Art and Design Commons^™

Manifesto Of Poor Images: Re-Imagine Guggenheim In The Post-Digital Age, Mengning He

Masters Theses

What is the role and value of low-resolution digital images, or "poor images," in a culture dominated by high-resolution and hyper-realistic digital media? This thesis investigates poor images from several perspectives: their technical characteristics, viewer’s experience, creative process, and artistic content.

With low-resolution as the defining characteristic of poor images, these pictures challenge the unceasing longing for ever-higher image resolution. While they seem unstable and untrustworthy, they challenge the obsession with higher resolution, offer an ambiguous visual experience, and provoke nostalgia. Poor images are open to appropriation, allowing users to become editors and co-authors. In the process of image-making, poor …

Moving Narration: A Journey Through History, Yincheng Zhu

Masters Theses

The Central Pacific, as the first transcontinental railroad, is a remarkable achievement in the history of the United States. However, the story of what happened during its construction, including the struggles of the first generation of immigrants from China who built the tracks, and the resistance of native Americans to cede their lands, is largely forgotten. The California Zephyr, as a long-trip train that currently runs on the Central Pacific tracks, is not only a means of transportation but should also tell the history of survival and resistance embodied by the landscape it moves through and tracks it travels over. …

A.R. Futuristic Scenario In Seun, Yookyung Lee

Masters Theses

Due to social distancing policies during the coronavirus pandemic, people have increasingly turned to digital platforms to fulfill what they previously enjoyed in face-to-face interactions. The high demand for virtual world services, called “metaverses,” has sparked discussions about the possibility of completely replacing the real world, which has raised questions about the role of architects in dealing with physical spaces. However, it is widely believed that digital elements will merge into the real world instead of completely replacing it, which makes augmented reality (AR) a key technology to study in the context of architecture.

In “Learning from Las Vegas,” Robert …

Tracing As Process, Lesley Su

Masters Theses

Tracing is a way to observe, document and translate, to be anchored in the physical working, to find personal occupancy in the built environment.

By establishing one-to-one relationships with the physical context, tracing enables us to comprehend objects in multiple dimensions. Through tracing, we can explore how two-dimensional drawings can be transformed into three-dimensional objects, and vice versa, objects can be documented through drawing to capture the essence of reality.

Based on materials and motion, research on tracing techniques guides me into how tracing could act as a process of art and architecture practice.

A Study Of Dwelling, Julia Mcarthur

Masters Theses

In teasing out natural phenomena in the unbuilt environment, through admiring beauty, and emphasizing the ordinary, meaningful moments can be brought about that can cause you to be more present with yourself and the world we live in. It is important to qualify that these spaces that encompass “ordinary” moments are not intended to be “idealized spaces,” but a domain that reconciles the chaos from the peaceful and the stress from the calm that is ever apparent in our daily lives. My thesis asks: Through critiquing the modernist condition of a prescriptive ideal space, how can we better understand how …

Spatial Reveries, Alexander Wenstrup

Masters Theses

We live in a hazy existence marked by rapid pace, development, digital consumption, and a deteriorating environment. Spatial Reveries hopes to counter the current trajectory and offer an alternative perspective by presenting one with moments of awe, discovery, and wonder to improve the disconnect between society and their surroundings. The work refers to a history of anamorphic art, cubism, deception, and optical phenomena in Western society. It operates on the urges and instincts of the artist, utilizing massing, light, transparency, horizons, and vastness, to challenge perceptions of space, time, and memory. Through the play of perspective and projection the work …

Liquid Border, Yingfan Jia

Masters Theses

A River is a mighty and constantly-evolving force, leaving behind an intricately designed and constantly changing system. Not just a river, the Rio Grande stretches all the way from Colorado before intersecting with the US-Mexico Border in southern Texas - a point where the powerful forces of nature now merge with a clearly-defined political boundary. The outcome of this is a unique ecological niche, which may often go unnoticed despite its distinctiveness.

