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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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."