Architecture Commons^™

Border City, Gabriel Thomas Jewell-Vitale

Architecture Senior Theses

Thesis submitted by Gabriel Thomas Jewell-Vitale for completion of the B.Arch degree. Border city does not acknowledge border as a line, but as a territory. Border city opportunistically looks toward the merging of cultures and the exchange of people and flows. Border city is both port, souk, caravanserai, city and border crossing. Border city is a framework for a borderless city.

Social Infusion: The Theatre Of Spatial Diplomacy, Daley Wilson

Architecture Senior Theses

Due to the present global condition, urban environments that do not conform to

late-capitalistic desires, have faced the threat of gentrification. Through methods of

spatial diplomacy such as Brechtian programmatic pairings, this thesis will allow the

existing Kunsthaus Tacheles, which faces a crisis of squatter/artist culture versus

private commercial, to coexist in tension with new capital-producing programs

forming a social and spatial dialectic.

Casa Como Yo, Gabriela Montilla

Architecture Senior Theses

"The key to addressing Puerto Rico’s increased life expectancy is to provide housing that improves people’s quality of life while growing older. I contend that the role of architecture is to encourage people to embrace aging through a re-conceptualization of senior housing: designed as “not so senior” (which stigmatizes the older individual as being less capable) and more focused on life satisfaction- promoting free will, flexibility, and program integration. Housing for the aging population should accommodate spatial needs over time in a self-directed personal environment, as well as provide interest and connection to the larger urban community."

Mangrove Housing: Ecosystem As A Housing Typology For Culebra, Pr, Jose Manuel Marti

Architecture Senior Theses

"This thesis will address ways in which design can provide safe shelter for the local residents of Culebra. It promotes an architecture that provides safe shelter during hurricanes, which creates an awareness of the danger and effects this natural force has."

Black Market Tourism, Cristina Webb

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Detroit: Reproductive City, Marielle Vargas

Architecture Senior Theses

A Systems motivated test, coupling infrastructures and food processing for a productive city core.

Remobilize + Localize: A Move Towards Creating Cultural Identity And Connectivity, Layla Safiani

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing The Berliner Schloss: Architecture And Memory After German Reunification, Scott Schwarzwalder

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the German government’s proposed reconstruction of Berlin’s city palace, the Stadtschloss, from a critical perspective. The exact replication of the old façades attempts to recreate a lost relationship in the city’s geographical and cultural center. An exploration of the layering of historical events and memories on the palace’s site show how they may be revealed and recalled. By analyzing case studies of reconstructed historic districts in Dresden and Warsaw, along with theories of preservation and memorialization, this thesis proposes an alternative to the artificial façade reconstruction. Through the coupling of museum program with a landscape garden, ‘found’ …

Reclaiming Vieques, Angela Albela

Architecture Senior Theses

" The physical environment at any point in history is the result of all the various events of the history of that place prior to that moment. It tends to manifest itself as a palimpsest of artifacts and mentifacts. It is my contention that architecture has the capacity to create a space of education and reflection about history. The objective of this process is to create an architecture that reclaims and presents the history that may have vanished. "

A Didactic Architecture: Rural Early Education, Vasiliy Lakoba

Architecture Senior Theses

A thesis on rural early education. An architectural intervention in a winter climate.

Liquid Infrastructure: Transnational Spaces Of Water, Timothy Gale

Architecture Senior Theses

As a response to the geopolitical issues of water importation into London UK, a new political entity emerges: theThink Tank. Through coupling political architecture and water infrastructure, the Think Tank legitimizes itself as a dominant institution for water governance. The project reveals the existing spatial subversion of Think Tanks and physical subversion of Pumping Stations to alter existing political structures by allowing the public to access the territorial.

It does not attempt to solve conflict or tensions, it instead seeks to utilize the architectural methods of coupling new programs and functions in the city to create a political and public …

Geothermal Emancipator, Brygida Michon

Architecture Senior Theses

"Today as the factors determining nation’s independence are changing, Poland has a chance to decide on its political future and avoid the

involvement in the foreseen energy wars. It can happen through an appropriate utilization of its renewable energy resources on a larger scale,

which can ensure its nation‘s energy demand stability and therefore political concord.

The types of renewable resource that can best support the energy economy vary in different countries and climates. The choice of renewable

technology to be applied in a location should be supported by existing site conditions in order to determine which has the best …

Logical Urbanism: Food City, Nathaniel Wooten

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Festival Urbanism, Gabriella Morrone

Architecture Senior Theses

"Festivals, as modes of architectural production, can exist as provocations for change in our urban environments. The festival exists as a moment in time and as a distributed system which allows for the transformative capacity of space and the reconsidering of present conditions. Negotiating its temporality, the festival provides a critique on our current and primarily static architectural manifestations and their relationships to our rapidly changing social environments. Festival Urbanism is an experimental design which models a mode of architectural practice rooted in participatory design. Simultaneously as the architect, the planner, and the curator, I propose the construction a virtual …

World Takes, David A. Schragger

Architecture Senior Theses

"The emergence of the derelict and urban flora is a result of a myriad of current economic, political, and social conditions. The combination of the two offers an opportunity to institute a performative hybrid architecture. The remediation of the site can be achieved through combining the systems of the industrial and the organism. Because urban land is no longer valued, one can use the spaces to begin to generate temporal emergent patterns. The industrial topography can be dissolved through structured derelict ecologies throughout the city."

Host City: Catalytic Alternatives For Olympic Planning, William Murillo

Architecture Senior Theses

"The modern Olympic Games exist as one of the most prolific mega-events in global culture, heralding proclamations of peace,pan-unification, and sodality. A mega event can be understood as a high profile, world interest spectacle existing on a short term basis with a series of implications (both beneficial and detrimental) for its host, including socio-economic impacts through generation of tourism and infrastructural advancements, short term/long term employment spikes, real-estate boosts, cost overrun, and an effective branding of the host city with a plethora of potential collective identity issues reliant on themes employed, generation of a legacy/global image and planning concerns, such …

(Re)Formulating The Informal: Architecture As Identity For A Community, J Sebastien Coles

Architecture Senior Theses

The identity associated with the inhabitants of the “Bidonvilles” of Haiti

is arguably nonexistent aside from its connection to the impoverished conditions

of the Haitian slum/shantytown. This thesis contends that with the

insertion of a reformative intervention in the heart of the community promoting

a conducive and educational environment while overlaying a currently

absent infrastructure, will help in creating a positive inner growth within

the informal typology. More specifically architecture will act as a form of

“pride of place,” enticing interaction through the direct connection to

culture.

Stimulating Our Food Environment, Katharine Masciocchi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis argues that architecture must be more than just the physical creation of space and become involved in the design of policies and sustainable systems, which support local food systems providing healthy food for all people regardless of income or race, helping to restore the environment rather than destroy it.