Architecture Commons^™

Rebranding The Brooklyn Navy Yard: Market + Place, Lauren Buckheit

Architecture Thesis Prep

Historically, market and place had continuity. Market was defined by place - a commercial program shaped by its surrounding social and cultural environment.1 Market was realized at the overlap of commerce and religion, markets and feasts; all were interrelated. However, as we switched to a consumption based economy the coherence between the two diminished. Markets no longer were shaped by the surrounding micro-cultures, but by temporal consumer trends. When assessing current branding strategies this separation between market and place is also apparent. In one instance, market branding includes creating corporate identities through product, image/semiotics, and built form. This brand identity …

The Manifest Narrative, Kelsey Devries

Architecture Senior Theses

The United States is a Nation of Immigrants. A central part of the myth and narrative of the United States is based on the historical patterns and phases of various immigrant populations, their struggles, and their assimilation into the diverse culture of the United States. Each of these successive waves of immigration, however, has met with strong resistance by the existing population, a phenomenon that has persisted to the present day. This dual nature of this American narrative is reflected in the simultaneous existence of the Statue of Liberty, as a symbol of welcoming, and the ever-growing U.S.-Mexico border fence, …

Untitled Context, Bhumi Patel

Architecture Senior Theses

The original is an emblem of industrialization. It is the homogeneous and the rule. Through methods of reproduction and reduction, the object creates a new identity, invigorating pre-existing conditions.

This research explores the resolution of the replica through the reproduced and the reduced. The reproduced uses the syntax of the original as a framework to produce an object containing the same components, but altered and modifies to the new context. Many towers built around the worlds that reference the Eiffel Tower as an influence, contain components of the tower that have altered and modified to the new context. These tests …

Engaging Holistic Health Through Interactive Design In Public Space- Part 1, Alec Hembree, Emily Sholder

Architecture Senior Theses

Everything that an individual knows, thinks, feels, and perceives is ultimately formed by a culmination of experiences within his or her constructed environment. Beginning with early stages f childhood development, an individual begins to develop schemas through which he or she processes internal conditions and external factors of the surrounding environment. Education through self, family, school, community, and social media further contributes to this development as the learner grows and changes over time. However, recent changes in cultural clues have altered the way children develop physically, cognitively, and socially. Considering these factors as primary influences on the individuals holistic health …

Untitled Context- Part 2, Bhumi Patel

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Engaging Holistic Health Through Interactive Design In Public Space- Part 2, Alec Hembree, Emily Sholder

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Spatial Entrepreneurship: Rethinking The Environmental Conditions Of The Start-Up Business Model, Carson Davis

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis proposes a more dynamic relationship between the process of refining and testing a start-up business model and the spaces in which this process takes place. A short-term live/work facility that provides a support structure during the initial development of these companies will reduce risk for both investors and entrepreneurs. This is when young start-ups are in need of both physical resources, in the form of workspaces and temporary lodging, as well as intellectual resources in the way of business advice and mentorship. Venture Capitalists, who already fund this process, should provide these resources, thus leaving more money to …

Opp: Id, Marcus Johnson

Architecture Thesis Prep

Because embassies increasingly function as symbols instead of diplomatic outposts it is necessary to question their effectiveness as diplomatic tools in a global society. If the United States intends to maintain physical diplomatic outposts as part of its foreign policy, then it will require reducing the collateral that is associated with such dangerous missions. While security enhancements have improved the safety and welfare of the Foreign Service in the past, persistent attacks question the relevancy of this approach. Architecture and Urbanism should be included in as possible, if not probable and appropriate, solutions to this difficult problem.

The Creation Of Sense Of Place: Negotiating The Divide Between Nature And Culture Through Phenomenological Architecture, Gabriel Nolle

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The project I am proposing seeks to explore phenomenological architecture as a medium between culture and nature in order for humans to regain a sense of place in the natural world. While recent trends in architecture, namely sustainability, seek to emphasize environmental consciousness, the subjective relationship to the environment – how it affects our senses – remains the one we know least about. The process of designing and constructing buildings in the natural world must respond to conditions of nature in terms of site, material, purpose and form, to answer the demands of the human-nature condition. At …

High Density La: Ego-Centric Housing, Yannick Matthews

Architecture Thesis Prep

Los Angeles has spread out too far and needs to adjust its urban strategy in terms of higher density develpments and compact urban nuclei.

These nuclei will establish more defined city centers with locally available amenities, thereby decreasing Angelino’s reliance on an overtaxed private transportation infrastructure. To sustain these centers there is a need to increase both population and housing density. Courtyard housing is the ideal typological model to remedy the situation. The Courtyard model, additional allocation of public space, and encentivised public transportation are key to achieving the best possible results.

Re-evaluate Los Angeles through a Freudian filter, identifying …

Waiting As Remedy: The Architecture Of Emergent Care, Jack Mccarrick

Architecture Thesis Prep

While the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides insured care to a much larger group of Americans, it has the potential to reduce the quality of care provided to patients, particularly in emergency departments. This research will argue for a reimagining of the emergency department in which there is a definitive split between the architectural implications of spaces where technical care is administered for biological needs (the emergency room) and spaces where primary and implied care can satisfy the psychological desires of inappropriate patients (the waiting room) in order to better serve appropriate patients.

