Architecture Commons^™

We Die As We Live, Yücel Güven

Architecture Thesis Prep

Each person is made up of different characters that build his/her complete identity. It is possible to identify these individual personas and design a different mausoleum to each one, specific in architectural language and function. The mausoleum should architecturally be unique to the persona and functionally serve the same purpose.

The "D.A.R." Object, Zhe Wang

Architecture Thesis Prep

The D.A.R. Object discusses a method, which to redesign a selected object through Disassembling - Analyzing - Reconstructing, 3 main process. When the method of "D.A.R." is adopted, the inherent form logic of an object will still be kept. Because designing like this way will make challenge to the original object ideologically. This challenge is embodied in the dramatic conflict between the process, which has a strong relationship with the object's inherent logic, and the result, which will blur the original reality of the object.

And my method of "D.A.R." initially comes from my study ...

Architecture Amidst Smog, Hui Sheng

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is an investigation on smog and architecture.

Urban Archtifice: Regenerating Residential Facades Through Acupuncture, Ran Mei

Architecture Thesis Prep

To legitimize and make use of weirdness in the Chinese cultural fascination of symbolism and objectified architecture, I decide to put it in the most function-oriented program in the city _ collective housing, or more specifically, the transformation and regeneration of existing housing types in Chinese megacities. To inject iconicity into the most banal and repetitive structures of Chinese cities, the residential high-rises, I aim to create a human layer that parasites the faceless facades of housing blocks; to take advantage of the novelty value of collectively generated iconicity to legitimize the personal appropriation of “public” space; to bring back ...

Challenging The Pattern, Gary Thurston

Architecture Thesis Prep

Christopher Alexander and Yona Friedman suggest the architect is necessarily limited in his or her ability to construct the built environment for all people, or should be limited in favor of participation of the non-architect. While I agree that all parties of the world should take part in design and construction, I assert that architects through their training are better equipped to design and construct our built environment and in this sense, I am directly challenging the claims made by Alexander, et al.

Regenerative Refugee Housing: Creating Temporary Housing With Low Environmental Impact, Erika Guldner

Architecture Thesis Prep

Refugee settlements often have a negative environ­mental impact; by promoting options for sustainable development from the outset, this can be avoided. A plan for a refugee settlement was made, along with a plan for the individual residential units. To expedite the construction process, units were divided into compo­nents. These components could be easily assembled on site. Once the refugee settlement is no longer needed, components can be used for other purposes, such as, affordable housing or the components themselves can be broken down to be either recycled or used for other purposes.

Atlas Of Walls: Wall Speculations, Casiana Kennedy

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project lies at the intersection between the wall as device of separation + text as narrative of separation. The wall is re-examined as a LIVING architectural element that acts as an ACTOR - a necessity - in the translation of text to architecture within a city palimpsest. The wall’s capacity to create limit and separation (walled sanctuary) will be explored within the dense context of the contemporary city, wherever that might be.

The wall is not passive, it is not a given, but a constructed entity that addresses problems of space defining and ritual in a direct/efficient/explicit way that ...

Paradise In Conflict: Let's Make Europe Great Again!, Rui Bao

Architecture Thesis Prep

What is the role of architecture in a conflict situation? Architecture can act after or during a conflict by providing emergency aid, for example, refugee camps. This kind of emergency remedy measure brings a large amount of displaced people to other countries that may address the issue of displacement and interment of refugees in countries all over the world. Refugees may be discriminated and be treated as second class citizens in those countries. They are restricted in a small area like prisoners rather than legal citizens. In order to call attention to this problem and affect the countries which are ...

Inscrutable Places For Cyborgs, Christopher Bressler, Colin Thomas Hoover

Architecture Thesis Prep

More and more humans interface with digital devices to mediate their experiences with external information. This project seeks to explore the architectural implications of this trend as it reaches its logical conclusion in the cyborg mind. Although the project is positioned in the near future, architects practicing today will have to deal with the interaction between their architectural manifestations and the cyborg interface. This does not mean that this is a predictive project. We will be focusing on generating techniques which begin to explore the tools necessary in organizing and envisioning this world, while focusing less on the detailed inner ...

Character & Features: Reframing The Everyday Through What It's Not And What It's Near, Paul Lee

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis reconsiders Quatremère de Quincy’s definitions of character from his Encyclopedia by synthesizing it with discussions of character in the discourse today, specifically as written by Bob Somol and Andrew Zago. Using these recontextualized definitions, this thesis takes a second look at the photographic series of Bernd & Hilla Becher to reframe the everyday with digital media. This thesis proposes to analyze and design architecture through a focus on architecture’s features as opposed to its formal and spatial composition. Quatremère described character in architecture as “the idea of an alphabet composed of abstract units that can endlessly be ...

