Architecture Commons^™

On The Power Of Attainable Architecture Community Engagement And Interaction Through Architecture: A New Approach To Architectural Exhibitions, Jianing Yang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the potential of architecture exhibitions as a medium to make architecture more accessible and relevant to the public. Drawing inspiration from an article titled "6 Small Scale Projects with Large Social Impact", it highlights the significance of small-scale architectural interventions that foster social responsibility, public engagement, and sustainability.

The prevalent architectural elitism often overlooks attainable, small-scale architecture, which advocates for a broader appreciation of architecture, including the everyday built environments that shape our communities and everyday lives.

The thesis proposes a new approach to architecture exhibitions emphasizing authentic immersion and engagement. It introduces a unique 1:1 experience …

Unfolding Embodied Experience: A Process-Driven Immersive Exhibition Design Model, Mooa Seongah Kang

Masters Theses

The collections of most museums are comprised of two-dimensional artworks—paintings, drawings, prints, and photography—and are generally presented within a white cube gallery platform. Within this restricted static view, displays rarely consider multisensory engagement and immersion that reveals the accumulated time and effort of creation. Yet for many artists, the process is as important as the finished product.

My impetus for this design initiative began by questioning traditional methods of display. Is it possible to reveal the hidden depth embodied in two-dimensional artworks, allowing audiences to participate with all their senses in the journey of an artist’s experience? In other words, …

The Cthulhu Journey : Storytelling Through An Architectural Immersive Experience, Rui Zhang

Masters Theses

The exhibition of sequential art is becoming increasingly popular. The subjects of these shows vary from fantasy, horror to science fiction depending on the style of authors. Compared with other 2d images, sequential art requires more narrative framing. Typical exhibitions show sequential art like regular images, however narrative is the essence of sequential art. This thesis will find a way to exhibit sequential art forms in a way that respects that they are based in storytelling. I will develop an immersive experience of sequential art. Immersion is also a narrative-based experience, if we combine the immersive experience with the sequential …

Cultural Acupuncture: Decentralization And Deocratization In Chinese Exhibition Design, Ruohan Duan

Masters Theses

There is an imbalance between the opportunities for aesthetic education in big cities and underdeveloped areas in China. Taking Shanghai and Beijing as examples, museums in big cities consume most art educational resources. People who live in rural or small towns hardly have access to the arts, making the aesthetic gap larger between cultural centers and cultural deserts.

This thesis proposes a new exhibition system that could send a series of accessible and sustainable exhibition structures around China to narrow the educational resources gap and synchronize cultural curriculum between different places. Decentralizing and democratizing the cultural center and bringing the …

Going Back, Zhiyi Hilary He

Masters Theses

The acceleration of social urbanization and education universalization in the past 30 years of China has promoted the popularization of mandarin among the public. Meanwhile, the dialect, as a unique regional language, is gradually dying away. In the city where I grew up, Taizhou, only the elders are likely to speak Taizhou dialect frequently in their life, while others prefer to use mandarin rather than dialect. The truth is the usage rate of dialect has gradually decreased from generation to generation. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide an opportunity for the public to “dialogue with the past” …

Remember Me: How We Can Modify The Home For People With Dementia, Wenjin Wang

Masters Theses

More than 50 million people live with dementia worldwide. For reasons of familiarity, affordability, and psychological comfort, the home is uniquely preferred by people with dementia (PwD) and their caregivers for aging in place. Ample studies show that built environmental features (e.g., furnishing, lighting, layout) influence the daily lives of PwD. These features can be modified easily and with fewer disruptions to daily life at home. However, most PwD and their caregivers usually have little knowledge of what can be achieved through simple interventions to environmental features.

There is a great need for an exhibition to explain the dementia-friendly home …

Terminal: Through The "Windows" Of A Tram Car Museum, Yuyi Si

Masters Theses

The typical city museum is more concerned with the city’s past: focused on founding myths or historical events. The content is frozen and lacks engagement. Simultaneously, the city itself develops rapidly and shifts, just as the citizens move and change. To address this disconnection, it is necessary to create an active city museum that joins place, memory, and people by putting museum learning in context throughout the city and engaging audiences in their daily lives.

Dalian in Liaoning Province, China, is recognized as a historical and tourism district with a unique city fabric and collection of architectural styles. The city …

Beyond Pasta: Understanding Italian American Culinary Culture In Federal Hill, Chufan He

Masters Theses

Nuances of culture are lost from an outside perspective. This one–sidedness perception brings confusion and can lead to stereotypes. As a “Country of immigrants’” it is crucial to break stereotypes born in America to understand the complexity and uniqueness of every immigrant's culture. As for stereotypes of Italian culture in America, these are always related to food. As an Italian American neighbourhood with many layers of history, Federal Hill has experienced several transitions. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Fabre Line offered the only transatlantic route which brought a large number of Italian immigrants to New England. Providence …

Sensory Refreshment: Tcm Reconsidered, Ni Tang

Masters Theses

With the rapid development and expansion of our cities and the economic demand placed on residents, city dwellers are under more personal stress than ever. Long commutes, overtime work, irregular rest, unhealthy diets, urban pollution and noise all adversely impact wellbeing. These unhealthy conditions overwhelm the mind and make residents mentally and physically sub-healthy. Sub-health is a state between complete health and sickness, which is especially common in large cities. The sub-health rate in Shanghai and Beijing has reached more than 70%.