Texas is famous for its farms and ranches, and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas was once an agricultural hub. However, urbanization and the depletion of water …

Translational Placemaking: The Diasporic Archive, Alia Varawalla

Masters Theses

Globalization and mass migration has propelled a hybrid existence, as individuals that occupy multiple geographies we live in a constant state of translation. Our museums and cultural institutions are in opposition to this; static, preserved and de-contextualized. At the intersection of printmaking and architecture, this thesis proposes a living archive to document the collective migratory journey across sites, materials, and hybrid identities. A network of centers for knowledge sharing and production centered on India and its diaspora. As art practices and people migrate, cultural production evolves with its context, gaining new meaning as it changes hands generationally and globally.

Cohabitation X Adaptation, 2100: A Climate Change Epoch, Kyle Andrews

Masters Theses

Some seventy-seven odd years in the future, the world as we know it will only be recognizable by those who are willing to accept it. The bustling metropolis of Boston Massachusetts has been transformed to appease the tides of Mother Nature as a consequence of human intervention. In the decades prior, humanity viciously fought to contain the effects of climate change, until many realized the colossal undertaking of such a battle. Municipalities across the globe had begun to accept that fighting the earth was no longer an option. Instead, the only hope forward was to adapt to a reality in …

Making Then Meaning, Ben Denzer

Masters Theses

This is an artist talk contained within a book. It is 816 pages and 49 minutes long. Closed captions run across the spreads. A video of this talk can be watched on bendenzer.com/making-then-meaning

At RISD, I’ve been prompted to expand the scope and tools of my practice and to reflect on questions of meaning in my work.

I spend my days making things, but I’ve never really had good answers to questions of why I make the things I make, or what their meaning is. I don’t think there are simple answers to these questions.

I think meaning comes from …

Beyond The White Box: Building Alternative Art Spaces For The Black Community, Elijah Trice

Masters Theses

BASED ON THE SYSTEMIC BIASES AND LACK OF SUPPORT FOR BLACK ARTISTS & DESIGNERS IN THE PRIMARY ART MARKET, THIS STIGMA DISCOURAGES BLACK AND BROWN COMMUNITIES FROM PURSUING A CAREER IN THE CREATIVE ARTS. MY GOAL IS TO UNDERSTAND THE UNDERLYING ISSUES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THIS DISPARITY, BY ANALYZING THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF BALTIMORE CITY AS A CASE STUDY.

Landscape De/Re-Construction Through Art, Manuel Gonzalez

Masters Theses

Contemporary landscape architecture practice and education primarily focus on ecological and technical interventions. The climate crisis we find ourselves in demands scientifically informed decisions and well-engineered execution of projects, but, more importantly, creativity and innovation.

The fine arts, which were once integral and foundational to design, are today largely unappreciated and appropriated. The spiritual power of Art, Aesthetics, and Beauty, explored at length through art history and theory, are often viewed as indulgent or secondary to execution. The gap between Art & Design has widened. As a result, designers face challenges in fostering in individuals the kind of care and …

Unearthing Complexity: Tangible Histories Of Water And Earth, Alexis Violet

Masters Theses

Unearthing Complexity investigates conceptions of time and surface through geological stories of the water and earth. Building on theories of deep time, hydrofeminism, critical zones, and grounding, I hope to foster a deeper awareness of time scales other than our own and a more tangible understanding of the embodied experience of matter in the universe. Working toward a new literacy of the water and earth in which they are recognized as living, changing bodies to which we are inherently tied at a molecular level, the site of this multiscalar inquiry occurs in the coastal zones of the Narragansett Bay where …

Garden Etiquette, Kai Wasikowski

Masters Theses

Garden Etiquette is an ongoing project concerned with landscape photography, environmental conservation, and the way they have both served the settler colonialist agenda. I focus specifically on the conservation ideologies shaped in New South Wales (NSW) Australia and New England, United States of America (USA) in the late nineteenth century and the settler visualities that underwrote them. Both countries’ histories were marked by photography and conservation’s common function of mythologising land as empty space—to be invaded, extracted and occupied, and wilderness—to be territorialized and protected, albeit, in distinct ways.

