Other Architecture Commons^™

Adaptive (Re)Purpose Of Industrial Heritage Buildings In Massachusetts A Modular Strategy For Building A Community, Riya D. Premani

Masters Theses

A significant portion of a building’s carbon emission comes from the materials used to construct it, primarily through fabrication and assembly. According to the World Green Building Council, this is called embodied carbon, and it makes up to 49% of the total emissions from global construction. Thus, new energy-efficient buildings can take from 10-80 years of time to offset just the carbon used in construction. Combined with such amounts of construction and demolition waste, new construction can be viewed as a wasteful or even destructive practice. Adaptive reuse presents a promising alternative method for creating new space, without the emissions …

Myths, Legends, And Landscapes, Oromia Jula

Masters Theses

The concept of myth-making in architecture involves the use of narratives, symbolism, and cultural references to shape the meaning and experience of built spaces. These myths hold significance beyond the distinction between fiction and reality; they exist to provide explanations and hold great influence over our lives. Understanding a place and its identity requires an exploration of the narratives and beliefs associated with it, as they directly shape the physical environment. By embracing and incorporating these mythologies, designers and planners can create meaningful and authentic spaces that resonate deeply with people.

Communities, being socially constructed, rely on unifying narratives that …

Scruffy City, Variegated Spaces, Rare Places, Royal Moore Starr

Masters Theses

The general basis of this thesis is to provide a critical examination of city branding and its implications on the built environment. Geographically fixated upon on the city of Knoxville, TN, Scruffy City, Variegated Spaces, Rare Places explores a unique relationship between cultural identity and architectural form. This project is an attempt to understand and harness an allusive attitude that undoubtedly shapes the architecture of this city. Therefore, the project itself is an open-ended set of design operations that inherently challenge the nature of architectural process in an attempt to study and emulate scruffiness in the built environment.

The project …

Z-Cube: Mobile Living For Feminist Nomads, Zi Ye

Masters Theses

Homes proclaim our social standing and reflect the trend of the times. This project seeks to explore and redefine the relationship between modern homes and modern women who strive for mobile life styles.

Modernism and globalization have brought us a new way of living that could have never been imagined before— our workspace and homes are no longer limited to a specific unit but have extended to the entire globe. The physical changes compelled by modernity have also complemented the changing role of women. Since the beginning of the 20th century, modern women have expanded their lives outside of their …

Gra[In]Vincible, Kimberly Ann Wojcik

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the stitching of a community back together at a scale that is appropriate to the existing demographics. The memory of place and time are still evident in the relics that are the Buffalo Grain Elevators; the only changing variable is the rate of population and affordability in the adjacent Old First Ward.

The economic downturn of big business and the havoc it wreaked on the worker community created a ripple effect in large enough scale to grab hold of an entire city. In an attempt to bulldoze rust covered structures and knock down abandoned homes rather …

Developing Maker Economies In Post-Industrial Cities: Applying Commons Based Peer Production To Mycelium Biomaterials, Grant R. Rocco

Masters Theses

Our current system of research and production is no longer suitable for solving the problems we face today. As climate change threatens our cities and livelihoods, the global economic system preys on the weak. A more responsive, equitable, and resilient system needs to be implemented. Our post industrial cities are both products and victims of the boom-bust economies employed for the last few centuries.
While some communities have survived by converting to retail and services based economies, others have not been so fortunate and have become run-down husks of their former bustling selves. The key to revitalizing these cities is …

Layers Of Staro Sajmište [Re]Opening Dialog, Jared Samuel Wilkins

Masters Theses

This research analyzes and tests the application of a process driven memorial intervention on the contested territory of Staro Sajmište, Novi Belgrade’s former 1937 International Exposition Fairgrounds that was adapted into a concentration camp in 1941. Today, Staro Sajmište exists as makeshift living for an impoverished community. Traditional memorial and conservation efforts have been attempted on the site over the last 60 years; however, none have achieved an appropriate depth of impact. I propose to revisit Staro Sajmište through an intervention not recognized as a literal memorial, but rather as the transformation and re-appropriation of the urban fabric into an …

Utopia In The Apocalypse: Creating A Framework Of Survival Systems, Bryan E. Toepfer

Masters Theses

As medicines continue to evolve, as well as our tendency to misuse and abuse them, viruses become more and more resilient. While the flu is largely an inconvenience which at its worst may result in a missed day of work, it bears the risk of returning to the days of old when it was a terminal disease. With the imminent risk of resistant super viruses emerging,New York Cityhas taken precautions to prepare for the worst case scenario. If deemed necessaryNew Yorkhas plans to completely quarantine and isolate the city from the world. This provides us with the perfect opportunity to …

Emergent Opportunities: Urban Design In Small Town Appalachia, Phillip Geiman

Masters Theses

This thesis looks at urban design within small town Appalachia and its role in low density and low resource communities.

Small towns are facing a critical juncture in this point in their history. As most areas transition from a heavy depend acne on industrial based economy to an uncertain post-industrial, they face challenges unique to rural areas. Specifically, this thesis looks at “urban design” in distinctly non-urban areas and seeks to answer the question of what is the function and what is the role of design at such a large (urban) scale.

The idea is that what distinguishes small towns …

Block 271, Reviving An Industrial Artifact, Jared Thomas Pohl

Masters Theses

Vacant industrial sites are scattered throughout our cities all across the country. These sites, these remnants of industry, are occupied by a very interesting category of buildings. They are artifacts from an industrial era that served very unique and specific functions. These service buildings suffered programmatic failure and have lost their vitality. They have entered a form of hibernation, waiting for the post-industrial epoch to wake them up.

The building stock under investigation makes up a large portion of the city’s structures. Identifiable by their heroic scale, clean articulated lines and tendency to be vacant, these service buildings raise arguments …