Filling The Gap: The Effect Of Temporary Environments On Deteriorated Cities, David Caballero

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project I’m proposing will analyze the effect of temporary environments on deteriorated cities that have been damaged environmentally and economically. While attempts have been made to motivate cities through the use of vacant and public space, “research on temporary urbanism is still in its infancy”. I claim that temporary architecture, if ideally placed, can alleviate the strain placed on communities from environmental and economic disasters. I will demonstrate that temporal space is the needed structure for human cultural permanence and preservation.

Agricultural Reform, Francesca Ling

Architecture Thesis Prep

The design of an architecture typology of a coffee cooperative center will be able to increase the efficiency of benefits for these farmers. The center will serve as a place of cultural exchange and mitigation between family farmers, and the world of the international market. It achieves this by being based upon two main design problems: (1) that formally, there is a disjunction between what farmers perceive as desirable architecture for “western” coffee buyers and their own physically successful construction methods, and (2) providing classroom spaces to teach farmers about the business of trading as well as teaching buyers about …

Shapes Of Gray: Concepts In Concrete, Ford Bostwick

Architecture Senior Theses

Concrete is plastic and highly manipulatable. Its characteristics and the forms it takes are vastly diverse and its history as a building material is broken and nonlinear. By charting the trajectory of its manifestations and uses over time, as well as the trajectories of constituent things (chairs, pneumatic structures, blocks, and relevant artwork), I’ve reached an understanding of what some possible valuable futures for concrete might look like. I have proposed three of these possible futures in doodle form. The doodles appear later in this book.

Dead Space, Aimee Michele Hultquist

Architecture Senior Theses

Deadspace might seem like it would refer to a sequestered location, but it is more of an ephemeral idea. The universality of death as a condition of life means that deadspace exists across all cultures and even transcends human creation. Deadspaces can be for no one and for everyone, or they can be open only to particular constituencies. A cemetery may be open to everyone, or it may be accessible only to those who practice a certain faith; it may even be a place so feared that no one is to be there except for the dead. A nuclear contamination …

Housing Indeterminacy: Responsive Design For Diverse And Changing Households, Mark Sousa

Architecture Senior Theses

This project hopes to create a new outlook on the future of housing design. Ray Forrest wrote, “The pace of demographic change need not be that dynamic to outpace the capacity of markets or states to provide appropriate dwellings in appropriate locations. […] Dwelling placement or adaptation is always likely to lag.” The preceding statement reflects the belief that housing is static and rigid, and that dwelling replacement or major structural adaptation is necessary to accommodate a continually evolving population. On the contrary, responsive housing can release significant pressure on housing systems by anticipating change and providing a lower cost …

Reconsidering The User, Nathan M. Aleskovsky

Architecture Senior Theses

My thesis, Reconsidering The User, is a proposal for a digital application that unites the architect and the occupant in the design process of a home by transforming how design criteria are obtained and controlled.

Within the scope of the detached single-family house, my thesis argues that a design process that engages the expertise of both the architect and the occupant has the potential to create a design solution that is more accurately tailored to the preferences of the occupant. This is possible through reconfiguring the information phase of architectural design. Given my background and current entrepreneurial pursuit, best way …

Specifying Spectacle: Architectural Representation & Image-Oriented Society, Patrick Ruggiero

Architecture Senior Theses

"The project will critique current modes of operation by a linear problem-solving design process. By acting through representation as both a vehicle for developing design and as a means of communicating and experiencing it, the project will engage the design of a tactile deployment of architecture and effective means of communicating its intent. The architecture will function in the way that the visual arts do in terms of their scale and engagement in cultural issues. Research into tangible artifacts of the site will yield a combination of image, drawing and model forms of representation. Through this analysis, a strategy of …

Liquid Borders: (Re)Claiming The Coast Through Resilient Urbanism, Natasha Valldejuly

Architecture Senior Theses

Infrastructure, architecture, and landscape have been commonly understood as three different entities within the urban fabric. Nevertheless, climatic uncertainties such as rising sea levels have proven that the division between these systems needs to be re-thought. How can this boundary be transformed into a more flexible urban development in which the water is seen as a habitat rather than a threat? The project I am proposing will use the Caño Martin Peña in San Juan, Puerto Rico as a testing ground to re-think how these systems can come together to form a more holistic architecture of resilience. By building for …

Experiential, Anticipatory, Unreal: This Fairy-Tale Does Not Have A Happy Ending., Laya Pattana

Architecture Senior Theses

"The methodology will be tested in the cinema type because of its promise of escapist hyperreality. It is spatial, highly personal and privatized, and firmly anti-architecture. Because the film is self-contained, its space is irrelevant. The representation of experience can be reclaimed as a design strategy to activate the movie theatre typology--a typology that architecture has long since lost."

