Architecture Commons^™

Sponge Logics | Rethinking Thresholds Through A Porous Mass, Tanvi Sanghvi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the separation and distinction between the envelope and the mass in contemporary architecture is to be resisted. Architect and theorist, Greg Lynn, argues that mass “is not only the outward shape of a building; it’s also the projection of shape, plan organization, spatial and sectional type, and façade”1.This critical reevaluation of the mass, and its relationship to the interior spaces and the building’s face, is particularly pertinent to the modern construction in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The character of the historicist and postmodern buildings that make up Jaipur is made solely based on the applied façade. This …

Releasing The Unconsciousness | Visualizing The City, Taihui Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores how subway stations lost their identity as strategic node of connectivity which constructed the prevailing image of New York City. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Sigmund Freud famously compared the human mind to the city of Rome. He argues that both contain strata of memory and history which have accumulated over the years through a messy and ad-hoc process. Like Rome, New York City also has a layered history, albeit not as deep.

This thesis contends that the subway entrance serves as an experiential entre into the unconscious experience of the unknown elements of the past. …

Unearthing Threshold, Maggie L. Cookman

Architecture Senior Theses

In addition to responding to its immediate physical context, architectural form has the capacity to reveal and celebrate history, promoting an understanding of the relationship of site and region to historic conditions no longer in their original form. Within the built environment, architecture has an inherent ability to influence the experience and perception of historical relationships. This can be achieved through prescribed interactions with the constructed form, beginning before one enters the building, and continuing through the program. The exterior begins to engage the visitor through both site and facade. The building itself, as well as its response to physical …

Architecture In The Text: A Re-Proposition Of Solomon’S Temple, Christopher Pizzi

Architecture Senior Theses

This Thesis investigates the idea of Architecture in text, and the role which a text can play in making architecture. This Thesis will analyze a text and question how it can be used to reveal architectural form and meaning as well as generate program. This Thesis is about the reading, translation, and rewriting of texts. The texts are the written text, the text of the ruin, and the text of the city. The subject of textual analysis is the Bible, specifically those passages which reveal or describe the Jewish Temple. The Temple is referred to often in the Bible, …

How To Make Architecture Today In Yesterday's Cities, Andres A. Hirmas

Architecture Senior Theses

"I tihnk that just by reading the title, one can know what the objectives can be: 'How to make architecture today in yesterday's cities.' Any architectural task requires the consideration of a series of variable; now, if we add to this the respect for what exists, which , by the way, should never be left aside, then we get across two prevailing positions..."

Architecture And Memory, Mary Patterson

Architecture Senior Theses

"The primary focus of this thesis is to understand the role and responsibility of architecture in provoking memory."

"The vehicle selected for the pursuit of this thesis is an Institute of Maritime Etruscan Studies sited in Cerveteri, Italy, one of the most memorial and testimonial sites in Italy today."

East Village Housing New York City, Alice J. Raucher

Architecture Senior Theses

The intent of this thesis is to develop low-rise, high density urban housing which will provide its occupants with the basic amenities of light, air, and green space, while reconstructing and extending the fabric of New York City into an area of the East Village.
There exists in the East Village, as in other areas of Manhattan, an uneasy relationship between the low-scale rowhouses and tenements [...] and the monolithic architecture of the superblock housing developments of the 1950s. These rowhouses and tenements [...] provided few amenities for its inhabitants.
The proposed development would investigate new housing prototypes for a …

A Retrospective Study Of Renaissance Florence, Kathryn Blakeslee

Architecture Senior Theses

"The architecture of the Florentine Renaissance was a means of establishing a visual, physical identity that represented the new values of a new society. The integration of Medieval and ancient Roman ideals resulted in the making of Renaissance space. In essence, the city of Renaissance Florence can be seen as a synthesis of order and disorder. The "new" insertions of Renaissance order accommodate what was an existing condition of Medieval disorder while simultaneously creating a new coherent architectural identity. The result of this synthesis was much more than a "revival" of ancient architectural sensitivities, rather, it was the development of …