Architecture Commons^™

Housing Projects And Cityscape In Vienna: Apartment Buildings As Fortresses From Metaphor To Reality, Michael J. Zeps S.J.

History Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin In Urban Renewal America, Anthony Raynsford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Divided Cyprus, Nicola Kyverniti

Architecture Thesis Prep

Creating urban interventions in the city at different scales and sites strategically chosen to attract the city population would have the potential to expose the state of the urban fabric. Nodes designed to alter the perspective of the occupant. Exposure created through the language of architecture. Revealling dividing elements emphasizes the need for a true symbol of dialogue and freedom of discussion between the separated communities. At a global scale, conflict is not something that can truly be resolved or diminished. The notion of conflict occurs in certain locations at different periods, following the evolution of political, social, economic, and …

Architecture On Parade: Rejuvenating Venice Biennale, Fan Fang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is interested in speculating on new ways to exhibit architecture. As it is a culturally relevant event, the thesis will borrow strategies in other forms of popular cultural production to determine how to rejuvenate architecture exhibition. Parade and traveling circus are cultural rituals that have unique formats that give actual shape to culture. They present in a live and lively manner, and they travel among places to enlarge a wider audience.This thesis project seeks to learn from these cultural rituals such as the parade and the traveling circus to improve and expand current formats of exhibition and celebration …

Into Instrument: A Case For The Musical Tectonic, Alex Lievens

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will observe and investigate the relationship between musical objects and architectonic construction. It will begin to test relationships between musical notational systems and architectural notational systems. Musical instruments can provide key insights into how architecture might possess the same qualities of interactivity, action and personal value that musical instruments inherently own.

The Question Of Slim | A Critical Look At Manhattan's Recent Trend Towards Slenderness, Raymond Sova

Architecture Senior Theses

Manhattan’s real estate market since the turn of the 20th century to present day can be characterized as an extreme optimization of the economical elements of architecture. Most of the buildings in Manhattan’s diverse and complex skyline share a tenacious desire to maximize the profitability and feasibility of a site while minimizing overall building expenditure. This concept is defined in Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York,’ as the relationship between “the Needle” and “the Globe.” Seemingly immeasurable wealth and investment have given rise to a new sub-typology of super-tall strikingly skinny (Slim) residential skyscrapers that may very well result in the demise …

Parity, Hamza Hasan

Architecture Senior Theses

Digital data contributes to an increasingly alienated aspect of our infrastructure. The complex practices of the Internet produce highly specified, engineered objects. Though their forms are ‘optimized,’ their intentions are not: the two primary considerations for the development of the infrastructure of the Internet are energy and security. Each category presents its own deliberations, but both often produce non-architectural, infrastructural elements beyond public visibility. The hidden infrastructure of data storage and mining (the indexing and analysis of data and traffic) produces spaces outside the agency of normative architectural discourse.

The key consideration for the design of the Internet is redundancy, …

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 …

Sponge Logics | Rethinking Thresholds Through A Porous Mass, Tanvi Sanghvi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the separation and distinction between the envelope and the mass in contemporary architecture is to be resisted. Architect and theorist, Greg Lynn, argues that mass “is not only the outward shape of a building; it’s also the projection of shape, plan organization, spatial and sectional type, and façade”1.This critical reevaluation of the mass, and its relationship to the interior spaces and the building’s face, is particularly pertinent to the modern construction in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The character of the historicist and postmodern buildings that make up Jaipur is made solely based on the applied façade. This …

Releasing The Unconsciousness | Visualizing The City, Taihui Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores how subway stations lost their identity as strategic node of connectivity which constructed the prevailing image of New York City. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Sigmund Freud famously compared the human mind to the city of Rome. He argues that both contain strata of memory and history which have accumulated over the years through a messy and ad-hoc process. Like Rome, New York City also has a layered history, albeit not as deep.