The Architecture Of Collapse, Alison Sekerak

Architecture Thesis Prep

The world is changing around us. There is no more denying it. We are running out of resources. We are polluting our air and water. Sea levels are rising, and with it, natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, drought. We are killing each other. Economies are collapsing and countries are dissolving. The world is changing. Stories of apocalypse have been prevalent in our society for decades, but they may not be a thing of science fiction anymore. When the world does change, what are architects going to do about it?

An architecture must be designed to enable the survival of ...

Parameters For Permanence: Planning Independent Settlements For Syrian Refugee Reintegration, Katherine Barymow, Jacqueline Morin

Architecture Thesis Prep

Syrians, previously housed in camps, will be returning to Aleppo in the new ISIS-free zone, a utopian oasis for women, children and war veterans. How can architecture recognize this oscillation from the temporary to semi permanent typology?

Framing The Future: Imagining The City Through The Lens Of Film, Sofia Zavala Ferreira

Architecture Thesis Prep

With a great interest in the relationship between film and architecture, this project establishes its subject matter on the possibilities presented in science fiction cinema and speculative design. By extracting attributes from these that would influence design and architectural concerns, a bridge between the disconnected imagined and real, current and future, can be created through the creation of a speculative scenario and a narrative. It seeks to utilize cinematic design and storytelling conventions to successfully convey the desired atmosphere, architectural realities, and life conditions of a fictional city. By utilizing advanced digital techniques often used in cinema itself, including but ...

Charon's Passage: The Journey To Nimiety, Nicholas Kronauer

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to reconsider the possibility and potential of the mausoleum as an architectural contradiction by reconceptualizing the mausoleum as a typology for public space, thus inverting the traditional objective of introspection and the object-form, interior-exterior dialectic of funerary architecture. By engaging the mausoleum with 21st-century urbanization, traditional notions of permanence, meaning, and tectonics can be renegotiated through the juxtaposition of a foreign object that activated by the appropriation and integration of a social program. Through this thesis, the mausoleum is no longer a place for reflection or solidarity but will operate as a stage set to frame and ...

Library To Nowhere, Anna Sernicki

Architecture Thesis Prep

Using the metaphor of the pyramid and the labyrinth as a precedent, I am interested in deconstructing existing programmed spaces into the essential spatial qualities of architecture.

Is it possible to question the nature of a space, while at the same time experiencing that space?

As Above, So Below: Tapping Into The Latent Energy Of Abandoned Underground Infrastructure, Alexandra N. Ramirez

Architecture Thesis Prep

1

Abandoned underground infrastructure is an example of an untapped surplus in energy that an architect has the opportunity to reappropriate. Tunnels in particular, can be used as systems to heat or cool a network of buildings above ground to create more sustainable urban environments. In addition to greater energy efficiency, the system could also have beneficial social implications within segregated cities by providing fluid connections between divided neighborhoods.

This thesis will establish a framework for repurposing underground infrastructures. The strategy operates under an umbrella of sustainability and urban improvement which are two concepts applicable to sites far beyond the ...

Public Domesticities, Taylor Hagan

Architecture Thesis Prep

In a lecture entitled ‘The Room, The Street, and the Human Agreement,’ Louis Kahn argued that the room is the beginning of architecture. Looking to engage in a similar conversation, this thesis recognizes the significance of the ecologywithin the domestic realm. Domesticities are constructed between walls, windows and doors, but are filled with furniture, materials and stuff that connect to personal preference, evoke a sense of intimacy and set the stage for a flux of activity. While explicit architectural form of a house or dwelling may express certain programmatic designation and usage, the user is ultimately king. Through personal selection ...

White Out, Hye Rim Shin

Architecture Thesis Prep

“White Out” explores ideas about architecture that seeks ephemerality rather than legibility, eidetic effects rather than demanding of focused attention and atmospheric or emotional spaces rather than conventional spaces.

Rethinking "Stuff", Jonathan Anthony

Architecture Thesis Prep

Re-thinking Stuff is a manifesto for the study of material culture and a new way of looking at the ‘stuff’ that surrounds us and makes up so much of our social and personal life. This thesis contends it is time to acknowledge and confront the lack of attention to how we store our stuff - most importantly what are the architectural effects of rethinking stuff in storage.

