Architecture Commons^™

Hijacked: Parasitic Injection Of The Social Condenser Within The Contemporary City, Lara Moock

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis contends that the constructivist “social condenser” should be injected through the lens of the 21st century, capitalist city in order to reveal the interwoven collisions and hidden overlaps between the homeless and tech industry of San Francisco. The condenser will operate like a parasitic intervention by hijacking spaces along the spine of the city, heavily influenced by social and policy concerns, to formally and programmatically make these invisibilities between the two entities evident.

Animal Cities: Post-Human Urban Wildness, Jing Huang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis contends that architecture should be designed in a way to foster closer human-animal relationships. Cities are typically designed solely with the human in mind, and over time, animals have been pushed out of the city, decreasing biodiversity. Peoples’ tendency is to separate themselves and domesticate animals, resulting in sterile and tame urban centers. This is a result of the different attitudes humans have cultivated towards animals; dirty/clean, pleasant/annoying, useful/useless, harmless/dangerous, awe/disgust, etc., and utilizing architecture as means of filtering the presence of those that are beneficial to us, rendering animals as an afterthought. In a way, humans have …

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 …

Reimagining Obsolete Underground Infrastructure, Pt. 3, Alexa Hansford

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis aims to tackle the issues of obsolete infrastructure through the creation of a new network throughout the urban center. Networks of abandoned underground structures exist in urban locations everywhere, left untouched or forgotten when building anew was easier. These sometimes iconic structures are left with only small traces of their influence upon their context. Sites like these still have the ability to influence their surroundings on both an urban and a local scale. Due to the elevation of such spaces, they are inevitably at a greater risk for damage. Redesigning the network to accommodate and adapt to the …

City School, Urban Re-Form: Sublimating Education Into Daily Civic Life, Alison Dobbertin

Architecture Senior Theses

The urban public school is in crisis. In the 21st century we have yet to reform the bounded and centralized school model: one of queues, rigid spatial/temporal organization, and restricted learning in a continuously supervised environment. The general failure of the public school system within the American city is compounded with the need for new skill sets that refocus educational priority upon ability to communicate, think critically and embody creativity – skills that are becoming crucial in the globalizing culture and economy. The urban public school awaits a critical re-formation that can architecturally and ideologically address these shortcomings.

Reimagining Obsolete Underground Infrastructure, Pt. 5, Alexa Hansford

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis aims to tackle the issues of obsolete infrastructure through the creation of a new network throughout the urban center. Networks of abandoned underground structures exist in urban locations everywhere, left untouched or forgotten when building anew was easier. These sometimes iconic structures are left with only small traces of their influence upon their context. Sites like these still have the ability to influence their surroundings on both an urban and a local scale. Due to the elevation of such spaces, they are inevitably at a greater risk for damage. Redesigning the network to accommodate and adapt to the …

Reimagining Obsolete Underground Infrastructure, Pt. 4, Alexa Hansford

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis aims to tackle the issues of obsolete infrastructure through the creation of a new network throughout the urban center. Networks of abandoned underground structures exist in urban locations everywhere, left untouched or forgotten when building anew was easier. These sometimes iconic structures are left with only small traces of their influence upon their context. Sites like these still have the ability to influence their surroundings on both an urban and a local scale. Due to the elevation of such spaces, they are inevitably at a greater risk for damage. Redesigning the network to accommodate and adapt to the …

Reimagining Obsolete Underground Infrastructure, Pt. 1, Alexa Hansford

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis aims to tackle the issues of obsolete infrastructure through the creation of a new network throughout the urban center. Networks of abandoned underground structures exist in urban locations everywhere, left untouched or forgotten when building anew was easier. These sometimes iconic structures are left with only small traces of their influence upon their context. Sites like these still have the ability to influence their surroundings on both an urban and a local scale. Due to the elevation of such spaces, they are inevitably at a greater risk for damage. Redesigning the network to accommodate and adapt to the …

Rethinking The Food Narrative, Pt. 2, Danielle Foisy, Taskina Tareen

Architecture Senior Theses

If there is anything to be learnt from developed cities around the world, it is that the private sector will continue to play an increasingly important role in the urban food supply of emerging cities. In the context of Southern Africa, where the informal sector continues to serve a large percentage of the urban poor population, but is losing power due to the advent of modern agribusinesses, it becomes necessary to derive methods to integrate small-scale vendors into formal food marketing systems through the respatializing of logistical spaces of food aggregation and distribution in the city. Through a consolidation of …

Reimagining Obsolete Underground Infrastructure, Pt. 2, Alexa Hansford

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis aims to tackle the issues of obsolete infrastructure through the creation of a new network throughout the urban center. Networks of abandoned underground structures exist in urban locations everywhere, left untouched or forgotten when building anew was easier. These sometimes iconic structures are left with only small traces of their influence upon their context. Sites like these still have the ability to influence their surroundings on both an urban and a local scale. Due to the elevation of such spaces, they are inevitably at a greater risk for damage. Redesigning the network to accommodate and adapt to the …

Efficacy Of Perspective: The Production Of Transitoriness In 21st Century Public Space, Kenny Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis considers the specific relationship between representation of cities and its capacity to promote and construct cities. In the last century, there has been a shift of theorizing in the position of the human eye to organize the new systems of the contemporary city. It has moved away from using these tools to imagine and polemically argue for or against the city.