Architecture Commons^™

Dissolve Of Living Space: Living Space Under The Development Of Metaverse, Wenting Feng, Nuo Lyu

Architecture Thesis Prep

According to our vision, in the future, after the use of the metaverse becomes popular, we will spend a lot of time working, living and playing in the metaverse. The space needed in reality will be reduced by the use of the metaverse, and public buildings will be retained or not depending on the nature of the building. Because the focus of human life shifts from reality to the metaverse, energy and material consumption will also be reduced, and environmental problems can be properly alleviated. The nature in the real city will also be expanded by the reduction of the …

Mars 2100: A Microcosm Of Ecocentric Design, Andrea Hoe

Architecture Thesis Prep

In the dystopian future of 2100, Earth becomes a dying planet and humanity is forced to continue colonizing the solar system for survival. Mars develops as a colonized planet, exploited for its natural resources and potential. The hierarchical system of power seen constantly throughout Earth’s history was inescapable, and poor conditions turned to extremes. As billionaires take control of the space race, the capitalist system reflected in past company towns was implemented, making the moral questions and lines blurred.

When the system is eventually ruptured, ecosystemic living is proposed. Living is now centered around health and mindfulness, creating a system …

Immersive Inoculation: Testing If Architecture Can Become A Form Of Emotional Supplementation, Julia Kazubowsi, Chloe De Marco

Architecture Thesis Prep

The environments, objects, and spaces we encounter rub off on us, even if we don't notice. Like a human interaction, every inanimate encounter we have have with surrounding objects and architecture has a positive or negative affect on us.

We recognize that ordinary things have a surprising power to create extraordinary feelings and reactions. This thesis propose a visual medium that bridges the gap between us and the inanimate. Where we meet in the middle is an architectural experience that is emotionally charged, introducing specific emotions to the body. Just as movies, books, and happy pills elicit a response from …

Paradigm Of The Post Natural: Critiquing Capitalist Ideals Through Environmental Degradation, Andrea De Haro, Charlotte Bascombe

Architecture Thesis Prep

There is an unspoken value in the destructiveness caused by design that is exposed through the exploitation of natural resources. This thesis seeks to exemplify the aesthetic value inherent within these newly defined environments. Nature is a source for human consumption, and as such it has developed into a commodity. By now it should be made evident that humanity’s presence is everywhere. There is no ecosystem left unturned by human manipulation Iin this respect, nature is dead. Deforested sites of oil fracking leave mile long toxic ponds highlighting the destructive pursuits that capitalism creates. Chernobyl showcases how human errors in …

Assistive Intelligence: Replication And Mediation Of Modern, Madeline Alves, Kimberly Esquilin, Pramita Mital, Erin Zearfoss, Julia Kubowoski, Chloe Demarco

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project is an exploration of frames of reference that guide human authorship and how they influence machine output . “Reference frames are [used] to make predictions, create plans, and perform movements.” (Hawkins 131). We guided our exploration under the principle that if we control who authored the frames of reference that the AI receives, then that would influence the output of the machine. However, we began to question to what degree we need to control the machine in order to have a valuable output –is human-intelligent authorship necessary for machine intelligence to function productively, or is machine intelligence enough …

Eternal Imprint: Two Libraries Linked In Time, Jaifer Sultan

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis is an exploration of the symbolic relationship between Earth and the Moon through the conceptualization of two libraries, one on Earth and one on the Moon, are to be formally expressed through a mitosis-like interdependency, where both libraries are in constant architectural dialogue with each other despite their separation which occurred some time ago.

The thesis positions itself in the architectural discourse through the rigorous stud and analysis of the library typology throughout history, to both symbolize meaning and ritualize one's experience of acquiring knowledge. This understanding of the library typology will be tackled through the cataloging of …

Suppression | Liberation: Memorial To The Lgbtq + Holocaust Victims, Justin Difabritis

Architecture Thesis Prep

Architecture + poetry are powerful forms of creativity, both exemplifying beauty, symbolism, emotion, and experience through structure + form. This thesis is interested in poetic architecture and its ability to not only narrate, represent, symbolize, or express, but also eternalize, the story of groups, individuals, and events.

