Architecture Commons^™

Waiting: Sidewalk Sheds And Urban Identity, Sukhmann Aneja

Architecture Thesis Prep

In New York City, a sidewalk shed is a structure that covers a sidewalk immediately adjacent to a site under construction in order to protect pedestrians from falling debris. There are currently about 9,000 sheds in the entire city, with a lifespan of about 300 days. In total, all of the sidewalk sheds take up about 1,000,000 feet of space.1 Their existence is unwanted but inevitable, and, over the last four decades, these sheds have become an integral part of the City’s identity. This thesis proposes an intervention that allows the shed to better engage with the general public, particularly …

Naturalizing The Neoliberal Subject, The Object: To Change The Soul, Hanneke Van Deursen

Architecture Thesis Prep

Neoliberalism exists in two forms: policy and ideology. On the policy side, a crusade of deregulation, privatization, and the competition was ushered in by Neoliberal politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. On the ideology side, Neoliberalism constructs for us a series of truth games. It tells us: our society is too complex for us to understand, and therefore it can not be ordered by humans. In contrast, the market is itself a mechanism of spontaneous order, and therefore is better suited to calculate, process, and order our society. Subsequently, it is humans who must adapt to the needs of …

But Soft! Fabricating Adaptive Urbanism, Caroline Barrick, Arezo Hakemy, Sabrina Logroño

Architecture Senior Theses

We contend that a performative fabric that combines strategies of comfort and adaptation and deployed as large-scale soft architecture can challenge the approach to urban infrastructural issues currently only managed by hard architecture. We are investigating both soft and hard architecture through the human scale and experience, the urban scale, materiality, adaptability, and temporality. Soft architecture produces comfort and ergonomic design for both physical and mental benefit and affects the built environment through its tactile materiality, its ephemeral temporality, and its swift adaptability. Hard architecture resists environmental and human adaptation through its rigid materiality, its lasting temporality, and its reluctant …

Towards A Floating Urbanism: Adapting To Water As A New Ground, Chris Autera

Architecture Senior Theses

Climate change offers myriad challenges to society, including a rising sea level and increasingly intense storms. Resilience to climate change, particularly the reliance on hard barriers, only protects certain areas and raises the risk of catastrophic failure. More deeply, these approaches reflect an attempt to preserve society as it exists today, denying the reality that the multi-millennia process of climate change necessitates a more profound reevaluation of how society operates. Adaptation takes this need as a given, arguing for the retrofitting of infrastructure to regular inundation when possible and the abandonment of at-risk areas when not. However, these strategies are …

Re-Imagine Air: Transforming Zoning Around Landmarks, Brian Hurh

Architecture Senior Theses

Today’s New York City skyline has been developed as a result of over a century of zoning resolutions and changes. Zoning code were first established in 1916 to regulate the building of skyscrapers. These resolutions act as “harm preventing” 1 measure to provide limits, meaning the zone prevents extremities in building dimensions to have some control. However, today’s skyscrapers are built higher and higher through exploits and loopholes. The transfer of development rights from adjacent lots or landmarks allows developers to break regulations. It also allows structures to reach unexpected heights to the most recent zoning resolution in 1961 . …

City Of Brick: Spatial And Material Explorations In 21st Century Urbanism, William Collins

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project I’m proposing, City of Brick: Spatial and Material Explorations in 21st Century Urbanism, will analyze the problem of and propose an alternative to the supertall residential tower in the contemporary city. Th ere is a trend in American cites toward the construction of ‘prestige’ projects, namely, skyscrapers of luxury apartments purchased as investments. Th is phenomenon is well-documented in the spacious floorplans of these towers; for example, 432 Park Avenue in New York City, though it is the tallest residential building in North America, only contains 104 units. My proposal seeks to provide a counter to the ultraluxury …

Rural Retreat | Urban Myth, Celeste Pomputius

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a destination for recreation and retreat on Plum Island, New York that references the model of the National and State Park Services and whose intended audience is primarily residents of New York City who are without the means or methods of easily seeking other experiences of nature outside the realm of city limits. The first step of this design process involves reexamining the traditional definition of “urban” to shorten the leap from the comforts of the city to the unknowns of nature. From there, the project identifies and resolves three challenges that stand between urban residents and …

Food Form Function, Travis Telemaque

Architecture Senior Theses

By 2050, the global population will have grown to over 9.7 Billion people. Traditional farming practices will no longer be able to sustain food production for the increasing population. This thesis demonstrates how architecture and urban food production can be used to educate and reconnect our cities with locally sourced food. Integrating food production into dense urban settings will create a more efficient and resilient city.

[Ar] You Ready?, Trang Tran

Architecture Senior Theses

This project challenges the obsolete existence of signage and billboards and seeks to explore how augmented reality (AR) advertisements change the relationship between signage and buildings.

