Art and Design Commons^™

Photography, Architecture, And Environment: An Architectural Analysis Of Edward Ruscha’S 26 Gasoline Stations, Rebecca Tonguis

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

This presentation explores Edward Ruscha’s photobook 26 Gasoline Stations through an architectural lens. Specifically, it treats Ruscha’s work as historic evidence of how consumption, industry, and commodity have infiltrated all kinds of environmental contexts through architectural manifestations. Known for being the first artist’s book, 26 Gasoline Stations ambiguously exists as both fine art and documentation of everyday conditions, with the overall graphic character highlighting its perceived focus on overarching narrative. Since gasoline stations are the primary subject of each of the 26 photographs, the subject of this work is arguably architecture, suggesting that the historic relationship between mass gas consumption—or …

Ripe Spoils, Yan Cynthia Chen

Theses and Dissertations

Chen’s practice primarily focus on sculptures and installation. She explores the interplay between the idea of nature and the constructed environment, by examining how language informs what we know. The central thesis, "Ripe Spoils", employs citrus fruits as symbols for bodily experiences and personal identity, investigating their cultural and historical significance. Her sculptures summon the qualities and embedded meanings in materials like paper pulp and clay, wax and citrus fruits, often resulting in abstracted forms evocative of the human body. This thesis paper and exhibition reflect on themes like mortality and the essence of self.

Chinese-English Dictionary Enable Select Search …

Place-Conscious Vs. Place-Bound, Julie Avetisyan

Theses and Dissertations

Julie Avetisyan’s installation of sculptures, paintings and printmaking works are driven by an exploration of constructed identity that is not place-bound, but place-conscious. In this paper, she explores how her art practice generates world building under the context of the Armenian Diaspora – considering histories of indigeneity, migration, and assimilation.

Geometry Through Architectural Design, Maureen T. Carroll, Elyn Rykken

LASER Journal

In her 1912 geometry book, Mabel Sykes surveys complex and beautiful architectural designs from around the world to inspire exercises on geometric proof, construction and computation. In over 1800 exercises, Sykes analyzes geometric patterns from ornamental and structural features found in tile mosaics, parquet floors, Gothic windows, trusses and arches. As Sykes' writes, ``Geometry gives, as no other subject can give, an appreciation of form as it exists in the material world" . We have chosen four examples to illustrate how her appealing designs and the accompanying exercises of this hidden gem can be incorporated into any geometry course.

Sanctuary, Harsha Kejriwal

Masters Theses

When I first arrived in New England, I was accustomed to thinking of winters as short but pleasant periods. For me, winter was a break from the strong and relentless sunlight of summer in Central India. But the contrast between my childhood winters and the same months in the Northeastern United States was dramatic. Statistically, Providence has an average of five hours of sunlight a day whereas Central India enjoys 9.5 hours during its coldest months. This pronounced change in light piqued my interest. I was struck by the various phenomena created by natural light during these cold months. Sunlight, …

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 …

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 …

Rooted In Topsoil, Jiaying Wang

Masters Theses

Disillusioned by my transnational identity, I have come to realize that my sense of belonging is no longer attached to any physical location, but instead to a state of mind, to an intimacy with the world. My notion of home is an obscure and unsettled—at times utopian—idea, which can be infinitely decoded, re-positioned and re-established psychologically. This thesis is an investigation of that liminal state, questioning the paradoxical place at the intersection of longing and belonging, interior and exterior, rootedness and uprootedness. Through a collection of short essays that accompany projects, I seek to unpack the precarious emotional complexities that …

