Architecture Commons^™

Interdisciplinary Couture: A Translation From Fashion To Architecture, Michael Toache

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Haute Couture or ‘high dressmaking’ is a term used for fashion designers to implement one-of-a-kind designs custom fit for an exclusive collection. Within the realm of design, there lies a relationship between fashion and architecture. Humans formed the earliest iterations of spatial boundaries by implementing weaving techniques made with plant fibers and posts. We created fences before we clothed ourselves. Weaving these boundaries or textile walls was instituted in some of the earliest forms of architecture still used today. The process of design that drives the creation of the spaces we inhabit today is created by the same beginnings as …

Architronics: Utilizing Virtual Reality In Architectural Pedagogy, Constantine Lambros

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This research is about integrating the recent advancements in VR technology as a way to ‘playtest’ and design in architectural pedagogy. To better gauge the interest in VR and prove the need for VR integration, surveys were conducted among students and faculty within KSU’s College of Architecture and Construction Management (CACM).

A ‘site analysis’ was then conducted within surrounding firms in the greater Atlanta area, leading to precedent studies of local firms that use VR in their practice. By utilizing the firms advancements, this shed new light into how VR could be implemented into architectural pedagogy, and why it hasn’t …

Evolving Comforts [Reimagination Of The Homestead Community Based On Flexible Living, Adaptability And Self-Sufficiency, Tyler Quick

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

"Evolving Comforts" investigates the design of adaptable housing components to facilitate flexible, sustainable, and self-sufficient living, in form of a community homestead. The research explores how adaptable housing solutions can foster a more flexible lifestyle while promoting sustainability and cost efficiency. Innovative material options are scrutinized to ensure both flexibility and sustainability in developing housing components. Effective joinery techniques balancing ease of replacement, reuse, and transport are examined. Additionally, strategies for creating the desired homestead community environment and achieving net-zero energy goals are proposed. Through this study, a solution emerges for reimagining housing for those seeking simplified, more …

The Effect Of Natural Light On Mental Health, Gianna Arquilla

Honors Projects

All students have experienced low motivation at one point in their academic career, but what are the factors that can affect this? Is it solely based on their personality and work ethic, or can the environment have an effect? This study discusses the effects on mental health through architecture. Can the amount of natural light in a building affect the motivation of students? Natural light is something that is often overlooked, mostly considered as a perk rather than a necessity. How can students truly feel passionate about their work sitting in a dark place? To evaluate this data, this study …

Beyond Aesthetics: Antoni Gaudí'S Revolutionary Use Of Biomimicry, Biomorphism, And Biosynchronization In Architectural Design, Yechan Sung

MA Theses

This paper explores the evolving paradigm of sustainable development in response to increasing issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and ozone depletion. Recognizing the inherent connection between architecture and nature, the study highlights the substantial benefits that nature provides for human habitation. A rising trend in organic or nature-inspired projects reflects the increasing prominence of contemporary architecture, which aims to harmonize human needs with the natural environment. The application of nature in architecture extends beyond aesthetics, encompassing well-being, sustainability, economic benefits, and climate resilience. These broader environment-friendly elements were meticulously incorporated into the architectural works of Antoni Gaudi, who …

Python Manual: A Learning Guide For Structural Engineering Students, Aaron Dewey, Kennedy Gomez, Meileen Yee

Architectural Engineering

This Python programming manual is a resource to assist architectural, civil, or structural engineering students as they learn to create scripts to solve various structural analysis and dynamics problems. Beyond providing guidance on Python libraries that enable numerical and symbolic mathematics (NumPy, SciPy, SymPy), the manual also focuses on the creation of tabular and plot outputs useful to communicate results through technical reports (Pandas, Matplotlib).

