Architecture Commons^™

Ethics In Architecture: The Application Of An Ethic Of Care In The Design Of A Cancer Treatment Center, Emily Lynn Hardin

Masters Theses

The project chosen for this thesis is a healthcare facility, specifically a Cancer Treatment Center, as it is a paradigmatic project for application of an ethic of care. Moreover, healthcare facilities are not given due attention in architectural discourse and education despite the importance of their role in society. While healthcare specific organizations have begun to recognize and research the effects of built environment on health, this newfound concern seems to be generally limited to those organizations. Broader discourse involving other related professions, i.e. architecture, philosophy, psychology, sociology, etc., could benefit research as healthcare entails not only the treatment of …

Thresholds, John Charles Sanders Mixon

Masters Theses

This thesis is an attempt to expand the meaning of the threshold in order to conceptualize and design architecture that is able “to reconcile conflicting polarities” (Smithson, 96). The program of the investigation is an art center for community and learning to be used by professionals, students, and the public. A senior year public highschool school program, professional art studios, and a community center are designed for a site in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, on two blocks on either side of Jefferson Street at the base and below the Jefferson street Bridge. The threshold is explorded as a conceptual and physical …

Connecting Self-Contained Urban Neighborhoods, John Daniel Lattimore

Masters Theses

(Thesis Statement)

The world today has physical, social, and economic problems that can be solved, at least in part, through architectural design. This thesis argues that designing our neighborhoods with equal weight given to the environmental, social, and economic issues can help solve larger global problems. The goal of sustainability can happen if we create neighborhoods that contain basic needs in all these areas for their inhabitants without jeopardizing their necessary connectivity to other neighborhoods and the larger urban fabric.

Body & Context In The Discovery Of Place, Beth Ann Fry

Masters Theses

(From the Thesis Statement)

"Sensations of experience become a kind of reasoning distinct to the making of architecture. Whether reflecting on the unity of concept and sensation, or the intertwining of idea and phenomena, the hope is to unite intellect and feeling, precision with soul."

-Anonymous

This thesis investigates a methodology of using ones senses to experience, observe, and understand a place as a layered system with the intent of discovering the essence in order to create successful urban design that is connected to place. The layers Nature, Infrastructure, Built Structure and Culture, will be observed and considered through multiple …

Understanding Space Through The Experience Of Dance, Sandra L. Restrepo-Tovar

Masters Theses

(Thesis Statement)

"Space, said choreographer George Balanchine, 'is everything'. A symphony can be enjoyed live or on record, a play can be seen or read, but dance emerges through the single medium of space. Without space, dance does not exist. "

"There are ceremonies that determine space, and spaces that determine ceremonies."

Bernard Tschumi

Architecture can be experienced in various forms. Though we often consider sight the primary means through which architectural space can be understood, one would also argue it is more relevant to examine how the whole body responds and "sees" space. Movement is an important …

Sustainable Expression: Combining The Past And The Present To Create A Viable Vernacular, William Thomas Brown

Masters Theses

This topic will involve an analysis of architecture of the past to reveal how sustainable design techniques were dependent on the natural environment of a specific climate region. This analysis of ancient building strategies will examine similar climate areas to the Southeast United States and combined the information with modern 'green' technologies. The final result being a building whose expression reflects a new regional vernacular. Before the age of electric heating and cooling systems and thermal insulation, buildings were designed to take advantage of their natural surroundings. In fact, these structures depended on its natural surroundings and this dependence informed …

Light, Place, And The Temporal Experience: A Proposal For A Live Work Building In Nashville, Tennessee, Robert G. Thompson Iii

Masters Theses

“An architecture must have the religion of light. A sense of light is the giver of all presences, because natural light gives the mood of the day. The season of the year is brought into a room.”

