Architecture Commons^™

The Way Of Water: A Cultural Revival, Mariana Munoz

Architecture Senior Theses

THE WAY OF WATER: A CULTURAL REVIVAL MARIANA MUNOZ:

This thesis aims to address the challenges facing the coastal community of Condado, Puerto Rico, by proposing interventions that protect against floods and restore access to water, while also enhancing daily life and cultural practices. Through an examination of the community’s existing conditions, and answer three research questions: (1) how to mitigate flooding without displacing the community, (2) how to meet the needs of the community during times of emergency, and (3) how to integrate interventions into daily life and existing practices. The proposed interventions include a canal system to redirect …

White Picket Possibilities: Socially, Economically And Environmentally Reshaping Suburbia, Brendan Carroll

Architecture Senior Theses

What does the future of suburbia look like? For much of its history suburbia marketed itself as a pillar of the American dream. While it could be argued that for many years owning a single-family home was an obtainable goal for most Americans, this is far from the case today. Suburbia has shifted from the housing type advertised for the masses to a housing type only obtainable by a fraction of Americans. Suburbia and the housing units within it do not match the social, economic, or environmental needs of today's society.

As the demand for suburban living remains at all-time …

Paradigms Of The Post-Natural: Depicting Alternative Futures, Andrea De Haro, Charlotte Bascombe

Architecture Senior Theses

Paradigms of the Post Natural is a thesis that utilizes imagery and storytelling to critique present practices of design which disregard the protection of our environment. We are interested in current environmental degradation characteristics of the era of the anthropocene where human-centric design methods have manipulated and exploited the ecosystem in which we coexist with other organisms as destructive pursuits of human development. Our inspiration developed from a shared interest in the conservation of non-human organisms. Specifically, we are interested in ecocides, areas in which animals are forced to adapt as they experience the human destruction of their habitat. Examining …

Weathering With: Afterlife Treatment Of Architecture, Tianhui Li

Architecture Senior Theses

When thinking about afterlife of architecture, one would imagine architecture’s incapability of maintain its form due to its deterioration. Humans tear down buildings to construct new buildings, or update building by replacing damaged parts.

However recent study indicates that the traditional human-architecture relationship will end in the near future due to population increase and global warming. As humans lose more and more habitable lands, the remaining architecture on inhabitable lands will be abandoned. This raises the question of who then decides the fate of the abandoned architecture. This thesis sees weathering as the answer to the question and reimagines the …

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 …

Artificially Alternate Bauhaus: Gremlins Of Function, Body, And Pattern, Madeline Alves, Erin Zearfoss

Architecture Senior Theses

Human and machine intelligence has the potential to re-design objects and spaces of the past and generate an artificially alternate collection of reimagined Bauhaus images. Present A.I. technologies can operate as synthetic imaginations of historic Bauhaus principles and design ambitions to create a possible future. The past becomes altered through our understanding of its contributions to an alternate present.

Mela: Vessels Of Ephemeral Architecture, Neha Tummalapalli

Architecture Senior Theses

In states of temporality, conventions can be challenged and reimagined. Ephemeral architecture responds to fluctuating conditions and are often built with lightweight, recycled materials that allow for reconfiguration and reinvention. Melas, Sanskrit for "gathering," become a lens through which ad hoc urbanism can be further explored in its most idealized form. Melas include gatherings of all scales that are commercial, celebratory, or religious. The large crowds and temporary nature of these events allow for thoughtful ephemeral configurations to be tried and tested.

The largest gathering of humans in the world is the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, India. This religious pilgrimages …

Toxic Glacier: Confronting Our Society's Consumerism Culture, Valeria Otero Lopez

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is situated in the scenario of a dysfunctional society in which States refuse to cooperate with one another, and every State refuses to import NYC’s waste.

I’m proposing the implementation of a waste treatment plant that processes waste into a “Toxic Glacier” in Central Park, which was originally developed as a place to escape from the overcrowding and polluting streets. Because of the tremendous size this would conquer, there is nowhere in NYC to execute the project but the park.

This project uncovers the City’s hidden motives for concealing waste from its inhabitants. It questions the City’s intentions …

Threshold Tectonics: Reclaiming Space Through Geomorphological Design, Amreeta Verma

Architecture Senior Theses

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 while engaging practices of land return and reclamation. Locally sourced earth materials are the focus of this research because when utilized in a circular consumption cycle, they can be reused or returned to the natural environment. Designing with a temporal understanding of material decay, changing site conditions, and project life cycle reduces the impact of construction waste on the burgeoning issue of environmental degradation and resource depletion. Material experimentation is used to develop …

Linear Waltz With Nature: A Self-Supporting Infrastructure In Nature, Shangkun Zhong

Architecture Senior Theses

This project aims to create a sustainable system that addresses waste management issues in urban areas by examining the functionality of recycling infrastructures and how they can be integrated. The system will absorb waste and convert it into renewable energy to support a field station in Tibet, where self-sustainability is critical, due to the remote location. Architects often demonstrate their understanding of sustainability through various means such as integration, passive/energy-saving, and natural architecture. This thesis argues that a sustainable system such as CopenHill, can exemplify the combination of green-manifested design and recycle content as a sustainable cycle that supports human-nature …

Assemblage Dwelling: A Radical Migrant Domesticity In Urbanity, Protik Choudhuri

Architecture Senior Theses

Humanity will end the 21st century as an entirely urban species. But urban environments are factories- the site of perpetual reproduction of services, interactions, urban and domestic spaces for capital accumulation, rather than the outcome of social processes. As such, the conditions under which migrants have integrated into the urban environments globally are characterized by the extraordinary struggle for decent housing and work.

Globally, it is the squatting movement that responded by countering exclusionary forms of ownership and radically transforming urban and domestic conditions for migrants through two distinct operations: the illegal appropriation of vacant buildings and domestic interventions centered …