With British, German and Polish settler ancestry, born and raised on …

Reintroducing Hemp (Rongony) In The Material Palette Of Madagascar: A Study On The Potential Of Hemp Clay Components And Its Impact On Social And Ecological Communities., Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Masters Theses

When mentioning the word hemp, especially in the local language of Madagascar, the literal translation does not set it apart from marijuana, as they are both called “rongony” - creating the stigma around hemp as the negative stereotype of marijuana. However, the material has been used by the ancestors of Madagascar, as well as across cultures, in its fibrous form to produce fabrication like textile goods and packaging. During colonization, the prohibition of hemp intensified, and since then, any activity related to either of these plants is prohibited and will end in severe punitive measures. This thesis explores the strengths …

Postindustrial Playbook++, Maxwell Fertik

Masters Theses

There is no such thing as an undisrupted ecosystem. Every inch of the planet is impacted by industrial development and its chemical legacy has mutated the soil and water. As a response, this thesis is designed to promote abundant over extractive resources and visualize a post-industrial reality. It consists of a series of objects, writing and design research on the relationship of industry and ecosystem.

In many ways it is a playbook++, laying out possible strategies or “plays’’ for making do with what exists around us amid collapse.

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)(ي'ڑ*), a plant that grows in the most degraded …

The Center For Centering Dome, Olek Piechaczek, Ryan M. Scharf

Architectural Engineering

The Center for Centering seeks to create a large-scale healing center, conducive to individual centering of the mind and body. This mobile installation provides a relaxing, enclosed space while still maintaining a connection to the outdoors. The clients liked the idea of having a pop-up installation that could be easily set up as a touring display. With a deadline for installation looming in June 2022, a team of students had five months to design and manufacture the structure.

In winter 2022, the students developed custom geometry to minimize the number of individual parts and built a ¼ scale model of …

Recipes For Building Relationships, Adriana Lintz

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the history of women's access to education and the issues of gender disparity in education. I focus on single-gendered schools as I write from personal experience to describe the benefits for individuals in single-gender educational systems. I cite conflicting research on how men and women learn regarding biological, cognitive, and developmental differences. I illuminate some of the benefits of single-gendered education through research, experience, and personal communications. I write about the controversies and disparities regarding education and single-gender schools. I document research on the issues women face in education and the politics of women’s bodies and minds …

Wasteful To Useful: Investigating The Metamorphosis Of Textile For Construction Methods, Elizabeth Rodriguez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Every year, the average American generates over 80 pounds of textile waste. Since the 1990s, consumer behavior has shifted as mass production of items has become the norm. Production of clothing alone already impacts the environment as it requires immense amounts of chemicals, energy, water, and other natural resources. So, when consumers throw away clothing and brands decide to discard overproduced items, it ends up in landfills where it takes over 200+ years to decompose. Furthermore, a large percentage of unwanted clothing will be sent off to third-world countries to try to resale or recycle. Yet, the amount being imported …

Uni_Form Space: Exploring Environment Through Fashion+Architecture, Alanzo Price

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Henry Van de Velde advocated for the German concept, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ which translates to ‘total work of art’. This concept became popular during the Art Nouveau Movement around the 1890s when architects began utilizing their knowledge of scale to design fashion and other everyday objects like silverware. Though this concept has produced intriguing designs, architects still shy away from design processes that seem ornamental assuming that they will not produce work that is ‘architectural’. The goal of this project is to create an architectural environment by curating designed elements that use a recognizable design language present in fashion and architecture. The …

Restitution: Restoration Of A Post-Colonial Identity Through Memorial Architecture, Toyin Olurebi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The Nigerian Diaspora use the Pidgin phrase, “Naija no dey carry last”, is a constant reminder to generations to succeed no matter how far you are from Nigeria and creating opportunities from the ground. The impact of colonialism has tainted the rich history of Nigeria for generations through implanting a conceptual Terra Nullius (No Man’s Land) as a right to claim land. The Europeans’ Scramble for Africa forced neighboring ethnic groups into colonies and separated generations through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, growing the Diaspora. Slowing, West Africa was being exploited for its rich resources as well as its cultural identity, …

Archi-Comics, Timothy Gatto

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Humor in architecture is not at the forefront of architect’s minds, this comes from architects need to be deemed serious. This way of thinking is what has backed architects up into a corner banal and stagnant architecture. Architecture is the art of context, everything in architecture is referential. Humor is foundationally the exact same way, the incongruity theory makes humor possible by putting a concept into context with things and finding contradictions in the process, thus developing a joke. Each of these arts, humor and architecture, are that of context and when architecture is delivered like humor, it points out …

(Not) Knowing, Jared Friedman

Theses and Dissertations

Jared Friedman’s work creates monuments out of banal common objects. Through acrylic paintings on- Astroturf, burlap, canvas, and upholstery fabric- he explores the ambiguity of the unremarkable, such as the condenser coils on the back of a refrigerator. In, (Not) Knowing, he parses the difference between knowing and understanding.

