Architecture Commons^™

Impact Of The Built Environment On The End-Of-Life Journey, Kelechi Akwazie

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Several research studies and personal anecdotes show that home-based hospice care patients report better quality of life than their inpatient care counterparts – suggesting that the location of care/built environment is a critical component of hospice care. As a result, other research studies have attempted to provide evidence-based design recommendations for inpatient hospice facilities; however, several of these recommendations either conflict with each other or are vaguely prescribed – which may dull any attempts to implement them.

This literature review takes a unique approach to the provision of evidence-based design recommendations for inpatient hospice facilities by holistically assessing hospice care, …

Illustration Misbehavior, Dana Mcintyre

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis attends to normative and repressive problems within representation to show disobedience through the exploration of misbehaving illustration. This project is designed as a collection of three chapters. Each highlights and challenges specific themes relevant to the chosen three architects, Bernard Tschumi, Francis Ching, and Graphic Standards, and the behavior of their representation. The goal is to contest these male voices by replacing them with female perspectives that misbehave. The exploration of narrative and illustration emphasizes the harm that mundane representation creates. By co-opting their modes and methods in misbehaving ways, these stories call into focus the way that …

Leveraging Participatory Design To Regenerate Neighborhood Spaces: Rebuilding Community Infrastructure, Jeremiah Brown

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

No abstract provided.

Neurodiversity In Architecture: The Inclusive School, Dominic Paquet

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Architecture today has responded to the typification of people we saw in the modernist era. While sectors like workplace, healthcare, and residential have responded to the changing needs of people and vast amount of differences educational architecture has been left behind as schools built in the 70’s continue to impact our students today and fail to serve each students differing needs. Schools have become architecture that must serve multiple generations. With the average age of schools rising to 44 years old we must consider how schools transverse how education is taught and learned today as well as consider how that …

Disrupting Routine: The Expansion Of Precedent, Olena Yarmolyuk, Olena Yarmolyuk

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Iconic architecture has presented a preferential nature to the establishment of architectural work. Academically, only the architectural a-side is presented to students. It is used as a means to develop, measure, and identify good work. Meanwhile, the architectural B-side is deliberately hidden away and censored by the profession. It exploits the perverse - displaying all of architecture’s failures, glitches, and anomalies.1 However, the notion of the a and b sides also presents problematic consequences. Prescribing architecture as either a or b side is problematic - it creates a divide between iconic architecture and all the other works deemed ‘insignificant’. Even …

The Reactivation Of Desolate Architecture, Logan Dolezal

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

A guiding concept for my thesis is the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. Wabi-Sabi, as defined by Valentina Marin, “refers to an aesthetic philosophy and vision applied to objects, which alludes to beauty in imperfections and the value of the passage of time, and openly accepts the deterioration and transience of existence, both human and material.”

I believe that this concept can be applied to architecture and that we can utilize disregarded and desolate structures by creating insertions that promote interaction with decaying architecture. This notion eventually led to my discovery of my thesis statement, “The reactivation of desolate architecture through …

Tectonics Of Reuse: A Material Exploration Of Deconstruction And Reconstruction In Architecture, Scott Lafferty

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis explores the tectonics and poetics of reusing deconstructed building components. To challenge the current unitized method of deconstruction, a series of machines were designed to extract large-scale building chunks. These chunks were then reassembled using a range of details and connections that celebrate material textures and cultural memories of each architectural fragment. By developing methods and strategies for material reuse, the thesis demonstrates the potential for design to address the environmental impacts of the building industry and the architectural representation of cultural memory through tectonics.

Advisor: Zachary Tate Porter

Interior Architectural Facades: A Study Into The Visual Impact On Emotional Experience, Bailey Gocke

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Emotion is a vital process in which the body interprets environmental stimuli and generates a corresponding bodily response. The interpretation of stimuli determines the emotional reactions experienced by individuals, making it crucial for designers to influence these interpretations and subsequent reactions. Architectural facades, both interior and exterior, have a significant impact on the user's perception and overall experience of a building. However, limited research exists on the integration of emotion research in architecture, particularly regarding the study of facades and emotions.

