Architecture Commons^™

Evaluating Adaptability, Rebecca E. Robinson

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis aims to understand the process of adaptive reuse from the point of view of an owner and architect while uncovering the difficulties faced in schematically assessing existing building value and determining steps needed to preserve structures for continued occupation. This thesis will look at three approaches to the redevelopment of an existing building located in Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn District, each proposing a different degree of deconstruction while measuring the associated short-term capital and long-term operational cost of the building owner. A new metric is proposed to facilitate building evaluation and cost projection that is organized around six categories; …

Architecture For Better Days: Design Solution For Homelessness, Jiwoong Lee

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The homelessness is not an dilemma with clear boundaries. It could happen to anybody for any reason. Poverty is the leading cause of being homeless despite the fact that people think otherwise. The homeless people are not people who do not know or too lazy to take care of themselves but they are the people who just got caught in the unfortunate events. Some homeless people even have a job but they are just not making enough money to afford a house but making too much money to get the government assist. There are shelters and supportive housings but in …

Secret Place: Generated From Place And Non-Place, Zeyue Zhang

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

My thesis explores the nature of place today. Looking for the living condition in future, there are about more than 70% of the world's population that will be urban by 2050. I look to explore a place (in a dense urban area) for city people can get a respite from the daily chaos and feel, experience, and discover "a sense of calm". This I define as the "Secret Place". The Secret Place also comes from the study of "Place" and "Non-Place", which is basically distinguished by one question: if the quality of the space could resonate with or has to …

Restitching Metro Atlanta, Alexis M. Corrao

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis aims to reconnect Metro Atlanta through the connection and expansion of the public transportation systems currently operating in Metro Atlanta, using the comparative analysis of New York and Atlanta to show the benefits of a unified transportation system. This thesis plans to show potential expansion of the MARTA rail system focusing on the live, work, play, and travel aspects of Metro Atlanta. Through the exploration of the analysis, this thesis will propose a master plan of the expanded MARTA rail system, with a zoomed in focus of one of the expansion rails. This thesis ultimately will propose a …

Kinesthesis: Buildings Learning From People, Will Tufts

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Kinetic architecture has traditionally been the domain of expensive, boutique projects which require a high degree of finance and engineering. This results in systems which are difficult to construct and maintain, and prevents widespread adoption of building technologies which offer adaptive possibilities to their users over time.

Additionally, such systems predominantly either respond to simplistic environmental models, or actuation for purposes of artistic effect. Neither approach primarily addresses the needs of the user -- an approach which architects should not accept.

This thesis shows that new technologies in analysis and construction techniques can be combined to create performative works which …

Urban Space Regeneration, Yuanyuan Xiao

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The main idea I pursued in my research is the regeneration of urban space, which helped to create a new civic space for a city. The details of urban space regeneration are designed to improve the quality of life, and it involves the use of urban public space. Based on the research and background study, my thesis explored to improve the urban environment, enhance urban space usage and improve city image in Beijing to regenerate it from a heavy industrial city in a garden city. In my research on regeneration of urban space I came across the example of the …

Perceptive Architecture : Reviving The Perception Of Space In A Digital Era, Minho Jang

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

We perceive what we see. Therefore, we conceive the information of an experience we have. According to Henri Lefebvre, “Nothing disappears completely, however; nor can what subsists be defined solely in terms of traces, memories or relics. In space, what came earlier continues to underpin what follows.” (The Production of Space_Henri Lefebvre 229). It can be said that Lefebvre is implying the importance of spatial experience in context to the transition of space.

Previous experiences will affect the way the occupant percieves future experiences of space. Taking this into consideration and referring back to the problem implied, excessive users …

Revolutionary Rooms, Briana J. Fountain

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Residence Halls are a social center on college campuses. The common spaces within a residence hall are a space for informal collectivism. However, they have become increasingly task specific and redundant. How do social constructs influence design? Should common spaces within the residence hall typology influence the design of the entire domicile? This thesis develops a methodology that prioritizes sociospatial relationships in the design of residence halls. This was accomplished through the exploration of college culture, socio-spatial relationships, and notions from sister typologies.

Delirious Boundaries, Miguel Perez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

When we think of an American identity it is very hard to describe due to bases on race and ethnic groups. The idea of an American identity is often blurred in a place where two identities try to establish an existence. It is not the existence of race and ethnicity but the existence of culture. Culture as viewed by many is having elements which can be disassembled and re-composed, that is to say that culture is a process of living conditions not here a process of a condition that does not change. Culture is based on the ideas of context …

Offshore R+D Facility, Philip A. Marble

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Design a Research + Development facility that merges with a functional Oil Rig. This center will house both a Marine Research Center and Oil rig Research + Development center. Both of these facilities will be in a separate structure than the Oil Rig but will have a connection back to the Living Quarter.

