Architecture Commons^™

Museum Of The Mechanical Eye: The Phenomenology Of Perception In Architecture, Isabela Sierra

Architecture Senior Theses

Since ancient tines, philosophers have tied knowledge to clear vision. Sight has been deemed the most important sense to mankind. Plato said vision was "humanity's greatest gift." It is human nature to make optical conclusions, to reify, to totalize, to control. What is seen is assumed to certain because of the uncontested and unexplored optical gray areas upheld by our rational and technological culture. We solidified our ocular-centric society by creating vision-generated understandings of knowledge, truth, and reality. Architecture, along with art and film, deals directly with human existence in space. Architecture is the construction of human perception.

The universe …

More Than Just A Fantasy: Literary Fantasy As An Architectural Tool, Kae Schwalber

Architecture Senior Theses

Fantasy literature world building can suggest and support alternative paths for architectural practice using the super stimuli of fantasy “otherworlds” to promote and create more “placed” spaces and improve the wellbeing of communities. According to Edward Relph, the United States has had an issue with “placelessness” since the 1950’s, where building typologies are nationally distributed and rarely localized. Literary Fantasy has created worlds so desirable that they have permeated into a multi-billion dollar industry that reaches past literature, making the consumption of fictional worlds a central behavior in modern societies. The cultural importance and success of the genre is due …

Living Memories: Rethinking Remembrance, Timothy Mulhall

Architecture Senior Theses

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. Memorials must be alive, changing, constantly developing as a result of interaction. The reliance on overly abstract, rhetorical conditions of design will become obsolete. The static condition of the image-friendly object will be replaced with a dynamism influenced by time and participation.

Review Of "Rights And Reproductions: The Handbook For Cultural Institutions" (2nd Ed.), Georgia Westbrook

School of Information Studies - Post-doc and Student Scholarship

The second edition of Rights and Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions provides an updated look at intellectual property, related laws, and appropriate use for cultural institutions. The authors provide a robust and clear explanation of relevant issues and serves a wide range of users employing the text as a reference work.

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

Architecture Senior Theses

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 …

Breaching The Divide: An Inquiry Into Border Passage, Russell Scheer

Architecture Senior Theses

This project is an inquiry into the existing threshold that currently separates Israelis from Palestinians in the West Bank. Through the dismantling of the Israeli border checkpoint and reinterpretation of its parts, this project reimagines the sequence of passing through the threshold. By framing the mundane activities of border passage through dramatic scenes, this architecture can reveal themes religion, resources, and surveillance. This architecture also intends to highlight the imbalance of the current conflict and those involved in it, by creating an architecture equally absurd.

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 …

“Rationalization Takes Command: Zeilenbau And The Politics Of Ciam,” Excerpt From Building Culture: Ernst May And The New Frankfurt Initiative, 1926-1931, Susan R. Henderson

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Chapter seven, of Building Culture,"Rationalization Takes Command: Zeilenbau and the Politics of CIAM," addresses the New Frankfurt housing and settlement initiative at the onset of the depression of 1929. The shift into decline, saw some initiatives completed, others stifled, and new ones emerge. Thus the 1929 CIAM Congress held in Frankfurt began with performances of experimental music, poetry and dance, and ended with the consecration of the existence minimum as the new housing standard. Meanwhile, Ernst May pushed forward with a revised housing strategy based on the minimal dwelling, the existence minimum, and the superblock (Zeilenbau). The CIAM Congress …

The New Woman's Home, Excerpt From Building Culture: Ernst May And The New Frankfurt Initiative, 1926-1931, Susan R. Henderson

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Chapter three of Building Culture, “The New Woman’s Home. Kitchens, Laundry, Furnishings,” discusses household culture and modernization. It begins with the Frankfurt Kitchen and its designer, Grete Lihotzky, and continues with a discussion of electricity and the architect Adolf Meyer, and its expansion with the example of the electric laundries in the Frankfurt settlements. The next segment is a discussion of new furniture design, small, inexpensive furniture that was an essential partner to contemporary small house design and was avidly researched in the Frankfurt offices. Designers here include Kramer, Cetto and Schuster.