The content of this document was developed based on detailed review of curriculum for three architectural engineering computing courses typically offered to upper class students at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo as well as surveys …

The Brigham City Temple: An Architectural Intersection Of Standardization And Localization, Ashlee Mckay Hall

Theses

This paper analyzes the necessary interplay of standardization and localization within the design of Latter-day Saint temples. These buildings are sacred religious structures intended for spiritual growth, learning, and rituals. Previous scholarship has discussed different aspects of various temple designs within the context of contemporary history. These analyses focus on different temples constructed by the LDS Church and how the design of these building was impacted or influenced by contemporaneous events. Prior critical efforts have also focused on symbolic interpretations of motifs incorporated into temple design and criticized the standardization of Latter-day Saint buildings. This scholarship will consider the Brigham …

Assessing Asset Management In Aec/Fm: Unveiling Limitations And Advancing Solutions With Digital Twin, Abdelmoneim Mohamed Abdelmoti

Theses

In recent years, the concept of Digital Twins (DTs) has emerged as a transformative technological innovation with the potential to revolutionize asset management practices. A Digital Twin is a digital representation closely linked to a physical entity, enabling bidirectional information exchange and data-driven decision-making. Within the realm of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction/Facilities Management (AEC/FM), DTs offer a diverse array of applications for enhancing asset management.
This thesis aims to demystify the concept of DTs and explore their existing applications in asset management, particularly within the AEC/FM industry. To achieve this, the research employs a two-fold approach: a systematic review of …

The Tectonic Evaluation And Design Implementation Of 3d Printing Technology In Architecture, Robert Buttrick

Masters Theses

This design thesis is an assessment of the tectonic capabilities and applications of large format 3D printing, given the current available and practiced technologies. This review consists of an analysis of the technical specifications and limitations of the various forms and methods of 3D printing at all scales, followed by an in-depth analysis of technologies that have been adopted and employed at an architectural scale. A number of case studies are assessed to create a typology of tectonic types created by employing 3D printing technologies. These tectonic types: Holistic/Homogenous, Complementary/Integrative, Structural, and Sculptural are then tested to see how they …

The Evolution Of Chinese Supermarkets In North America: An Alternative Approach To Chinese Supermarket Design, Ruoxin Lin

Masters Theses

This thesis begins by investigating the evolution of traditional Chinese markets to Chinese supermarkets in North America. By charting the trends of these structures in shop floor layouts and site approaches, a hybridized architecture is uncovered. Then, through the design of a contemporary Chinese supermarket in Philadelphia, PA, the thesis demonstrates how values of identity and cultural awareness can be brought into dialogue with architectural trends.

Landscape Interventions For Pedestrian Safety Around Urban Parks: Learning From City Of Dallas, Texas, Ann Mariya Thuruthy

Landscape Architecture Masters & Design Theses

Urban parks and their immediate surroundings provide access to nature in urbanized areas. However, they can also be crime hotspots if not properly kept or monitored or provide a safe environment for positive activities (Jones & Robinson, 2008). The local community respects a safe and secure neighborhood urban park as proximity to green spaces (McCormack et al., 2010), which enhances living quality (Iqbal & Ceccato, 2015). Nevertheless, a neighborhood urban park and its context have a negative impact on the quality of life if they cater to criminal activity. Crime rates have increased in urban public parks and buffer zones …

Uncovering Emotional Contamination: Five Sites Of Trauma, Abigail Zola

Masters Theses

“Emotional contamination,” describes residual feelings associated with a space where a negative or tragic event occurred to an individual or group either personally, historically, or politically. Emotional contamination affects people’s associations with place and informs their willingness to spend time in them. This project considers a set of design principles rooted in uncovering and acknowledging the lifespan of a site, and considers how this acknowledgment can exist as an urban system rather than an individual architectural artifact. My thesis work analyzes five case studies in Berlin where political and economic factors determined the result of intervention, and how these sites …

Means And Methods: Pedagogy And Proto-Architecture, Daniel Choconta

Masters Theses

This project investigates the architectural mock-up as a process that is perpetually in the making. The 1:1 scale mock-up is treated as an opportunity to learn through the process of making and to establish a reciprocal relationship between design and construction.