Active Density: Stimulating The Urban Domain In High-Rise Social Housing Developments, Heather Dela Cruz

Architecture Thesis Prep

I propose to retain the benefits of vertical housing and improve upon it by

up-zoning the block and building low-rise, high-density mixed-income structures

on the site’s perimeter. The new construction will include public amenities that are

lacking in the immediate area such as retail, restaurants, work space, and public

service facilities. Through adaptive re-use of mega blocks will be reclaimed. This

mixed-use approach to the expanded occupancy will also restore the diversity that

was lost when the towers were first built.

Big Urban Things, Nathan Geller

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project has evolved from an interest in architecture’s role and impact in the city, as well as a developing interest in the philosophy of Object Oriented Ontology. As a way to explore these interests, this project is about contextualizing Bigness through the writings of Graham Harman.

Infra[Re]Structure, Sara Minsley

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project contends that through the mediation and expression of systems, energies and flows the pedestrian can reclaim the experience of the street.Crucial to this is an understanding of what is on the street and how objects and people are situated on the streets currently. Through exploiting these issues New York City the pedestrian is offered a more engaged experience of moving through the city.

Occupying Spatial Dimensions In Media, Lina Bondarenko

Architecture Senior Theses

"I contend that in a context in which the protester is warded the minor title of Time Magazine's Person of the Year, multi-agent production of news media outnumbers the institutionalized, and unemployment among educated youth soars, architecture must be capable of fusing the shared appetites between a freshly ambitious urban demographic."

Festival Urbanism, Gabriella Morrone

Architecture Senior Theses

"Festivals, as modes of architectural production, can exist as provocations for change in our urban environments. The festival exists as a moment in time and as a distributed system which allows for the transformative capacity of space and the reconsidering of present conditions. Negotiating its temporality, the festival provides a critique on our current and primarily static architectural manifestations and their relationships to our rapidly changing social environments. Festival Urbanism is an experimental design which models a mode of architectural practice rooted in participatory design. Simultaneously as the architect, the planner, and the curator, I propose the construction a virtual …

Excavating Wilderness: A Reorienting Passage Into Central Park, Jeff Kamuda

Architecture Thesis Prep

If we are to understand that dwelling, a function of orientation is an ultimate goal of humankind, and that architecture's primary purpose is to provide this 'existential foothold', how can this be accomplished in an age when the very tools of orientation and it's components (time, place, and identity) be oriented to their surroundings through an increasing detachment from the natural world, how can architecture thus be used as a didactic mechanism ideology, developed through the historical lineage of the wilderness concept, will produce an opportunity for an architectural intervention to confront the primal act of orientation while simulating grafting …

Reconnect The Urban Surface --- By Making Landscape And Infrastructure, Ming Gao

Architecture Senior Theses

Today in the post industrial city, the connection between different places relies mostly on transportation by way of automobiles, public buses, and subway. By walking or biking, people are able to talk with nature directly. However, by modern transportation, people are confined in a close machinery space which prevents them from experiencing nature directly. They are separated from nature by consciously choosing to use modern transportation during their daily lives, and they get less and less direct access to nature. Nowadays, nature experienced space within walking distance int he city is limited to the tiny front yard garden, where landscape …

See What I... Controlling Vision Through The Senses, Taylor Wilk

Architecture Senior Theses

"By dismissing the other (non visual) senses we are encouraging a design approach that lacks concern for human, physical, and emotional engagement. We as a society have become numb to emotive involvement - we have become mesmerized by imagery and have forgotten about the capabilities architecture can employ on experience."

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Metamorphose, Elijah Yoon

Architecture Senior Theses

"This thesis will test how Metamorphose Architecture can intensify a multi-program space as it changes over time. Metamorphose Architecture will transform as it responds to the purpose, inhabitation, and structure of changing programs to allow maximum efficiency. This transformation will in turn create changes in the appearance and character of the space."

Construction For Art, Will Fellis

Architecture Thesis Prep

"When museums draw large crowds and display large collections, there is a lack of personal relationship and understanding of the art.

Small scale museum architecture, in the form of single galleries or pavilions housing only a few pieces by a specific artist or simply expressing the concepts of a certain artist's work, offers and opportunity to create a more intimate relationship between the artwork and the viewer.

The design of a pavilion according to an artist's philosophy will be manifested within the construction. Therefore the detailing of the pavilion will be the point at which the occupant engages the principles …

Metropolis Necropolis: Building A Ritual Of Memorial For The Urban Homeless, Michael Marchand

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The intervention of architecture, through a cultural and contextual understanding, can create a relevant ritual for the memorial of the deceased that is meaningful to the communities it is intended to serve - the marginalized people of the streets of New York - while bringing the needs of the communities into the public light."

