Architecture Commons^™

Bench – A Design Process To Make A Digitally Manufactured Furniture System Using The Spirit Of Japanese Joinery, Myles Richter

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone identifies and implements the spirit of Japanese joinery into a contemporary design process to develop a component based piece of furniture through means of digital manufacturing, namely CNC (Computerized Numerical Control) machining. Through the aesthetic, functional, and structural results of this design process, the impact of applying the spirit of Japanese joinery as a guide for the development of the tectonic language of an object are revealed. The structure of this project will discuss an overview of the design process of an object which was designed in the spirit of Japanese joinery, and an assessment of the success …

Subterraneans: A Regional Earth Dwelling For Comfort And Beauty, Isaak Benchoff

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Subterraneans is a study of an affordable, self-sufficient, sustainable, and dignified housing prototype for the region of Northwest Arkansas. It is a design process investigation based on the ideas of turning a local, sustainable material into affordable homes that can be built within a community of people sharing land and resources. The homes would utilize as many natural materials as possible to minimize the impact on the Earth and the cost to the owners.

Research looked at many different vernacular building precedents as well as the work done by contemporary design firms in the area of economical, low-impact, and passively …

Of Word And Stone: The History Of Medieval Spain Through The Lens Of Architecture And Language, Samantha Hernandez

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Medieval Spain is a unique summation of religious and cultural communities. Through the built forms of Al-Andalus, there is unique preservation of societal imprints that parallel the formation of the Castilian language. These two mediums—architecture and language—are a telling of the culture and history of the region. By first observing the historical formation of Spanish, and in turn the various communities which inhabited the Iberian Peninsula, one may find many correlations with architecture created at the same time. After understanding the historical making of the Spanish language, it is important to analyze the language itself and how it differs from …

Gentrification And Displacement: Connections Between Changing Housing Typologies And Long-Time Residents’ Quality Of Life In East Austin, Texas, Grant Wilson

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the impacts of gentrification on quality of life, displacement, and housing typology in East Austin, Texas. The neighborhood is examined as a case study and example of the concepts discussed. Evaluated through both a qualitative and quantitative lens, this study serves as a report and update on the continued disruption of the living patterns of minority residents in the city. Recommendations are given to mitigate displacement for East Austin residents and improve the quality of life for those remaining. By identifying the connection between changing housing typology and displacement impacts, this report aspires to give designers a …

Identity And Placemaking Of Modern Roman Piazzas: Case Study Analysis Of Piazza San Cosimato, Piazza Testaccio, And Piazza Cavour, Lauren Lamker

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The more we understand the patterns of how people use space, the better we will be able to forecast the outcomes of new public space initiatives. Studying public life can be done in a similar way to how meteorologists can fairly accurately describe the weather (Gehl 2013, 2). The goal of this analysis is to better understand the patterns evident in these successful spaces so that more similar spaces can be developed in the future. Can exemplary public spaces be used to forecast new projects? Rome has a high density of successful public spaces, and this case study will focus …

Form From Color: Color Generated Form, Kyra Vreeland

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Form From Color: Color Generated Form evaluates the ability of color to be a three-dimensional and architectural space creator. While complex in history and connotations, color within this capstone is assigned a theoretical characteristic by which forms are generated from color solely. The produced results suggest that color can be a form generator and can have more spatial applications in design. This capstone has the mode of inquiry of a Creative Artistic Inquiry.

There are three series of tests within this capstone. All of which are based on Johannes Itten’s belief that primary colors correspond with primary shapes. The first …

The Evolution Of Place And Neighborhood Identity In Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, Isai Castaneda

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This research paper examines the relationship between place and identity by looking at the evolution of both in the specificity of the neighborhood of Boyle Heights, in Los Angeles, California. The role of the built environment and its evolution is tied to socio-cultural evolution in Boyle Heights in a narrative that emphasizes the systems of power and control that emerge through the lenses of dwelling and transportation infrastructure. Historical review of secondary sources, images, and graphics (like maps) serve to support the arguments made. The research paper focuses on Boyle Heights and Los Angeles during its interwar years, primarily examining …

Culture In Disney Films: A Comparative Analysis Of Color, Composition And Rhythm, Megan Paul

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

As a student of design, I take inspiration from everything around me. The media I consume, the places I visit, and the people I meet.By choice or not, I and my generation are subject to the various forms of pop culture, film is one of them. Film is one of few art forms which combines several methods and elements of design to produce a cohesive result, as opposed to a singular medium. This forms the connection to design thinking and is the foundation for the study.