Through the analysis of, but not limited to, memorials, tombs, and monuments, a deeper architectural understanding will be offered, one of architecture’s ability to emotionally affect others as a means of remembrance.

This research will focus on the literal + symbolic narrative and experience of the LGBTQ+ victims of the holocaust, placing a …

Panopticon: A Privacy Revelation, Kexin Wang, Zhexu Yang

Architecture Thesis Prep

Our thesis project studies and analyzes the control of Surveillance Capitalism over people’s privacy, and how to make people realize the importance of privacy through the means of an architectural/design narrative. This concept comes from Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, which explains how tech companies collect extra data, capture people’s behavioral surplus and sell them to third party customers, such as advertising companies, thus the predictions about people’s preferences accordingly. In this process, technology companies can make tremendous profit by stealing users’ personal information and then …

Tectonic Thresholds: Reclaiming Space Through Geomorphological Design, Amreeta Verma

Architecture Thesis Prep

This research posits that a revitalization of indigenous earth architecture practices in a contemporary context can mitigate the immense waste and embodied carbon in the construction industry. Earth materials are the focus of this research because they are locally sourced, abundantly available, and can be reused or returned to the natural environment, when utilized in a circular consumption cycle. Designing for reuse reduces the impact of construction waste on the burgeoning issue of environmental degradation and resource depletion.

The structural viability and environmental enclosure capabilities of soil throughout its lifecycle will be tested in different forms derived geomorphically from the …

The Ark: Sanctuary For Isfs, Zejun Sun, Wei Wei Li

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis is aiming to decrease the potential flooding damages to the ISFs, and a balance between the limited resources and high population density to relieve the flooding issues through the renovation and reconstruction of local churches in the Baseco Compound.

Flooding has become one of the most common and devastated issues in developing countries, and it is worsen by the housing crisis that lead to a formation of informal settlements with shoddy constructions and destabilized communities. What is an applicable approach to decrease the potential flooding damage to the ISFs? How to find a balance between the limited resources …

My Abject Body: Dissimulating & Disheveling Fleshy Matter, Taylor Hoople

Architecture Thesis Prep

Body (as subject) and space (as object) are polarized entities in modern discourse and design. The current epoch of hygiene, control, and mass-production/ consumption renders the body and the space(s) it inhabits as whole, discrete entities. In their totality, body and space are idealized opposites, failing to experience any messy overlaps or ambiguous in-betweenness. My feminine body is particularly subject to this dualism, being tightly bound to the legal and social patriarchal dominance over my body’s autonomy and appearance.

This thesis seeks to corrupt my hyper-aestheticized and policed body by making (with) abject( ion). Understood both as an ongoing condition …

Unearthed; Villa S(Av)Oil, Megha Murali

Architecture Thesis Prep

Rammed Earth has not yet been studied in terms of soil's inherent spatial qualities. This thesis aims to create a set of rules to follow when designing with Rammed Earth. Coupling physical testing and a series of interviews with experts, the rules are formed by manifesting natural qualities of soil as spatial manipulations. The outcome goal of this project is to broadcast soil as a material. Imagining a Rammed Earth intervention in today's world, the news about Rammed Earth would be spread as the headlining article in the New York Times. Aiming to educate a wide audience on Rammed Earth, …

Picture Perfect: Ephemera, Icons, And Disaster, Riley Patrick

Architecture Thesis Prep

The abstract, authorless fabrication of an AI image juxtaposed with the legible photography of the constructed recognition perspective connects the awe-inspiring concept of the “natural” disaster with the tangible reality of its actual and potential destruction, found at culturally known physicalities. It is part of architecture’s responsibility to utilize its agency in demystifying the climate crisis, utilizing potent imagery to manifest the danger and effects of these disasters in a contributing effort to protect America’s cultural icons. Representation therefore holds power in communicating immediacy and emotional investment to the climate crisis. The cultural l legibility of national parks is well …