The Continuing Exodus: The Synagogue And Jewish Urban Migration, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Catalog essay in Silent Witnesses: Migration Stories Through Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt or Abandoned (Farmington Hills, MI, 2012) that deals with Jewish settlement and migration in American cities (especially New York, Boston and Cleveland) and the religious and community buildings erected and left behind in the process.

Graduate Sessions 6: Televisuality, Jon Yoder, James L. Hepokoski, James Utterback

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

The Televisuality symposium was organized by Jon Yoder and the students of Architectural Theory + Design Research, a core component to the graduate curriculum in the School of Architecture.

Cycling Without Spandex: A Transdisciplinary Approach To Design, Jess Garnitz

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Engaging with other disciplines is important to designers today as the nature of problems and issues are becoming more complex."

"The problem of integrating bicycles into our city streets is inherently a problem that requires transdisciplinary work. This is because of the complexity of the problem and the numerous areas affected through the integration. The problem is like an interconnected web of relations. There are issues relating to wayfinding and understanding how to get from destination to destination, which relate to issues of speed and non-verbal communication."

Graduate Sessions 10: Preston Scott Cohen, Mark D. Linder, James Lucas

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Preston Scott Cohen, founder of Preston Scott Cohen, Inc., is the Chair of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is the author of Contested Symmetries and numerous theoretical and historical essays as well as the designer of several significant cultural institutions, urban plans, and residences for which he has received awards and honors including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture.

Polish Influence On American Synagogue Architecture, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Poland came to America after 1880. Many built synagogues with details recalling synagogues in their homeland. Immigrant artisans brought motifs and methods of Poland. Many of these synagogues were small, so the relationship to Polish art was on the inside in the painted and carved decoration. Established architects also had access to Polish synagogues as sources. With publication of the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901-06) images of Polish synagogues, such as the Warsaw’s Tlomackie Street Synagogue, became part of many Jewish libraries. More Polish influence came in the 1950s. Most architects were building modern synagogues, …

Medieval Synagogues In The Mediterranean Region, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Throughout the Middle Ages, the synagogue developed as the central identifying institution and physical building for Jews, replacing the still yearned for but increasingly distant Jerusalem Temple as the focus of Jewish identity. Equally important, the synagogue became the symbol par excellance of the Jews and their community for the Christian (or Muslim) majority populations in the countries where Jews were settled. For Christians, the synagogue was a Jewish church, but much more so, it came to symbolize in opposition all that the church represented.

Though relatively little known today, medieval synagogues were not symbolic abstractions to the men and …

Graduate Sessions 9: Keller Easterling, James Lucas, Mark D. Linder, Cameron Lassiter

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Keller Easterling is an architect, professor, urbanist, and writer whose books Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and Its Political Masquerades and Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America offer original and provocative conflations of spatial theory and contemporary design.

Special Formats, Innovative Preservation Storage Solutions, Peter D. Verheyen

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

The presentation dealt with the tube storage system developed for architectural and other over-sized drawings at Syracuse University Library.

Political Renewal And Architectural Revival During The French Regency: Oppenord's Palais-Royal, Jean-François Bedard

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Author links Oppenord's 'revivalist' attitude to the politics of his patron, Philippe II, duc d'Orleans, regent of France between 1715 and 1723. The author uses eight drawings by Oppenord, acquired by the Carnavalet in 1999, as well as others known, to show how the Palais-Royal and its apartments were transformed to be a surrogate Versailles. Includes a checklist of drawings and prints by and after Oppenord for the Palais-Royal (1713-1723).

Graduate Sessions 7: Anthony Vidler, Mark D. Linder, James Lucas, Lauren M. Baez

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Anthony Vidler is Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union. His books include Histories of the Immediate Present, The Architectural Uncanny, Warped Space, and The Writing of the Walls.

Graduate Sessions 8: Neil Denari, Mark D. Linder, James Lucas, Melissa Griffin

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Neil Denari is the founder and principal of Neil M. Denari Architects, Inc. He was the director of SCI-Arc from 1997 to 2001 and is currently a professor in the Architecture and Urban Design Department at UCLA. His lecture at Syracuse Architecture, entitled "The New Intimacy," is one of over two hundred he has given at institutions throughout France, Japan, and the United States.

