Architecture Commons^™

A Hazard Assessment And Proposed Risk Index For Art, Architecture, Archive And Artifact Protection: Case Studies For Assorted International Museums, Clara Jeanene Kirk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study proposes a hazard/risk index for environmental, technological, and social hazards that may threaten a museum or other place of cultural storage and accession. This index can be utilized and implemented to measure the risk at the locations of these storage facilities in relationship to their geologic, geographic, environmental, and social settings. A model case study of the 1966 flood of the Arno River and its impact on the city of Florence and the Uffizi Gallery was used as the index focus. From this focus an additional eleven museums and their related risk were assessed. Each index addressed a …

Project Space(S) In The Design Professions: An Intersectional Feminist Study Of The Women's School Of Planning And Architecture (1974-1981), Elizabeth Cahn

Doctoral Dissertations

The Women’s School of Planning and Architecture (WSPA) was an ambitious, explicitly feminist educational program created by seven women planners and architects who used the school to introduce ideas and practices of the 1970s women’s movement into design and planning education in the United States. Between 1974 and 1981, WSPA organized five intensive, short-term residential educational sessions and a conference, each in a different geographical location in the United States, after which the organization ceased formal programming and the organizers moved on to other activities. The founders and participants involved in WSPA collectively imagined and created a feminist space for …

Reconnecting Mill Communities: An Architectural Intervention In Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Ronald Bujold

Masters Theses

For nearly a century, once prosperous mill communities throughout New England have struggled to adapt to ever-changing societal, cultural, and economic conditions. This project explores an architectural intervention for Fitchburg’s Rollstone Hill neighborhood, which seeks to reverse this trend by deploying a design strategy that begins with repurposing a 60,000 square foot mill. This strategy focuses on utilizing the fundamental and existing components of these planned communities—people, infrastructure, and economics—to cultivate the design and the relationships necessary to reconnect this neighborhood to the modern world.

Utopia In The Apocalypse: Creating A Framework Of Survival Systems, Bryan E. Toepfer

Masters Theses

As medicines continue to evolve, as well as our tendency to misuse and abuse them, viruses become more and more resilient. While the flu is largely an inconvenience which at its worst may result in a missed day of work, it bears the risk of returning to the days of old when it was a terminal disease. With the imminent risk of resistant super viruses emerging,New York Cityhas taken precautions to prepare for the worst case scenario. If deemed necessaryNew Yorkhas plans to completely quarantine and isolate the city from the world. This provides us with the perfect opportunity to …

Parametric Tools In The Design Process, Robert B. Marcalow

Masters Theses

The recent revolution in digital design tools is having a sea-change effect on the way buildings are designed. As the design process becomes increasingly automated, the focus of architectural expertise is shifting from the execution of drawings to the parametric definition of space and form. In other words, the architect will define a complex set of rules that, when entered into a program, create a building. This design process, coupled with digital fabrication, allows for control of the final product in ways that were previously impossible for designers. However, there is still much to learn about the ways these new …

The Community Cohesion Trail Of Brattleboro, Vermont, Patrick C. Kitzmiller

Masters Theses

The focus of this thesis is the creation of a series of architectural installations, bridges and gardens that link together via a pedestrian/bike path to connect the urban center of Main St. in Brattleboro, Vermont with the municipal park on the western end of town known as Memorial Park.

This thesis argues that the vast majority of community interactions take place along the sidewalks of the urban downtown, and in certain centers of activity in and around the area, such as Memorial Park. Thus, these two places have been chosen to test whether architecture can be used to bridge the …

Bridging The Gap: Community-Oriented Transit Development, Matthew C. Jones

Masters Theses

The bedroom community has become a prevalent and oft-criticized part of the modern architectural landscape. These suburban towns have continually grown radially outward from major cities across the nation since the end of the Second World War. While these suburbs have served to fulfill housing needs and wants of society, pressure to develop has often forced this growth to occur at a much more rapid rate than a traditional community. This rapid development has led to poorly implemented infrastructure, especially with regard to walkability and public transportation, which has fallen short of meeting the needs of users. These solutions in …

Reconsidering The Community Center - Restorative Strategies Within Existing Frameworks, John Gilbert Iii

Masters Theses

The overarching goal of this investigation is to determine how an existing building of spatial and programmatic rigidity can serve as a framework for designing a more integrated center for personal and community development. This project is an exploration of what a building can evolve into after its "shelf-life" has expired, with the aid of a reconsidered architectural vision. Formulated within criteria individual to its context, it is intended to be an investigation of possibility and the testing of a nascent potential, not an attempt to serve as a prescriptive, panacea solution. It is an examination of a creative vision …

Make A Delirious Noise: Improvising Urbanism In New Orleans, Louisiana, Jason Michael Stark

Masters Theses

Decades of poor urban design choices and a lack of attention to the characteristics of communities have played prominent roles in the fracturing of urban communities and the relegation of those without means to the edges of the urban fabric: poverty and powerlessness abetted by geographic location. Rather than “restitching” the urban whole back together, I argue that progress can be made through the generation of local nodes of identity: a polynucleated urban condition. The development of spaces to magnify community identity with respect to localized characteristics produces a community focus to replace the unattainable (for those without means) city …

Working At The Water's Edge: Reconnecting The People Of Charleston With The Water, Maria Ann Fox

Masters Theses

Water is a chemical compound fundamental to life. When many people first think of water, it is the water used for everyday activities and drinking that may come to mind. What is frequently overlooked is the fact that 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water and 96.5% of Earth’s water is found in oceans and seas (U.S. Geological Survey). What may not be as clear is the importance of these bodies of water to the surrounding towns and cities.

