Architecture Commons^™

The Korean Hanok As A Model For Sustainable Architecture In South Korea, Jordan Oh

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the traditional Korean hanok within the Western framework for sustainability across environmental, social, and economic dimensions. It then cross-references the findings of this analysis with existing theory on the cultural role of architecture to elucidate how the traditional Korean hanok can serve as a model for sustainable architecture in South Korea. Through a comprehensive analysis this thesis highlights the importance of architectural vernacular to define a sustainable building, and critiques contemporary Western ideas of sustainable architecture. Furthermore, this thesis synthesizes two current approaches to sustainable development in South Korea, the u-eco-city and the Green Standard for Energy …

Mobile Food Displacement And Formalization: A Case Study Of Portland’S Block 216, Marcello Ursic

Pomona Senior Theses

Portland has been on the cutting edge of American mobile food for over fifteen years, becoming a critical darling in the popular and academic press for its role in trailblazing progressive mobile food policy buttressed by broad-based civic engagement. In recent years, Portland’s mobile food landscape has begun shifting as downtown development has picked up post-recession, displacing some of the oldest and most prominent city center food cart pods with others likely to follow. Meanwhile, a new breed of formalized, purpose-built food cart pods has gained ascendancy. Called “food courtyards,” their armored, insulated, and bourgeois character is distinct from traditional …

La Floresta; An Appreciation And Reimagination Of My Barrio, Ana Rodríguez

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis is a love letter to my barrio, La Floresta in Quito, Ecuador. I have divided it into three different sections: a creative writing piece where I walk readers through my barrio and my life in it, a historical section where I analyze its history and the reasons for its uniqueness and current identity, and finally a project proposal for a community center called "Casa La Floresta".

Contemplative Nearby Nature: A Design Proposal For Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, Russell Corbin

Pomona Senior Theses

In this Environmental Analysis thesis project, I analyze what contemplative landscapes are, why they are important, and how to design them, and then implement those learnings in a design proposal for a contemplative landscape at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park. In addition to this writing component of the thesis, I created diagrams, drawings, section renderings, a plan, and two 3d models that all help inform the intentions, meaning, and components of my design. These elements have been woven into the writing and attached as additional documents. Five key contemplative design elements have been identified which I hope can prove useful for …

Quantifying The Carbon Stored And Sequestered By The Trees On Pomona College’S Campus, Paola A. Giron-Carson

Scripps Senior Theses

We are experiencing a climate crisis that must be confronted with strategic mitigation. Pomona College contributes to the climate crisis through its emissions for which there is a baseline record. However there is no baseline record of the climate mitigation currently performed by the trees on Pomona’s campus through carbon storage. This study seeks to determine a current baseline quantity of carbon stored and sequestrated by Pomona’s trees as well as possible courses of climate mitigation for Pomona College to take. Initial information gathering was conducted through interviews with several stakeholders. This study was conducted using data collected prior to …

Redefining Community In The Age Of The Internet: Will The Internet Of Things (Iot) Generate Sustainable And Equitable Community Development?, Carson Martinez

Pomona Senior Theses

There is a problem so immense in our built world that it is often not fully realized. This problem is the disconnection between humanity and the physical world. In an era of limitless data and information at our fingertips, buildings, public spaces, and landscapes are divided from us due to their physical nature. Compared with the intense flow of information from our online world driven by the beating engine of the internet, our physical world is silent. This lack of connection not only has consequences for sustainability but also for how we perceive and communicate with our built environment in …

Bicycling For Sustainable Urban Mobility: Comparing Urban Transformations In Paris And Bogotá, Luba Masliy

Pomona Senior Theses

Promoting cycling is one of the low-hanging fruits to decarbonizing transportation, with further extensive benefits to quality of life. The main deterrent to the adoption of cycling for transportation is the lack of safe and connected infrastructure. This thesis explores and compares the case studies of Paris and Bogotá, where cycling modal shares grew significantly within the last decade. Plans outlining ambitious goals around sustainable transportation were put in place, and total bicycle network lengths increased rapidly in both cities. My work focuses on examining policy and infrastructure developments that lead to increased adoption of cycling over time in Paris …