To address this critical research gap, this thesis aims to investigate the emotional impact of interior facade conditions on …

Beyond Dualities Of Place: West Bottoms Kcmo, Keleigh Ketelhut

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

West Bottoms, Kansas City, is a historic, industrial neighborhood adjacent to downtown and splitting the Kansas/Missouri border. Formerly home to livestock trading, It is a place currently known for its lawless character and grit. Like many urban cores, it has grabbed the attention of developers, including current stakeholders in SomeraRoad, a New York-based developer, partnering with HOK Kansas City to masterplan the district and redevelop the portion adjacent to the Historic Core.

Like many urban redevelopment projects, the locals who live, work, and play here have concerns that the West Bottoms may succumb to conventional placelessness development, washing out the …

Designing For Micropolitan Areas: A Public Library Design Manual For Adaptive And Circular Applications, Samantha R. Zeek

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

A micropolitan statistical area refers to a geographic region in the United States that has at least one urban cluster of population between 10,000 and 50,000 people, as defined by the US Census Bureau. According to the 2019 Fiscal Year Public Libraries Survey, more than three-fourths of public libraries serve areas with fewer than 25,000 people in the U.S. (Frehill, et al. 2021). However, as new design techniques and advanced services are developed, they tend to be primarily implemented in libraries serving metropolitan areas, which only serve around a quarter of the US population, leading to an unequal distribution of …

Designing The American Dreamscape: Suburbs Of Worship And The American Dream, Rebecca Virgl

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis explores suburbia as the physical manifestation of the American Dream as a pseudo-religious system. This religious system and contemporary suburban ideology are explained and disseminated through a historical review and analysis of suburban media. Pop culture serves as a signpost that directs public opinion and cultural value; much of media today wrestles with the ideas of the American Dream, fore fronting these cultural values in our collective identity. Once the baseline of socio-economic religious ideology has been established in the American Dream, the extremes of these beliefs were explored in three suburban environments: home, labor, and retail. Each …

Reinventing Educational Spaces, Angel Coleman

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Problems always existed in our educational system, but many issues intensified in the pandemic. One of the biggest is the mental impact on the children, with those in high school tripling in numbers. The spaces these students spend their time has a great impact on their mental well-being. Our schools need to create places for the students to make communities and feel a sense of ownership. Giving students a place to belong and making them proud of their work helps build their self-esteem, relieving some mental health issues.

My thesis is redesigning these environments to create classrooms, schools and a …

Prototyping Attainability: A Guide For Incremental Density In Communities, Quinlan Mcfadden

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

In the absence of direct public investment solutions, Prototyping Attainability, explores how the combination of building typologies and land uses can achieve attainable housing strategies by striking a balance between shared community spaces and optimizing density, without disrupting the existing residential landscape. Through this exploration of research and design, strategic changes in zoning, regulation and typologies will be brought forward to aid the framework process of solutions to the housing crisis not only within Nebraskan communities, but in communities nationwide.

Restoring Lost Heritage, Lewis Culliver

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

One of the best streets to explore in Omaha is N. 24th Street. Many buildings showcase larger than life, vibrant murals that express the creative nature and spirit of this part of historic North Omaha. The murals represent a healing element for the community; many murals cover structures that are in various states of disrepair. Community gardens have risen to fill voids left by traumatic development practices, such as the implementation of the north freeway.