In The Projects: Rebuilding Social Housing In New York City, Ruo Piao Chen, Caroline Jeon

Architecture Thesis Prep

There is a shrinking stock of all types of affordable housing, resulting in the inflation of rent across all demographics. The rise in rent makes housing detrimentally unaffordable for people with extremely low incomes. Mayor Bill de Blasio also recognizes that there is an affordable housing crisis, promising to build over 200,000 units of affordable housing in the next ten years. However, his plan applies to new and privately-owned construction, not the massive public stock that the city already owns. The state of disrepair of public housing combined with generally underutilized sites in 1950’s projects makes the public ...

Gold: Stories Of A City, Vivek Vijayan Njanappilly

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis explores the latent influences of gold and its value systems on the urban geo-politics of a South Indian city. It is an anthology of sporadic narrations recording the growth and transformation of a city over time. These narrative compositions contain traces of the past, the city of the present and speculative futures. They indicate change without erasure. Their values are embodied in gold. Malleable, ductile and fungible in its different forms.

Paper Theater, Tyler Wolcott

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis seeks to employ the tactics of theater and the notion of collective experience in a way that is architecturally responsive to social occupation.

A Re-Application Of Neo-Plasticism: De Stijl Architecture In A Contemporary Context, Tyler Holdren

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will apply the principles of neo-plasticism to a contemporary building and site. The aim of this project is to extend de Stijl architecture into a contemporary context, making use of modern building methods and materials in an effort to express the full potential of the neoplastic project.

In order to achieve this one must select a site that is contextually scarce as well as one that will allow the building to be experienced from all sides. A site that is not contextually rich will enable a sense of self-referentiality within the project which is a critical theme to ...

Cyber Security In An Age Of Insecurity, Angela Copes

Architecture Thesis Prep

By combining the structure and space of Gothic Revival churches with the programmatic elements of a data center, two problems can be addressed. First, the churches avoid a fate of abandonment and obsolescence. As the Christian population declines and consolidates, these monuments are given a chance to maintain significance.

Second, through design, data centers can become a more integrated piece of the communities they serve. Instead of data centers being isolated warehouses in the middle of nowhere, people can have a better understanding of what allows their internet at home to connect them to the global network.

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

Architecture Thesis Prep

In this thesis, we will continue to address the issue of self-identity and missing narrative in contemporary context. Differently, we will use landscape paintings as our design source to revive the narrative quality. We will use the methodologies developed from the research to deconstruct the selected landscape paintings, transform them into narratives, and reconstruct the narratives into architecture.

By extracting events, atmosphere, and spirits from original painting narratives, and by borrowing the principles of paintings to transform them into sequences, we will set up architectural narratives in contemporary context for people to experience.

Dinner Parti, Evangeline Soileau

Architecture Thesis Prep

No abstract provided.

Ruin-Naissance, Fatma Gonca Tunc

Architecture Thesis Prep

Ruin-naissance is the term I use to describe not only the resurrection of an archeological site, but also the rebirth of an idea about how we think about ruins and how new construction can enhance the experience of these kinds of sites.

The principle contention of this thesis is that a better understanding of the fragmented evidence presented by an archeological site can be seen through the lens of a contemporary architectural intervention that responds sensitively to an ancient site. In doing this, the intervention needs to address issues of identity, narrative and historiography. The new architecture should not ignore ...

What Is Sacred, Maxwell K. Baum

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to reinterpret the notion of sacred space and explore architectures role in the creation of sacred space. Stripped of the religious connotations of the sacred, this thesis hopes to create an architecture that balances between the individual and the collective, fosters both introspective reflection and extrospective contemplation, and proposes architecture for the experiencing of the sacred. Ultimately this project will make sacred architecture and experience out of a normal, mundane, and profane program and elevate the users experience to that of a transcendental one.

The Public Sky-Spacer, Piotr Jankowski

Architecture Thesis Prep

We have reached an era where architecture has to prepare for the alarming changes affecting our modern society. Predicted urbanization will lead to cities becoming denser and taller to facilitate the needs of housing and workspace for the growing world population. High costs of rent and scarcity of real state land in city centers will force developers to build skyscrapers. Taking into account the impact of larger populations, skyscrapers will have to offer more efficient spaces and follow strict environmental regulations while contributing to the production of energy and necessary resources. Focus on human comfort and sustainability will play an ...

Urban Amnesia, Teriya Lee

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is a response to Kevin Lynch's claim that "in the process of way-finding, the strategic link is the environmental image, the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual." Specifically, the thesis deals with those parts of the urban fabric which are imageless - the unidentified, or, the forgotten. It asks the question: what can architecture do to clarify spatial identities? The thesis will explore Hong Kong's identity as it relates to memory and space.