Architectural History and Criticism Commons^™

Architecture That Bows.Pdf, Andreas Luescher

Andreas Luescher

Into Instrument: A Case For The Musical Tectonic, Alex Lievens

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will observe and investigate the relationship between musical objects and architectonic construction. It will begin to test relationships between musical notational systems and architectural notational systems. Musical instruments can provide key insights into how architecture might possess the same qualities of interactivity, action and personal value that musical instruments inherently own.

Hacking The Urban Village | Architecture As Board Game, Xuyun Liu

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes the board game as a new research methodology and platform for the study of southern China's urban villages.

Hacking the Urban Village examines the urban villages that have, in recent decades, become a common but informal settlement type in China as a result of China's unprecedented period of urbanization.

This research forms the contextual core of a board game where game settings present the current urban conditions and players may explore alternative forms of urbanism. The board game offers players the opportunity to investigate both he formal conditions of the urban village life along with it attendant …

Review: City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin In Urban Renewal America, Anthony Raynsford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Architecture On Parade: Rejuvenating Venice Biennale, Fan Fang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is interested in speculating on new ways to exhibit architecture. As it is a culturally relevant event, the thesis will borrow strategies in other forms of popular cultural production to determine how to rejuvenate architecture exhibition. Parade and traveling circus are cultural rituals that have unique formats that give actual shape to culture. They present in a live and lively manner, and they travel among places to enlarge a wider audience.This thesis project seeks to learn from these cultural rituals such as the parade and the traveling circus to improve and expand current formats of exhibition and celebration …

Divided Cyprus, Nicola Kyverniti

Architecture Thesis Prep

Creating urban interventions in the city at different scales and sites strategically chosen to attract the city population would have the potential to expose the state of the urban fabric. Nodes designed to alter the perspective of the occupant. Exposure created through the language of architecture. Revealling dividing elements emphasizes the need for a true symbol of dialogue and freedom of discussion between the separated communities. At a global scale, conflict is not something that can truly be resolved or diminished. The notion of conflict occurs in certain locations at different periods, following the evolution of political, social, economic, and …

The Question Of Slim | A Critical Look At Manhattan's Recent Trend Towards Slenderness, Raymond Sova

Architecture Senior Theses

Manhattan’s real estate market since the turn of the 20th century to present day can be characterized as an extreme optimization of the economical elements of architecture. Most of the buildings in Manhattan’s diverse and complex skyline share a tenacious desire to maximize the profitability and feasibility of a site while minimizing overall building expenditure. This concept is defined in Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York,’ as the relationship between “the Needle” and “the Globe.” Seemingly immeasurable wealth and investment have given rise to a new sub-typology of super-tall strikingly skinny (Slim) residential skyscrapers that may very well result in the demise …

Housing Projects And Cityscape In Vienna: Apartment Buildings As Fortresses From Metaphor To Reality, Michael J. Zeps S.J.

History Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Sponge Logics | Rethinking Thresholds Through A Porous Mass, Tanvi Sanghvi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the separation and distinction between the envelope and the mass in contemporary architecture is to be resisted. Architect and theorist, Greg Lynn, argues that mass “is not only the outward shape of a building; it’s also the projection of shape, plan organization, spatial and sectional type, and façade”1.This critical reevaluation of the mass, and its relationship to the interior spaces and the building’s face, is particularly pertinent to the modern construction in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. The character of the historicist and postmodern buildings that make up Jaipur is made solely based on the applied façade. This …

Releasing The Unconsciousness | Visualizing The City, Taihui Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores how subway stations lost their identity as strategic node of connectivity which constructed the prevailing image of New York City. In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Sigmund Freud famously compared the human mind to the city of Rome. He argues that both contain strata of memory and history which have accumulated over the years through a messy and ad-hoc process. Like Rome, New York City also has a layered history, albeit not as deep.

This thesis contends that the subway entrance serves as an experiential entre into the unconscious experience of the unknown elements of the past. …

Parity, Hamza Hasan

Architecture Senior Theses

Digital data contributes to an increasingly alienated aspect of our infrastructure. The complex practices of the Internet produce highly specified, engineered objects. Though their forms are ‘optimized,’ their intentions are not: the two primary considerations for the development of the infrastructure of the Internet are energy and security. Each category presents its own deliberations, but both often produce non-architectural, infrastructural elements beyond public visibility. The hidden infrastructure of data storage and mining (the indexing and analysis of data and traffic) produces spaces outside the agency of normative architectural discourse.

