Architecture Commons^™

Regenerative Refugee Housing: Creating Temporary Housing With Low Environmental Impact, Erika Guldner

Architecture Thesis Prep

Refugee settlements often have a negative environ­mental impact; by promoting options for sustainable development from the outset, this can be avoided. A plan for a refugee settlement was made, along with a plan for the individual residential units. To expedite the construction process, units were divided into compo­nents. These components could be easily assembled on site. Once the refugee settlement is no longer needed, components can be used for other purposes, such as, affordable housing or the components themselves can be broken down to be either recycled or used for other purposes.

Learning From The Informal: Designing A New Housing Typology For Informal Development In Cairo, Cherif Farid

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis examines what to design when designing for the informal and questions the role of the architect. The project combines the inherent qualities of the informal; self-built, incremental construction, and flexibility of spatial uses, with alternative urban design strategies.

The design strategy is to control the ground plane and roof scape, while leaving an open frame in between to be incrementally filled with housing. This frame allows residents to voice their identity by physically constructing their homes. It introduces an urban system that is composed of blocks that consist of an aggregation of identical units. The blocks are connected …

@The_New_House: An Online-Offline Manifesto, Ana Paola Hernandez Derbez, Domenica Velasco

Architecture Senior Theses

The house, is one of the most fundamental architectural archetypes, has long been used as unbuilt or built manifestos to declare the avant-garde of the discipline. As designers, we need to re-visualize design concepts to create architecture that integrates and corresponds to the way we dwell. Innovating design in the same way technology and digitalization have been innovating production and the way we live. This thesis investigates a return to the design of a house as a manifesto, focusing on today’s advanced modes of fabrication and evolving ways of living to challenge the current design mindset.

Emergency Homes, Denise A. Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

“Designers cannot just stand by and watch as the refugee crisis unfolds,” and although architects and designers can’t save the world, through design, we can alleviate consequences of scarcity. It’s not about creating a structure that will withstand the ends of time or endure the most extreme climate, it’s about how to respond in an emergency with the most geographically intelligent prototype that utilizes the utmost importance of on site materials so the bare minimum of an instruction manual or few key tools to offset distribution obstacles. This thesis is aimed to design for the 99 in disaster relief.