Innovator - Spring 2023

Innovator

03 - The President’s Column

06 - Time Machine: Fabric of the Heart

10 - The Nexus: News at Jefferson

20 - Student to #Philebrity: Influenced by Jefferson

24 - The Light Fantastic

30 - We Are One Jefferson

34 - Question & Innovate

36 - Reimagine

40 - Ram Roundup

44 - Class Notes

56 - In Memory

58 - Trivia

Innovator - Summer 2022

Innovator

05 - The Provost’s Column

08 - Time Machine: John K. Mitchell’s Automaton Chess Player

12 - The Nexus: News at Jefferson

22 - Empowering Amputees to Conquer the Seas

26 - The Legend: Coach Herb Magee ’63, HOF ’11

34 - Common Threads

38 - Pitch Please

44 - Question & Innovate: Natasha A. Trice ’14

48 - The Future is Now Farewell to Dr. Stephen K. Klasko

52 - A Father’s Life Inspires a Son’s Giving

54 - Reimagine

60 - Ram Roundup

64 - Class Notes

72 - In Memory

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 …

Blueprints, Lauryn E. Welch

Theses and Dissertations

“Blueprints” is an open letter on chronic illness and its shaping of the artist’s partnership and painting practice. Through the framework of a house—foyer, kitchen, library, bedroom, garden—put in relation to the body, this paper examines the vibrant matter inside, as an alliance of parts including people, objects, and spaces.

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 …

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 …

Michael’S Mouth, Peter Olshavsky

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

“Michael’s Mouth” examines the virtuoso performance of small mouth sounds (“um,” “ah,” etc.) in MOS’ 2006 video, Alternate Ending 1: The Glimmering Noise. In this performance, “Michael” deftly uses non-words to advance a non-discursive argument about architecture as a form of attention in the post-critical imaginary.

In-Between Spaces: Atmospheres, Movement And New Narratives For The City, Paul Alexander Stoicheff

Masters Theses

We often think of architecture as distinct buildings, yet as we move through the city we continuously pass through a built environment that is a collage of buildings. These spaces between buildings are underestimated as influences on our experience of everyday life in the city. Considering architecture as linked existential experiences through spaces rather than confined to individual buildings is more in line with our experience of the city as a series of interconnected spaces and places. Rather than describing a single, static architecture through words, how can we express this linked experience of spaces dynamically through narratives? Can writing …

Designing Neighbourhoods, Fernando Bajo, Ezequiel Collantes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The chairs' editorial introduction to the theme track 'Designing Neighbourhoods'.

After Practice: Messy Relations In The Ethnographic Study Of Design, Arlene Oak, Claire Nicholas

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The Thinking While Doing (TWD) project was an ambitious “research-creation” project that involved the designing and building of several full scale, “real” structures by architecture students and professors in “design-build” education. The grant also included two ethnographers (as well as scholars from the humanities). Together the participants in TWD were engaged in intersecting and distinct modes of research, ranging from architecture practice to philosophical reflections. While there were intentions for the insights of the ethnographers to ex-tend and inform knowledge of practice, as the TWD structures were created, it became evident that undertaking ethnography coincident with designing and building was …

Australian Architectural Education In The Pluriverse, Daniel Huppatz, Kirsten Day

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Among the design disciplines, architectural education in Australia has a unique con-straint: accreditation. On the one hand, competency requirements by accrediting bod-ies potentially limit an educator’s autonomy and curriculum development. On the oth-er, competencies define and regulate a profession by ensuring standard knowledge and skills. In this paper, we analyse the pedagogical and professional impacts of the 2021 “National Standard of Competencies” for Australian architects, particularly the inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge for the first time. Together with the recent Indige-nous Design Charter – Communication Design, these competencies signal a shift in Australian architectural and design education that suggests a vision …

Fragments Of Frictions: A Route To Spatial Manoeuvres For Uplifting Wellbeing In School Environments, Ruth Stevens

DRS Biennial Conference Series

In the context of design for human flourishing (DfHF), this paper reports on a two-week research-by-design-and-built project by master students in (interior) ar-chitecture. A cocktail of qualitative research experiments was executed to function as a seismograph that registered fragments of frictions in the wellbeing of K-8 pupils. This particular study firstly explains how the research cocktail was designed, based on the ethnographic, participatory and immersive methods infused by the theoretical guidelines of DfHF theory, and secondly seeks to reveal how an analysis of the well-being related results from the experiment cocktail can lead to a novel type of design problem …

Augmented: Design And Ethnography In/Of An Architecture, Computer Science, And Textile Research-Creative Collective, Claire Nicholas, James Forren, Derek Reilly

