Interior Architecture Commons^™

The Importance Of Passive Sustainable Design, Caitlin Raymond

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Sustainability is a topic regularly discussed within today’s culture. Many people are worried about society’s future due to pollution, excessive use of nonrenewable resources, and more. Even with all of the growing awareness and promotion, the historical context and more specifically the passive design techniques used in buildings have received little attention. It is imperative to increase this awareness, as well as increase the application of passive sustainable techniques to ensure that sustainable building is efficient and effective. This project has two portions, a literature review and a design project. The literature review assembles research and techniques collected on passive …

Nest - Caring For The Caregiver, Ashley Whitehead

Theses and Dissertations

Today, more than ever, there exists an overlap between hospitality and healthcare industries; with the impact being felt in the way hospital interiors are designed. This influence impacts the patient’s experience but focuses very little on the experience of the caregiver. Caring for a sick child takes an emotional, mental, and physical toll on a family. It is especially challenging to care for a sick family member when away from the comfort and security of the family’s private home. This project explores that challenge through the interior design of a space that, for both patient and family, is restorative, healing, …

Momentum Clinic For Teen And Young Adult Cancer Patients, Merian O'Neil

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the needs of teen and young adult cancer patients undergoing long-term chemotherapy treatments and the design of an outpatient clinic that accommodates this population’s unique needs. Most teens endure long-term treatments in a pediatric facility targeted primarily for children, while others are treated in adult facilities. Teens have different privacy and social needs than children, and while they are not adults, they are involved in their own treatment decisions, unlike children. The target age group for this study is teens and young adults, ages thirteen to twenty-two. A common theme emerged from research and interviews conducted in …

A City Winery - Revealing Process + Promoting Interaction, Eline Warren

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis project is an exploration of process in both design and winemaking. Wine has long been a part of Virginia’s history and culture and in recent years has influenced architecture and design that is specific to winemaking and hospitality. Through an interior intervention, this project addresses the many challenges of marrying production and hospitality design criteria under one roof. The final design encourages understanding of process through links between production and consumption with both a winemaking facility and laboratory that are integrated into the surrounding hospitality-oriented spaces. This visual exposure to the facility stimulates patron interest and intuitive knowledge …

Caution: Line-Of-Sight In Icu Designs, Diane C. Bartos

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Projects

It has been estimated that by the end of 2015, the U.S. will spend approximately $200 billion in new healthcare facilities construction. Infection prevention, patient and family satisfaction, and technologies influence contemporary designs of critical care units. All of these impacts have created larger patient care units, with a majority of single patient rooms. These larger spaces have created challenges for the clinicians to maintain the line-of-sight. The line-of-sight is one tool clinicians often use to maintain patient safety.

Since the seminal publication by the Institute of Medicine in 1999, patient safety concerns have escalated after revealing numerous deaths in …

Creating Healthy Schools: Identifying The Positive Impacts Of Practicing Sustainable Interior Design In Education Facilities, Deborah Lindsey Ketchum

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

A significant amount of research identifies a relationship between the physical environment of educational facilities and how the design can positively or negatively impact teachers, staff and students. Evidence indicates that America’s school facilities are outdated, decaying, and need repair. This presents an opportunity for interior design professionals to create high-quality learning environments through an emphasis on sustainable design practices.

This thesis examines interior spaces of two high school buildings in North Mississippi. Site A incorporated sustainable design principles while Site B did not. To limit influential variables, the two sites were selected because of the location and similar population …

Subversive Supermarket: Tactical Interjections Into The Everyday Experience, Taylor Johnson

Architecture Thesis Prep

The architecture of the supermarket and the landscape of food production, processing, distribution, and consumption it is situated within, further isolates the relationships consumers have with their food and routines. Investigating the intersection between socio-political, and economic constructs that shape the supermarket, the psychology of the interior constructs, and uses of spatial theory to frame architectural tactics of intervention, the thesis aims to embed a narrative subscript into the existing supermarket experience, to expand beyond its systemic constructs and user policies.

Threshold, Kristin King

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the nature of interiority and exteriority, the relationship between the centered inner self and the peripheral, the physicality of occupying the inside of a space or viewing that space from the outside.

Designing Work: A Study Of Collaboration And Concentration In Open-Plan Offices, John Walsh

Academic Articles

This article looks at the design of open-plan offices, particularly in relation to the impact of spatial design on different work-modes. It examines the history of the open-plan office, looking at how the open-plan workplace has evolved. It reports the findings of a survey on office design of 150 office workers across multiple industry sectors, job types and age categories. Finally, assuming there will not be a return en masse to the traditional, space hungry, cellular office for most knowledge workers this article considers what have we learned so far, and how spaces can be designed to support different work-modes, …

Greening Restaurant Design: A Study Of The Implementation Of Leed Certification In Restaurant Design, Shelly Schmidt

Interior Design Program: Student Creative Activity

With a significant amount of interest in sustainability and green design in the commercial industry, this thesis examined the effects of the implementation of LEED certification specifically within the built environment of restaurants. Being one of the largest energy consumers and waste producers in the commercial retail industry, restaurant stakeholders have a social responsibility to safeguard the environment from such detriments imposed upon by the daily operations of their business. Yet, few owners have chosen to implement green practices or sustainable features into the design of their restaurant.