Post-Olympic Stadium: Life Following The Games, Louis Lim

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The post-Olympic Stadium is one of the greatest gems to be conceived from the Olympic Games and the quality of life for the city following it depends on how we can reuse the stadium when the torch goes out. In this study, strategies for adaptability will be analyzed for application to an existing post-Olympic stadium.

The urban fabric is where the stadium makes a negative impact: the displacement of local residents preceding and the urban voids proceeding the Olympic Games. It not only creates a physical void, but also a social void. Neighborhoods can be divided and the local community …

Space . Efficiency . Transformation, Timothy W. Alston

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In Atlanta, there is a lack of affordable housing for the working class category of citizen due to outdated building norms and inefficient building techniques that are not designed to increase said affordability.This mindset lends people to the idea that they need to take ownership of larger, more expensive spaces, effectively wasting their money. This trend tends to ward working class citizens off from buying houses, which in turn creates a bigger gap in the housing market.

This thesis plans to propose a design strategy for single family detached dwellings that utilizes the idea of multi-functional, transformative space while simultaneously …

City By The Sea, Izuchukwu O. Ojukwu

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis investigates the current state of slums globally. The thesis argues that many of the hazardous environments of slums established is a product of the negative output devised by the current housing situation in said slum. The living quarters of residents within most slums exemplify how much the citizens are not able/willing to treat the area as a home. The lack of care and devices to help reduce the amount of pollution, resource scarcity, and overall damage to the environment can arguably be solved simply by redesigning the residential units within the region. By designing a new living unit …

A Formal Building Dress, Maria Jarda

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The thesis approaches building façade design from a couture point of view. Examining closer the cloth of the building and its inhabitants. It approaches design from a fashion start, turning dresses into building dresses, thus relating it to its textile origin. Initially, the analysis of dress vs façade falls into 4 categories materiality, layering, exoskeleton, and responsive. Building upon the analysis, essentially the outcome of the thesis is to adaptively redress a high rise. The focused runway is Broadway Street from Penn Station to Times Square. The questions become, What is the appropriate modern day building dress? Can this envelope …

New Constuctivism Or [Re] Defining Utopia, Anna Pack

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In contemporary Practice what makes a society successful and how can we achieve it?

Defined as “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.” It’s a structure, flexible, movable, and, therefore, shape-able. In the roots of Constructivist Utopia lays the idea of achieving the perfect society through the means of practicing new methods of design and productions. The Revolutionized ideas of propaganda and communal living in total equality were the key points in Constructivist Agenda. Their Utopia was to erase all boundaries and to build total equality. What is Utopia today? In my thesis I …

A Place Of Our Own: Investigating The Physical And Social Construct Of Public Space In Atlanta, Jonne Smith

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Atlanta has lost the quality of spaces which links the social and physical qualities of its urban fabric. Through its disjointed nature its sense of place and organic public life has dwindled into the background. As it stands Atlanta’s “identity” broadcasts a city whose urban spaces are haphazard assemblages of the social, economic, cultural, and historical elements of the city.

Business has become an overbearing forefront in the streetscape as public spaces such as plazas function in reality as surveilled extensions of corporate space. The cultural and historic attractions, though enjoyable and interesting, are scattered throughout the city, making for …

Breaking The Horizon, Chelseay Frith

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

I want you to imagine my first time scuba diving; it was at Morrison Springs, Florida in January 2012... Yes I know what you are thinking it was really cold. I was a little nervous, not knowing what to expect, while putting on my gear I started to think of all the possibilities that could happen, including death. As we start to descend into the water, my eyes adjusted to the new surroundings seeing a whole new world under the surface of the water. Fish darted around these plants that towered like sky scrapers: it started to look like a …

Coda - Sound Urbanism, Michael Phaff

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The interstate connector was once a really exciting and cutting edge concept for Atlanta. It celebrated a vehicular lifestyle and addressed movement in and around the city with the development of I-75, I-85, and I-285. The lack of connectivity in the Midtown area is divisive as it limits travel from one side of the Connector to the other and ruins the local atmosphere and exchange of ideas. Connecting across this sixteen lane barrier is imperative to the future success of the city of Atlanta. As society moves towards a more sustainable environment focused in pedestrian and public transit, the city …

Compelling Interactions, Zimbulus T. Nixon

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture can unite cultural diversity through means of communication via spatial orientation. Spatial and sensory experience are key components in developing spaces that can compel interaction. By fusing communication and architecture, a complex international airport terminal can transform into a structure that supports the notion of communication and interaction between people.

Scalar Resiliency In The Age Of Disruption, Brandon Aultman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Natural storm surges and global sea level rise cause devastating effects, whether it’s leaving over a million of residents homeless or dooming an entire

coastline ecosystem with little to no hopes of recovery. Current responsive methods consist the issue of unequal priortization within coastal resiliency

design because of site scalar characteristics. A design that incorporates an equity of attention towards all elements of resiliency will lead to a responsive

solution that can transcend any scale of site. I will begin to analyze the elements of effective resiliency; adaptation, affordability, community, sustainability

and customization, in order to provide a balanced solution …

Healing The Scars, Tony J. Rodriguez Jr

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

We live in a Kleenex society. What I mean by this is that everything is, or is in danger of becoming, disposable. We simply take what we need and like a tissue toss it aside when we've exhausted its use.