Since it’s founding in 1670, Charleston, South Carolina has always had a strong relationship with the water. One could …

Block 271, Reviving An Industrial Artifact, Jared Thomas Pohl

Masters Theses

Vacant industrial sites are scattered throughout our cities all across the country. These sites, these remnants of industry, are occupied by a very interesting category of buildings. They are artifacts from an industrial era that served very unique and specific functions. These service buildings suffered programmatic failure and have lost their vitality. They have entered a form of hibernation, waiting for the post-industrial epoch to wake them up.

The building stock under investigation makes up a large portion of the city’s structures. Identifiable by their heroic scale, clean articulated lines and tendency to be vacant, these service buildings raise arguments …

Change By Design: A Study In The Potential For Architecture And Design To Encourage Healthy, Conscious Behaviors And Enduring Sustainable Change, Kathleen Michelle Lewis

Masters Theses

Sustainability is more than a technologically based, financially motivated option for living. Instead, it is an invigorating opportunity for creating healthier environments on a mental, physical, and deeply personal scale. The intent of the following study is to inspire long-term sustainable solutions. The foundation for this course of inquiry will be an exploration, analysis, and synthesis into the potential for architecture to engender quality experiences by satisfying basic human needs, instilling environmentally responsible values, and promoting sustainable behavior.

Agri[Culture]: An Alternate Paradigm For The American Landscape, Melissa Erin Morris

Masters Theses

Throughout the Appalachian region, one can experience the vast disappearance of the American landscape as we know it. Whether driving through the rugged coal mining towns of Virginia, or the suburban sprawl taking over the rural farmland of Tennessee, it becomes clear that this is a spreading epidemic. Without an appropriate balance of urban, suburban, and rural areas, we begin to loose the landscape which has always been so closely linked to this country’s cultural and physical identity.

This thesis focuses on the agrarian Appalachian culture with a proposal for a project rooted heavily in cultural identity. With programs based …

Carbon-Neutral Design Guidelines For Medium Density Urban Areas In Warm-Humid And Cool-Dry Climates, Jennifer Delane Stewart

Masters Theses

This thesis combines Architecture 2030’s carbon-neutral performance targets with the SmartCode transect-based development principles, to generate guidelines for design of medium-density carbon-neutral districts. The topic examines these guidelines in medium density planned and built sites (transect types T4, General Urban Zone, and T5, Urban Center Zone) in representative cities within a cool-dry climate (IECC climate zone 5B, Denver) and a warm-humid climate (IECC climate zone 3A, Atlanta). The thesis assumes that a carbon-neutral district is more effective and potentially easier to achieve than designing independent carbon-neutral urban buildings. Within an urban context, it is now possible to connect buildings to …

Fostering Recovery: Establishing Therapeutic Environments In Behavioral Health Facilities For Adolescents, Ashley Colquhoun

All Theses

The intent of this project is to explore what and how specific architectural features can contribute to a holistic therapeutic environment for adolescents in an inpatient behavioral health care setting. Mental health facilities in the U.S. historically have been highly institutional spaces designed to restrain and isolate persons with mental health problems from society. These facilities have often been designed under a misunderstanding of the needs of individuals with behavioral health issues, frequently thinking that they are incompetant or criminal and are therefore incapable of participating in the community. This belief is a result of stigma toward behavioral health. This …

'Connecticut's Most Auncient Towne': A Brief History Of Homes In Wethersfield, 1634-1934, Emily Sesko

Senior Theses and Projects

This paper aims to delineate the stylistic history of Wethersfield, Connecticut’s domestic architectural culture from the time of its founding in 1634 by Massachusetts adventurer John Oldham through the completion of the Hubbard Community in the mid-1930s by visionary developer and historic home restorer Albert G. Hubbard, originally of Simsbury, Connecticut.

Due to its status as the oldest town in Connecticut, Wethersfield has the advantage of having at least one example of each major style of home building from the mid-seventeenth century age of settlement to the birth of the streetcar suburb and a class of corporate commuters and automobile …

The Plots Of Alexanderplatz: A Study Of The Space That Shaped Weimar Berlin, Carrie Grace Latimer

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper explores Alexanderplatz during the Weimar Period in Berlin. It is looked at from three different perspectives: historical urban plans, Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1980's film adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz. Through these three mediums, an argument forms that Alexanderplatz functioned as both a major transit space for movement of transportation and pedestrians, but also the transit space for the movement of ideas and information.

Reconsidering Firmitas: Durability As An Integral Function Of The Sustainably Built Environment, Katherine P. Yzurdiaga

Pomona Senior Theses

Architecture is an inherently functional art – buildings have functions, some more vital than others, beyond the objective of sheer aesthetic appeal. Yet at the same time, aesthetic appeal is an integral part of the human experience that many agree is vital to sustainability objectives, including those of the built environment. Ideally, a building would be able to embody and honor both principles, both form and function, but some contend that in the current architectural climate, the emphasis on beauty has surpassed the importance placed on functionality. This discussion is particularly relevant to sustainability in the built environment: Sustainability as …