Urban Studies and Planning Commons^™

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 …

From Building To Dwelling: Unfolding Infinity Through Bioregional Fulfillment, Sanjana Bhatnagar

Pitzer Senior Theses

The causes of anthropogenic climate change touch every feature of our modern-day existences. Approaches to sustainability tend to focus on material actions, but unsustainable practices are guided by an ontological orientation of individuality and human exceptionalism. This thesis provides an alternate account of being that decenters individuality through weaving the metaphysics of Fazang of the Huayan School of Mahayana Buddhism with the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger. To encompass the whole of the relational network that constitutes and conditionally defines our existence, I expand Heidegger’s account of locales as relational sites which are put forth solely by humans to an account …

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 …

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 …

Case Studies On Architecture And Economics Of Public Housing, John Kent

Honors Projects

Public is an historical and contemporary issue faced by many cities. Many new developments often include plans for some form of public or affordable housing. The purpose of this paper is to explore a few case studies in public housing through the lens of community development, architectural and urban design, and economic investment. The selected projects included: Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri (1954), Cabrini Green in Chicago, Illinois (1962), Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, Austria (1930), Caoyang New Village in Shanghai, China (1951), and various Soviet housing projects in the former Soviet Union (1922-1991). Historical and contemporary research was used …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings, …

Captives & Spoils In Chicago: Examining The Columbian Exposition’S Triumphal Procession Of 1893, Kazandra Zelaya

CMC Senior Theses

Daniel Burnham’s vision of a classical revival in the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 brought ancient Roman triumph with its captives and spoils to Chicago, Illinois. Burnham’s restorative urban utopia used Beaux-Arts architecture in the exposition’s White City that evoked the image of Roman triumphal processions. Beaux-Arts architecture did not extend into the Midway Plaisance, however, the model of Roman triumph extended into the ethnographic exhibits. By examining the ethnographic exhibits of the Midway as a version of a Roman triumphal procession, the exhibits highlighted novel types of captivity through sponsorships, wages, and erasure. Illustrations of American imperialism in the …

Some Notes On Congruency, Ryan J. Rusiecki

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Some Notes on Congruency is an examination of the seemingly arbitrary methods in which the built environment facilitates order among its inhabitants (eg., parking lot striping, roadway signs). Asphalt fissures observed at the main intersection in Red Hook, NY were used as a starting off point for making the photographs contained within this book. A lens with a focal length that closely resembles the range of human vision was used to communicate the experience of discovering fissures from my perspective as a pedestrian and motorist. I was most captivated by temporal, subtle fissures, such as the replanting of flower beds …

Squatters, Shanties, And Technocratic Professionals: Urban Migration And Housing Shortages In Twentieth-Century Chile, Nathan C. Norris

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the struggles of squatters and slum dwellers for housing prior to the 1973 coup in Santiago de Chile, Valparaíso, and surrounding areas, with a focus on the Frei era of the late 1960s. The work argues that severe urban overcrowding generated advocacy for housing during the rise of progressive and leftist politics in Chile. It also explores the dynamics of efforts to promote housing through the lens of the work of professionals in the fields of architecture and urban planning. It argues that Chilean professionals adopted modernist principals in the fields of architecture and planning when promoting …

Formal Displacement, Savannah Grace Dixon

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Walls Have Ears But They Also Speak –A Comparative Study Of Two Playgrounds, Anna Hirson-Sagalyn

Senior Projects Spring 2015

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Project Space(S) In The Design Professions: An Intersectional Feminist Study Of The Women's School Of Planning And Architecture (1974-1981), Elizabeth Cahn

Doctoral Dissertations

The Women’s School of Planning and Architecture (WSPA) was an ambitious, explicitly feminist educational program created by seven women planners and architects who used the school to introduce ideas and practices of the 1970s women’s movement into design and planning education in the United States. Between 1974 and 1981, WSPA organized five intensive, short-term residential educational sessions and a conference, each in a different geographical location in the United States, after which the organization ceased formal programming and the organizers moved on to other activities. The founders and participants involved in WSPA collectively imagined and created a feminist space for …

Emergent Morphogenetic Design Strategies, Dawn Gunter

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emergent morphogenetic designs provide a superior architectural response to programmatic, technical, structural, environmental and spatial requirements that conventional unit based architectural forms are too inflexible to fully address.

Architecture has reached an exciting stage in its development, where structures are attempting to behave more like nature, which does not function as a static state, but as a complex grouping of symbiotic processes which are constantly evolving to adapt to environmental changes.

Digital fabrication and materials engineering have promoted an explosion in formal architectural typologies. By utilizing these digital tools and enhanced materials to embrace a morphogenetic design strategy, architecture can …