Architecture Commons^™

The Center For Centering Dome, Olek Piechaczek, Ryan M. Scharf

Architectural Engineering

The Center for Centering seeks to create a large-scale healing center, conducive to individual centering of the mind and body. This mobile installation provides a relaxing, enclosed space while still maintaining a connection to the outdoors. The clients liked the idea of having a pop-up installation that could be easily set up as a touring display. With a deadline for installation looming in June 2022, a team of students had five months to design and manufacture the structure.

In winter 2022, the students developed custom geometry to minimize the number of individual parts and built a ¼ scale model of …

Evanescent: Animating Space, Kyle Servando

City and Regional Planning

A redesign of the open space of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA into an plein air gallery for the public to be their own artists.

Loving Blackness: A Sense Experience, Ricardo J. Millhouse

Feminist Pedagogy

The late bell hooks framed feminist pedagogies as a set of practices and systems that provide a description of feminism, a feminist learning environment, and ways to cultivate a community that is ready for feminist instruction. Using intersectionality, hooks (1992) discussed “loving blackness” as a representational and destabilizing practice to de-center whiteness. hooks (1992, 20) writes, “loving blackness as a political resistance transforms our ways of looking and being, and thus creates conditions necessary for us to move against the forces of domination and death and reclaim black life.” I propose a black feminist praxis teaching tool, “a sense experience,” …

The Literary Controversies Of Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, Victoria Duehring

The Forum: Journal of History

This literary review will focus on Michelangelo’s most significant work of color: the Sistine ceiling. Michelangelo’s work has spawned a plethora of literature, but this paper will focus on three main controversial topics: assistants (or lack thereof), the ignudi’s purpose, and restoration. I will also apply a psycho-historical approach to these controversies and identify potential avenues for future research.

Equity In Accessibility, A Case Study Of City Of Sacramento, Meredith C. Milam

City and Regional Planning

This paper is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) spatial analysis of the transportation accessibility and equity in Sacramento, California. A literature review examines discriminatory regulatory policies in the 1900s that wrote racial segregation into law. The effects of these policies have lasting effects on spatial dispersal of people and create barriers to accessibility and therefore result in inequitable transportation systems. The accessibility and equity analysis in Sacramento explores demographic data, job concentration and available modes of transportation, and commuter data. The results of the analysis suggest that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach when it comes to measuring accessibility and equity. …

Impact: The Visual Communication Of Information, Jennifer Shields, Mark Cabrinha, Sasha Menshikova, Catherine Trujillo, Emily Chung, Miles Young, Hope Golden, Laura Akatsu Kuffner, Markus Rogne, Aimie Olson

Creative Works

Impact: The Visual Communication of Information focuses on the diversity of visual communication created by students, faculty, and staff across California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Drawing from a multitude of methods in courses and activities across the campus, the exhibit displays the influences of visual communication in fields ranging from statistical data and geography, to art, design, and engineering, to performance and physics. This project was made possible by a gift from the Austin and Gabriela Hearst Foundation.

This catalog represents the onsite exhibit of the same name, which opened in winter of 2020 at Robert E. Kennedy …

Development Of Cal Poly’S School Of Architecture And Environmental Design, Robert Chomicz

The Forum: Journal of History

In the turbulent decade of the 1960s, Cal Poly consciously diverged from a Master Plan created by the state Department of Education in order to create one of the best architecture schools in the nation, which highlighted the university’s unique position as the only polytechnic in the CSU system. This article details Cal Polys commitment to the development of the program through the examination of the expansion of the Architectural Engineering department into a full-fledged College of Architecture in the years 1948 to 1972. Three landmark academic years are examined in order to highlight the growth of the Architecture program. …

Urban Palimpsests: Studying Enlightenment Influences In The Post-Earthquake Rebuilding Of Lima And Lisbon, 1746–1765, Emily Chung

The Forum: Journal of History

Urban renewal has long existed as a vessel for the assertion of authority, embodying hierarchy, policy, and culture in the most tangible way with architecture and civic landscaping shaped to accommodate the upper strata of society. Particularly interesting to study through this lens is the latter half of the eighteenth century which marks the turning point between royal absolutism and the emergence of competing forms of power in the European Empire, through the growth of the Enlightenment movement. This paper offers a comparison of two imperial cities, Lima and Lisbon, which due to similarly tragic earthquakes, were provided the opportunity …

Don’T Believe The Hype: The Radical Elements Of Hip-Hop, Jenell Navarro, Catherine Trujillo, Jeremiah Hernandez, Logan Kregness, John Duch, Anna Teiche

Creative Works

“Don’t Believe the Hype: the Radical Elements of Hip-Hop” is an installation that showcases the five elements of hip-hop culture. These elements—graffiti writing, breakdancing, deejaying, emceeing, and knowledge production— have been utilized to speak truth and justice about social ills in the United States and beyond. This exhibit illustrates the conscious roots of hip-hop culture from the South Bronx in the 1970s and follows that course to our current moment, where hip-hop still remains a powerful voice for those who are marginalized by dominant structures of power.