Blowing Away, Ziyi Zhao

Masters Theses

Nature has always been playing one of the positive protagonists in the architecture field. Despite the disparate milieux and the cognitions discrepancy of nature in different eras, people keep exploring the interrelationships of nature, architecture, and h. In this case, “natural air” as an extensive component of nature, is an integration of sustainability foundation, architectural system enquiry, technological methods intervention, and research of human perception. In the process of exploring how to rebuild the “connectedness” between nature and humans in the architectural context, researching the human-sensible means that architecture interacts with the natural air and will be a primary “natural-representative” …

A Study Of Dwelling, Julia Mcarthur

Masters Theses

In teasing out natural phenomena in the unbuilt environment, through admiring beauty, and emphasizing the ordinary, meaningful moments can be brought about that can cause you to be more present with yourself and the world we live in. It is important to qualify that these spaces that encompass “ordinary” moments are not intended to be “idealized spaces,” but a domain that reconciles the chaos from the peaceful and the stress from the calm that is ever apparent in our daily lives. My thesis asks: Through critiquing the modernist condition of a prescriptive ideal space, how can we better understand how …

Translational Placemaking: The Diasporic Archive, Alia Varawalla

Masters Theses

Globalization and mass migration has propelled a hybrid existence, as individuals that occupy multiple geographies we live in a constant state of translation. Our museums and cultural institutions are in opposition to this; static, preserved and de-contextualized. At the intersection of printmaking and architecture, this thesis proposes a living archive to document the collective migratory journey across sites, materials, and hybrid identities. A network of centers for knowledge sharing and production centered on India and its diaspora. As art practices and people migrate, cultural production evolves with its context, gaining new meaning as it changes hands generationally and globally.

Cohabitation X Adaptation, 2100: A Climate Change Epoch, Kyle Andrews

Masters Theses

Some seventy-seven odd years in the future, the world as we know it will only be recognizable by those who are willing to accept it. The bustling metropolis of Boston Massachusetts has been transformed to appease the tides of Mother Nature as a consequence of human intervention. In the decades prior, humanity viciously fought to contain the effects of climate change, until many realized the colossal undertaking of such a battle. Municipalities across the globe had begun to accept that fighting the earth was no longer an option. Instead, the only hope forward was to adapt to a reality in …

Arce 415 Portfolio: The Green Bird Of Paradise, Kristofer R. Rickansrud, Ryan Chan, Brendan Peers, Joel Santoyo

Architectural Engineering

A design project creating a Polyshell sunshade structure for the Leaning Pine Arboretum.

Development Of The New Hasslein Caed Collaborative, Catie Dines

Construction Management

This paper outlines the development and execution of the new Hasslein CAED Collaborative student competition which engages students of all five majors in the College of Architecture and Environmental Design in a Request for Proposal style competition. CAED houses students studying Architecture, Architectural Engineering, City and Regional Planning, Construction Management, and Landscape Architecture. There is little opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration within the CAED, despite our future career paths being heavily intertwined. This competition followed research by Greta Stout, class of 2022, on the benefits and support of interdisciplinary collaboration at Cal Poly SLO in CAED. The competition is named after …

Reorientation, Soleil Nguyen

Masters Theses

A non-linear narrative to understand the place and character of my neighborhood.

A Feminist Approach To Solutions In Urban Development, Lourdes Yessenia Gracia Cantu

Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering: Sustainability and Development Capstone Projects

Are there ways of occupying space and producing places that somehow contest, challenge, and problematize the dominant modalities of organization, of space and place?

A Feminist Approach to Solutions in Urban Development presents an exploration and proposal of a more equitable and diverse urban design that guarantees the use of public space as a place for economic development. With a focus on the recent theory and social movement concerning the impact of the built environment on women, children and older adults, urban feminist, comes across as a participatory planning process that ensures the involvement of multilevel agendas, to react and …

Interconnective Corridors: From Institutional To Educational, Jaylan Burgess

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The Middle school Architecture of yesterday is not designed for the education of tomorrow. So often, we find the traditional typology of schools to be one dimensional in design by being filled long dead-end corridors, white CMU walls, outdated learning spaces of our parents’ generation, and a disassociation from the surrounding neighborhood. This old-fashioned way of design not only wastes hundreds of square footages on circulation alone but is not conducive of the best possible learning environment of the future.