We have come to believe that no matter our actions nature will eventually heal itself. Showing the world the impact industrialization has had on the natural world can lead us as a society to become aware of our Kleenex mentality.

My site, Bellwood Quarry here in Atlanta, is currently proposed to be the largest park and water reservoir in the …

Healing Architecture: Engagement, Nature, Community, Antonio D. Hinson, Antonio D. Hinson

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

My thesis focused on exploring death as a part of life rather than looking at death as a separate entity. I reframed a Cancer Center that engaged life as part of a community with nature rather than a hospice center that embraced death. In today’s society, healthcare institutions are very isolated and disconnected from the public like gated communities. Most people I know do not like to go to hospitals if they can prevent it. I felt there needed to be a place where people with cancer could go that offered some respite from the conventional healthcare institutions. A place …

Re (Civic) Function The Cultural Value Of L’ Aquila, Ogechi Nwoko

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

I want to start by exploring with you the meaning of you these numbers. From 2000 to 2012 natural disasters have caused 1.7 trillion dollars in damage and affected 2.9 billion people. Nearly 50% of the fatalities caused by natural disasters were due to flooding or earthquakes events. If we also look at the regions affected, these are usually facing social, cultural and environmental difficulties; therefore, the process of recovery of the communities in most of the time is slowly effective or unsuccessful. In order to face better future calamities, this research aims to analyze the displacing effect of the …

Architecture And Memory, Anne Murigi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The objective of this thesis is to come up with a design which will celebrate the experience during and after the Post-Election violence that rocked Kenya through the design of the Museum of Hope in Uhuru Park, in Nairobi, Kenya. The museum is intended to create an experiential journey that allows visitors to explore sentiments of the climate of the country during this political time, while also evoking optimism in design. The recent history of Kenya is marred by struggle, violence, terror, hope, joy and peace. The site of Uhuru Park has witnessed this unending cycle, making it a politically …

Sport In Society: Enhancing The Experience, Sean Fuller

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

As an avid sports fan myself, sport has become a huge cultural event in today's society. It’s evolved from a social interaction aspect to a physical experiential standpoint. When you arrive to a sport stadium, the first thing you notice is the amount of people and the size of the structure. How can that many people fit comfortably in one space? Does the experience become something more than just finding your way to your seat and watching the game? By understanding the breakdown of stadiums and how they perceive experiential architecture, these massive structures can open up to the community …

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 …

Divine Intervention: Designed For Social Evolution By Integrating Natural Order, Anatoshia L. Wyatt

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

There is a long tradition in architecture of using ordering systems found in nature and science to create built space. This thesis builds upon such line of thought to propose new design methods based on ordering systems with a particular focus on social relations. It focuses on the design of a community center in the city of Atlanta which is considered as a catalyst for jumpstarting the betterment of society through improvement of social bonds, community involvement, activism, meditation, and the integration of nature in the community. The design is situated on the Bellwood Quarry site and creates an ecological …

Resurrection, Zachery Terry

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In Sensory Design by Author Joy Monice Malnar, she describes 1.The perception of a physical construct. 2. Assessment of its individual composition in relation to a larger characteristic pattern. 3. Memories of prior personal and cultural experiences all play a part in conditioning ones perception and the totality of these factors can be described as a spatio-sensory construct.

The experience of an area built on the foundation of a rich cultural history should be always be dynamic whether to a visitor or resident.

But what do you call a place where none of this is present?

Today, Sweet Auburn …

Constructed Reality: A Study In Spatial Perception Through Virtual Reality, Jose P. Rodriguez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture often begins explorations that lead into various modes of end products. These modes of production and representation could often embed traces that shape the outcome of the design. In his book, “Architectural Representation and The Perspective Hinge.”, Alberto Perez Gomez says that “Architects do not produce Buildings but instead produce images of buildings.” These representational images are an expression of an idea or design. Historically, representation began in static two-dimensions. By bridging into digital environments, these representations become more dynamic. As computing power increases and software broadens, the use of virtual reality environments and immersion simulations are becoming more …

On Craft, William Lentjes

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Craft is a relationship - a dialogue - between craftsman, tool, and material. Craft begins with the intent of all of these loci, and all of these loci are rooted in Being.

Being is known through the consciousness, awareness, and perception of a subject. Being is the inherent existence and totality of "what is."

Being crafts us; Craft imbues Being.

This thesis re-examines the pedagogical approach of an architectural education. The focus is placed on craft through presuppositionless phenomenology.

In an age of endless mechanized production and spiritless materialism, the practice of craft can teach us to return to the …