Architecture Commons^™

Making By Taking: An Investigation Of Architectural Appropriation, Victoria Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

The project contends that explicit appropriation can be a legitimate method of architectural production. The scope encompasses four canonical works of architecture: Villa Rotonda, Villa Savoye, Fallingwater, and the Farnsworth House. These works are appropriated as the basis of a retrospective analysis and as the foundation for a speculative, generative design strategy. Following the height of postmodernism, the notion of explicit formal appropriation was characterized in a negative light, seen as inauthentic imitation. However, an increasing number of contemporary artists and architects are utilizing explicit appropriation and historical reference as a primary method of production. This mode of thinking can …

American Picnickers, Yuxiang Luo

Architecture Senior Theses

The thesis re-imagines the operation and impact of the roadside food business, by studying commuter drivers’ eating practice through a social lens. Proposing a manualproduct- test design mechanism, the thesis links roadside eating to the larger plurality of a city’s social life, and in return reconstructs the life of American cities based on the existing highway infrastructure and people’s common need for eating. Commuters’ eating practice is problematic; the drive-thru as a prevalent building and business typology has created spatial and social isolation for various parties in the society. The social isolation has two implications. On one hand, as drivers …

Permeating The Void: Establishing A New Order Of Informality- Part 2, Lisa Kombakis

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Permeating The Void: Establishing A New Order Of Informality- Part 4, Lisa Kombakis

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Leakiness: Literal And Phenomenal, Jesse Ganes

Architecture Senior Theses

By designing a series of house-like pavilions that leak (fluids and information) in specific ways, this thesis will develop an explicit lexicon for architects to employ in managing the ‘metadata’ that buildings perpetually emit. As a matter of design, these structures will operate on the leaked visible, non-visible, and absent metadata generated incidental to our occupation of buildings. The pavilions will ultimately probe similar sets of conditions, each conveying a radically different tone. Whether stopping or amplifying, scrambling or spoofing, deceiving or decoding, they seek to effect a measurable change on the metadata leaked from within. In order to objectively …

Transient Solutions: Responding And Adapting To Rapid Change Through Temporary Design- Part 1, Casie Kowalski

Architecture Senior Theses

PART 1: RAPID CHANGES

The American City is characterized by a history of industry, rapid growth and stagnant economy, and a quick adaptation to consumer culture. In cities once characterized by specific industries, they now attempt to cling to their cultural identity and the arts to preserve their image beyond their industry, readdressing and reinvigorating permanent cultural entities such as the library, museum, and theater. This reviving is done in variety of ways, all of which require heavy funding both privately and publicly and primarily result in interventions of permanence. [Chicago's Millennium Park, Cleveland funding waterfront activity, New York City …

The Immersive Spectacle: Performance And The Audience In Pop Music - Part 1, Emily Roupp

Architecture Senior Theses

THESIS STATEMENT: In a visually dominated culture, spaces of sound have the potential to produce an immersive audio-physical experience that facil~ates spatial awareness and challenges traditional listening experiences. The aural and spatial awareness is unquestionable. Although it is a primitive human refiex to direct visual focus to the original sound source, technological and architectural devices no longer require the sound source to be in the same space as the distributed sound Recording and distribution devices have deconstructed the relationship between sound and space. Technological innovations, especially speakers and digital screens, no longer require the listener to be in a single …

China Rail-Borne, Daya Zhang

Architecture Senior Theses

The next stage of China’ growth and advancement rests on the assumption that its population will be more and more concentrated in cites since approximately 350 million farmers are expected to move towards the urban areas from 2005 to 2025. How to connect its population of more than 1 billion within those cites, and among them, is always an urgent issue for Chinese government to deal with. Railway is the most common mode for Chinese to travel around. However, the overcapacity has plagues China’s railway network for years, especially during the national holidays, such as Spring Festival. The emergence of …

Thick Images: Rendering Digital Dimensions- Part 1, Jeff Nedelka

Architecture Senior Theses

Thick Images is an investigation into the creation, perception, and possibilities of digital architectural representation. Rethinking the relationship between rendering and building, among other design possibilities, Thick images considers the qualities and characteristics both inherent to and demanded of the digital, and suggests new ways of reading and deploying common, contemporary image making tools.

Borderline- Part 2, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Community Recentered, Elizabeth Arens

Architecture Senior Theses

Chicago, Illinois is a large city comprised of small neighborhoods. The City of Chicago is made up of 77 “Community Areas.” Many diverse neighborhoods are within each community area. Each neighborhood has its own identity that revolves around the churches, schools and community centers that serve the neighborhood. In each of these educational institutions, learning also exists on a larger social and cultural scale that is reflective of the distinct qualities of the neighborhood. The idea of a learning institution as the center of a neighborhood is formed at the time children first begin school. Much of their intellectual and …

Permeating The Void: Establishing A New Order Of Informality- Part 3, Lisa Kombakis

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Myths Of The Near Future: A Flaneuric Remapping Of The Post Modern City, Marco Piscitelli

Architecture Senior Theses

AT THE HEELS of heroic Modernist planning, fully institutionalized by the start of the Second World War, an investigation on the desires of Urban Subject emerges as a critical response to architects’ moralistic fixation on composition, function, and programmatic separation. Walter Benjamin’s exploration of the subject takes the form of an analysis of the nineteenth-century Parisian flâneur, as celebrated by poet-essayist Charles Baudelaire. Passagenwerk discusses architecture’s potency in both supporting social rituals and crafting a Subject itself. “Paris,” specifically the arcade, “created the Type of the flâneur.”(BEN, 416). Continuing in this vein of research, the Situationists develop a framework describing …

Epistemology: It’S Elementary! An Architectonically Constructivist Elementary School In Syracuse, Ny-- Part 2, Tyler Ferrusi

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Guerrilla Tourism: Between The Resort And The Casa Particular, Michael Kowalchuk

Architecture Senior Theses

The justification for guerrilla tourism in Havana draws from the political experiences of the urban guerrilla movement of the 1970s which transplanted rural guerrilla strategies to the city. The same basic rules continued to apply: a working knowledge of the terrain and local communities, an ability to strike and retreat quickly and a network form a military-political power. The anti-resort is a collection of micro-hotels in a city that rely on a public support programs and fit within communities instead of dominating them.

The current tourist infrastructure of Havana is socially unsustainable: foreign tourists have the choice of staying in …

Ciudad Disidente: Addressing Social And Infrastructural Deficiencies In Villa Salvador-- Part 2, Victoria Brewster

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

The Urban Evolution: Stiching Mumbai's Eastern Waterfront With The Incremental Symbiosis- Part 3, Betsy Daniel

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.