Architecture Commons^™

Public-Ish, Aliah Werth

Masters Theses

Climate change affects public space, and architecture must establish tenets that prioritize pedestrians in this difficult era. Greywater re-use can be a mechanism for creating shade, and in turn, public space.

As heat waves grow more intense, the vast swaths of asphalt that connect commercial zones pose greater risks to public health and to urban vitality. This thesis records the typical material, spatial, and lived conditions of strip malls in urban heat islands, and demands more from infrastructure in public-ish space.

Heat violence weaves through Los Angeles’ built form. Parking space minimums, required setbacks, and height restrictions pull buildings away …

On The Edge Of The "Er-Ocean" State, Mariesa Travers

Masters Theses

This thesis will explore how hard coastal infrastructure methods can be redesigned by softening the coastal edge to support the ecosystem and enhance public access to the beach. By referencing and arguing against techniques used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) as a solution to deal with coastal erosion, this process will propose a regenerated design system. Through a series of material experiments, this research works with natural processes and flows, to create transitory systems that erode and ebb with the coast.

Estimating Vehicle Infrastructure: Downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, Zachery Phillip Baiamonte

Architecture and Planning ETDs

Cities have little knowledge about their parking infrastructure despite clear evidence that abundant parking has environmental, economic, and transportation consequences. The objective of this thesis is to illustrate the need to accurately estimate the area dedicated to vehicle infrastructure (parking lots and streets) within urban areas. I focused on a method that estimated the vehicle infrastructure area within the Downtown Core of Albuquerque, New Mexico, by cross-referencing geospatial cadastral data with minimum parking requirements. Three parking space types were identified: 1) parking in structures; 2) surface parking (parking lots and residential driveways); and 3) on-street parking. To illustrate the need …

Biking In Indianapolis: An Ethnographic Analysis Of Obstacles And Solutions, Emory Lietz

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Indiana is known as the ""Crossroads of America"" for its historic investment in vehicle infrastructure. This focus on automobiles has shaped Indianapolis's urban landscape, to the dismay of many cyclists. Based on semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders in the Indianapolis cycling community, including urban planners, bike commuters, IndyGo employees, city government officials, and bike advocates, this project identifies and evaluates the current barriers that prevent Indianapolis residents from riding their bikes. These obstacles, which include infrastructural, safety, and social factors, make it more difficult than it ought to be to bike in Indy.

For my thesis project, I …

Mapping Grounds For Reparations In Jaraguá Peak, Laura Pappalardo

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

For the Guarani Mbya, ka’aguy (Atlantic Forest) is sacred. Yet, only 12 percent of the Atlantic Forest original coverage remains. A portion of that is in Jaraguá Peak. The Peak is also the highest point within São Paulo, located in the northwest region of the city. Anyone who lives in São Paulo knows Jaraguá Peak as a point of visual reference—the only forested area rising above dense urbanism. Two hundred years ago, São Paulo was ka’aguy. Now, the city occupies part of Guarani territory, which spans across the borders of what is now known as Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and …

Surmounting Disembodiment: Architecture And Suicide Prevention, Jack Mcgeehan

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Suicide is currently the 10th leading cause of death in the United States, more than double the number of homicide deaths. This thesis questions how architects can design more appropriately for people who are at risk for suicide in the United States. While suicide is individualistic and varies from person to person, there are consistencies that can serve as a basis for mitigating the problem and building an infrastructure for the solution. This thesis begins by examining four key cohorts that are typically high risk in the United States; veterans, the elderly, the homeless, and youths. It examines the behavioral …

How American Transit Agencies Determine Fare Policy: It All Comes Down To Politics, Julian Thesseling

CMC Senior Theses

This paper will provide readers with an understanding of the variables that US transit agencies grapple with when developing fare policy, with a particular focus on the political process. The framework chapter will examine the objectives of public transportation and how agencies face difficulties in achieving these objectives. While this paper will focus on American transportation policy, the framework will draw from the experiences of cities across the world. Three case study chapters will then each discuss an American city or region’s approach to fare policy, and how variables have either complicated or enhanced agencies’ ability to develop effective fare …

Un-Black Boxing Mitigation Infrastructures : Proposing Alternative Imaginaries For Mono-Functional And Under-Utilized Urban Backstages, Min Jin Kook

Masters Theses

Cities are full of risk-mitigation infrastructure to protect ourselves from floods, erosion and threatening natural disasters. These infrastructures include underground retention tanks, dams and channelized river. They are purposefully hidden away because they are under highways or underground. Most of risk-mitigation infrastructures are under-utilized ninety- five percent of the time. They only serve one function for two weeks every year. They are empty most of the year. Is there an alternative project to consider these risk-mitigation infrastructures while they are completely mono-functional and under-utilized?

