Architecture Commons^™

Designing Multi-Sensory Environments: A Powerful Tool For Steam Learning, Tonya D. Miller

The STEAM Journal

Architecture and design are natural facilitators of STEAM learning. This article discusses an interior architecture project requiring students to design a multi-sensory environment within an existing classroom space. The project uniquely addresses the STEAM disciplines and challenges students to explore creative problem-solving to develop unique designs.

Melting Away - Ilha Formosa, Hao-Chun Chang

Masters Theses

Taiwan lies in warm, tropical water, and fishing has long been an important part of its economy. Both the Han Chinese from the coast of China and the Westerners in Europe brought commercial trade and cultural exchange between the East and the West through navigation over the past 500 years. For most of this period, people have assumed that our vast ocean was limitless and immune to human impact. It’s only recently through the struggles of fishermen that we come to realize the devastating effects we have already had on the sea: global warming, plastic pollution, and overfishing. As Callum …

Community Pop-Up Galleries : The Instruction Manual, Mary Iorio

Masters Theses

The art world has historically been controlled by the wealthy and privileged. The institutions that have benefited the most have received criticism in recent years over the lack of diversity amongst their audience and artists represented on their walls. Community galleries can make up for the deficiencies of major art institutions and give voice to those who will not be noticed in traditional spaces (i.e. museums, galleries, auctions). This book details the process of creating a pop-up gallery that will serve the community through displaying, publicizing, and selling artwork. The process begins with organizing a committee to oversee the space, …

Contextualize, Jiaai He

Masters Theses

Museums, as a continuation of the urban environment, enrich people's recreational life and also carry the mission of education. Museums protect culture outside a textbook and make history closer to people’s lives. However, the present museum has not reached an ideal state for the expression and embodiment of cultural objects.

Time and history shape the objects, and the objects inside a museum record and memorialize the period of their creation. Stories and contest behind cultural objects’ creation are integral to knowledge and understanding. What do we remember after a museum visit? Displaying the full range of historical content to the …

Realistic Utopia : Utopian Architecture Exhibition At Arcosanti, Xiao Fang

Masters Theses

Many people believe that only when a design is built can it be called architecture. Architecture, however, was never solely about built form. And unlike other types of design, architecture depends on imagination and visualization: only the architect knows how the space works before it has actually been built. Thus, it is necessary to test the design on paper before it has been realized and many times architectural designs are heavily modified or abandoned for economic, political or environmental reasons.

Meanwhile, architects also design spaces knowing they will never be built, to exercise ideas or push toward new realities. From …

Re-Occupation : Buildings, Ideology And Decolonization In Northeastern China, Ziyu Wei

Masters Theses

Buildings often survive longer than a single human generation, and many witness significant transitions from generation to generation. When we approach varied eras that have washed over an unchangeable building like tides eroding a bank repeatedly, how can we distinguish the building’s primary identity and judge its fate?

In Northeastern China, a Japanese dormitory survives as a witness of Manchurian colonization, early socialism and the economic recession that caused its abandonment until today. The city also suffers a swiftly aging population and brain drain as the brightest of the youth move away. How can an intervention build dialogue and revive …

Envisioning Work : An Autism Friendly And Anxiety Free Office, Naixin Ren

Masters Theses

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) refers to a broad range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication. It is estimated that worldwide 1 in 160 children has ASD, and in China, about 1 in 69 children has ASD.

There are many successful educational environments specially designed for people on the spectrum to support learning, understanding, and behaving. However, after graduating, it is usually very hard for people on the spectrum to move toward independence because there is a huge difference between school environments and office environments.

Most office environments are designed to meet the …

Exploration And Autonomy : Wild Children In The City, Xiaojie Li

Masters Theses

From 1980 to 2000, China adopted a teacher-centered kindergarten model with the main purpose of imparting knowledge, leaving children in a passive learning environment. Since 2001, this system’s adverse impact on child development has become clear to preschool educators. As a result, teachers have begun to consider kid friendly environments and games. However, even these games were arranged with a top-down, teacher-centered structure.

An education revolution has emerged that aims to release the freedom of children by prioritizing their needs, paying respect and trust to exploration, as well as giving children choice. One pioneering philosophy applying this principle is Anji …

Re-Source : Re-Source Your Resources, Raquel Swartz

Masters Theses

Humans are using all of the earth’s natural resources and releasing unprecedented levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, endangering the planet’s viability. The implementation of sustainable design is no longer a luxury, and though eco-conscious construction and architecture have gained traction and have proven to reduce the built world’s contribution to the carbon footprint, interior design lags behind, even though it too, can reduce the industry’s negative impact. If architects and interior designers further consider the interaction between humans and objects with interior space through the awareness of sustainable practices, materials, and finishes, the built world’s contribution to the …

Re-Connect, Xin Ren

Masters Theses

We live in an era of contradiction: the order of the external world always stands in an ambiguous relationship to individual autonomy. In this time of high industrialization and fast paced efficiency, the development of technology has not only greatly reduced the distance between space and time, but also causes the over-coupling effect in social division: institutions are formed with a dangerously strong and stable dependence on each other. This excessive reliance on one another weakens their independence and resilience. Meanwhile, in this hyper-connected society, access to instant satisfaction through consumption and fragmented entertainment is the norm. Similar to the …

The Ultimate Task Of Public Libraries : Introducing Architecture As Pedestal, Elaine Wu

Masters Theses

Most cultural institutions are housed in one of two kinds of architecture: either to show off the structure or building style or to appreciate the preciousness and identity of the object(s) it contains. The first kind focuses more on the architecture itself, and its function is not defined by the outside appearance. For the second kind, the architecture aims to serve as a support or pedestal, where the form is a result of needs based on different objects contained.

For libraries, architecture should never be the protagonist. Libraries should champion the aura of books, just as museums exhibit their collections. …

Behind Appearance : Hidden Dimensions In The Work Of Wassily Kandinsky And Paul Klee, Ning Ding

Masters Theses

What is the feel like to be a successful artist?

Works being appreciated,being valuable,become famous all over the world?

But what is under? What is behind? The audience seems never to know the story as well as the artworks.

Take an example. When you look at The Scream of Edward Munch, what do you see?

A melting image, a disgusting face, or the derived emoji, which is so popular on the SNS?

What's really behind the painting is Edward Munch's illness, and decades of struggling under sickness, madness, and death.

Most times, when the audience enjoys painting, the imagination can …

Living Under Surveillance, Fan Jia

Masters Theses

Our first impression about surveillance will always likely relates to with advanced technology. However, advanced technology is the means that only awakens our consciousness of surveillance but is not the birth of surveillance. It has been embedded in our lives in our lives all the time for generations. Before the age of technology blooming, surveillance was carried out by the human eye, and this mode continues always. My thesis starts from our daily relationships, and analyzes how surveillance happens around us within those relationships and people interactions.

This thesis proposes a surveillance system in a specific city: —Washington D.C., which …