Despite having lost a large part of its heritage, including hundreds of homes and businesses that were destroyed to make way for the north freeway, …

"Folk" Home-Lore: Storytelling And The Architecture Of The Home, Madeleine Pollara

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

I have observed that architecture is not sufficiently understood. This problem is largely due to the fact that the language used to describe architecture is broad and convoluted. This language is also divided into two categories which describe the denotative and connotative nature of architecture. It is easier to understand the denotative nature of architecture than it is to understand the connotative nature. As a response to this issue, my project aims to explore the connotative nature of architecture through telling stories about the home from the architecture’s point of view. The purpose of my thesis is to explore the …

Modding Suburbia - Guided Principles To Challenge The Established Social And Political Norms Of The American Midwestern Suburbs., Brenton Rahn

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Responding to the unchallenged sprawl of suburban cities in the Midwest, the proposed principles seek to densify and further diversify the established social and political norms which currently still stagnate progress toward more autonomous neighborhoods. Through application of a specific set of principles that serve as guidelines, Modding Suburbia seeks to create dense, usable space from previously unused and forgotten interstitial areas hiding in the suburban landscape surrounding the socially and politically protected single-family home.

This project focuses on the transformation of the immediate context surrounding the single family home to promote density and diversification of housing and community. Through …

Access To Air: Generating Open Space In The Built Environment, Phillip Smith

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis project explores the balance between capturing the benefits of dense, urban design and the desire for residents to experience open space where healthy, active lifestyles are possible. The condition of humanity today struggles with both ecological degradation and social injustices reinforced by systemic segregation. By exploring density in a way that nurtures human dignity, our development patterns can allow us to grow in a more sustainable and equitable way.

Advisor: Mark Hoistad

Aesthetics For The Uncanny In Architecture, Andres F. Villegas

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis puts forth an aesthetic model that explores phenomenological effects of the architectural uncanny as a disruptor of an ever-becoming standardized architecture. Along with an increasing population, and the rapid digitazition of architecture, the Building Industry has seen a drastic demand for productivity and efficiency in construction.

This in turn, has led urban spaces to be synthesized into formulas and algorithms as repeating, automated recipes in the urban fabric.

The proposed aesthetic model will re-contextualize concepts of the architectural uncanny in our contemporary societal and urban fabric, as a response to a built environment that seems growingly dictated, arranged …

Materiality And Construction Of A Church In Myanmar, Sunkist Judson

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This is my investigation related to Theinla village church. This is an investigation of architectural impacts on a protestant religious house of worship experience through a cultural case study. Churches were built and design based on worship culture and traditions. Churches have evolved for over two thousand years due to innovation and technology and imitating previous architecture styles. The way people worship in the protestant religion is a little different in every culture. I want to find out if there is any overlap in Baptist churches in different cultures. Does material limit the manner in which the church is constructed …

White Noise Dark Ecology: Designing For The Soundscape, William Cox

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis explores the intersection of architecture, sound, and ecology. It works through the methodology on how to modulate and produce soundscapes rich with various sound objects. It addresses questions on how designers can use the act of listening to engage with the soundscape. This exploration hopes to continue to find niches which create opportunities for new interactions between architecture and ecology through sound. This is all in a continued effort to engage in positive feedback loops between architecture and non-humans to actively break down the divide between the artificial and natural through sound and architecture by designing for the …

Building Scene: Translations Between Text And Architecture, Joseph Synek

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis explores the translation between text and architecture to construct architectural scene. By foregrounding the richness of the scene, these processes engage the kinesthetic, material, emotional, and temporal qualities of architectural space.

Advisor: Zachary Tate Porter

Accessible Health: An Evidenced Based Approach To Improve User Experience And Clinical Sustainability Within Rural Healthcare, John Coughlin

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

The manner through which health care is provided evolves through advances in medical knowledge as well as improvements in supporting infrastructure and processes. The rate at which this change is made possible is increasingly driven by non-medical factors. These factors include, but are not limited to, the necessity to operate safely in a COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously operating with economically sustainable processes and infrastructure. This is especially true for underserved populations in rural communities. Acknowledging and understanding these changing environments allows one to better optimize the sometimes competing interests of user experience with sustainable clinical practices. Healthcare is vital to …

Julia Morgan: Forgotten, Omitted, Overlooked, Or Celebrated, Renee Meyer

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was the first female registered architect in the state of California (1902). Despite her prolific independent practice, recognition for her work came late even for her most known project, Hearst’s Castle in San Simeon, California.