The Built Environment, Nicholas J. Petrarca, Aaron Boucher, Nathaniel Hall, Alejandro Lopez, Nicholas Reindel, Emily Setoudeh, Sean Westpahl, Lacy Williams

Architectural Engineering

This project was a very fast paced and high pressure design project where Architectural Engineering students and an architect worked with an noteworthy artist to design and construct a large steel sculpture made purely from recycled materials.

The Impact Of Cargo Bikes On The Travel Patterns Of Women, Jana E. Schwartz

Master's Theses

There are a number of issues preventing the rollout of cargo bikes as a transportation mode in the United States. One concern that has been raised is whether cargo bikes can function as a gender equitable transportation solution in the United States, given documented gender gaps in national bike riding statistics and ongoing inequities in childcare in 2-parent heterosexual households. The research is aimed at reviewing the practicality, enjoyment, and outcome of cargo bike use as a gender equitable transportation solution. This research contributes to new knowledge in gender equitable transportation in 2 ways — a) gender-focused analysis of survey …

Latino Rhythms In Downtown Los Angeles: A Case Study Of The Social, Physical, And Economic Environment Of "La Broadway", Ulises Antonio Gonzalez

Master's Theses

In an attempt to practice inclusive planning, this research project explores whether Broadway Avenue functions as an ethnic commercial strip and identifies social, physical, and economic components that contribute to the Latino neighborhood/ barrio. Using pilot studies Loukaitou-Sideris (2000), Loukaitou-Sideris (2002), Rojas (1993), Manzumdar et al. (2000), Main (2007), and Fernando (2007) as a foundation, this research uses a single case study in addition to several research methods: 42 random surveys, literature review and analysis, site observations/pictures, and land use survey.

Various scholars write that barrios have unique physical, social, economic, and political attributes. A new aesthetic, art, symbols, …

Public Art: Context & Process In San Luis Obispo, Ca, Kristin Ann Kiefer

Master's Theses

Public spaces are noted by historians, philosophers, planners, etc as being the lifeblood of civic centers, spaces that bring people in community together for a myriad of reasons. Recalling the ancient Agricola’s of ancient Greece to the modern version of malls and pedestrian plazas, these spaces are where social interactions occur, ideas are spread, and are open for all people to enjoy. Beautifying these spaces with public art and well-thought out design encourage the use of these spaces and work to empower those who use them. While the mode in which public art populates public spaces has changed, the notion …

Confused Spaces: Theatricality As A Device For Defining Different Types Of Public Space, Danton Christopher Spina

Master's Theses

Confused Spaces has come to the conclusion that theatricality can be a device for defining different types of public space. This book aims to define theatricality in architectural terms by taking principles from the disciplines of theater and urban design. It limits the scope of the definition to a specific set of elements of theatricality that include spectacle, transition, flexibility, and compactability. After attempting to define why these elements of theatricality are valid architectural concepts, the text then pushes to understand the experience that these elements can create. Through the use of historical and contemporary references, an argument for theatricality …

Mirages Solidified: Myth, Beautification, And Tourism In The Creation Of Santa Barbara's El Pueblo Viejo Landmark District, Michael D. Orth

Master's Theses

A number of books and articles have been written on the social movement to reimagine Southern California’s past in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While many of the pageants, parades, and public displays that defined this regional movement now reside in the pages of history, some architectural examples from this period are still visible today. In many cities, these examples are scattered throughout the community; while in others like Santa Barbara, they represent the centerpiece of the city’s architectural distinctiveness.

Santa Barbara’s architecture challenges urban scholars to successfully garner an accurate sense of the past. More importantly, such historic …

Glorious Constructions: The Struggle To Preserve Salvation-Themed Visionary Art Environments, Molly Elaine Sheehan

Master's Theses

Salvation-themed art environments are a roadside rarity, built out of a strong visionary dedication to God, but the sites are disappearing simply because the work is misunderstood. The historiography on the subject is sparse, trending more toward coffee table books with big glossy pictures than real scholarly endeavors, but the consensus among all has been clear. The sites are a valuable part of the recent American cultural landscape, crossing several scholarly fields - art, architecture, and history - and uniting them into a cohesive preservation movement. On a series of trips to visit, see, and experience five of these sites, …