Architecture Commons^™

Design For The Past, Zexi Wang

Masters Theses

The thesis project started off with an investigation of the Coal Gas Factory in Datong City, and an interview of a former factory employee. All relevent information is covered in the Report.

This thesis project proposes for an alternative factory design solution for the past (1980s), acknowledging its inevitable failure in its future (2000s).

The design acknowledges architecture’s nature of temporality, and is focused on making architecture transformative--creating space and environment for architecture to be transformed in order to accommodate updated programs and activities when its no longer able to serve its original purpose.

Change Of Plans: The Subversive Kit In The Planned Community, Hugo Caldwell

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between the prescriptive forces of urban planning with architecture. Through extracting elements and characteristics from an existing context, I implement a subversive system/kit of parts that work together to challenge the ideas behind top-down planning while painting a new picture of Columbia, MD, and planned communities as a whole.

The City Of Minas: The Founding Of Belo Horizonte, Brazil And Modernity In The First Republic, 1889-1897, Daniel Lee Mcdonald

Masters Theses

The foundation of Belo Horizonte in the state of Minas Gerais in 1897 represents a pivotal moment in urban planning and the search for modernity in Brazil. This thesis argues that the decision to move the capital of Minas Gerais at the outset of the First Republic and the designing of the new city encompassed an evolving vision of modernity that helped establish the planned city as a means to transport Brazil into the future. It also situates the effort to build Belo Horizonte within the wider theoretical discourse on modernity and the development of urban spaces in Brazil. The …

Connection Through (Re)Use: Repurposing Kingsport, Tennessee's Industrial Landscapes, Patrick Nathan Osborne

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to promote industrial reuse and sustainable planning principles as catalysts for adaptive redesign of public space in Kingsport, Tennessee. During the middle to late decades of the 19th century, the southeastern United States experienced a period of extreme industrial acceleration, stemming from the mining, manufacturing, and transportation advances of the Industrial Revolution. Concurrently, a transatlantic transition toward utopian planning principles was being cultivated by Briton Ebenezer Howard under the Garden City movement. Garden cities were planned, carefully zoned communities, containing designated areas for commerce, industry, and living. In 1919, American landscape architect John Nolen developed a plan …