Debrisia, Alice Rong, Jing Ying Chin, Tanya Tungkaserawong

Architecture Thesis Prep

According to the introduction:

Vacant spaces are the non-utilized or underutilized lands due to their parcel shape, size, or geographic location. These vacant lands are often associated with illegal dumping of construction and general waste due to avoidance of refuse collection fee payments, leading to social, environmental, and financial risks. With the rise in illegal dumping over the years, we aim to address this problem at the avoidance, minimization, and recovery level of waste management.

Qi And Garden Wall, Gaole Dai

Architecture Thesis Prep

By using Feng Shui’s principles of Qi in relation to specific residential properties – site organization, surrounding environment and existing structures – this thesis will demonstrate new spatial, formal, and material potentials of the garden wall, as the medium for occupation. The prototypes that achieving therapeutic qualities of Qi and phenomenological effects of the garden wall will be developed for diverse residential landscapes.

Rethinking Participatory Design: Tools For Modelling Community Potentials, Adam Liu, Stephen Marinelli

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to provide an alternative method of community engagement through the process of participatory model-making. Rather than only seeking out community voices for surveys and data collection, this project’s goal is to empower a community’s sense of ownership through collective design.

The methods of this project will be tested and examined in collaboration with students from Dr. King Elementary School in Syracuse, New York. By designing a participatory method for model-making, the project will involve students in the early stages of urban design and make it more educationally and socially accessible.

Resembling Legitimacy: Restructuring The American Civic Architectural Myth, Estefany Lona

Architecture Thesis Prep

By looking at three case studies--Esposizione Universale Roma, the New Deal, and Red Vienna--this project demonstrates that the architecture within each context to be more than subjective constructions of political ideology. They grasp at the history of nations, tangible environments, and coincide with implementation of public policy.

Living Memories: Rethinking Remembrance, Timothy Mulhall

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will interrogate conventional types and methods of memorialization, challenging the memorial as a complete product. Developing from inquiries into alternative acts of commemoration, this investigation will seek to conceive a memorial in the making. An ever-changing memorial that embraces temporality and the process of becoming will offer a new way of rendering remembrance in the built environment.

Image Carnival, Kaixin Huang, Siting Xing

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis project will begin with a basic understanding of iconology, and research on social and technological changes, and explore the different levels of images in a certain range of Instagram-based image sharing social media, and the current social media The space design for the goal is characterized by two directions, which leads to our architectural iconology.

Entangling Manila’S Seams, Patrick De Garcia

Architecture Thesis Prep

Manila, Philippines is a city fragmented into slums and upper-class enclaves. The adjacency of their separated development contributes to intensifying class-relations; each side is fearful of the other. Symbolic manifestations of the border are made apparent due to economic inaccessibility, emphasizing social stratification. This project is interested in blurring the boundaries maintaining social segregation to enhance public spaces’ quality, specifically through redeveloping the shopping mall.

Communion Composed: Fostering Unity Through A Nourished Architecture, David Acevedo

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis looks to utilize food and its inherent social properties as a medium in which architecture can have greater agency in the unification of people, more specifically, distraught communities. Guatemala, a pillar of Central American culture, will be the chosen zone of exploration where such a collaboration can be implemented at a ceremonial scale, utilizing techniques and methods found in ecologically efficient urban food production, intimate domestic food consumption, and marrying them to methods of engaging ceremonial food preparation to create a new edible landscape of socially sustaining architecture.

Mycotecture Of Contamination, Maria Gutierrez, Elise Zilius

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis situates living organisms, specifically mycelium, as the primary designer of the built environment. The investigation uses contamination to fuel mycelium growth and create emergent forms whilst executing remediation strategies for contaminated sites.

Mutualistic Infra\Structures, Dylan Crean

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis asserts design for Infra\ Space, to override static private or public conditions of territory and manipulate Neoliberal investment patterns. The architectural output will be Mutualistic Infra\ Structures. Buildings developed on a methodology focusing on how to lead investment to interstitial spaces.