This thesis contends that the subway entrance serves as an experiential entre into the unconscious experience of the unknown elements of the past. …

Discover Joyce's Dublin By Reading And Running, Barry Sheehan

Academic Articles

James Joyce told his friend Frank Budgen. “‘I want’ said Joyce, as we were walking down the Universitätstrasse, ‘to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.’” (Budgen, 1960, p.67, 68).

This research looks at the relevance of Dublin to Joyce’s writings and to the relevance of Joyce’s writings to Dublin. It is concerned with the virtual Dublin of Joyce’s writings, the physical manifestation of Dublin over time, and the relationships between them.

Numerous scholars read and analyse the writings of Joyce …

Victor Horta's Illusion Of Space, Courtney Manning

Student Research

An exploration of Victor Horta's architectural illusion of space.

Zero 2020, The Low Energy Retrofit And Renovation Of A Precast Concrete Building In Ireland Exploring Site Nzeb Energy Retrofit In Precast Grid Optimized Low Rise ‘60s Buildings, Marc O Riain, Jim Harrison, Kevin Mccarthney

Publications

This paper contextualizes the 1967 design of Regional Technical College (RTC) campuses in Ireland, with reference to the influence of oil crises on early green design and the establishment of a regulatory environment. Variation between NZEB and Passive House low energy strategies are discussed. Design Science and Action research inform solution-oriented methodologies in a pilot retrofit project on 1.5% area of an RTC building. Problem investigation notes previous schemes, stakeholder’s goals, building evaluation and energy performance diagnosis. Environment interaction between context and artifact are discussed. Design validation includes simulated envelope performances, which inform design iterations. Phenomena are evaluated in terms …

Exploring Nineteenth Century Church Architecture In Saint Louis, Missouri: 1870-1900, Rebecca A. Pressimone

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Steeplechasing, a seventeenth century pastime in England, was a form of match horse racing. At the time, steeples were the most distinguishable landmarks and were used to indicate the beginning and end of a steeplechase race. Over time, steeplechasing became more of a sport, and has since been turned into a track and field event, however the idea of the steeplechase remains present in architectural development, travel, and tourism. Saint Louis, Missouri—home to close to fifty religious denominations—is not unaccustomed with the design, history and use of a steeple. In Saint Louis, steeples were, and continue to be staple church …

Materialism: The Search For Something More, Nolan S. Golgert

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

“Part of our troubles results from the tendency to ascribe to architects – or, for that matter, to all specialists – exceptional insight into problems of living when, in truth, most of them are concerned with problems of business and prestige. Besides, the art of living is neither taught nor encouraged in this country. We look at it as a form of debauch. Little aware that its tenets are frugality, cleanliness, and a general respect for creation, not to mention Creation.”

– Bernard Rudofsky (Rudofsky, 1964)

– Life is complicated – because of this, specialists derive narratives as readings for …

Aspen Art Museum, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

'I hope when people come to the New Aspen Art Museum they will sense that this building is very much at home in Aspen and could only live here', Shigeru Ban states in a short essay to visitors included in the museum brochure. Indeed, the way in which Ban's design fits uniquely within its context is nothing less than extraordinary. A full appreciation of his accomplishment, however, requires a study of Aspen's history.

What strategies are available to the architect who intends to design a museum that fits well for a community with keen interests in arts but lacking in …

Towards A Collective Spatial Form:An Analysis Of Achill’S Deserted Village, Noel Brady

Conference papers

This paper examines an earlier study by Bob Kingston and along with onsite observations develops an environmental theory behind the particular siting and location of the deserted village in Achill, Ireland. The paper relies on the survey conducted by Kingston in the first instance but then by translating the material into a different format has concluded on statistically significant evidence of willful and careful planning and design in the construction of the houses.

Umass Amherst Campus Master Plan Sustainability Chapter, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Kylie A. Landrey, Somayeh Tabatabaee Pozveh, Ezra Small, Ted Mendoza, Jason J. Burbank, Robert Ryan, Dennis Swinford, Niels La Cour, Alexander Stepanov

Campus Planning Master Plans

The UMass Amherst Campus Master Plan Sustainability Chapter articulates the manner in which the Campus Master Plan 2012 principles translate into specific recommendations for campus systems development in support of future smart growth. It summarizes the current physical campus-scale planning projects that Facilities & Campus Services have completed during and after the Master Plan process, and incorporates other operational and educational initiatives that have engaged our campus community as we plan for sustainability.