From Building To Dwelling: Unfolding Infinity Through Bioregional Fulfillment, Sanjana Bhatnagar

Pitzer Senior Theses

The causes of anthropogenic climate change touch every feature of our modern-day existences. Approaches to sustainability tend to focus on material actions, but unsustainable practices are guided by an ontological orientation of individuality and human exceptionalism. This thesis provides an alternate account of being that decenters individuality through weaving the metaphysics of Fazang of the Huayan School of Mahayana Buddhism with the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger. To encompass the whole of the relational network that constitutes and conditionally defines our existence, I expand Heidegger’s account of locales as relational sites which are put forth solely by humans to an account …

Redesigning Pitzer's East Mesa Parking Lot, Maisie Debruyn

Pitzer Senior Theses

Pitzer College’s East Mesa parking lot has been greatly outgrown and hardly adapted in its history. This thesis aims to redesign the lot as something highly usable for the present as well as the future needs of the school. At the core of the design are three design principles: Biophilic design, Human Centered Design, and adaptable architecture. I also pulled conceptual ideas from three precedent buildings from both on and off campus. The on-campus sites are Pomona’s “The Hive” and Harvey Mudd’s “Makerspace” and the off campus site is JaJa Architects’ PARK’N’PLAY. Utilizing each of the three principles in conjunction …

La Puerta Park, Graeme F. Logan

Pitzer Senior Theses

The thesis at hand analyzed ecological corridors, biophilic design, and native planting as individual design entities, and eventually combined them through the creation of a comprehensive park proposal called La Puerta Park. The park was located in the urban matrix of Claremont, CA on a 10-acre parcel of land. The land was recently purchased by Trumark Housing, and a housing development plan was put forth. This project creates a superior alternative to the high levels of impervious surfaces, loss of biodiversity, and lack of community that would ensue after the housing plan implementation. The design process was fluid, as each …

The Tree Of Life: Observations From The Olive Grove, Kendall Lowery

Scripps Senior Theses

Scripps College is famous for its olive trees and the award-winning olive oil that they produce. However, despite the considerable age of the trees, the campus community has only harvested the annual crop of olives for the past decade. In this thesis, I set out to learn why the trees were planted on the campus in the first place. To this end, I immerse myself in the history, culture, and commerce of the olive oil industry, and ultimately use the fruit as a lens through which we can explore the colonial history of Scripps College and Southern California. In order …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings …

Tales Of Urban Livability－ Vermont Avenue In Los Angeles As Told By Tree Canopy Cover, Hoi Cheng Wong

Pomona Senior Theses

As city-goers and residents of urban and suburban spaces, we are constantly on the move. It is no surprise that we often neglect the static trees and plants that seemingly blend into the background of our day-to-day rush to our next destination. Unfortunately, once we do have a chance to pause to take a look around us, or to pause long enough to feel the heat of the sun beaming down on our bare skin, we are decades too late in realizing the absence of trees at the location in which we are standing. This thesis contributes critical insight to …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings, …

Civichon 1.0: City In A Village, Catalogue For Civichon Exhibition In Vienna Biennale 2021, Albert L. Park, Kyong Park, Annie Pedret

EnviroLab Asia

No abstract provided.

How American Transit Agencies Determine Fare Policy: It All Comes Down To Politics, Julian Thesseling

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will provide readers with an understanding of the variables that US transit agencies grapple with when developing fare policy, with a particular focus on the political process. The framework chapter will examine the objectives of public transportation and how agencies face difficulties in achieving these objectives. While this paper will focus on American transportation policy, the framework will draw from the experiences of cities across the world. Three case study chapters will then each discuss an American city or region’s approach to fare policy, and how variables have either complicated or enhanced agencies’ ability to develop effective fare …

Captives & Spoils In Chicago: Examining The Columbian Exposition’S Triumphal Procession Of 1893, Kazandra Zelaya

