Architecture Commons^™

‘Capital’ City: Creating An Approach To Urban Development In A Monumental City, Lindsay H. Davis

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Washington DC is the political capital of the country, nestled within a working city. It is under international scrutiny everyday, acting as the face we show the world. A recent development in the center city showed the world our view on future

urban development, as the historic Chinatown was completely demolished to make way for new condos and a convention center, leaving a single street for nostalgia. Is this how we should think about our cities futures? As architects, we often become obsessed with the details of our designs, forgetting the larger forces that impact these projects, or that they …

Urban Fabrication: The Architectural Heightening Of The Urban Tactile Sensibility A Fiber Arts Fabrication & Exhibition Center In Dublin, Ireland, Elizabeth Fallon

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The discipline of fiber arts has been in existence since the beginning of civilization to produce both functional equipment as well as aesthetically driven art pieces. The craft, at times highly specialized, often produces elements at the scale of the human body, due to the personal level by which fiber artifacts are produced. The making of artifacts and implementation of fiber art strategies have simultaneous cultural, environmental, formal, and gender-related relationships and implications. The design, construction and experience of buildings and inhabitable space at all scales can benefit from these relationships.

It is the contention of this thesis to merge …

Activating Infrastructure, Joanna T. Myers

Honors Capstone Projects - All

“The City Implant is an urban design project that can be used to strengthen an existing center or create a new one. It is a spatial and programmatic upgrade that gives an area the status of a center or increases the density of an existing center. Rather than intervening in undeveloped land, a City Implant should be a transformer of empty land and even under-exploited traffic junctions. A City Implant should describe the quality of centrality itself.” Alex Wall “Boomtown v. Regiocity: Thinking and designing or the Networked City Region.” (Almy, 286)

Transportation infrastructures across the United States create issues …

Theatre For A New Theater: A Play On Architecture, Alexander Coulombe

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Not Included

[Dis]Lodge; A Transformation Of The Ski Lodge In Response To Function And Site, Jacob E. Schneck

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Over the past century skiing has experienced remarkable growth in popularity, equipment and technique. From 1946 to the present the number of ski resorts in North America with operating lifts has grown from 15 to over 600. During this time skiing has developed from a means of winter travel into a sport that combines paramilitary precision and control with leisure. Driven by economic interests and the superficial imitation of European alpine architecture the contemporary ski lodge model has failed to meaningfully address these changes and has failed to address function and context in terms of both its formal organization and …

Theatre For A New Theater: A Play On Architecture, Alex Coulombe

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The project entails transforming a former military fort into a theater. The scopic parameters native to both fort and theater can provide a field of operation for an architecture that simultaneously mobilizes and exposes the machinery of spectacle. In tandem, amplifying and distorting existing conditions of the fort and repurposing them for a theatrical program can provide catalytic parameters for design that are typically absent when designing from a clean slate.

Architecture For Disparate Communities In Transitional China: Urban Housing Stitch For Chinese Migrant Workers And City Dwellers In Rapidly Urbanizing Cities, Jennifer Hoi Ling Ha

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Problem:

Two housing types in China’s urban cities serve two specific demographics, the city dweller and the migrant worker. The high-rise and the urban village reside on the same block of land but cannot coexist. In order to save the urban villages from being demolished and to keep the migrant worker population within the city, there needs to be a more appropriate and aggressive housing concept to address China’s “changing contemporary social reality” between the two demographic.

Methodology:

The first step is to understand the two typologies of housing. Through the study of migrant housing typologies in different major …

Conspicuous Space: Parking Lot Suburbanism, Ian Nicholson

Honors Capstone Projects - All

What can be accomplished without a car? In a city: everything. In a suburb: nothing. Without a car, one cannot escape the city. Without a city, one cannot escape the car. Neither city nor suburb is an ideal habitat. The city has no nature. The suburb has no culture. What’s good about the suburbs over the city? According to economics: houses.

The American dream has long been “one’s own house with a private yard” (Nelesson xi); an acre and a mule for every free citizen. But this dream has created distance; a nightmare of endless commutes and oil addiction. What …

Urban Farming Mumbai, Ankur Patel

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract not included.

Increasing Stimulation | Decreasing Progression: The Built Environment’S Impact On Alzheimer’S And Dementia, Tracy Chin

Honors Capstone Projects - All

With people living longer lives, the population of elderly is increasing at significant rates. Currently 5.3 million suffer from Alzheimer’s in America and 35 million people worldwide. The disease is one that deteriorates brain cells which in turn affects everyday thinking, behavioral problems, and results in a reduced mastery of one’s environment. The current typology is one that has been designed along the same premises of medical institutions and hospitals. The configuration results in narrow corridors and confined, unlit spaces that lead to disorientation and fear—exacerbating both physical and mental symptoms of the disease.

In addition to memory, sensory losses …

The Architecture Of Terroir: A Phenomenological Approach To The Design Of A Winery, Marina Gabriela Betti Albiero Brink

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The process of winemaking is a complex one that engages all the senses. Grapes are harvested at their optimal point for making wine. This is determined by the human touching of the grape still on the vine. In fermentation, the temperature of the room is critical in determining the quality of the wine produced. While aging, the smell and color engage the senses in testing the wine’s development. Tasting is not only a final step but also one that occurs throughout the winemaking process. In most instances, the sensory experience associated with winemaking is exclusive to the winemaker. I am …

Silicommon: A Library Complex And Center For Technology Start-Ups In Palo Alto, Ca, Morgan Shaw

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Abstract not included

Undermining Impasse: The Role Of Architecture In The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Laura Ondrich

Honors Capstone Projects - All

Undermining Impasse: The Role of Architecture in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Abstract

Laura Ondrich

Architecture is political, in that it can be used to further an authority’s agenda, and the relationship between peoples under that authority can be affected by it. As the political tool of a ruling power, architecture in a place of ongoing conflict may propel the conflict and submit to its perpetuity at the detriment of participating peoples. Though politics are often considered intangible, certain conflicts exist in real space, thus there is an opportunity for architecture to create an influence. In this case where architecture - concrete …

Architecture Thesis, 2010-Kyle Weeks: Temple Kabbalah Madonna: Architecture And The Camp Sensibility, Kyle Weeks

School of Architecture - Theses

Weeks uses the theoretical pretext of creating a celebrity Kabbalah center loosely based in Los Angeles to test the potential of camp as a design strategy.