Architecture Commons^™

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.

Adaptive Layers: Preservation In High Speed Urbanism, Yuanyue (Alex) Chen

Architecture Senior Theses

With a population density of 20, 191.5 people per square mile and 279 square miles of land, Singapore is the world's third densest country. One hundred percent of the population lives in an urban area. Every year, the population increases by an average of 100,000 people, while land shrinks due to rising sea levels. For Singapore, the only option is densification. Singapore's historical identity is often secondary to the pragmatic need for densification.

In a city built in 30 years, the rapid rate of modernization has created a disconnect between our historical background and architecture today. Buildings in Singapore have …

Memory + Architecture | The Act Of Forgetting, Mariel Mora Llorens

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes the activation and repurposing of buildings associated with traumatic memories as a means of studying the ways in which architecture embodies memories and aids in the process of forgetting. Architecture and the built environment are linked to the creation and recollection of memories because they trigger four of the senses that are related to memory.

To forget is an active, not passive endeavor. Conscious forgetting is not an act of erasing memories, but transforming them by removing the emotional responses that are produced by our recollection of these memories. Like memories in our brains, buildings that have …

Deployable Domesticity, Daniel Hopkins

Architecture Senior Theses

Deployable homes have characterized the survivalist origins of our species, the lifestyles of disenfranchised populations, and the luxurious retreats of others. Still, a predominance of contemporary domestic space relies on the ‘permanently’ stationary and situated object. As the social and ecological conditions of our society are rapidly and continually fluctuating, we must reaffirm our association with deployable culture and expand the utilization of mobile and adaptable unit. Further, architecture must negotiate the contrasts between ephemerality and permanence.

Through speculation of the social and sustainable implications of the deployable unit, issues of flexibility, material selection and afterlife, economics, ecology, and efficiency …

Making By Taking: An Investigation Of Architectural Appropriation, Victoria Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

The project contends that explicit appropriation can be a legitimate method of architectural production. The scope encompasses four canonical works of architecture: Villa Rotonda, Villa Savoye, Fallingwater, and the Farnsworth House. These works are appropriated as the basis of a retrospective analysis and as the foundation for a speculative, generative design strategy. Following the height of postmodernism, the notion of explicit formal appropriation was characterized in a negative light, seen as inauthentic imitation. However, an increasing number of contemporary artists and architects are utilizing explicit appropriation and historical reference as a primary method of production. This mode of thinking can …

Building On The Edge: A Dialogue Between The Past And The Present; The Re-Excavation Of History In Our Modern Cities, Lance G. Vigil

Architecture Senior Theses

"The intent of this architectural thesis is to demonstrate that a new building intervention on the designated urban site will maintain the southern edge of the 'modern' twentieth century gridded city of Rome overlooking the 'ancient' city of the Forum. This edge, acting as a seam, will attempt to strengthen the relationship between these two urban conditions. The second half of this thesis will be to develop an articulated facade for this edge to create a modern building which responds not only to the buildings of the modern city, but also to the buildings of the ancient, or archaeological city …

Urban Prospects: A Search For Poetry In The American City, Gerard D. Damiani

Architecture Senior Theses

"This thesis is about establishing an attitude about design which argues building organization, appearance and meaning. Architecture should be a reflection of culture rather than being an instigator of change."