In this thesis, I will begin to interrogate the existing conditions of the school corridor and explore circulation as it …

Desert Safe Haven, Deja Dortch

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The purpose of this thesis is to inform on the materials, technologies, spaces and structure needed to architecturally and sustainably achieve human comfort and create a mother nature-proof safe haven in the becoming harsh climate of the USA. All the while implementing minimum HVAC, using primarily passive and active systems towards a net zero home. Studies have shown there is a real threat with the rate in which the climate is changing. Temperatures are rising worldwide which is causing droughts, more frequent fires, glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise, more severe hurricanes and storms, etc. Sustainability is a way …

Analogous Architectural Habitat, Brandon Watkins

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The rapid expansion of the urban landscape is destroying habitat and displacing native populations of organisms at an alarming rate. Disrupting bird migratory paths and the danger glazing poses to birds, lowering soil and water access, reducing pollinators are among the large number of issues caused by large buildings. Today's built environment accounts for 39% of carbon emissions globally and it is thought that by 2050 two thirds of the world's population will inhabit urban environments. This all means we must design structures that meet energy requirements while not just thinking about humans as the only occupants. It is our …

Reverence For Life And Death: A New Cemetery Typology, Ashlyn Olmstead

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The current methods and traditions of burial practices and cemetery design are to be examined for architectural opportunities within this thesis study. The current practices of cemetery design and burial methodologies in the United States have shown signs of instability and lack of longevity due to the decreasing availability of land in dense city environments. Additional climatic factors such as rising sea levels also threaten below ground burial. In other countries, cities such as Hong Kong and Tokyo have already begun to research new methodologies surrounding burial due to this concern and the need for US cities to follow suit …

Enabling The Intellectually Disabled Mind Through Architecture, Edward J. Voorhees Iv

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

According to the World Health Organization, roughly 10% of the world population live with mental disability or impairment (Fujira, 2005). For the intellectually disabled, finding a purpose and independence as one transitions into yound adulthood can prove troublesome given their unique shortcomings. In 2015, it was estimated 80,000 intellectually disabled adults were held on waiting lists for residential placement in government-funded programs that could take up to 10 years to complete. Autism Speaks approximates that this number will increase by half a million in that same time span (Lutz, 2015). A greater initiative must take place to assist these individuals …

A Ludic Generation: Bridging Architecture, Games, And Technology For More Playful Spaces, Jade Lefebvre

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In a world dominated by mundane environments, this thesis proposes a novel approach to designing public spaces that integrate game design principles and extended reality technology. By embracing the inherent ludic behavior found in human nature and games, I aim to elevate everyday experiences.

This research delves into the capabilities of extended reality technology, psychology of play and its cultural and societal background, psychology of human archetypes, and game design components as an extraction for architectural typologies. Key findings reveal that by analyzing game components, design languages are formed and can be used to develop feasible architectural typologies.

The significance …

Empowering Communities Through Food Entrepreneurship And Creative Placemaking, Bailey Kijek

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The City of Clarkston is one of Atlanta’s oldest and most diverse communities. The city is currently in need of tactical placemaking strategies to create quality public spaces that can serve and unite the members of the community. This thesis seeks to identify the needs of the city using a comprehensive site analysis and apply that knowledge to determine a program that is best suited for the community. To create an impactful design, applicable placemaking procedures will be identified through literature review and case study analyses. The data collected will inform a design procedural that will yield an outcome that …

Architecture And Harm Reduction : An Unconventional Approach To Detox, Anna Studdard

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Harm reduction is a principle that stems from countries like Denmark and Switzerland, that implements strategies to encourage safer drug usage, abstinence, and education for users. The National Harm Reduction Coalition implements nationwide programs for substance abusers, such as Syringe Service Programs, rehabilitation programs, detox programs, housing programs, drug testing facilities, services assisting sex workers, and administering Narcan for overdoses, to try to minimize some of the tragedies accompanying substance abuse. The counterpoint opinion of some countries or states is that providing services like needle exchanges and testing centers are encouraging drug usage and doing more harm than good. However, …

Reinventing Greyfields, William Jones

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Since the 21st century began, sports involvement within society has grown as sporting events have become significant spectacles. Thus, major stadia came to be to hold spectators. Unfortunately, many are on the city's outskirts due to the size of their parking lots, categorized as greyfields. Greyfields are 'Underused' land or a 'sea' of asphalt concrete. The problem of creating greyfields within cities harms the urban fabric and the actual relationship between the stadium and the city. They are creating a disconnection between the two. This proposal is to design an urban hub around a chosen existing stadium to enrich the …