Along with my inquiry to utilize risk-mitigation infrastructures, I am critiquing the “blackboxing” and “under-utilization” of …

Intimacy In Infrastructure, Andrew Sponseller

Masters Theses

This thesis employs public transit to establish regional reclamations of infrastructure, empowering cultural identities through a vernacular that is realized and matured into the capacity of today. The decaying state of our mass transit infrastructure is due to a decline of community ownership and regional identity represented in their architecture.

“Communities” can be considered cities, neighborhoods, towns, or entire regions of States depending on the scale of the infrastructure. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania clearly exhibits the range of this decline. A city that went from being the center of the Pennsylvania Railroad, now is sprinkled with infrastructural shells of the past. These …

Optimizing The Environmental And Economic Sustainability Of Contingency Base Infrastructure, Jamie E. Filer

Theses and Dissertations

Contingency bases are often located in remote areas with limited access to established infrastructure grids. This isolation leads to standalone systems comprised of inefficient, resource-dependent infrastructure, which yields a significant logistical burden, creates negative environmental impacts, and increases costs. Planners can mitigate these negative impacts by selecting sustainable technologies. However, such alternatives often come at a higher procurement cost and mobilization requirement. Accordingly, this study aims to develop and implement a novel infrastructure sustainability assessment model capable of optimizing the tradeoffs between environmental and economic performance of infrastructure alternatives.

Some Notes On Congruency, Ryan J. Rusiecki

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Some Notes on Congruency is an examination of the seemingly arbitrary methods in which the built environment facilitates order among its inhabitants (eg., parking lot striping, roadway signs). Asphalt fissures observed at the main intersection in Red Hook, NY were used as a starting off point for making the photographs contained within this book. A lens with a focal length that closely resembles the range of human vision was used to communicate the experience of discovering fissures from my perspective as a pedestrian and motorist. I was most captivated by temporal, subtle fissures, such as the replanting of flower beds …

Gilgit-Baltistan At The Cross Road Of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Cpec), Zulfiqar Ali Khan

MSJ Capstone Projects

This capstone project focused on the in-depth analysis of the role and impact of this multi-billion-dollar project on the politically deprived region of Gilgit-Baltistan. This region is the gateway to CPEC as it is the only region of Pakistan that shares border with China. The geographical ties, tributary and trade relationship and even family relationships between Gilgit-Baltistan and the Xinjiang region of China dates back centuries before the creation of Pakistan and the post revolution China.

The project has been designed and implemented in a way that GB’s role is to provide the services of road and some other services …

The Urban Shelf : A Hybrid Between Architecture And Infrastructure, William Morales

Masters Theses

As one of the most prominent and in-famous pieces of infrastructure in the built environment of the city, the freeway has created nasty conditions of socioeconomic division, segregation, mono-functional zoning and land use, and urban sprawl. In the case of Downtown Los Angeles, the city has evolved into two predominant zones of manufacturing and commercial uses. This process has pushed out housing and other necessary infrastructure to the outskirts of the city, making commutes to work, grocery stores, healthcare, and other basic necessities long and burdensome. In general, the ability to acquire resources is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

With the …

Airport Infrastructure In The Shrinking City: Planning For Smart Decline In Cleveland’S Regional Airport System And Its Role In A Dynamic Urban Future, Garret Forst

Senior Theses and Projects

Cleveland, while having experienced some growth and regeneration in the 21st Century, still experiences some of the salient characteristics of the "shrinking city." It continues to slowly lose population. Metropolitan-level economic growth remains elusive. Its status as a shrinking city and metropolitan region has consequences for its systems of infrastructure, especially its regional system of airports. This study illustrates how shrinking cities theory applies to Cleveland's airport system. Namely, the airport system has experienced challenges associated with maintaining substantial levels of flight operations in addition to having experienced certain financial challenges since 2000. This study then theorizes how a plan …

Socioeconomic Impacts Of Infrastructure Investment In Eswatini: The Case Of Lusip, Noussayma Njeim

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The 2016 Eswatini Vulnerability Assessment Report indicated that over half of the Eswatini population required livelihood support due to the severe El Niño drought. Since agriculture is the backbone of Eswatini’s economy, investments in climate change mitigation are needed in order to help protect the agriculture sector and associated livelihoods from increased yield and profit variability associated with future droughts. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) estimates climate change in Eswatini could reduce rain-fed agricultural yields by up to 50%, threating the ability of Eswatini to be food secure. As such, investing in water capture systems could help mitigate …

The Need For Enhanced Physical Infrastructure In The United States, Tanvi Gandham

CMC Senior Theses

An examination of necessary infrastructure improvements in the United States.