Another critical component to pop culture is the ability to reach the masses. Due …

Urban Portraiture: Capturing The Personality Of Place, Hannah Gray

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone aims to develop a prototypical process using digital photography to document the essence of place. A final visual narrative element is created with the intent of being utilized by architectural designers to draw inspiration and understanding from the setting in which they are designing. The process involved four distinct phases that culminated in a single narrative montage. These four phases included the actual photographing of the city, evaluating and taxonomy of the photographs into categories that best embodied the spirit of the place, the altering of individual photographs into their essential parts and pieces, and the process of …

Genius Loci: Capturing The Distinctive Roman Spirit Through Pochoir, Carlee Mcguire

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone explores the concept of genius loci through photographic and artistic exploration and does so through a lens of study set on Rome, Italy. The first major goal of the process has been to discover the elements, moments, physical textures, and other design elements that comprise the genius loci of a city or space. The second goal has been to partake in a process that can be used by myself and other designers in efforts to make more conscious design decisions — gaining a better understanding of ‘sense of place’ can assist designers in straying from globalized, placeless design.

The Hot Springs Creekway & The Rediscovery Of The Water That Made Hot Springs Famous, Zane Colvin

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Arkansas’s Hot Springs National Park was the first natural reservation in the United States and is the oldest park in the National Park System. In Hot Springs, 47 springs release almost a million gallons of potable 143° water every day - the problem is, almost all of this water is hidden from sight, funneled directly into an 1884-constructed tunnel underground, where no person (or other life) can experience it.

Hot Springs Creek should be daylighted and connected with the surrounding National Park, creating thermal 'pools' for public use, and restoring its banks to pre-settlement ecologically rich conditions. My plan to …

Design For A Spectrum, Brooke Warden

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a growing disorder across the world. ASD affects around 1 in every 68 children in the United States (Block, 2018). This disorder results in significant social, intellectual, and behavioral changes within a child, and create challenges for a child with ASD to learn and develop like children without ASD. No two cases of ASD are alike which is why it is called a spectrum disorder. This adds an extra challenge to designing spaces for children with ASD to inhabit and thrive. These children frequently suffer from sensory processing deficits in which they have a hard …

Young Adults In A Costly World: Can Accessory Dwelling Units Serve As An Alternative Form Of Accommodation For Recent College Graduates Amidst The Rising Cost Of Housing And A College Education?, Aaron Schlosser

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past few years, young adults have been put in a rather tough situation concerning personal finances. As college tuition has risen, so has student debt accrual, leaving many recent college graduates near-crippled financially. Along with this issue, which is large in and of itself, is the fact that housing prices have risen in many of the metropolitan areas in the United States. Both of these problems, when coupled, lead to a decrease in quality of life for most young adults, and people in general. Because of this, the approach of this thesis is to find an affordable form …

Spaces Of The Tragic: Modern Dramatic Tragedy And Contemporary Memorial Design, Shiloh Bemis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Humans use narrative to understand the world around us. At early ages we are exposed to storytelling with variable intent, from cautionary tales to the inspirational and everything in between. The dialectic strength of narrative mediums is well-known and well-studied. Theatre is one of the world’s oldest enduring forms of storytelling and has a strong ability to reflect and adapt with cultures as they develop, as a means of commentary and cultural reflection.

Architecture shares theatre’s ancient roots and has always been an important method of communication and expression. However, its tactics have historically been less narrative-centric than theatre and …

A Story Of The Social Life Of Yulupa Cohousing, Kayla Ho

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone is a study of the lived social experience of one cohousing community. Cohousing communities are designed with the intention of fostering a community with a mixture of privately-owned units and publicly shared spaces and responsibilities. The study is conducted at a significant point in American history: these communities are a fast-growing phenomenon in the United States yet they remain unknown and/or unattainable to many Americans.