Two Churches, One Vision: Sacred Architecture As A Reflection Of Benedictine Values And Liturgical Reform, Katheryn Wethli

Obsculta

This piece compares the architecture of the worshipping spaces of Saint Benedict's Monastery's Sacred Heart Chapel and Saint John's Abbey Church; presenting how the worshiping spaces uplift their monastic communities’ Benedictine values and demonstrate their monastic call towards evangelizing the Gospel in the modern world, highlighting the liturgical reforms of the mid-20th century.

Biodive, Morgana Faucett

Graduate Theses

Humans exist among an intertwined series of ecosystems and environments. As a species, we curate the spaces, these environments, that surround us to suit our internalized visions of the world. While such curation is not inherently negative, humanity’s industrial process of constructing our visions is not always handled with sustainable methods. This paper analyzes my creative work through the framework of architecture’s role in climate change and human impact, highlighting past and present building practices. Solutions for future practices will also be considered, specifically targeting the questions of construction material, building function, and repurposing of older buildings to achieve a …

The Liminality Of Identity And Place: Chinese Transracial Adoptees And The Built Environment, Roe Draus

Theses and Dissertations

International adoption of children from China began in 1992, and between 1999 and 2019, China adopted out approximately 267,000 children. At this time, around 82,000 Chinese children were adopted by American families and raised within a culturally and racially different environment. As a unique diaspora community that has been involuntarily and forcefully displaced, Chinese transracial adoptees (TRAs) are often fragmented across the United States. The outcomes have especially complex effects as their identities are often situated in perpetual in-betweenness as they must negotiate the meanings of their Chineseness, Chinese Americanness, and adopteeness. Since a sense of self and identity is …

The Cult Of The Nymphs: Identity, Ritual, And Womanhood In Ancient Greece, Ivana Genov

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Examining archeological and epigraphic evidence in its historical context, in this thesis I explore the Cult of the Nymphs venerated across ancient Greek poleis. I analyze the nymph’s profound cultural and historical impact that is often overlooked in the study of ancient Greece. Nymphs were female deities thought to embody ecological sites, such as fountains and springs, and became fundamental to polis identity. Their locations were often central to city plans, and their faces, depicted on coinage, became representative of the city itself. In the community, nymphs were integral to rituals for major life events, most often in the lives …

Procedural City Generation With Combined Architectures For Real-Time Visualization, Griffin Poyck

All Theses

The work and research of this paper sought to build upon traditional city generation and simulation in creating a tool that both realistically simulates cities and their prominent features and also creates aesthetic and artistically rich cities using assets that combine several contemporary or near contemporary architectural styles. The major city features simulated are the surrounding terrain, road networks, individual buildings, and building placement. The tools used to both create and integrate these features were created in Houdini with Unreal Engine 5 as the intended final destination. This research was influenced by the city, town, and road networking of Ghost …

Turning Green: Envisioning A Sustainable Future For Bowling Green, Kiana Fitzpatrick

Honors Projects

This project examines how smaller cities and communities can become more sustainable.

Adaptive Reuse Of Frosty Morn, Veronika Kalugina, Rebecca Tonguis, Heidi Gabriel, Peyton Kauffman

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

Frosty Morn, a former meat packing facility in Clarksville, TN, is now abandoned, dilapidated, and partially demolished. The site sits within the Red River District neighborhood, which consists of a diverse community of artists. The Red River District has been identified by the Clarksville Mayor’s Office as an area with potential for growth, catalyzed by repurposing the Frosty Morn building as an icon and beacon of the community. Highest and best use research, in addition to community voices, indicated programmatic needs of a farmer’s market, makerspaces, small business incubators, park space, and live/work units. Our presentation will describe how this …