Architecture Commons^™

Y'All Come Back Now, Ya Hear: A Reflection On Nashville's History And The Carnivalesque, Kolby Forbes

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to utilize the technique of allegorical image in understanding both the past and present histories of Nashville. By collaging aspects of past and present, the images produced seek to present the emerging alternative. This otherness constructs an in between in which the narratives of both instances begin to merge and mutate. These collages establish a landscape of Nashville which is no longer constricted temporally or spatially, remaining open to interpretations and resisting a clear sense of closure. The designs that I propose are meant to clarify the neglected traumas and occurrences of the past to demonstrate that …

Rural Retreat | Urban Myth, Celeste Pomputius

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a destination for recreation and retreat on Plum Island, New York that references the model of the National and State Park Services and whose intended audience is primarily residents of New York City who are without the means or methods of easily seeking other experiences of nature outside the realm of city limits. The first step of this design process involves reexamining the traditional definition of “urban” to shorten the leap from the comforts of the city to the unknowns of nature. From there, the project identifies and resolves three challenges that stand between urban residents and …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the issue of lacking self-identity and missing narrative under contemporary Chinese architecture discipline. Using ancient landscape paintings as design source, this project aims to create an environment that provides personal experience and exclusive meaning from a participant’s point of view instead of an omniscient view.

Paintings are selected from different dynasties and artists, but all based on one important cultural theme: Reclusion. Thus, the reconstructed narrative would provide a tranquil environment for inhabitant to have a temporary retreatment from the city life through making, seeking and thinking.

Materializing Light, Lirong Tan

Architecture Senior Theses

Artificial light, especially volumetric light, can be materialized and transform the existing ruin. Specifically, I would choreograph the interaction between people and light to exaggerate, or dramatize, the tragic feeling of Hiroshima Memorial Dome.

Axon-Orama: A New System Of Architectural Representation, Fei Wang

Architecture Senior Theses

A codified architectural representation, the axonometric drawing is objective, yet an audience's reception of a building is perspectival and constructed through a spatial narrative over time. In response to this paradox, Axon-orama is proposed as a new representational technique - a set of variational drawings with pliable arrangement and hybrid expression - explored through the use of the British board game, Myriorama. The work blurs the boundary between objective and subjective representation and perception, offering a new system of architectural inquiry.

Blind Spot, Andrea Macias-Yanez

Architecture Senior Theses

Negotiating between the physical and software means mediating perception, therefore physical space is defined by endo-perception and software space by exo-perception. This project investigates the temporary singularity of a frozen moment. Through means of motion Blind Spot will reveal unalienable, hidden software algorithms, stripping off what is not comprehensible and feed back the output back into the process of creating architectural speculation.

Literally Figurative: Architectural Manifestation Of The Written Word, Carrie Leneweaver

Architecture Senior Theses

"I contend that architecture and literature can enhance one another, not only as methods of storytelling and creating narrative, but in their capacity to establish metaphors and themes which provide realizations of larger social conditions...

To test my thesis, I propose designing a library based on the life of author Antoine de Saint-Exupery and his allegorical story: The Little Prince."

Sens(E)Ible Education: A Sensory Approach To An Inclusive Kindergarten, Mary Delaurentis

Architecture Senior Theses

"Architecture that is designed with the intended occupants full sensorial needs in mind ultimately enhances the occupants' experience. Architecture that engages all our senses will create spaces that transcend the purely visual. This higher order of perception will make occupants more self aware, conscious of their embodied experience of the world around them, and create informative experiences."

Interactive Architecture: Creating Opportunities For Our Future, Gregory Levy

Architecture Senior Theses

"It is the contention of this thesis that developing more interactive relationships will create new opportunities for a building to respond and adapt to the rapid pace of change. Through means of flexibility and efficiency, his expanded dynamic process can generate direct engagement between a building and the users and the natural environment that interact with it."

Fragmented City: The Intersection Of Surrealism And Urban Reality, Lauren Hackett

Architecture Senior Theses

"The concept of the experience becomes relevant in the surrealist view of the city. It is one that has been embraced by the situationists in their concept of the derive. The psychological understanding of urban space can supersede the retinal understanding of rationalized space. The search for truth within the city is what guides a civilization toward absolutism.

In treating the city as a field for discovert and the formulation of ideaas and pure thought, urban space enters a realm of surreality."