘ghost spaces’ provide insight into the transformational nature of a changing program.

The path of a future architectural trajectory must evolve simultaneously with the study of the past in order to create architecture that is appropriate for the present. Only by recognizing critical events in both the past and present timeline can we root the …

The New Sub Urban, Brad Lee Herr

Masters Theses

By pairing the unique and varying physical conditions of open-pit mines with the contextual situations and issues that surround them, these often abandoned and overlooked gaps in the earth can be rethought as a new landscape for creating future infrastructures that uniquely address national and global issues that are likely to increasingly effect our world in the future. This thesis project aims to rethink and restore purpose to these numerous vacant gaps left in the earth to determine how their unique conditions can provide a greater benefit to society through adaptive reuse.

Monumental Revival, Michael Brandon Litton

Masters Theses

The post-industrial era has left textile mills programless and isolated from their towns, leaving these monuments in ruination. The villages surrounding these mill have began to decay as a part of the process of the mill closing. In search of a thriving economy, inhabitants of the town leave for opportunity elsewhere. This thesis explores a method of reviving a mill town by re-adapting the textile mill and injecting a transnational economic system into the town.

Rigs Of Refuge: Spatial Agency And Its Role In Conflict, Brittany Lauren Mcgraw

Masters Theses

Architecture is an inherently political endeavor. As such, designers should carefully consider the spatial dialogue that the built environment creates between those who control spaces and those who use them. In times of crisis, this dialogue often ceases to be an equal exchange, pushing users’ needs aside and exerting authority in the most expedient way possible.

This thesis proposes that amidst settings of conflict, hyper-responsive architectural systems can counteract landscapes of authority by returning spatial agency to users. As the means of providing such a system, oil rigs should be repurposed as a network of deployable crisis response hubs.

Scruffy City, Variegated Spaces, Rare Places, Royal Moore Starr

Masters Theses

The general basis of this thesis is to provide a critical examination of city branding and its implications on the built environment. Geographically fixated upon on the city of Knoxville, TN, Scruffy City, Variegated Spaces, Rare Places explores a unique relationship between cultural identity and architectural form. This project is an attempt to understand and harness an allusive attitude that undoubtedly shapes the architecture of this city. Therefore, the project itself is an open-ended set of design operations that inherently challenge the nature of architectural process in an attempt to study and emulate scruffiness in the built environment.

The project …

Logistical Bodies Of Fulfillment, Michael Steven Frush

Masters Theses

existence occurs in a spatial assembly of multiple scalar experiences that is intensified and brought to perception by the exponential advancement of a virtual extension.

the physical realm that human cognition experiences acts as a bound container influenced by natural law and trusted forces. the virtual realm exists as a medium through which linkages are made that suppose unseen law, forces, and connections. the human existence experiences an interface between the multiplicities of the physical and the virtual. as technologies advance exponentially the recognition of a multiple temporality is intensified by digital networks and spatial extensions. the trusting of physical …

Architecture Of A Post Physical Universe, Mathew D. Smith

Masters Theses

As architects we are fundamentally forced to make arguments within the physical realm. However since mid 1990’s the world has become more and more reliant upon the digital. Now in 2017 it is the way we voice public opinion, shop, visit with our friends and much more. This digital space has taken over, and while humanity would more than survive without this modern technology, it continues design our world around it. This architecture project glimpses into the future of how we as architects are continually dealing with this new infrastructural space. While many projects have played architecture as the victim, …

Modeling Practice Immersive Design Methodologies, Michael Aaron Stone

Masters Theses

Modeling Practice is centered around an immersive methodology that connects the architect to the process of making. The value of reflection and a consciousness of methodology are intrinsic layers of thought throughout. The act of building influences the process of design. The experience of creating is as important as the final result.

The practice of creating architecture comes with a range of limitations, notably a disconnection from the building process, and in many cases an insubstantial amount of time to interact with the site and surroundings in which the project is located. Throughout many years of working in the profession, …

The Artifacts Of Preserving: Housing Echoes Of Silence, Jennifer Nicklas

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Fabricated City: Created Energy Of The Assembled City, Julie Davenport

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Operational Jakarta: The Problem Of Representation, Kevin Patrick Jeffers

Masters Theses

As the twenty-first century unfolds with newly formed degrees of hypercomplex interactions and reactions amongst space, time, economy, politics, social dynamics, and cultural paradigms, we are observing new typologies of urbanism that are different in kind, rather than degree, from the previous “urban” upon which the vast majority of present theoretical and practical discourse has been based. The techniques, strategies, and methodologies of the twentieth-century no longer serve to adequately represent or to explain the phenomena of today’s incipient mega-cities. A new vocabulary must be developed. A new way of seeing is required in order to understand and therefor to …

Formal Displacement, Savannah Grace Dixon

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Memory, Allison M. Sonnenberg

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.