Qualitative information from the community’s current residents is gathered by using research tools of interviewing and photography. Interviews were completed virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographs were created during a three-day visit …

Fitness Anxiety: Redesigning The University Of Arkansas’ Health, Physical Education, And Recreation Building To Reduce Intimidation In The Fitness Centers, William Tack

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The goal of the capstone was to redesign Health, Physical Education, and Recreation (from here on out referred to as the H.P.E.R.) building on the University of Arkansas Campus to make the space more friendly to new users. This redesign consisted of a reworked site plan for the overall building and some significant shifts in the program to accommodate more gym space. The redesign work was based on the following: prior academic research regarding what causes intimidation in gym settings, student opinions shared via questionnaires, spatial/ programmatic standards from the National Intramural and Recreational Sports Association, a photographic journal documenting …

The Future Of Urban Technology: Exploring Smart Cities And Transportation Through Game Theory And Scenario Planning, Matthew Wilson

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Technological innovation is occurring at a rapid pace in the world of personal devices. This trend of change has not been able to occur as fast in the city infrastructure. Consumers are curious about the next generation of technology and the integration of artificially intelligent technology in transportation and the urban fabric. In this project, I study the motivations and values of a set of characters involved in the integration and innovation of Smart City Technology. These characters create potential future scenarios of the city from their actions and reactions to specific decisions.

This body of work can provide a …

Plastic Bottles In Architecture: A How To Guide On Life-Cycle Through Reuse, Crystallyne Landram

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This booklet is a collection of 6 case studies that utilize reused plastic bottles significantly within their design. Prior to working with the case studies, much time was dedicated to research that justified the need for such a project. In-depth research on the environmental crisis, waste management trends, stewardship, sustainability, and ethics was conducted and recorded in the introduction to contextualize the need for an accessible how-to guide such as this one. Time was also given to establishing background information on bottles, reprocessing, and architecture to elaborate further on each piece of the content matter. It is curated as a …

Dance In Public Space, Rachel Cruzan

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Dance is a universal cultural phenomenon that provides physical, emotional, and social benefits. Public Space, when well-utilized, provides people with opportunities to meet various needs. In this way, Dance and Public Space have the potential for a mutually beneficial relationship, Public Space providing a way for people to meet certain needs through Dance, while Dance improves the quality of Public Space. This relationship is already in existence worldwide. This paper explores seven case studies globally where Dance occurs in Public Space. Written research is combined with diagrams developed to study key aspects of these spaces. The diagrams study Dance and …

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 …

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 …

Apollo And Columbia: Landscape As Power In Washington D.C. And Versailles., Beau Cameron Burris

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The grounds of the Palace of Versailles and the urban fabric of Washington, D.C. are monumentally scaled, richly mythologized landscapes of power. Through massive baroque geometries, both sites impress order on the vastness of space, reframing it for the glory of their respective creators. Within these grand spaces, symbolism and iconography provide narratives of conquest, violence, glory, and fear. Stories of seemingly immortal men emerge from classical traditions of architecture and sculpture. Louis XIV and the presidents and war heroes of the United States have become god-heroes in bronze and stone, presiding over palatial grounds and public space as if …

Americanization Of Islamic Cultural Design: Erasure, Orientalism/Exoticism, And Americanization, Peter L. Stanley

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Islam arrived in North America primarily through the importation of Muslim African slaves. Subsequent suppression of the slaves, and by extension their religion and places of worship, generated a lack of understanding and misunderstanding about Islam. Over time, this misunderstanding evolved into xenophobic and orientalist representations of the religion. This Capstone project researches Islam’s roots in colonial America through the period before the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and its evolution after the Columbian Exposition, with defining time periods expressed as Erasure, Orientalism/Exoticism, and Americanization. With the help of cultural trust organizations such as the Aga Khan Foundation, the contemporary Americanization …

