Architecture Commons^™

Re-Active Architecture: Exploring The Japanese Educational Experience, John J. Baker

Architecture Theses

This design seeks to transform the Japanese educational experience through the use of architecture. The aim is to provide an alternative school that breaks from the uniformity of the current system and provides an educational environment that places an emphasis on interaction, community, and learning. The school would serve as a junior high school combined with a small community library. The school would accommodate 250-300 children. Ultimately, this school could serve as a model for future educational buildings within the Japanese educational system.

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.

50 Years Reconsidered, Elaine B. Stiles

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Urban [Boxscape], Brad W. Bolte

Architecture Theses

Urban [BOXSCAPE] is a method of developing upon the existing Big Box Landscape in order to synthesize commercial, environmental, and social components of civic life into an integrated solution. This urban concept is demonstrated through a design vision for a Big Box Center in Seekonk, Massachusetts. However, the guidelines and options used in this exercise are meant to exceed this site’s immediate relevance and provide a model approach for similar sites across the nation.

Community Infrastructure: A Transformation Of The New Orleans Industrial Canal, Nicholas Thornton

Architecture Theses

The city of New Orleans is in need of a symbol of stability and hope. The design proposal is for a New Orleans Water Treatment Facility that focuses on purification, reclamation and desalination processes. The facility will create a pure water supply that will be distributed into public circulation as well as be made readily available during natural disasters. A public works building such as this is important to the growth of the ever rebuilding city. In 2005, New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina causing flooding and destruction to a great majority of the city. Once the hurricane subsided …

Rising Architecture, Erica M. Wiggin

Architecture Theses

Many cities have experienced shrinkage in their city centers, leaving behind abandoned lots and buildings throughout the city streets. The historic city of Providence was split after the construction of I-95, leaving the west side of the city separated and in some cases abandoned from downtown. Creating a couple living communities that work together to live sustainably by producing necessities such as electricity, clean water, food and medicine will be contributing to the quality of the city as well as improving their lives by learning, developing and teaching new means of living to the rest of the community in their …

Creating Community: Mixed Use Development In New Bedford, Ma, Matthew J.B. Cate

Architecture Theses

In creating a new type of community for New Bedford, MA, there was an awareness of both the existing community, context, and people, while realizing a need for change. The design uses the concept of adapting the existing density into two modes. First, merging the existing residential fabric and merging it with a public program including both commercial and retail development. Second, focusing that new typology into a smaller more refi ned space, while creating new public areas for communal enjoyment and development. Creating such an idea of living takes the existing unused exterior spaces allotted to the typical housing …

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 …

Redefining The Rural Experience: Change For The People Of The Appalachian Mountains, Magoffin County Crafts, Social, And Health Services Center Gifford, Kentucky, Katelyn Chapin

Architecture Theses

As an introductory attempt to develop improvements within economically challenged Magoffin County, Kentucky, and explore the relationship of program to an individual’s life, craft, social, and health initiatives would be introduced to the residents. A community would evolve where locals could receive education, have access to daycare, purchase food at discount prices, engage in indigenous craft making, and visit professional doctors in the health clinic and urgent care center. Done in order to facilitate individual advancement and community growth, this design will support social integration by allowing people to share the resources needed to end the problem of generational and …

Contradiction And Duality Within The City: The House Of Arts And Culture, Andrei Sdrula

Architecture Theses

This project aims to apply the concepts of contradiction and duality as described in the manifesto to reinvigorate and reconnect a portion of the city Bucharest: the capital of Romania. This city has a long history of architectural achievements and disasters, and this intervention gets to the heart of that legacy when it confronts the House of Parliament: a massive megalomaniacal building constructed under the Ceausescu regime in the 1980s. The project addresses the parliament, sector, city, country, and people with first: a master plan, and then a civic building within that master plan that is located in front of …

Los Angeles Modern: City Of Tomorrow, Christine Madrid French, Elaine B. Stiles

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) and the Los Angeles Conservancy (LAC) hosted the two-day inaugural Modern Module in Los Angeles on September 30 and October 1, 2009. This full-color booklet highlights Modern and recent past resources in greater Los Angeles Area.

