Architecture Commons^™

The Public Interior Space Within Louvre Abu Dhabi Dome: A Visual Reflection, Karim Musfy, Marco Sosa, Lina Ahmad

All Works

What defines an interior space? Is a traditional threshold the only building element considered as a clear component demarcating interiority from the outside environment? Could light or water be just as clear? How can scale challenge the identification of an internal space? Is a living space more identifiable as an interior volume? What about an internal courtyard for a family house outlining the beginning of a nation or the opposite extreme in the time-space continuum, a 24,000 square meters domed roof over a series of intimate spaces establishing a nation’s cultural intention internationally? Can a central space act as a …

Entangling Manila’S Seams, Patrick De Garcia

Architecture Thesis Prep

Manila, Philippines is a city fragmented into slums and upper-class enclaves. The adjacency of their separated development contributes to intensifying class-relations; each side is fearful of the other. Symbolic manifestations of the border are made apparent due to economic inaccessibility, emphasizing social stratification. This project is interested in blurring the boundaries maintaining social segregation to enhance public spaces’ quality, specifically through redeveloping the shopping mall.

Dissolving Reality: An Endless Domestic Landscape, Hanzhang Lai, Phang Lim

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis explores how the exponential growth in communication technology is changing the way we interact with the tangible and intangible spaces. The invasion of the public into the private, the collective into the domestic, the work into the leisure, and the ability to be constantly connected wirelessly have caused a dissolution of the physical domestic space. The domestic space has lost its value of privacy and intimacy and the boundary between the binaries will be no more. The gap between “the control” and “controlled” has widened and productive workers will be oppressed to be even more productive under the …

Privacy Reconfigured: Examining Public Interactions Within Domestic Space, Vanessa Poe

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis reconfigures private domestic spaces by combining modes of privacy in order to accommodate the needs of the townhouse, resulting in a new series of private reveals through socialization.

Reconceptualizing The Urban Artifact, Ricardo Rodriguez Huerta

Architecture Senior Theses

This is a study of the architectural and historical construct of the Urban Artifact. For the purposes of this exploration, an Urban Artifact is to be understood as the physical manifestation of the city and its collective memory. It is the product of the history and character of its place and the embodiment of an idea of its type and the memory of its lineage. In contrast to the fixed intention and permanence of a monument, an Urban Artifact has its own autonomy and value gained over time until it ultimately becomes also identified as a monument. These concepts, defined …

Not Parking Lots But Parks: A Joint Association Of Parks And Transit Stations With Travel Behavior, Keunhyun Park, Dong-Ah Choi, Guang Tian, Reid Ewing

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

Urban design literature says that public open space in a station area could promote walking and other types of physical activity, enhance place attractiveness, and increase property values. In the context of station areas, however, there is a lack of empirical studies on the relationship between the presence of parks and sustainable travel behavior, which is one of the primary goals of transit-oriented developments (TODs). This study examined the impact of park provision on transit users’ mode choice in three U.S. regions: Atlanta (GA), Boston (MA), and Portland (OR). This study utilized multilevel multinomial logistic regression to account for hierarchical …

Growing Syracuse: The Architect's Role In Improving Syracuse, Ny's Food Environment, Stephanie Wagner

Architecture Thesis Prep

Urbanism requires community, and community requires a platform of public space. Underutilized spaces within the urban fabric can be activated by small scale architectural interventions to create formal spaces for community gathering, interaction, and commerce. The positioning and connectivity of these interventions can lead to the creation of new urban corridors that encourage growth within and between underdeveloped parts of the city.

It is the role of the architect to develop an architecture that is contextually relevant to a community, while addressing larger-scale urban issues, in order to create an accessible and beneficial built environment and lifestyle for users. The …

The New Urban Artifact, Ricardo Rodriguez Huerta

Architecture Thesis Prep

This is a study of the architectural and historical construct of the Urban Artifact. For the purposes of this exploration, an Urban Artifact is to be understood as the physical manifestation of the city and its collective memory. It is the product of the history and character of its place and the embodiment of an idea of its type and the memory of its lineage. In contrast to the fixed intention and permanence of a monument, an Urban Artifact has its own autonomy and value gained over time until it ultimately becomes also identified as a monument. These concepts, defined …

Atmospheres And Bureaucracy: Challenging Everyday Perception And Regulation Of Public Space, Philip Claghorn

Architecture Senior Theses

It is common for us to overlook the everyday elements encountered in the city such as public Wi-Fi beacons, aestheticized benches, bike-sharing stations, and other items which have colonized street-scapes. In reality, these components are cosigned by business investment districts, private businesses, and city governments who stand to profit by maintaining control of public space. This struggle between formal and informal urbanism has been played out globally. The best example of informal urban contention can be found in street vending policy. An increasingly congested sidewalk, in conjunction with convoluted policies in places such as New York City, has made street …

A Simulation-Assisted Workflow For Outdoor Thermal Comfort Design In Downtown Syracuse, Pouya Zhand

Architecture Senior Theses

Cities are not just about the buildings and skylines. Cities are also about the space be­tween buildings (the ground in figure-ground). More importantly and fundamentally cities are about people and the life that happens between buildings. Simulation tools can inform the design of attractive public spaces by pro­viding insight about the environmental conditions.