The CMP Chapter is organized in three major sections: i) sustainability overview; ii) campus master plan systems; iii) current initiatives; and iv) next steps. The first section …

Coelum Britannicum: Inigo Jones And Symbolic Geometry, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

Inigo Jones’s interpretation that Stonehenge was a Roman temple of Coelum, the god of the heavens, was published in 1655, 3 years after his death, in The most notable Antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone-Heng, on Salisbury Plain, Restored.¹ King James I demanded an interpretation in 1620. The task most reasonably fell in the realm of Surveyor of the King’s Works, which Jones had been for the preceding 5 years. According to John Webb, Jones’s assistant since 1628 and executor of Jones’s will, it was Webb who wrote the book based on Jones’s “few indigested” notes, on …

Experiencing The Architecture Of The Incomplete, Imperfect, And Impermanent, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

For some time now architects have operated with the notion that the building is complete when construction is finished. They strive to make the building perfect and wish to keep it so permanently. Seen from this point of view, any subsequent alterations seem to degenerate the original. And yet, buildings never stay the same as they take part in politics, economics, and religion through the course of time. Their changes may be caused by natural forces or artificial means, and may manifest physically or in meaning. For example, immediately after the inauguration of the Colosseum in Rome, structures were added …

The City As Palimpsest, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

“Palimpsest preservation” suggest the necessity of keeping the successive layers of urban form alive rather than simply effacing and rebuilding, for that keeps a city’s history alive. No city without a tangible, tactile history, without the capacity for denizens and visitors to reach into the past while experiencing the present, can be truly vital. But this is a contested approach. George Orwell’s 1984 offers a warning in the guise of a party slogan: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Preservationists may advocate on historical, architectural, or cultural grounds, but the final decision …

China Gothic: Indigenous' Church Design In Late-Imperial Beijing, Anthony E. Clark

History Faculty Scholarship

In 1887 the French ecclesiastic-cum-architect, Bishop Alphonse Favier, negotiated the construction of Beijing’s most extravagant church, the North Church cathedral, located near the Forbidden City. China was then under a semi-colonial occupation of missionaries and diplomats, and Favier was an icon of France’s mission civilisatrice. For missionaries such as Favier, Gothic church design represented the inherent caractère Français expected to “civilize” the Chinese empire. Having secured funds from the imperial court to build his ambitious Gothic cathedral, the French bishop enlisted local builders to realize his architectural vision, which consisted of Gothic arches, exaggerated finials, and a rose widow with …

Historic American Buildings Survey: Investigation And Documentation Of The Halfway Schoolhouse In Eastpointe, Michigan, Whitney D. Gravelle

Historic Preservation Final Projects

No abstract provided.

“Can The Use Of Online Learning And Reflective Journals Improve Students’ Performance And Engage Them In Independent Learning For A Practically Taught “Timber Jointing Module”?, Jennifer Byrne

Other resources

The Technological University Dubiln is one of the largest multi-level higher education providers in Ireland. The Institute’s traditional mission has always been focused on teaching and learning in the field of advanced technical vocational education and training (TVET), and one of its agendas is to foster and encourage changes in teaching practice and methodology in order to enhance the student learning experience.

This research concerned the performance levels of first year students of the Timber Product Technology (TPT) programme. I wanted to investigate whether the use of independent online learning and reflective journals would encourage these students to continue their …

Housing Regeneration Strategies - Dit Students' Projects For Waterford City, Ireland., Jim Roche, Orla O'Donnell, Jim Ward

Other resources

No abstract provided.

Le Corbusier’S Fatal Flaws – A Critique Of Modernism, Alessandro Hseuh-Bruni

The First-Year Papers (2010 - present)

No abstract provided.