Chinese medicine can regulate the human body from a holistic perspective and help solve sub-health problems. Chinese medicine …

Fostering Cultural Understanding: Mirroring Ways Of Living In Providence, Ri, Usa And Beijing, Prc, Jiarui Tina Wu

Masters Theses

Over the last several decades, the relationship between the US and China has suffered twists and turns, rooted in different ideologies and social foundations. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent surge of anti-Asian violence in the US contributed to the exacerbation of this global controversy, triggering an undeclared Cold War. However, in history over hundred years, there was a real dialogue between the US and China through business trade. The high classes in the US were used to buy Chinese export commodities, such as luxury furnitures and porcelain, and similarly, Chinese merchants bought American goods, which caused naturally lead to an …

Adaptive Reuse As Evidence Of Scientific Progress: Recontextualizing A Space For Growing Knowledge, Kayci Gallagher

Masters Theses

With the constantly evolving initiatives of astronomical exploration comes the obsolescence of instruments conceived to support research; a sure sign of the scientific process. However, architecture constructed to shelter these constantly shifting tools often remains fixed, growing incapable of supporting advancing technology. Typically, these shelters are sidelined in favor of new infrastructure. Many optical observatories around the world face this issue and must choose between preserving the past or abandoning the site altogether. That these buildings are no longer needed for revolutionary research shouldn’t be disappointing: it is a signal of human achievement, and the scientific process requires a more …

Contextualize, Jiaai He

Masters Theses

Museums, as a continuation of the urban environment, enrich people's recreational life and also carry the mission of education. Museums protect culture outside a textbook and make history closer to people’s lives. However, the present museum has not reached an ideal state for the expression and embodiment of cultural objects.

Time and history shape the objects, and the objects inside a museum record and memorialize the period of their creation. Stories and contest behind cultural objects’ creation are integral to knowledge and understanding. What do we remember after a museum visit? Displaying the full range of historical content to the …

Living And Alive : Homeless Shelter Design, Zixu Wang

Masters Theses

Homelessness is a major social problem in the United States. The number of people who are living without a decent shelter is rising daily throughout the country. The problem of homelessness affects various groups in society, including the elderly, children, youths, and middle-aged adults. Recent studies have shown that the percentage of teens and youths who are experiencing homelessness has reached an alarming rate. The homeless adolescent group is defined as teens aged between 13 and 19 years. This rise in homelessness in this population group demands immediate attention, particularly older teens from 15 to 18 years of age. This …

Getting Closer : Exploring Re-Contextualization In Exhibition, Yiran Mu

Masters Theses

Due to the rise of globalization, the circulation of exhibits born in different cultural backgrounds to alien places all over the world has dramatically increased. Cultural contents are re-contextualized and shaped in a way to adapt to new environments where they lose their essence of place and risk stereotypes of distant cultures. The looming question over every exhibition is how, and to what extent, the original context of the objects on display will be acknowledged or reproduced. Should an effort be made to place pieces in a convincing approximation of their culture of origin? Or should objects be returned to …

Behind Appearance : Hidden Dimensions In The Work Of Wassily Kandinsky And Paul Klee, Ning Ding

Masters Theses

What is the feel like to be a successful artist?

Works being appreciated,being valuable,become famous all over the world?

But what is under? What is behind? The audience seems never to know the story as well as the artworks.

Take an example. When you look at The Scream of Edward Munch, what do you see?

A melting image, a disgusting face, or the derived emoji, which is so popular on the SNS?

What's really behind the painting is Edward Munch's illness, and decades of struggling under sickness, madness, and death.

Most times, when the audience enjoys painting, the imagination can …

Tea Journeys : Exhibition As Experience, Liujun Liao

Masters Theses

In the past, the public came to see the exhibition because it was a rare opportunity to learn about the culture on the other side of the earth.

With the development of science and technology, exhibition forms are becoming more and more diverse. People can see more exhibits and smaller details without leaving home.

Therefore, I would like to ask: " When it becomes so convenient to get information in modern life, is there any reason for people to enter the exhibition hall?" "When people go into the exhibition hall, what do people really want to get? ”“What can be …

Exhibiting Materiality : Object For Love Attachment Therapy, Yunhong Hu

Masters Theses

What is the interaction material culture and the monetary value of museum objects through by highlighting the opposite sides of exhibited objects’ value and design commodities’ commercial value, an exhibition aims to question and confuse the traditional understanding and distinction between museum objects and design commercial objects. Corporate museums serve as the reference for this discussion because they represent a hybrid of a traditional museum whose exhibited objects are also commercial products collected for their material worth. The exhibition space mixes traditional museum objects with retail design merchandise in order to encourage visitors to discuss the meaning of material value, …