Borderscape : Weaving Political Boundaries In The Amazon Through Water Performance, Lucila Silva-Santisteban

Masters Theses

This research project is about how to connect political bordering urban systems through the natural structure for a coherent occupation between the built environment, ecosystems and resources following the Landscape Architecture lens that can address different scale systems simultaneously to create a holistic approach between them. And the proposition of a new type of landscape of this threshold territory as its own kind. Specifically looking at the bordering cities in the heart of the Amazon Region in South America that fall between Colombia, Brazil and Peru.

Why the Amazon?

Not only because of the usual fascination, but because of the …

Narratives Of Public Space : A Manifesto For Future Urban Landscape In Manhattan, Jaehong Chung

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the history of public space and how it has changed over time. Looking specifically at how social, historical, and advances in technology have influenced and changed the meaning and use of public spaces. Studies of history and its characteristics and case studies check the validity of paradigm of public spaces in Manhattan. The modern features of Manhattan have been completed over 200 hundreds years with Industrial revolutions and influx of immigrants. Due to these reasons, the main focus was to track of causalities among life style changes, social paradigms, and changes of urban landscapes.

As cities developed, …

Infrastructural Urbanism: Hybridizing Our Networks, Hannah Boyd

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

“The story of people can be told through our infrastructure. In the rise and fall of cities throughout history, the places best positioned for a thriving future have always been those that offer systems to create the lives that we want. And we can see that as the innovations of canals, aqueducts, railroads, and highways did in their time, the kind of infrastructure that we build today matters to our success. If we do it right, it will forever transform our way of life.”
– Ryan Gravel¹

Urban edges are created through interstices, spaces intervening between one thing and …

Infrastructural Urbanism: Hybridizing Our Networks, Hannah Boyd

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

“The story of people can be told through our infrastructure. In the rise and fall of cities throughout history, the places best positioned for a thriving future have always been those that offer systems to create the lives that we want. And we can see that as the innovations of canals, aqueducts, railroads, and highways did in their time, the kind of infrastructure that we build today matters to our success. If we do it right, it will forever transform our way of life.”
– Ryan Gravel¹

Urban edges are created through interstices, spaces intervening between one thing and …

Urban Infrastructure Reconnection: Recuperating The Riverfront Of Cincinnati., Ethan William Keller

Masters Theses

Transportation infrastructure has created divides within cities, but as cities continue to grow again, these spaces can be recuperated, utilized, and integrated into the urban fabric to reconnect neighborhoods, engage people in urban culture, and insure long-term viability of cities. Cincinnati is a city that has been divided by convergent highways cutting the riverfront from the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. These large voids of space must be activated to develop a reconnection that once existed between the city and its riverfront. Connectivity will create an abundance of pedestrian flow which will increase growth and economic opportunities for the city. Infrastructure …

The Effect Of Community Connectivity On Water And Sanitation Systems In Rural Panama, M.C. Moritz

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The world has yet to realize universal access to water and sanitation. Various academic and professional fields provide frameworks for understanding water and sanitation access, but none directly consider the impact of community connectivity. Community connectivity refers to the infrastructures linking rural communities with urban centers. These infrastructures fall under the broad categories of transportation, energy, and telecommunication. This paper examines 23 rural Panamanian communities and compares connectivity measures with the functionality of the communities’ rural water and sanitation systems (RWSS). Community connectivity was evaluated with the Community Connectivity Analysis Tool (CCAT), while the water and sanitation systems were evaluated …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

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 …

70 Mph: Place And Perception In The Automotive Landscape, Erik Nathaniel Hall

Masters Theses

This project explores the adverse impact of the automobile in regards to perception and the resultant disconnect from environment exhibited in the contemporary suburban landscape. It posits that the way we move through the world affects the way we understand the world, both physiologically/sensually, and philosophically/ethically. The automobile, and its landscape, prejudices vision as a means of cognition. Specifically, it is biased to the perceptual characteristics of vision at high speed- that is, a decreased cone of vision, with a consequent increase in the total area of the peripheral visual field. This peripheral field is characterized by flattened, monocular perception, …

Moving Towards Self-Reliance: Living Conditions Of Refugee Camps In Lebanon And Opportunities For Development, Dana Masad

Master's Theses

Refugee camps in Lebanon are harsh, continuously and rapidly deteriorating environments. In addition to poverty, numerous wars and the restrictions of civil rights, refugee camps that were not designed as a long-term settlement were made to accommodate their residents in addition to their descendents for a period that has lasted over 59 years. Since the establishment of the camps in 1948 the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have fallen victim to multiple wars and as a result most camps have witnessed major destruction of homes and infrastructure, and a few were entirely destroyed. Today, the planning and development of the camps …