Urban, Community and Regional Planning Commons^™

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 …

Monumental Revival, Michael Brandon Litton

Masters Theses

The post-industrial era has left textile mills programless and isolated from their towns, leaving these monuments in ruination. The villages surrounding these mill have began to decay as a part of the process of the mill closing. In search of a thriving economy, inhabitants of the town leave for opportunity elsewhere. This thesis explores a method of reviving a mill town by re-adapting the textile mill and injecting a transnational economic system into the town.

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 …

An Evidence-Based Approach To Designing Low-Income Housing Communities, Kaitlin Ward

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

In the field of interior design, functionality and aesthetics are combined to create spaces that are beautiful, but also serve a variety of purposes. Broadly categorized into residential and commercial sectors, interior design considers the health and wellness of users in a space, and strives to improve the standard of living. Quality interior design is often treated as a luxury afforded only to the wealthy, although the field can and should be applied to benefit a wider demographic. Intelligent design and space planning can be used as a tool for community-building, especially among populations often overlooked due to reasons such …

Resurrection, Zachery Terry

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In Sensory Design by Author Joy Monice Malnar, she describes 1.The perception of a physical construct. 2. Assessment of its individual composition in relation to a larger characteristic pattern. 3. Memories of prior personal and cultural experiences all play a part in conditioning ones perception and the totality of these factors can be described as a spatio-sensory construct.

The experience of an area built on the foundation of a rich cultural history should be always be dynamic whether to a visitor or resident.

But what do you call a place where none of this is present?

Today, Sweet Auburn …

Malaysian Shophouses: Creating Cities Of Character, Ashley Wagner

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

As a developing country, the urban landscape of Malaysia faces the same trends as many other cities worldwide: modernization at a rapid and unchecked pace. Due to the demand for new infrastructure and buildings, many vernacular building types are rapidly disappearing from the urban fabric, among them the Malaysian Shophouse. The shophouse was a common building style for over a century from 1840-1960s and is perhaps a typology of a previous era. Yet it offers many lessons on creating a city that embodies the character of the culture, the antithesis of the anonymous modern city. At its most basic program …

Provenance Of Place And Past: Designing A Bathhouse For Charlottesville (Online), Maya Chandler

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Site, to an architect, should comprise not only the topographical and physical markers of the place, but also the cultural, historical, atmospheric, ritualistic, or intangible qualities of place. New projects ask us to examine what has preceded the proposed architecture and invite it into the work that we place on a site—not ignoring the past, mowing it down, or covering it up—but allowing it to point us in the direction of an architectural intervention. This project redesigns the historic Albemarle County Jail in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, into a bathhouse. The place-based bathhouse design acknowledges several key elements in the jail’s …

Urban Design Guidelines For Places With Restorative Values, Nigel Cartlidge, Lynne Armitage, Daniel O'Hare

Daniel O'Hare

This paper evolved from a case study of three Gold Coast beach precincts that examined the complex relationships between the urban design attributes and spatial arrangement of beach precincts and their effect on public access to activity, amenity and facility. Australian and overseas urban design guidelines were examined along with the requirements of restorative places. The focus of the scrutiny of the guidelines was to identify the nature of urban design principles that enhance egalitarian, walkable access to the restorative values found in beach precincts. The intended goal was to produce urban design guidelines for walkable places with restorative values, …

Growing Portland: Not Whether, But How, Richard Barringer Phd, Joseph Mcdonnell Phd

Faculty Publications

In the 400 years since European settlement, Portland has survived the ravages of war, invasion, pestilence, conflagration, and economic depression and recession. Once a renowned manufacturing, trade, and shipping center, it now enjoys what might be called a post-industrial renaissance as a vibrant center for the arts, education, entertainment, and banking, legal, and medical services; and is frequently cited as one of America’s best small cities. As a result, Portland is growing today and is positioned for more growth.

The question, then, is not whether Portland will grow, but how well it will grow; or, how best to manage the …