Foreign Body Politics: Inflammation Of Micro Cities In The Urban Environment, Ariana Douso

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis focuses on the intense rigidity of government affordable housing and the homogenization of those designs that condemns them to become foreign bodies in the more flexible surrounding urban environment. Mike Davis categorizes these foreign bodies as modern-day slums. Project housing bracketed in the slum category associates it with the condemning qualities of its predecessors. Such developments are dangerous and unhealthy; they become massive sores on the city. How can this be remedied without offering project developments up to the same fate that their predecessors in the 1930's suffered (slum clearance)? "

Social Interaction In The Digitally Networked City., Zachary Goldstein

Architecture Thesis Prep

"There is an underlying digital network that exists in our contemporary cities that affects every aspic of urban life. Technology has changed the way we perceive and activate space, and communicate with one another....

Public space will always be critical in city planning because it fosters human interaction. No matter how advanced our technology becomes, nothing will be able to replace talking to someone in person or participating in live events."

Fluid Architecture : Synthesis : City, Adriana L. Zarrillo

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This proposal intends to manipulate the streams of the city and their potential overlaps and deviations in order to create an intervention that will revitalize both economically and aesthetically a localized area. By further developing the city streams that are already present, the pre-existing conditions, and subsequently introducing those streams that are not present in order to produce the desired result, a successful dynamic node of convergent streams with the potential to link back to larger scales."

Customassation, Paul F. Maguda

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The architecture of mass customization must be sensitive and selective at this point in time.

It must be sensitive to the historical lineage of mass production in architecture.

It must be selective in an application appropriate of the principles of the new model.

It must be selective in a location that represents old model industry set against the diverse new model society.

This architecture is best understood as a process of transformation from old model to new."

Infrastructure And Improvisationalism, Nick Saponara

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Infrastructure serves as a milt-scaled organizing urban framework in which material practices impose an identity on a given place allowing for the activation of otherwise static conditions.

Configuration Of Spatial Dynamics Through Cross-Cultural Reference; Korean-American Cultural Center At The Edge Between Inside And Outside, Kwangpyo Steve Koh

Architecture Senior Theses

"In this thesis, I would like to investigate and study the role of architecture as a spatial mediator between different cultural spheres within the city context. Specifically, I would like to focus on Koreatown and its surrounding in New York City. Through the architectural intervention of a cultural center at the edge of the community, I wish to explore the relationship between the Korean community and its immediate environment, between a transplanted ethnic neighborhood and the city, between inside and outside. The architecture of the new cultural venter will take advantage of this relationship to become a space for porous …

A Buddhist Monastery And Temple With A Religious Center In New York City, Jeffrey Michael Dvi-Vardhana

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The Buddhist Temple form has remained unchanged in the last 2,500 years. The thesis will become an exploration of contemporary issues of acculturation and transition of Buddhism in the United States. The thesis will examine architecturally, the individual spirit of contemplation and meditation of a monistic religion. This allows the thesis to transform, architecturally and typologically, a Buddhist Temple and Monastery of the Theravada Sect, with a Religious Center.

Working Women's Community: A Feminist Perspecitve On Women In The Urban Condition; Representation In Space And Architecture, Hilary M. Sample

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Investigating gender in architectre calls attention to issues of spatial segregation and stratification systems which contribute to human inequalities, such as the distribution of knowledge and power.... An exploration of gendered spaces through an investigation of male-oriented environmets in relation to feminine spatial-socio language of difference that could inform architectural spaces which allow for multiplicity of experience which promotes knowledge and power.

The vehicle for exploring these issues will be a community center which provides social services and communal living. The project will be developed through patterns of program and the multiplicity of spatial experiences."

A Propagandistic Center For Aids, Robert Finger

Architecture Senior Theses

A propagandistic center for aids, where an organization can raise awareness to the community in Abingdon Square, NYC. Britton Award Winner, Thesis Board.

The Rutgers Presbyterian, Syracuse University School Of Architecture Design Studio Project, Spring 1988, Charles Ardito, Alex Ceppi, Robert Dewalt, Christine Dewey, Daniel Donovan, Edward Duffy, Sean Flanagan, Tobias Gabranski, David Levy, Anthony Macri, Jeffrey O'Brien, Graham Pohl, Robert Portnoff, Sauksind Pulsirivong, Gary Schmidt, Arthur Mcdonald, Steven Peterson

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

The School wishes to give special thanks to Mr. James Britton, a member of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church and friend of the School of Architecture at Syracuse University. It was in May of 1986 that Mr. Britton suggested this project to Dean Werner Seligmann and myself as a possible studio project for our students. His belief that this project could be of educational benefit to our students was accurate, and all those who participated have a sense of indebtedness to him for his insights and encouragement.

The Rutgers Presbyterian Church located on West 73rd Street wishes to develop the parcel …