Case study comparisons of six restaurants, three LEED certified and three non-LEED …

Conceptual Thinking: How To Quantify Meaning In Projects And Processes Through Structured Non-Linear Thinking, Marijn Van Der Poll

Interior Design Program: Student Creative Activity

Things have meaning. Your job, your smartphone, even your insurance has another layer of meaning than its intended reason for existence. Products have become complex combinations of applications and features so small, that their shape no longer characterizes them. As people we have evolved into empowered consumers looking for purpose in our lives and in the things we buy. Advertising discovered the power of meaning more than a century ago. Since then, what has proven difficult is to quantify meaning. The skills we are taught in our educational system and the processes we apply in business fall short of identifying …

Power Shift: A Catalyst For Architectural Transformation : Rapid Transit, Cincinnati, Dachamont Kaewket

Masters Theses

Large-scale architectural projects rely on political stability, and take considerable time to realize. The survival of an architectural development depends on outliving the governing bodies that initiate these improvements. With a change in power, often these large-scale projects are halted, demolished, or left unfinished.

The adaptation of these unfinished structures can reconcile the difference in a power shift, providing an important sense of continuum that is not only a record of the shift in power but also a source of connection through time with this fragmentation. For these reasons, Cincinnati’s subway system is a good example of a public project …

Equilibrium: Public Spectacle For Social Integration, Reem Al Thani

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the ways socio-cultural methods of integration can influence architecture, using built form as a catalyst for connection in fragmented cities or communities.

Architecture plays a role in accentuating or diminishing socio-cultural segregation that exists in developing cities with diverse cultures. Doha, Qatar, with a population split between 13% National and 87% Expatriate, is an example of a developing city with extreme diversity that struggles to maintain its local community alongside foreign influx. The situation is jarringly apparent in the form of isolated architecture that has overtaken the city with glass towers and megastructures that are out of …

The Post Office Reimagined : Restoring Healthy Living In America, Mallory Buck

Masters Theses

Our built environment and broken food system are significant contributors to the obesity epidemic in the United States and must be considered when working towards a solution. Careless development patterns and city planning based around the ease of motor vehicle travel have left us with fragmented neighborhoods, increased dependency on cars and unsafe or uninviting sidewalks, each contributing to increasingly sedentary lifestyles.

Simultaneous changes in communication needs and increased connectivity through use of email have led to a drastic decline in the use of the postal service, causing major financial problems for the government agency. Historically a staple to every …

Redefining Liminal Spaces Through Natural Phenomena, Hanna Kim

Masters Theses

This thesis harnesses the untapped potential of spaces that are easily overlooked within our urban landscapes. By highlighting the environmental elements within these spaces (wind, precipitation, temperature and light) the quality of everyday urban life is enriched.

Used to living in predefined built environments that shape our thinking, we often fail to perceive subtle aspects in our surroundings and lose sight of their value. Alley spaces are perceptual urban blind spots: blighted left over places due to minimal activity. Their sense as "other spaces" presents them as undefined afterthoughts of city planning. Due to ambiguity of their status, the alleyways …

Community In A Post-Diest World, Kirby Benjamin

Masters Theses

We are in need of a new sense of community, that doesn’t rely upon religion. There exists a demand to adapt the church typology to meet the needs of current society rather than allowing these important buildings to be demolished or preserved indefinitely in an unneeded state.

With the decline of Christian religious practice in America, thousands of churches become underutilized or vacant every year, leaving these icons with strong religious associations empty. This abandonment simultaneously impacts the communities these churches once held together. Today’s generations’ sense of community has transitioned from physical to virtual connections, leading to less meaningful …

Problem-Based Learning As A Model For The Interior Design Classroom: Bridging The Skills Divide Between Academia And Practice, Gregory Galford, Susan Hawkins, Mark Hertweck

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

The addition of problem-based learning (PBL) pedagogy to studio-based learning (SBL) environments may help bridge the divide between traditional design education and initial postgraduate jobs. This paper demonstrates how one instructor adapted a PBL model to the interior design studio, including planning, execution, and evaluation. The relationship between PBL and SBL is explored. Two realistic design problems were created for use by interior design students who participated in PBL sessions. All of the groups adequately answered the client’s design programmatic needs. Students learned to perform as team members, including how to collaborate and compromise while working toward an effective design …

All Work & No Play, Zachary Port

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This project follows the format of an undergraduate thesis typical to the Syracuse University Industrial and Interaction Design program. It was conducted over two semesters, one focusing on research, and the other on the execution of an idea from the data gained during this research. The project in its entirety has been entitled “All Work & No Play” in order to illustrate the current state that exists in many offices: that play and toys are both looked down upon and discouraged. In order to address this situation, the project birthed a solution called Puck, a desk unit that can be …

Inspire. Empower. Live.: A Design Solution For The Deaf And Hearing-Impaired, Caryn M. Brahams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Being "deaf" is defined as the inability to hear, but it can also be defined as a culture centered around sensibilities and shared life experiences. This endeavor seeks to integrate the hearing-impaired and hearing communities through the application of "Deaf Space" and other design theories. The result is an inspiring, empowering, and lively solution.

How A Hurricane Affected The Residential Interior Design Of Mississippi’S Gulf Coast, Jamie L. Jelinski

Honors Theses

This study analyzes the interior design choices made by homeowners of Mississippi’s Gulf Coast who rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, in order to determine how the natural disaster of the hurricane affected residential interior design aesthetics. The aim of the study was to determine if there was a correlation between homeowner’s disaster experiences and their interior design choices following the disaster. Survey results were collected from 128 homeowners of the Mississippi Gulf Coast whose homes were affected by Hurricane Katrina. The data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, with little significance found during cross-analyses. Overall, the most prominent design changes were more …