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Full-Text Articles in Architecture
Optimized Density: Rehabilitating The Tower In The Park For The 21st Century, Emmett Walker
Optimized Density: Rehabilitating The Tower In The Park For The 21st Century, Emmett Walker
Architecture Senior Theses
Optimized densification is the exploitation of under utilized space to create a more dynamic cooperative based density often times adding onto what is already exists. The pursuit of maximizing intelligently can help to relieve socioeconomic exclusivity, create a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle and influence social mixing. Though architecture can only have a limited influence on the social climate of a place like New York City, re-envisioning and optimizing the density of the tower in the park typology can lead to a more harmonious engagement between buildings and their surrounding context or population. Optimizing density could be the modern day American …
The Shenzhen Activist Program`, Hyunggyu Kim, Jae Hyun Kim
The Shenzhen Activist Program`, Hyunggyu Kim, Jae Hyun Kim
Architecture Senior Theses
There is a gap between being an architecture student in western countries and working as an architect in underrepresented communities. Architect Teddy Cruz defines the role of an activist architect as "expanded mode of practice", and the task of "deigning the protocols or the interfaces between communities and spaces".
This thesis contends that architecture schools need to continue to embrace the widely-accepted norm of studios studying abroad and working in an international studio. Current study abroad programs tend to skew towards being touristic field trips and there is not a curriculum or programmatic investment in cultivating relationships between the visiting …
New Beijing | A Renewed Vernacular, Bowen Victor Zhang
New Beijing | A Renewed Vernacular, Bowen Victor Zhang
Architecture Senior Theses
What does the term "vernacular" means? In an increasingly flay world, this thesis seeks to define the essential elements of the vernacular architecture of Beijing in order to propose a contemporary residential archetype.
In the past century, China has experienced unprecedented economic growth and development. Along with the many influences introduced by cross-cultural interactions, the phenomenon of architectural and social gentrification has begun to affect many of the populations living in urban centers. The same gentrifying forces that have drastically changed Greenwich Village and other New York City neighborhoods has rapidly moved to China and has replaced centruries-old vernacular communities …
The Allopoiesis Of The Urban Artifact And The Palimpsest Of Context, Cristina Abondano
The Allopoiesis Of The Urban Artifact And The Palimpsest Of Context, Cristina Abondano
Architecture Senior Theses
This thesis contends that Pathological Urban Artifacts , as defined by Aldo Rossi, could be made Propelling through Allopoiesis in combination with the palimpsest of the urban context. The proposal consists of a dialogue between the two strategies of growth, aiming to reconnect the Artifact to the city.
Allopoiesis is the process by which a system produces something other than the system itself. In this thesis, allopoiesis is the mapping of the artifact’s underlying geometry as catalyst for urban development.
Rossi sees in the Propelling Urban Artifact a formal structure that confirms the presence of the city and persists through …
Never-Land | A Parasitic And Accumulative Approach To Urbanization In China, Xiaoyan Dong
Never-Land | A Parasitic And Accumulative Approach To Urbanization In China, Xiaoyan Dong
Architecture Senior Theses
Ever since 1960s, European situationist and Japanese metabolist architects constantly reject the uniformity and totalitarian of modern architecture/urban design, seeking parasitic and dynamic approaches to post-war urbanization. Projects such as the Plug-In City and the Tokyo Bay dream of alternative urban scenarios by reversing traditional perceptions of infrastructure’s role in the city, combining architecture, technology and society together. However, these megastructure projects not only neglect the existing urban context but also lack political and economic driving force. As a result, they are considered utopian by many contemporary critics.
Fifty years later in China, fast urbanization process creates problems for both …
Occupy Pomo | A Citizen's Guide To Urban Excavation, Kriti Garg
Occupy Pomo | A Citizen's Guide To Urban Excavation, Kriti Garg
Architecture Senior Theses
Traditionally, architects' definitions of solid-void conditions create a dichotomy between private, or built matter, and public, or void, spaces. Yet, this notion is a missed opportunity to understand the complex society of the twenty-first century that no longer operates within the realm of open, public space nor acts as a point of primal cohesiveness for culture and community. Rather than aggregating at instances of density, it is lost within a new ghostly cosmopolitan substitute of mass consumption and globalized culture. This new public realm is a "phantom public sphere", one comprised of "sub-publics", tailored to the demands of a mass …
China's New Weird, Bangyuan Shi
China's New Weird, Bangyuan Shi
Architecture Senior Theses
This thesis offers a critique of the diminishing communal life int he contemporary Chinese city which is created by the gap between large-scale master planning strategies and the contemporary need to focus on the individual instead of the structure of communities.
China's New Weird proposes an alternative to large-scale urbanism through the use of micro-urbanism strategies that preserve the relative scale and character of traditional urban settlements, like those of the "hutong", while also addressing the contemporary need to increase inner city population densities. The intention is to adapt the patterns of space and use that are found in these …
Hacking The Urban Village | Architecture As Board Game, Xuyun Liu
Hacking The Urban Village | Architecture As Board Game, Xuyun Liu
Architecture Senior Theses
This thesis proposes the board game as a new research methodology and platform for the study of southern China's urban villages.
Hacking the Urban Village examines the urban villages that have, in recent decades, become a common but informal settlement type in China as a result of China's unprecedented period of urbanization.
This research forms the contextual core of a board game where game settings present the current urban conditions and players may explore alternative forms of urbanism. The board game offers players the opportunity to investigate both he formal conditions of the urban village life along with it attendant …
33.3% - Creative Entrepreneurship In Buffalo, Ny, Bruce Molino
33.3% - Creative Entrepreneurship In Buffalo, Ny, Bruce Molino
Architecture Senior Theses
"This work has emerged out of an interest in the idea of the resilient city. It is an experiement intended to test ideas and suggest ways in which to reconsider architecture within a directed urbanism. Directional urbanism is a term that I use to describe how insertions can redirect or reinvent the trajectory of a city. This thesis privileges resiliency as the objective of that new trajectory; not as a moment of realization, but rather a continually changing adaptive process that allows cities to act, and react, in a constructive way."
Building Urban Texture, Fernando Pabon-Rico
Building Urban Texture, Fernando Pabon-Rico
Architecture Senior Theses
"This investigation is based on the contention that a city is made up of an urban construct where certain elements are continuous in their presence. This continuity provides legibility to an urban environment. The fact that elements or parts are an integral part of the legibility of the city fosters the reading of the city as a function of their integration. The role or place of architecture therefore lies on the formation of the city through its parts."
Harlem On My Mind, Shawn L. Rickenbacker
Harlem On My Mind, Shawn L. Rickenbacker
Architecture Senior Theses
The thesis involves directly establishing a coherent dialogue between participants and architecture. The site and architecture involved are only a catalyst to the area it is representing, Harlem. However, the project will have the responsibilities of designating itself as a primary theshold to the famous ditricts and attracting would be participants. It is for this reason the program of cultural progress centre has been chosen in the interest of providing a stimulation program. The intention of the proposed centre is not to compete with the district or communty in which it lies, but to act as its subordinate. This will …