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This paper introduces a multi-disciplinary research-creation project that examines the embodied and social nature of textile design and making at different structural scales – from beaded accessories to architectural components. Bringing together anthropology, architecture, computer science, and textile craft, “Gesture and Form” seeks to develop effective and ethical pedagogies for teaching design and handcraft with new materials and technologies. Specifically, the project explores the potentialities and limitations of a head-worn augmented reality (AR) system that documents, encodes, and later guides making practices. The discussion first introduces different disciplinary frameworks for understanding and researching embodied knowledge, before sketching the multi-disciplinary research …

Conceptual Chair Designs: Study Of Materials & Craftsmanship, Aram Festekjian

Honors Theses

This thesis is a study of different chair concepts made with various techniques and

methods. Usually, when taking a seat, people do not take a moment to appreciate the architecture and design thinking incorporated into a chair. The objective of my project is to have the viewer take a moment to appreciate and feel a particular way before taking a seat. I am inspired by many different architects and designers who have created chairs within their artistic careers. The thesis work includes four different conceptual chair sculptures made from steel, plywood, expanding foam, bullet liner, and bungee. When bringing my …

Disorientations, Noah Greene-Lowe

MFA in Visual Art

The materials that make up the ordinary and mundane in the United States also reinforce and normalize a white spatial imaginary. Conventions of mapping, imaging of land and landscape, and elements of the built environment continue to orient us in a logic of space as property. In my sculptural work, I employ strategies of disorientation and creative repair, or reconstruction, to unsettle the spatial practices of whiteness and structures of power embedded in the mundane, the familiar, and the domestic. I consider the planned cohousing community where I grew up as an influence on my work, and my whiteness. By …

Micro-Metropolis: Space, Work, And Waste In The Maquettes Of Constant And Bodys Isek Kingelez, Shoshanah B. Rosen

Theses and Dissertations

Constant Nieuwenhuys and Bodys Isek Kingelez both create futuristic utopias in the form of architectural maquettes. This comparative study explores each artist’s reverence for technology, global connectivity, and new forms of economic production. It argues that these utopias represent desires endemic to late modernity and capitalism, including consumption, nomadism, automation.

Scenes Of Screens, Scenes Of Sodomy: The Role And Impact Of The Folding Screen In Eighteenth-Century French Erotic Novels, Katherine Delony

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

This project provides an analysis of the folding screen as a literary agent and signifier which reflects the cultural happenings of the eighteenth century with specific emphasis on new ideas about queerness which arise in France during the eighteenth century. I will focus primarily on the Marquis de Sade’s (1740-1814) Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la vertu (1791) (as well as La Nouvelle Justine, 1797) and John Cleland’s (1709-1789) Le Fille de Joie (translated 1751) with reference to Jean-Louis Fougeret de Monbron’s (1706-1760) Margot la Ravaudeuse (1753), Sade’s Philosophie dans le boudoir Jean-François de Bastide’s (1724-1798) La …

Neo Development Of The Workplace Environment In Response To Evolutionary Social Changes, Dafne Odette

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study is to identify the needs and wants of remote workers to support their health and well-being in response to evolutionary social changes. Many workers were once tethered to live in the city where their job office resided. Additionally, economic forces have long been a deciding factor in where one lives. The COVID-19 virus of 2020 provided an opportunity for many people to work remotely to control the virus (Latham, Higgins, & Judish, 2020). This has allowed people to retain higher salaries while living in rural areas where the cost of living may be lower. In 2021, some businesses …

Genius Loci: Capturing The Distinctive Roman Spirit Through Pochoir, Carlee Mcguire

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone explores the concept of genius loci through photographic and artistic exploration and does so through a lens of study set on Rome, Italy. The first major goal of the process has been to discover the elements, moments, physical textures, and other design elements that comprise the genius loci of a city or space. The second goal has been to partake in a process that can be used by myself and other designers in efforts to make more conscious design decisions — gaining a better understanding of ‘sense of place’ can assist designers in straying from globalized, placeless design.