Reconnect: Amplifying Circulation Typologies To Radically Rethink Urban-Aqueous Relationships, Tiffany Pau

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a radical rethinking of city-water relationships to leverage existing infrastructural and architectural divides; because it holds great architectural and social value to work within and challenge existing systems, and because access to the waterfront– for sustenance, transportation, commercial, or leisure purposes– is a core human need. The project questions what happens when connections are scaled extra-large, yet aim to maintain the qualities that are imbued within them at the micro scale to generate increased public activity at the water’s edge. It looks to create a new type of urbanism, one that prioritizes the very act of circulation …

Ritual Place, Dabota Wilcox

Architecture Senior Theses

What is a ritual? Its connotations are rooted in the vocabulary of religion, but essentially a ritual is a repeated or singularly significant act meant to instill a deeper meaning or reinforce a belief. Beliefs are supported through the practice of rituals. Rituals are special because they facilitate experiences that separate us from the mundane. They serve to pull its participants to recognize and participate in something of worth. But what would it mean to imagine the new ritual? If for a moment this distinction were expanded there are countless moments, activities, or seemingly insignificant acts that could be considered …

The Public Sky-Spacer, Piotr Jankowski

Architecture Thesis Prep

We have reached an era where architecture has to prepare for the alarming changes affecting our modern society. Predicted urbanization will lead to cities becoming denser and taller to facilitate the needs of housing and workspace for the growing world population. High costs of rent and scarcity of real state land in city centers will force developers to build skyscrapers. Taking into account the impact of larger populations, skyscrapers will have to offer more efficient spaces and follow strict environmental regulations while contributing to the production of energy and necessary resources. Focus on human comfort and sustainability will play an …

Charon's Passage: The Journey To Nimiety, Nicholas Kronauer

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to reconsider the possibility and potential of the mausoleum as an architectural contradiction by reconceptualizing the mausoleum as a typology for public space, thus inverting the traditional objective of introspection and the object-form, interior-exterior dialectic of funerary architecture. By engaging the mausoleum with 21st-century urbanization, traditional notions of permanence, meaning, and tectonics can be renegotiated through the juxtaposition of a foreign object that activated by the appropriation and integration of a social program. Through this thesis, the mausoleum is no longer a place for reflection or solidarity but will operate as a stage set to frame and …

Situating Urban Moving Images: Illuminating Place, Annie Dell'aria

Graduate Student Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Efficacy Of Perspective: The Production Of Transitoriness In 21st Century Public Space, Kenny Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis considers the specific relationship between representation of cities and its capacity to promote and construct cities. In the last century, there has been a shift of theorizing in the position of the human eye to organize the new systems of the contemporary city. It has moved away from using these tools to imagine and polemically argue for or against the city.

Charon's Passage: A Pyramid For The 21st Century, Maximilian Kronauer

Architecture Senior Theses

Charon’s Passage is the product of nimiety1: a pyramid for the 21st century. By engaging the mausoleum within the context of global urbanization and global consumption, notions of permanence and object-form relationships are challenged and renegotiated through the introduction of foreign agents and spatial products. Ultimately, the agency of the project is facilitated by overlapping autonomies that assume the scale, density, and power structures of a city-state as exhibited by the casino-resort while reinforcing the sacredness of the mausoleum’s objective formal agenda.

Syllabus: Public Space Design Plus: Integrating Sustainable Design Through Exploration And Research, Carolina Aragon

Sustainability Education Resources

This studio focuses on the integration of sustainable technologies into the design of a public space on campus. We will explore this integration at various scales: the human scale, the site scale, and the campus scale ––while covering subjects like materiality, people’s behavior, and innovative sustainable solutions for landscape applications. The work of the studio will be a combination of creative exploration and research supporting this exploration. The methodology will include experiential learning ––learning by doing, research through direct observation, and research using library resources. Through research and use of library databases, students will gain a broader perspective of the …

Spatializing The Corridor, Mengru Li

Architecture Thesis Prep

The goal of this thesis project is to develop a model for a public corridor that would serve as the basis for the future development in the planning of a new district.

Connecting Cayucos: Visions And Actions For Public Space, Spring 2014, Crp 553 Project Planning Lab

City and Regional Planning Studios and Projects

This document expands upon the principles set forth in the County of San Luis Obispo’s Estero Plan (2009) in the context of public space and develops site-specific recommendations to support future implementation of public space plans for Cayucos, California. This plan includes an existing conditions analysis, general goals and principles, site-specific visions and actions, as well as supporting conceptual diagrams. The main purpose of this plan is to reflect the community’s desire to preserve, protect, and enhance the public spaces of Cayucos.