En[Crypted]: A Memorial Archive For The Preservation And Sanctification Of Digital Remains., William Stattman

Architecture Senior Theses

Humans no longer leave behind solely physical remains. We accrue countless digital files, photos, etc. that are part of our lives and reveal who we are. We have well established architectural typologies for physical living, spaces for viewings and funerals [the threshold] and typologies for storing and curating physical remains. There is a pragmatic "architecture" for the living digital in the form of vast server warehouses, which additionally house digital artifacts from deceased users out of necessity as there has yet to be an established typology for their permanent archiving. There is also no respectful digital equivalent to the funeral …

The Mall Reincarnate: Putting Faith In A Failed Mall, Barbara Burke

Architecture Senior Theses

I propose that there is a symbiotic way of addressing the aforementioned issues. Using the architecture of a discontinued shopping mall to agglomerate religious houses of worship will establish the opportunity or an environment that promotes religious pluralism, while repurposing infrastructural scar tissue. While seemingly disparate, the mall and the house of worship afford similar opportunities. First, they bring together like-minded people, fostering a sense of community. Second, they are both quasi-public facilities (privately-owned but publicly accessible). They are targeted to a specific demographic and require behavioral conduct. Both are designed to promote an atmosphere conducive to their activity, and …

Stigma For Regeneration: A Hub For City Efficiency And Saturation, Tanner Halkyard

Architecture Senior Theses

In many cases today, the train station as a connection point between the commute and the stationary mode of living or working, is a congestion point of personal and community modes of traffic resulting in an underthought chance for saturated development.

Incorporation of a Chicago high-speed rail station will pioneer new solutions to congestion and economic growth within this particular sub-standard city, drawing on landscape traditions while incorporating water, energy and pedestrian networks to connect the futuristic ideals to compound issues. It will alleviate housing shortages and provide a platform for reinstallment of impoverished families into the climing economic core.

Fashioning The Unfashionable: An Architecture Of Waste, Alyson Canal

Architecture Senior Theses

It is evident that there exists a connection between architecture and fashion, and more significantly fashion and waste. Fashioning a material recovery facility through exhibition space, art, and social interaction will bring infrastructure back into the designed environment while maintaining an industrial identity that the site demands. Designing an architecture of waste through the cultural ideologies of fashion facilitates collectivity and public engagement.

Political Dialogue: Spatial Opportunities Within The Lima Food System, Santiago Dammert

Architecture Senior Theses

"I propose to inteverne this otherwise spread out and disconnected environment and insert programmatic interfaces that result in interactions between the different users to be located there, without compromising the market’s need for efficient transactions. An other important factor is time. This will be done by the formulation of two different strategies that deal with different scales. On a larger scale, zoning is to be redefined, concentrating administrative, leisure and event program relevant to the 3 clients so as to spatially unify already built structures. On a smaller scale, this program acts as a creator of visual and spatial connections …

Sourcing Scarcity, Muneerah Alrabe

Architecture Senior Theses

Water is an essential element to human development and urban vitality. As a response to future oil depletion in cities, a new appearance of water emerges in cities: Hydro-urbanism. Through rethinking the potential of water infrastructure in cities, HydroUrbanism situates itself as a spectacular functional event that aims to collect, purify, store, and generate energy within a city. The project reconsiders the production process of water on the periphery of the city and hypothesizes for an integrated process of the production of water to work within the city at an urban scale. Exposing the water infrastructure, fantasizing water, and re-connecting …

A Duck But Not An Animal, Trevor Manders

Architecture Senior Theses

Program and scale are destabilized. Site is emptied of meaning. The ultimate way in which these outrageous forms mean something is through their iconography. The surprising legibility of the frat house in the shape of a snowflake crystal, the enormous familiarity of an office tower in the form of an earbud, how at home we feel in front of a bungalow sculpted like a bacterium, etc., and then it will make sense why on yelp.com the Long Island Duckling has a 4.5 star review.

The Tectonics Of Turning The Corner: A New City Hall For Boston, Massachusetts, Hillary Barlow

Architecture Senior Theses

The corner is a unique architectural condition that serves as a rhetorical device through its role in the configuration of space. How architects "turn the corner" or the "problem" of the corner has long been rooted in architectural discourse however as Eisenman notes, "corners are elusive and thus rarely thematized in architecture. For example, when Rosalind Krauss said that architecture will always have four walls-that is, an enclosure-she never said that architecture has corners, either external or internal." The corner specifically can produce multiple layers of meaning since the corner can define form either as a series of edges, surfaces …

Fixing The Forum: Re-Inventing The Typology That Once Was, Jonathan Bruno

Architecture Senior Theses

With the loss of the public forum, a sense of society, interaction among people, and a public place for everyone has vanished. With that in mind however, the old programmatic planning of the public forum is no longer adequate. I am proposing for the creation of a new typology, a contemporary forum driven by our consumerist culture.

Simultaneous City, Robert George Little

Architecture Senior Theses

"The description of something happening, often of significance, can be understood by the word ‘event.’ I am not interested in the notion of a large gathering with cocktails and food on toothpicks; instead the kind of event that shapes the city. Since the beginning of man’s conscious creation of the built environment, there has been a combative relationship between the human and physical world. “There is no architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without program. By extension, there is no architecture without violence.” Bernard Tschumi discusses notions of event in his essay “Violence of Architecture.” He describes …