CMC Senior Theses

Daniel Burnham’s vision of a classical revival in the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 brought ancient Roman triumph with its captives and spoils to Chicago, Illinois. Burnham’s restorative urban utopia used Beaux-Arts architecture in the exposition’s White City that evoked the image of Roman triumphal processions. Beaux-Arts architecture did not extend into the Midway Plaisance, however, the model of Roman triumph extended into the ethnographic exhibits. By examining the ethnographic exhibits of the Midway as a version of a Roman triumphal procession, the exhibits highlighted novel types of captivity through sponsorships, wages, and erasure. Illustrations of American imperialism in the …

The Right To The City: San Francisco's Chinatown Before And After The 1906 Earthquake, Alexandra Hsu

Scripps Senior Theses

The development of San Francisco, much like many American cities, is deeply entwined with the spatial process of settler-colonialism. Fueled by White supremacist processes of appropriation, dispossession and exclusion, city officials and White San Franciscans legally, financially, and socially segregated Chinese immigrants who entered into the U.S. context to a dense and degraded ethnic enclave. Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey theorize on The Right to the City, the social production of space and the ways in which social processes can be concretized by space. This thesis applies these concepts to the racialized space of San Francisco’s Chinatown. An examination of …

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 …

Designing Multi-Sensory Environments: A Powerful Tool For Steam Learning, Tonya D. Miller

The STEAM Journal

Architecture and design are natural facilitators of STEAM learning. This article discusses an interior architecture project requiring students to design a multi-sensory environment within an existing classroom space. The project uniquely addresses the STEAM disciplines and challenges students to explore creative problem-solving to develop unique designs.

The Living Community Challenge: An Uncase Study In Biophilic Master Planning, Jordan Grimaldi

Pomona Senior Theses

In a world that is quickly urbanizing with a climate that is rapidly changing, the International Living Future Institute’s (ILFI) Living Community Challenge (LCC) offers a whimsical yet highly relevant model for sustainable development—creating cities that are as connected and beautiful as forests. As no certified Living Community exists yet, this thesis serves as an “uncase study” of North Rainier, a neighborhood in Seattle that has registered for the Challenge. In an effort to assess the LCC’s perceived effectiveness as a model for sustainable development, this thesis first summarizes nearly 400 centuries of U.S. developmental history to give greater context …

Re-Imagining Nature In Dense, High Rise Urban Environment: The Present And Future Of Green Building Infrastructure In Singapore, Claire Yi

Pomona Senior Theses

From the futuristic Jewel at Changi Airport, the healing gardens at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Yishun to School of the Arts at Orchard Road, greenery has sprouted in buildings vertically and horizontally in Singapore, painting a growing green canopy for the dense, high rise city. This paper combines both analyses from first-hand site visits and case studies from external scholar studies to examine the performance of existing Green Building Infrastructures (BGIs) within Singapore’s unique urban context. The study reveals that the success of BGIs is highly dependent on the programming (i.e. thermal comfort design, accessibility, amenity facilities etc.), as …

Foster Rhodes Jackson And The Visual Conquest Of The West, Eve Kaufman

Scripps Senior Theses

Colonizers settled the Los Angeles and the Southern California region in part by using Modernism’s visual rhetoric and propagandic implications during the time of suburban sprawl. Suburban sprawl refers to the mass single family home development which took place from the 1920^[1]s until now but peaked from the 1970s to the 1990s. Los Angeles sprawl grew particularly in the 1950^[2]s as soldiers returned from WWII. It was a way for middle class white families to accrue generational wealth and follow through on the American Dream^[3].

The primary result however disenfranchised already marginalized groups. This …

Unaccepted Streets In Bayview Hunters Point: Addressing Spatial Injustice Through Public Open Space, Clare Blackwell

Scripps Senior Theses

Bayview Hunters Point is at the epicenter of environmental justice issues in San Francisco. The district has historically been the location of the city’s most polluting industries, as well as some of its poorest residents and its greatest concentration of public housing. As the city’s zoning developed over the twentieth century, the southeastern neighborhood on the bay became a patchwork of industrial and residential parcels of land, fueling spatial injustice, in particular a lack of access to public open space.