Moisture Monitoring Of A Clt Structure In A Southern Climate, Elizabeth Poblete

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Understanding of moisture behavior in cross laminated timber (CLT) is critical to the widespread use of CLT in construction in the United States. Currently, very little data exists on the long-term impact of moisture on CLT. The objective of this research is to collect data regarding the long-term moisture variation in the CLT panel at the University of Arkansas Adohi Hall residence hall. The climate of Northwest Arkansas is different from previously monitored buildings, as they were in the Pacific Northwest. Comparatively, Northwest Arkansas has a warmer climate with higher average annual precipitation. Waterproofing efforts are usually employed to prevent …

Ppmexplorer: Using Information Retrieval, Computer Vision And Transfer Learning Methods To Index And Explore Images Of Pompeii, Cindy Roullet

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, we present and analyze the technology used in the making of PPMExplorer: Search, Find, and Explore Pompeii. PPMExplorer is a software tool made with data extracted from the Pompei: Pitture e Mosaic (PPM) volumes. PPM is a valuable set of volumes containing 20,000 historical annotated images of the archaeological site of Pompeii, Italy accompanied by extensive captions. We transformed the volumes from paper, to digital, to searchable. PPMExplorer enables archaeologist researchers to conduct and check hypotheses on historical findings. We present a theory that such a concept is possible by leveraging computer generated correlations between artifacts using …

Walkability Of Suburban Retrofits Of The Washington Dc Area: Immersion Into Qualitative Constructs, David Sweere

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

The majority of the United States population is living in the suburbs, and yet the suburban built fabric has developed with spatial conditions that have failed to prove their efficacy on environmental, social or economic terms. Most contemporary architectural and urban theorists agree that the suburban condition is inherently problematic. In a 2010 Ted Talk, architect and urban designer Ellen Dunham-Jones discusses the problematic state of the suburban built condition, citing dependence on the vehicle, sparseness of built form, environmental costs, transportation costs, and even increased obesity rates (Dunham-Jones 2010). Because the suburbs comprise the majority of our “urbanized” areas …

Refuge For The Refugee, Chelsia Sooksengdao

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone investigates the overlap of psychology and architecture as a tool to address the issue of mental wellness in refugees. It focuses on the way refugee camp conditions perpetuate the trauma that is experienced, and how the inhabited spaces foster unhealthy interactions that add to the emotional stress refugees endure. Most of these unhealthy interactions are caused by overcrowded living conditions that prevail in most refugee camps, leading to violations of privacy and personal space. By investigating aspects of social psychology and proxemics, this capstone connects these concepts to spatial solutions, with the goal of reducing emotional stress and …

The Social Lot: Reimagining The Future Of Surface Parking Lots In Kansas City, Missouri, Lauren Davis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Currently, the world is experiencing a resurgence of the urban lifestyle as humanity undergoes its third great wave of human history, the metropolitan tide. Humanity’s advancement in the past few decades has made cities the largest technology possible. In 1952, only thirty percent of the population lived in cities, and by the end of the twenty-first century, eighty-five percent of the world’s population will be urban. With this influx of population in the urban landscape, it is pertinent now more than ever for cities to redesign the city for the pedestrian.

In the 1950s, there was a predominant reorganization of …

A Functional Escape, Zachary Spero

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past two decades, the tree house has outgrown its more recent traditional role as a child’s place to play and has served many new functions. I intend to conduct research that questions how the tree house has evolved over the last twenty years based upon changes in program, technology, and relation to the tree itself. As a result of this research, I will deliver a clear understanding of tree house design best practices in the form of a manual.

A Second Life: The Adaptation Of Dying Italian Towns To Accommodate Immigrants And Refugees, Rachel Rubis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Despite its efforts in historic preservation, there is an abundance of culturally significant Italian vernacular towns dying due to dilapidation and depopulation. Simultaneously, Italy has faced an ongoing stream of immigrants and refugees seeking work, housing, and asylum within its borders—a crisis that has resulted in Italian fear and animosity aside immigrant maltreatment and hardship. My research, which is supplemented by first-hand experience in Italy, qualitative analysis, and text sources, proposes interventions into dying Italian towns to aid in the resettlement of immigrants and refugees—an effort meant to be mutually beneficial to both the town and the immigrant. In my …