Espacios Sucre: Interdisciplinary Program To Develop A System Of Small- And Medium-Scale Interventions In Public Spaces, Daniel Belandria, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

With the accelerated growth of most Venezuelan cities, many of them show precarious settlements where residents seek to resolve their housing needs while services, facilities, and public spaces in particular hove been neglected. This is the case in Caracas and within the Municipality of Sucre, the second largest in size and population of the whole country. In this context. the Espacios Sucre Program, an interdisciplinary initiative with the main purpose of building networks of public space in both small and medium scales, not only works to confront the deficit but also to relate the contrasting areas of the Municipality and …

Revitalizing Waterfront: The Sinking City, Clifford Shih

Architecture Senior Theses

The existing waterfront condition presents a separation between the water and urban. I propose this separation between the water and urban is an interacted space of urban and water. Waterfront constructed in this way protects the city from floating, yet a solution of creating a public space, ports, and water filtration facility will blend the separated condition. Thus, architecture exemplifies a vehicle to constitute physical and visual connection for dichotomy edge created by the waterfront in a rapid stratified urbanization and industrialization.

Cohousing And The Greater Community: Re-Establishing Identity In Taunton’S Weir Village, Andrew Kremzier

Architecture Theses

This proposal seeks to bring new life to the former industrial district of the post-industrial city. Existing in a society based on services and technologies, these villages must either adapt to meet the needs of business or serve another purpose within the community. The project for the Weir Village falls into the latter category, as its aim will be to create a cohousing community within Taunton. The new development will strengthen the character of the village and be able to affect the community beyond the site’s physical boundaries. It will create affordable alternatives to housing for those who do not …

Awareness At A Threshold: Urban Exchange Through Public Space, Matthew Spears

Architecture Theses

The moment of arrival becomes an important opportunity for cultural exchange in an urban environment. This exchange can be both the physical exchange between two places or it can be the experiential exchange between two or more disparate groups. These moments of exchange are an elusive experience for visitors as well as residents and are easily forgotten. Expressing the space of the traveler, an interactive space between locals and visitors, can raise cultural awareness between the most prominent groups as well as the marginalized groups, creating a more cohesive urban imaginary. The major exchange hub in Seattle, Washington speaks to …

The Real, The Spectacle, And The In-Between: Architecture As A Stage For Reality, Chelsea Adelson

Architecture Theses

The goal of the project is to explore the space in between as a place of activity. The project will compare the spectacle and reality through a theater and public plaza near Chinatown and the theater district of Boston. The theater is accompanied by a small acting school that uses both an interior venue and the plaza as stages. The theater is focused on the awareness of reality through the spectacle of performance while the public plaza can “turn the artificiality of everyday situations into a theatrical situation” and bring life to the streets. Everyday life is put on display.

Technocarpet: Supporting A Culture Of Congestion, William Andrew Weigand

Architecture Senior Theses

"The TechnoCarpet is a public space sited in a future of resource scarcity, climate disruption, and urbanization. It provides support facilities and cultural amenities necessary to sustain super dense urban populations. I establishes an internal frontier for the city as a means to provoke density, by creating an escape from it. The TechnoCarpet is a model for parks in the 21st century."

A Sacred And Secular Landscape: Empowering Social Agency, Shreya Shah

Architecture Senior Theses

"I contend that landscape can provoke an idea for a productive, public space using the people of the city as social agents to create a sensitive rather than oppressive water remediation system. By inventing a program that uses landscape as a water remediation space as well as landscape as a religious and social space, the project will exhibit the idea that social agents can inform a change in the water pollution crisis."

Bridge_Works, Chris Driscoll

Architecture Senior Theses

Building typologies are generally well defined and functionally specific. A church is for worship, a house is for living, and a theater is for performing. In certain instances, these basic building typologies have been combined to form composite structures such as mixed-use housing/retail projects, or a house on a boat. The opportunities created by composite typologies have allowed for broader economic development, more complex and integrated programming, greater utility and richer social structures. A specific combination of typologies--the mix of infrastructural bridge with housing/retail/public space--has produced a few historically successful models[...] Over time, the bridge was developed from a simple …

[Re]-Establishing Connection: Integrating People Through Movement And Culture In Nyc, Justin Leung

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis proposes to test and re-establish how architecture can make connections between people. Through freedom of movement, transportation creates many opportunities for the congregation of people and social interaction. This thesis aims to create spaces for mixing and awareness through movement, and program."

Resurrecting The Bauhaus: Public Interaction Through Constructive Education In Harlem, Luke Carnahan

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Architecture has the capacity to mediate the boundaries between the social territories of urban contexts. Educational programs become the vehicles that generate the dynamic social exchange necessary to do so."