Mind The Gap Ii: Notes On The In-Between, Edgar Adams

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

This is an extension of research that looks at Transit Oriented Development as a means of examining the role of transit infrastructure and the public realm within the marginalized urban sites of the urban "in-between".

Density: An Additive Process, Oscar Sam Boyko

Architecture Theses

This project is about embracing the global transition from primarily rural life to primarily urban life. The project is looking for a way to organize the inevitable vertical growth that will need to occur in major cities such as New York.

Living In The Spectrum: Autistic Children Center, Jennifer Villegas

Architecture Theses

Throughout this project, I became aware of how the life of an autistic child differs from others. They view the world around them as something new and exciting. The goal was to create an environment to help children with autism and make them comfortable within their daily lifestyle. I used architecture to construct a realm in which these students could explore an environment which benefited their development.

Integrating Infrastructures: Redefining Ecological + Man-Made Systems, Bio-Remediation Facility, Woonsocket, Rhode Island, Nicole C. Arvanites

Architecture Theses

The bioremediation training facility consists ofaseries ofeducational bUildings including laboratories , libraries, an auditorium, classrooms, greenhouses and garden social spaces for students to learn about ecological systems. The facility runs adjacent to aseries ofold built infrastructures, like the Blackstone River Dam, drawing aparrallel to how people use these systems with the function of the ecological ones within the bUilding. The parrallels between these two types ofsystems will bring new definitions to one's environmental conditions in the city.

Redefining Branding In Architecture: Case Study, Westside Railyards Development New York City, Usa, Andrew Vuono

Architecture Theses

I am proposing a master plan of a 26 acre (1.4 million aq. ft.) development on top of the West Side Rail Yards near Midtown Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan in and of itself has a brand and I would like to design within it. The goal is to create a series of towers that specifically focus on anchoring the Highline as a destination all while enhancing the “New York Experience” of the surrounding context. The brand will be re-identifying the unused rail yards, due to its proximity to the highline, Javits Center, Pennsylvania Station, Madison Square Garden, the Hudson River, and …

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.

Reuniting A Community: The Stephen Kaplanis Ymca, Michael R. Kozlowski

Architecture Theses

The goal of this thesis was to create a center that brings all teenagers of Danbury, CT together, especially the young generation to keep them active and growing.

National Culture And Entertainment Center: Iconographic Architecture, Hung Quoc Le

Architecture Theses

The building I design will be an icon, a landmark to publicize my hometown, (a now thriving Ho Chi Minh City, formerly called Saigon), to celebrate friendly Vietnamese people and the country of Vietnam in general. The reality of Vietnam and Vietnamese life is quite different now from the image of Vietnam in the past. This new image of the Vietnamese culture will be publicized through a series of projections in spaces, on surfaces, in the transformation into form, or by more conventional displayed photos of different periods of time.

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

The Right Ascension Children's Center: Orphaned Refugee Rehabilitation, Newton, Ma, Jonathan Fox

Architecture Theses

An all encompassing facility placing an emphasis on safety and protection for rescued refugee children. Large open spaces are critical to the success of the children’s recovery, creating a healthy therapeutic environment. The flexibility of the building allows each child to experience the transitional functionality of living and cohabitating at the center. As the children progress through the rehabilitation process, a greater emphasis is placed on integration and community, allowing them another chance at a healthy, successful life.