The Synagogues Of Piedmont, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

History and architecture of the synagogues of Piedmont, Italy.

Graduate Sessions 5: Johnston Marklee, James Degennaro, Amanda Jones

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Sharon Johnston, AIA & Mark Lee are the principal founders of Johnston MarkLee Associates. Sharon currently teaches at UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design and has directed visiting critics studios throughout the country. Mark Lee is an integral faculty member at UCLA and is currently the Vice Chair.

Founded in 1998, Los Angeles-based Johnston MarkLee & Associates designs and develops distinvtive architectural environments that are responsive to the variable intermix of specific conditions of site, program and economics. Recent projects include an exhibition design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled nano, numerous award-winning houses that are …

Achieving Gender Equality Through Economic Empowerment, Danielle Sara Pactovis

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The implication that the social construct of our private lives [stereotyped gender roles associated with the nuclear family] controls the development of the public sphere is an ineffective way to define our role as architects. I propose that standards for equal rights need to be initiated in the public real,. Based on theory from the Modern Movement, architecture has potential as an economic and political means for improving the environment through building and urban planning. My interest in the social implications of architecture has led to exploring embedded gender distinctions in the urban environment, specifically studying how economic markets influence …

Organic Architecture And Direct Democracy: Claude Bragdon's Festivals Of Song And Light, Jonathan Massey

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Graduate Sessions 3: Juan Herreros, Mark D. Linder, Beth Mosenthal

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Juan Herreros is the founder and principal of Abalos and Herreros Architects in Madrid and teaches internationally as a Doctor of Architecture, Senior Professor and head of Teaching Unit Q at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, as well as a Visiting Professor most recently at Princeton University and the Illinois Institute of Technology

The work of Abalos and Herreros ranges from published works including Tower and Office: From Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice and Recycling Madrid to critically-acclaimed built work including apartment and office towers in Vitoria and the Woermann complex in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. …

Filmed Architecture: The Nature Of Vision, Theodore C. Grothe

Architecture Thesis Prep

"By researching the methods, technologies, theories, and criticism of motion film, one can begin to gain an understanding of these phenomena. Tha language of film becomes apparent, and can then be used in architectural discourse.

How can these methods and techniques begin to translate into the discipline of architecture? What can the discipline gain from them In what capacity can we begin to augment their affects on our perception of architecture, form, reality, and space?"

Graduate Sessions 4: Transdisiplinary Applications, Mark D. Linder, Joseph Sisko

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

This issue of Graduate Sessions combines the panel discussions of Transdisciplinary Applications, a symposium featuring designers and researchers who studied the discipline of architecture and now are expanding the field of the discipline by applying specifically architectural techniques to problems and projects outside of, or marginal to, the proper domain of the profession.

Graduate Sessions 1: Sylvia Lavin, Mark D. Linder, James Degennaro

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Sylvia Lavin is Professor of Architecture at UCLA and writes widely on contemporary architecture and theory. She recently completed a year as a Getty Scholar where she was working on her next book, The Flash in the Pan and Other Forms of Architectural Contemporaneity. She is co-editor of Crib Sheets (Monacelli Press, 2005) and the author of Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture (MIT Press, 2005).

Graduate Sessions 2: Greg Lynn, Mark D. Linder, Beth Mosenthal

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Greg Lynn is the principal of Greg Lynn FORM and has lectured and taught internationally, as Professor at the Universitat fur Angewandte Kunst in Vienna, as Davenport Professor at Yale, and as studio professor at UCLA. He curated the exhibitions "Intricacy" (2003) at the ICA in Philidelphia, and "Intricate Surface" (2003) at the MAK in Vienna. He is the editor of Folding in Architecture (Architectural Design, 1993), the author of Animate Form (Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), and Folds, Bodies, and Blobs: Collected Essays (La Lettre Vole, 1998).

Foglio, Syracuse University

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Foglio is a publication that covers the work produced by students and faculty of Syracuse University during their time in Florence. This edition covers the topics of Futurism and Fascism in architecture, Teaching Architecture, Mapping Rituals, and the general student work from 1998-2003.