The key consideration for the design of the Internet is redundancy, …

Architecture For Housing: Multi-Function Transitional Space Of Housing In China, Zhaoqing Zhang

Masters Theses

This dissertation defines and develops transitional space of housing, which is adaptable to the Chinese environment. It is the integration of community, culture element and sustainable development. Although the lifestyle is changing today, the concept of courtyard which comes from the Chinese vernacular building remains in peoples’ minds. It’s not only a form but also an expression of national culture and a sense of space. There are some attempts for Chinese architects to renovate or reconstruct the “courtyard”, but most of them are low-rise buildings. Facing with the high density, high volume urban living environment, Chinese architects only set vii …

Discover Joyce's Dublin By Reading And Running, Barry Sheehan

Academic Articles

James Joyce told his friend Frank Budgen. “‘I want’ said Joyce, as we were walking down the Universitätstrasse, ‘to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.’” (Budgen, 1960, p.67, 68).

This research looks at the relevance of Dublin to Joyce’s writings and to the relevance of Joyce’s writings to Dublin. It is concerned with the virtual Dublin of Joyce’s writings, the physical manifestation of Dublin over time, and the relationships between them.

Numerous scholars read and analyse the writings of Joyce …

P-04 Cavan Burren 2015 Project, Rhonda Root, Robin Johnson, Ariel Solis, Abelardo Rivas

Celebration of Research and Creative Scholarship

The Cavan Burren is a plantation forest within the Marble Arch Caves UNESCO Global Geopark overlay along the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland border. The exposure of Cavan Burren’s "relict landscape" resulted from a 2012 partial clear fell. Our multidisciplinary team of researchers in architecture, technology, ecology, fine arts, and archaeology investigated domestic architecture reflected in three stone configurations: circular/semicircular sites, rectangular sites, and tomb structures. We also investigated human action on pedestal boulders (PBs), which had been modified by sculpting, splitting, and cutting away. Our first goal was to show human action on structures by using three-dimensional (3D) …

University Of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Master Plan, Shirley Dugdale, Gerald Schafer, Bryan Harvey, James Cahill, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Leslie Button, Theresa Warner, Pam Rooney, John Cunningham

Ludmilla D Pavlova

Amherst Libraries, which is on the edge of significant change moving into a new era serving scholars, researchers and learners in the 21st Century. Over the last decade the Library has been a leader in many initiatives: increasing development of digital resources; collaborating with the Five Colleges Consortium, which was one of the first in the country to develop a shared book depository; developing a highly successful Learning Commons that engages partners in providing a broad range, of services and settings for learners; providing services through partners welcomed into library facilities, such the peer learning activities of the Learning Resources …

Umass Amherst Campus Master Plan Sustainability Chapter, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Kylie A. Landrey, Somayeh Tabatabaee Pozveh, Ezra Small, Ted Mendoza, Jason J. Burbank, Robert Ryan, Dennis Swinford, Niels La Cour, Alexander Stepanov

Ludmilla D Pavlova

The UMass Amherst Campus Master Plan Sustainability Chapter articulates the manner in which the Campus Master Plan 2012 principles translate into specific recommendations for campus systems development in support of future smart growth. It summarizes the current physical campus-scale planning projects that Facilities & Campus Services have completed during and after the Master Plan process, and incorporates other operational and educational initiatives that have engaged our campus community as we plan for sustainability. The CMP Chapter is organized in three major sections: i) sustainability overview; ii) campus master plan systems; iii) current initiatives; and iv) next steps. The first section …

Building In The Chester, Ridley, And Crum Watersheds – Outside And Inside, Walter Cressler

Walt Cressler

No abstract provided.

Evocación Y Reivindicación De Las Vanguardias Artísticas En La Arquitectura Moderna Con Ambición Social En Las Novelas Catálogo De Formas, De Nicolás Cabral, Y La Trabajadora, De Elvira Navarro, María-José Furió Sancho

Dissidences

Dos novelas publicadas en 2014 parecen dialogar en torno al tema de la función social de la arquitectura y del papel del artista –el creador, el escritor— en el seno de la sociedad en la que vive. Son Catálogo de formas, del argentino afincado en México, Nicolás Cabral (1975), y La trabajadora, de la sevillana instalada en Madrid Elvira Navarro (1978). La primera, una biografía ficcionalizada del arquitecto y pintor mexicano Juan O’Gorman, plantea una reivindicación de las vanguardias artísticas mientras La trabajadora describe los efectos psicológicos de la precarización laboral en una joven escritora española …

Victor Horta's Illusion Of Space, Courtney Manning

Student Research

An exploration of Victor Horta's architectural illusion of space.

Victoria Harbour In Hong Kong: 150 Years, Vivian Ngo

The STEAM Journal

The image depicts the changes to the coastline of Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong in the past 150 years. The historic photo shows a developing commercial harbour during the colonial time; overlaid with a sketch of the current skyscraper filled metropolitan city after 150 years of land reclamation.