Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons^™

Mela: Vessels Of Ephemeral Architecture, Neha Tummalapalli

Architecture Senior Theses

In states of temporality, conventions can be challenged and reimagined. Ephemeral architecture responds to fluctuating conditions and are often built with lightweight, recycled materials that allow for reconfiguration and reinvention. Melas, Sanskrit for "gathering," become a lens through which ad hoc urbanism can be further explored in its most idealized form. Melas include gatherings of all scales that are commercial, celebratory, or religious. The large crowds and temporary nature of these events allow for thoughtful ephemeral configurations to be tried and tested.

The largest gathering of humans in the world is the Kumbh Mela in Prayagraj, India. This religious pilgrimages …

The Shenzhen Activist Program`, Hyunggyu Kim, Jae Hyun Kim

Architecture Senior Theses

There is a gap between being an architecture student in western countries and working as an architect in underrepresented communities. Architect Teddy Cruz defines the role of an activist architect as "expanded mode of practice", and the task of "deigning the protocols or the interfaces between communities and spaces".

This thesis contends that architecture schools need to continue to embrace the widely-accepted norm of studios studying abroad and working in an international studio. Current study abroad programs tend to skew towards being touristic field trips and there is not a curriculum or programmatic investment in cultivating relationships between the visiting …

It's Not Easy Being Whole | Reevaluating The Relationship Of Part Whole In Pursuit Of A New High-Rise Vernacular, Josh Bransky

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has the power to structure societal relationships. Specifically, architecture's form can bring the balanced relationship between community and individual identity, as exhibited in vernacular single-family homes, to the housing tower. This thesis plans to achieve such a social orchestration through a nuanced understanding of formal part-to-whole relationships, or "differentiated" parts within the whole, exhibited in a 300' housing tower in Seattle, WA.

By carefully balancing the relation, material, scale, and form of each part, this project will achieve this difficult whole (of differentiated parts). Mining this middle ground will produce a housing tower in Seattle, which actively balances the …

Memory + Architecture | The Act Of Forgetting, Mariel Mora Llorens

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes the activation and repurposing of buildings associated with traumatic memories as a means of studying the ways in which architecture embodies memories and aids in the process of forgetting. Architecture and the built environment are linked to the creation and recollection of memories because they trigger four of the senses that are related to memory.

To forget is an active, not passive endeavor. Conscious forgetting is not an act of erasing memories, but transforming them by removing the emotional responses that are produced by our recollection of these memories. Like memories in our brains, buildings that have …

Anarchy City, Zhuocen Yao

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is a political manifesto that seeks to address the current chaotic and undesrable politcal environment on the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen (Anarchy City). Acknowledging that:

-Anarchy City has evolved from political borders whose purpose was to create division.

-Anarchy City possesses width and depth, is a 3-dimensional space of physical presence.

-Anarchy City is a "zone of exception" independent from the entities it sets out to separate.

-Anarchy City is anarchic, free of formal rules and regulations and thus free for interpretation.

-Anarchy City is deliberately distinguished from, and …

The Ottoman Han: Recovery Of A Lost Typology, Asli B. Germerli

Architecture Senior Theses

Developing countries around the world are coping with rapid population growth, the negative effects of globalization and the resultant political stress. Many of these cities have unique historical heritages and cultural identities that are being compromised by the monoculture and sameness of architecture that has come along with globalization. To preserve this historic fabric and cultural legacy, these cities must be willing to shape their future through self-expression driven by the local context. Yet, change is inevitable. The challenge is to find a balance between safeguarding the historical heritage while building new layers of history. In brief, the challenge is …

2041: A Communal Life, Nathaniel Thomas Danciger

Honors Capstone Projects - All

I posit that an architecture of collective cultural spaces, shared human and animal habitat, and affordable local building techniques, implemented through the design of a co-housing community, would promote a collaborative and communal way of life in harmony with the natural landscape and offer a model for the future development of former agricultural and suburban sites in a manner preferable to the current practices of the American suburb. This project is concerned with redefining the way that people in the United States will occupy rural landscapes in the future. The site for this new co-housing model is a field outside …

The Continuing Exodus: The Synagogue And Jewish Urban Migration, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

Catalog essay in Silent Witnesses: Migration Stories Through Synagogues Transformed, Rebuilt or Abandoned (Farmington Hills, MI, 2012) that deals with Jewish settlement and migration in American cities (especially New York, Boston and Cleveland) and the religious and community buildings erected and left behind in the process.

Urban Fabrication: The Architectural Heightening Of The Urban Tactile Sensibility A Fiber Arts Fabrication & Exhibition Center In Dublin, Ireland, Elizabeth Fallon

Honors Capstone Projects - All

The discipline of fiber arts has been in existence since the beginning of civilization to produce both functional equipment as well as aesthetically driven art pieces. The craft, at times highly specialized, often produces elements at the scale of the human body, due to the personal level by which fiber artifacts are produced. The making of artifacts and implementation of fiber art strategies have simultaneous cultural, environmental, formal, and gender-related relationships and implications. The design, construction and experience of buildings and inhabitable space at all scales can benefit from these relationships.

It is the contention of this thesis to merge …

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 …

Foglio, Syracuse University

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Foglio is a publication that covers the work produced by students and faculty of Syracuse University during their time in Florence. This edition covers the topics of urbanism as well as many contemporary issues.

Restoration Versus Demolition: Case History Of Amsterdam, New York, Raymond Joseph William Andrews

Architecture Master Theses

The purpose of this study is to disclose why Amsterdam, New York -- like thousands of other cities in the United States -- has shunned restoration. It is hoped these findings will prove the worth of the ordinary old buildings and that the revitalization of the urban fabric does not follow from demolition and newness.