Increasing greenspace would likely address spatial injustice in Bayview Hunters Point. However, green gentrification–the consequence of resident displacement as a …

Changing Perceptions Of The Carceral Space Through Photography: The Tehachapi Project By Jr, Alexi Butts

Scripps Senior Theses

“Can art change the world?”

In his global art practice, French artist JR transforms overlooked communities into valued canvases. With an approach rooted in collaboration, JR’s large-scale public photographic installations integrate the built environment into a visual experience of human life.

In October, 2019, JR and his team entered the maximum security prison in Tehachapi, California to embark on a new collaborative project: “Tehachapi.” This paper explores the impact of “Tehachapi” as it extends beyond the physical photograph wheat-pasted on the floor of the prison’s courtyard to touch on issues of humanity, power and accessibility. Created as a collage of …

Enlivening Spaces For The Dead: The Relevance Of Cemeteries In The 21st Century, Caroline Koh Smith

Pomona Senior Theses

Current cemetery practices can be harmful to public health and local ecologies and be intensive users of resources such as water and energy. However, given their spiritual benefits to mourners and community members, I believe that cemeteries are still justified in their construction for societies that wish to have a relationship with their dead. With a growing and aging population, more spaces will be used to house the dead; I examined how these could spaces benefit the living as well. Cemeteries can be designed within natural systems, both in landscaping and in burial, as well as spaces for communities and …

Rethinking Livability In Megacities: Applications Of Jane Jacobs’ Theories On Tokyo And Los Angeles, Kirara Tsutsui

Pomona Senior Theses

This senior thesis in Environmental Analysis compares critical infrastructure pieces in Tokyo and Los Angeles, on three discrete levels, with a particular focus on the pedestrian experience. As global population grows, with more people projected to live in urban cities more than ever, it is critical that we re-evaluate how we think about and “do” city-planning. Following Jane Jacobs’ theoretical framework, this thesis dissects what urban greenspaces, city neighborhoods, and sidewalks look like in LA and Tokyo. It analyzes, for each proxy, how two of the world’s most “developed” and largest cities have developed into the current landscape. Historical, cultural, …

Empire And Ruins In Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Adin Becker

Pomona Senior Theses

Modern Egypt began as a site for academic exploration and exploitation. Its tremendous archeological riches, indisputable centrality within the world of Islam, and complex multifaceted cultural makeup have piqued the interests of academics worldwide. For centuries, scholars have fantasized about “what lay beyond the water,” a land where they knew “colossal relics of the oldest-known human civilization were concentrated along the Nile in crumbling piles between two vast, usurping deserts, amidst a modern population that professed faith in Islam.”1 Absent material motives, however, Egypt long remained a land of mystery for the West, ripe for discovery and exploration. Egypt’s obscurity …

Development Of Discourse And Criteria In Green Building, Ben Bronstein

Pitzer Senior Theses

The development of sustainable design rating systems and forward-thinking case studies create an increasingly holistic approach to green building that reflects and drives broader changes in sustainability discourse. Introduction of LEED by the U.S. Green Building Council alongside the Adam Joseph Lewis Center at Oberlin College transformed loosely defined notions of environmentally responsible and sustainable architecture into a tangible, comprehensive definition of green building. New rating systems in the late 2000s, Living Building Challenge and SITES, expanded green building to strengthen quantitative benchmarks, introduce qualitative standards such as biophilic design, and provide increased focus on site sustainability. Case studies at …

A Vestige Of Architectural History: The Lansell Laboratory Building, Michael J. Leach

The STEAM Journal

The Lansell Laboratory Building is a beautiful heritage edifice located in the grounds of the old Bendigo Hospital in my hometown of Bendigo, Australia. I once worked in the Lansell Laboratory Building in my role as Data & Quality Specialist with the Loddon Mallee Integrated Cancer Service. I took this photograph of the building as I left it for the last time late one afternoon, just before moving to an office in the new Bendigo Hospital across the road. I felt as though the shadows falling across the building at this time of day were marking the end of an …