Beyond The Border: On The Contested Island, Ruxuan Zheng, Shengwei Liu

Architecture Thesis Prep

Every life is important and fragile, but what human being has done for centuries are destroying the balance between human and nature, threatening the future of every life on the Earth. Nowadays, waters are going out of control, while climates are changing dramatically, international boundaries are thickening, and regional human conflicts are tensing. New architectural forms are needed in order to restore the wounded nature, reconcile the political contests, and restructure the relation between human and non-human. We are designing architecture as an initiative to solve those problems, starting from one site and one marine creature, then extending ecologically, socially, …

Dissolving Reality: An Endless Domestic Landscape, Hanzhang Lai, Phang Lim

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis explores how the exponential growth in communication technology is changing the way we interact with the tangible and intangible spaces. The invasion of the public into the private, the collective into the domestic, the work into the leisure, and the ability to be constantly connected wirelessly have caused a dissolution of the physical domestic space. The domestic space has lost its value of privacy and intimacy and the boundary between the binaries will be no more. The gap between “the control” and “controlled” has widened and productive workers will be oppressed to be even more productive under the …

Olympic Gardens After The Games, Kaylee O'Brien

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis begins with an intense study of landscape and the garden. In addition to research on the historical, theoretical, and contemporary conditions of the garden, the thesis investigates the architectural and landscape conditions of the Olympic Games. Specifically looking into issues including Olympic Legacy, Olympic Gardens, and urban interventions associated with Olympic Parks, the project aims to understand ways in which these subjects can be studied, analyzed, and reapplied in the context of a new architectural design. This combined research into gardens and the Olympic Games serves as a foundation for the thesis design project, providing strategies and ways …

“Urban Corridor”: Growing The Connective Tissue Of Nashville, Lindsey Brown

Architecture Thesis Prep

Nashville is undergoing mass-gentrification, and certain marginalized groups are disconnected by infrastructure or distance from basic needs and resources. Architecture can reconnect underserved communities in order to empower them to participate culturally and reclaim autonomy over their community. Through this thesis, architecture can connect the city through the development of infrastructure that (1) encourages tourist exploration out of the inner ring, (2) encourages more sustainable transportation by visitors and residents, (3) increases visitor and resident access to resources through the incorporation of program to make an “active infrastructure”, and (4) highlights the wide variety of cultures in Nashville.

Hidden Narratives, Diego Becerra

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is interested in the active interventions that affect isolated towns through new economic developments. And I'm focused in the use of architecture as a leverage to transform the city in a way that empowers their local community, by adapting the architecture to handle the economic, infrastructure and density change, by working with existing building interventions. So it maintain its character but it also becomes its tool for social and economic cohesion that empowers the community.

Latent Territories, Vasundhra Aggarwal, Jaclyn Doyle

Architecture Thesis Prep

Through accelerated processes of recording and transmitting visual data of our built environment, architecture is increasingly consumed as a series of pixels and numbers by machine modes of vision for other autonomous actors. The incessant processing and data hoarding is saturating the networks that are perceived to be infinite, leading to the inevitable physical and digital decay. As weathering is to the physical, lags and glitches are to the the digital. The effects of aging of physical degradation are evident in our environment, however, the loss of material integrity of digital files is much less visible. Due to the mutable …

Drawing Ambulatory Cartographies: Understanding Urban Experience Through Walking, Bonnie Yu

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis contends that the act of walking, as a way of seeing, being, and understanding in the city, can be a form of urban intervention that enables the transformation of space by allowing individuals to imbue spaces with meaning. The act of walking, in conjunction with mapping practices, can be a critical tool for understanding urban space, acting as a nomadic architecture that works to subvert and smooth the striated space of the city.

This project will investigate the ways in which urban landscape representation, in particular the processes and performances of walking-based mapping practices, can reveal and assert …