Waite Potter House: Artifacts From Archaeological Dig

Documentation

Artifacts found during the 2009 archaeological dig at the Waite Kirby Potter Site in Westport, Massachusetts. Dig was completed by Katharine M. Johnson and Christa M. Beranek from the Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

For the full report, please see Documentary Research and Archaeological Investigations at the Waite-Kirby-Potter Site, Westport, Massachusetts. Prepared for Community Preservation Committee, Town of Westport, MA by Katharine M. Johnson and Christa M. Beranek, May 2010. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=fiskecenter_pubs

Volvo Museum Of Automotive History: Boston Massachusetts, C. Patrick Mccabe

Architecture Theses

The Volvo Museum of Automotive History places people and product in direct physical contact. The visitor travels on a pace towards a closer personal relationship with the product understanding its history components and underlying generative concepts. Visitors will gain valuable information about Volvo’s products but they will not feel forced to purchase anything. They may later decide to purchase a Volvo because they have reached a total understanding of the product and recognize it as a logically optimal solution to a personal need.

Bridging The Gap: A Symbiotic Approach, Nicholas Czarniecki

Architecture Theses

Some architectural themes to be explored in this project have to deal with sustainability, passive environment systems, the play between new and old, and public and private. These themes are important because of the obvious need for solutions for energy usage when it comes to building sustainably. The goal of the thesis is to creat a culture that is sustainable through the interaction of young and old people in a built environment.

Re-Conceptualizing Performance And Event In The Public Realm: A Multicultural Funeral Home, Ashley Rodrigues

Architecture Theses

Architecture is about space and space supports place and event. When someone spends time in a building for the first time it is not the architectural details of the edifi ce that will be branded in their mind; it is often the event that took place there, and the activities that they participated in that one will remember. It is the responsibility of the architect to foresee the events that will take place over the seasons and architecturally plan for such experiences. To be an architecture of this moment architecture must continually reinvent existing rituals, typologies, and tectonics through a …

Adaptive Reuse Of The Big Box Store, Mark C. Roderick

Architecture Theses

The project reuses and adapts a big box store into a mixed-use space that is pedestrian friendly, with paths allowing access to multiple modes of transportation. Located in Providence Rhode Island, the site is wedged between Amtrak rail tracks and Route 146, and bisected by the Woonasquatucket River. The river provides opportunity for people to enjoy the water. A focused effort was employed to enhance the river by diverting stormwater runoff to swales located on site. The project minimizes grey-fields and maximizes green-space, with a concerted effort to reconnect the site with the Charles neighborhood to enhance community. The reuse …

Center For The Creation And Performance Of The Arts, Dennis P. Mcgowan

Architecture Theses

The design is geared towards experience and interaction both in and outside the building, as well as the interaction with the city. The Project creates a place that wants to give back to the community. If the building and space is popular, it will attract people and make them want to become a part of the environment. For instance, after the center is constructed companies and businesses would be attracted to be part of the neighborhood because of the energy and activity that is generated by the building.

Dignified Housing: A Community In North Conway, New Hampshire, Christian Lanciaux

Architecture Theses

This document outlines and explores my interest and investigation of how architecture affect’s one’s state of mind while addressing a specific social need in a particular area. The project is a mixed-income housing development in the town of North Conway, New Hampshire.

Soundview Center For Acceptance: Youths Learning From Each Other, Amanda Cerqueira

Architecture Theses

This project is one that is designed to the needs of the children using it. Children seem to learn better and quicker from each other, so my building will be a space where they can get together after school and keep learning while staying safe. This building is designed to be environmentally friendly and take advantage of its open site. Any land removed from the site during construction will be reused somewhere within the site as well as adding a green roof to make up for the grass removed for the footprint of the building. Since it was previously a …

Social Rejuvenation: A New Community Center, Lancaster, Pa, John Snavely

Architecture Theses

The goal of a new community center, set in the Southeast Ward, Lancaster, Pa, is to create an iconic place that will unite people in a downtrodden neighborhood by providing a setting that will bring the community together, once again. The principle element that these downtrodden communities lack is a cultural or social bond. By providing a place where members of the community can gather together, celebrate and share their different cultures will ultimately create a new cultural and social bond within the neighborhood and the greater community. Also by providing a place for everyday activities to take place within …