Throughout history, women have been repeatedly left out of the history of architecture and design, often being overshadowed by their male partners. This paper will seek to clarify reasons to decipher why this particular architect was left out of history and the media during her lifetime and will show that her omissions were not solely due to the fact that she was …

Parafiction And The Architectural Imagination, Ashley Glesinger

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

I observe current architecture practice to be too reality-driven. As a response to this issue, this thesis demonstrates parafiction as one productive method of exercising architectural imagination. I define parafiction as a type of fiction that begins with a fact and is presented as a fact in order to demonstrate what the world could be. To create parafictions, I have used multi-medium techniques of representation. Through the representations, this thesis strives to “make present” one person’s imagination.

I see parafiction and architecture both as projective activities. Specifically, that both redefine relationships to what already exists and create tension between the …

Glitter Urbanism - Lgbtq Narratives In Architecture, William Dendinger

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

This thesis explores the concept of queer space in architecture to understand its relationship between queer social narratives and their impact on spatial conditions. LGBTQ culture is a complex mix of avant-garde character aesthetics contrasted with hidden, invisible identity traits. By exploring queer figures and spaces through the lens of "camp," we can begin to see sexuality and gender’s impacts on objects and space. I argue that queer space is critical in shaping LGBTQ individuals’ narratives by bringing their struggles, celebrations, and what it is to be queer to the forefront of the urban landscape.

This is approached is by …

Batman's New Arkham: Revisiting Piranesi, Mathew Drummond

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

My thesis is the re-appropriation of the historical image through the medium of a comic.

For the first half of this book, I will focus the conversation around three areas of inquiries that derived from the work I've produced while the second half will focus on the research that was done to create this thesis.

The Master Plan: Design Guidelines For Installments Along The Cowboy Trail, Nathan Gradoville

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

The Cowboy Recreation and Nature Trail is a multi-purpose trail with an abundance of amenities. However, even with great features, the trail is an underutilized asset for the state of Nebraska and the Midwest region. Budget cuts and a lack of regional and local momentum has caused the trail to become devalued. The grain elevator has long been an icon, adored and beloved by the Midwesterners for centuries. The silos have inherent qualities that foster appreciation and respect. These characteristics are rooted in its stature and materiality. In order to remedy the suffering of the Cowboy Trail, a study into …

Boundary Echoes: A Series Of Cautionary Tales, Shayla Joy Dick

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Around the world, people live in places where boundaries define their lives. Cities like Nicosia, Jerusalem, Belfast, and El Paso must contend with the constant struggle of us versus them, solidified through physical barriers. Unfortunately, these places and their very real problems are removed and seemingly unimportant in our safe and familiar reality. But these are real cities where real people live. Those people could be us. Their cities could be our cities. Thus, a radical approach is taken in this thesis. A satire of sorts. Four divided cites are examined to understand the spatial and social factors of their …

Rhythms Of Cinematic Horror: Enabling The Device Of The Frame, Violet Bast

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Horror can be defined as the lens in the pursuit of defining a complex model of aesthetic judgement, which is a classification that has conventionally been home to profound suspicion about the virtues of aesthetic itself. Particularly in horror films, the device of the frame can be utilized as an opportunity to alter a viewer’s perception of what may or may not occur within a space. This affiliation with space is what allows cinema and architecture to link their worlds and human experience together. By employing the methodologies of rhythmic impact and montage theory, the effects of horror-derived operations on …

[Ne]W Arch Hall | Building Inclusion & Equity Into Architecture Education, Jati Zunaibi

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

The purpose of this thesis book is not to play into the historically white-male-centric hierarchical system that the collegiate institution has established for architecture. The objective of this text is to provide a critical reflection of our academies through the lens of a minority emerging architect (raised by two former practicing architects that transitioned into academia, spent eight years in school with countless leadership experiences, and nationally recognized as a scholar). Most of the white text contents herein are appropriate for scholastic study, but, I would encourage readers to follow along with the grey and bracketed text as well. Although …