Louis Kahn

The understanding and manipulation of natural light lie at the heart of any architectural project, but it is also a universally available, physical manifestation of the passage of time. Natural light signals the times of the day, providing different qualities of light as the sun penetrates the atmosphere at different angles. Seasonally, the summer sun shines high in the sky through …

Photography In Architecture: The Transformation Of Reality, Haley E. Chapman

Masters Theses

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." - Alberto Giacometti

"...representation itself is not a reflection of some "reality" in the world about us, but is a means of casting onto that world a concept - or a subliminal sense - of what reality is." -Ackerman, 121

Photography informs our perceptions of reality. Through various themes or techniques of transformation, the photograph exposes reality as an abstraction of itself and alters the way that we see and understand our surroundings. This way of seeing, or "photographic vision", is especially …

Flexible Integration, Chun-Yi Wang

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exploration of mixed-used and mixed-density housing through modular design to uncover the possibility of architecture creating a diverse and integrated community that respects the people, local culture and historical traditions. The program of the investigation is a co-housing community in the hurricane devastated city of New Orleans. The construction will be based on the modular design that will give the residents the flexibility of organizing spaces and give them participatory ownership of their home and community. The hurricane disasters will be investigated to understand their impact. The ethnographic information and the demographic trends will be used …

Urban Hubs: Closing The Space, Time, Continuum, Edward Brinson Martin

Masters Theses

“It is known that the names of places change as many times as there are foreign languages: and that every place can be reached from other places, by the most various roads and routes by those who ride, or drive, or row, or fly.”

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

In this thesis, I will be exploring the role that architecture and urban design can play in transforming human behavior. I will develop the idea of a multi faceted transportation hub as a means to encourage people to use alternative modes of transportation, and through that development, evaluate influence fields as a …

Architectural Microcosm: From City To Building, Qi Jin

Masters Theses

STATEMENT OF THESIS/HYPOTHESIS

This thesis explores the reciprocal relationship of the building and the city. I argue that the building can be a microcosm of the city, as Alberti has said: " . . . for if a city, according to the opinion of philosophers be no more than a great house, and on the other hand the house be a little city . . ."¹

In demonstrating the interrelationship of building and city as reciprocals, I have analyzed three precedents, which will inform my design approach. Based on Kevin Lynch's analysis², I have identified five fundamental …

Place Not Of Place: The Moveable Home: A Critique Of Suburbia, Kristofer M. Nonn

Masters Theses

Home is an architectural construct, one which historically is a product of a specific place. However, as place has become progressively more and more generic, architecturally, socially, communally, so too has the concept of home become more generic and at odds with the individual person. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate an alternative possibility, one which is based on the person as the design impetus. What if home were not about place,but about person? It is the purpose of this project to formulate a response to a uniquely American history, one which is founded on individualism, nomadicism, and …

Constructed Sites Ad Collective Memory: A Proposal For Lower Manhattan's African Burial Ground, Jessica Lauren Wright

Masters Theses

Architecture should be a derivative of site. As constructed sites, Archaeological sites pose an interesting dilemma with architecture: How does one approach an archaeological site with architecture? What operation best suits the site? The African Burial Ground is an exceptional example of a constructed site as well as the expression of the public’s desire to remember and signify this sacred site. Public request for these associations should result in site-derived architecture. Facilitating architecture as a derivative of site produces an expressive built form of culture, history and temporality.

To derive architectural form from the African Burial Ground I will use …

A Teaching Tool: Exploring A Cooperative Spirit, Education, And Cultural Influence Through The Arts, Carmen Rachel Scoggins

Masters Theses

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context -- a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan." -Eliel Saarinen

The creation of the built environment today is highly complex. Hundreds of different professions come together to create what is, I would hope, creating a better environment for people to inhabit. Sometimes, and actually quite often, the players in this process do not work together effectively, if at all. Once the construction is over, the grand opening has come and gone, and the users …

Community Collaboration And Communication In The Design Studio, Noam Austerlitz, Avigail Sachs

Architecture Publications and Other Works

Based on the authors teaching experience, this essay presents an example of how the traditional design studio might be modified so as to foster democratic participation and egalitarian communication between the participating students and instructors. Open communication in the studio is seen as the key to incorporating important values such as collaboration, community and respect for the every day environment into the studio's hidden curriculum. The essay begins by discussing the potentials for and obstacles to meaningful communication in the studio. This discussion is followed by a description of a modified studio project that included continuous role-playing on the part …

Green-Switch: Reducing The Conflict Between The Industrial And The Residential Interface, Archana Sharma

Architecture Publications and Other Works

The dilemma of co-existence of human-industry has been a constant topic of debate among the realms of landscape planning, many times without being clearly articulated as such. This paper examines the conflict through the study of industrial-residential domain. Natural resources such as water and land are primary reasons of conflict. The paper explores the potential of landscape design to address this conflict. The proposed landscape design strategy green-switch combines the landscape planning concept of “greenways” and applied ecological engineering concept of “constructed wetland” to address the conflict.