Architecture Commons^™

Constructing Atmosphere The Use Of Light And Water As The Generators Of Architectural Atmosphere, Victoria A. Cioffi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

What if the spaces we inhabit are no longer felt, only seen? In contemporary architecture, many buildings are designed for visual impact rather than human experience, often resulting in environments that feel emotionally detached. This thesis asks a central question: have buildings lost their soul? It proposes that atmosphere, understood as the sensory and emotional quality of space, is essential to restoring meaning and connection within architecture.

Drawing from the work of Peter Zumthor, this research explores how architecture can move beyond visual form to engage the body through environmental conditions. The study focuses on light, shadow, and water as …

Reclaiming Civic Space: Designing A Public Space For Political Engagement, Joiya Nguyen

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

According to a 2018 survey of the United States, loneliness has reached generational highs, particularly among those who substitute social media for in-person social relationships — from dating to political engagement. Despite this knowledge, digital interaction continues to displace physical community. The root of this turn to the digital is the lack of adequate public spaces. This project investigates how the built environment can reclaim civic spaces by offering meaningful, in-person alternatives to digital interaction.

Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's Right to the City and Anthony Vidler's writing on occupied spaces, alongside an analysis of historical civic precedents, this research maps …

Subaltern Alternatives: Reclaiming Agency Through Spatial Articulation, Nadirah Ali

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The concept of the subaltern, introduced by Antonio Gramsci to describe populations excluded from political, social, and economic power while still being used to sustain dominant systems. Today, migrant construction workers often occupy this condition: essential to urban growth, yet denied dignity, visibility, and participation in the cities they build. Their housing is frequently reduced to an instrument of control—spaces designed to contain labor rather than support life. This thesis proposes an architectural alternative.

The project examines contemporary cases of labor exploitation in the United States, Qatar, and Singapore, where migrant workers have faced unsafe conditions, wage theft, …

Learned Resilience, Rebeca Ortiz

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Haiti faces a complex web of environmental and social pressures, from deforestation and soil erosion to climate instability and strained institutional support. While regenerative farming and community-led development are often discussed in the context of sustainability, architecture is frequently relegated to the background, treated as a secondary or isolated fix rather than a primary driver of change. My work challenges this by positioning architecture as the central, regenerative framework that weaves together food production, collective learning, and civic life. I see the built environment not just as shelter, but as an active agent for resilience and a sense of belonging. …

Assessing Transit-Oriented Development And Mixed-Use Urban Planning Strategies In Taipei, Taiwan, Eliza Mccoole

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

Virtual Matter: Architecture As A Critical Turning Point, Aden Sterchi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The materialization of AI infrastructure has outpaced all regulatory frameworks, allowing data centers to proliferate with limited oversight despite their growing environmental and social impacts. Through a review of artificial intelligence’s technological development, the rise of big tech, and contemporary data center expansion, this thesis situates AI infrastructure within a broader pattern of deregulation, delayed accountability, and market-driven governance. Using a qualitative mixed-method approach combining historical analysis, policy critique, regional case studies, and research-through-design, the study examines how existing land use, utility, and environmental frameworks have failed to keep pace with the scale of data center sprawl; The study also …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

Perception Of Mental Illness: Exploring Spatial Impacts On Well-Being, Dilan Stafin

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Bipolar disorder is often misunderstood, and its complex sensory and emotional needs are rarely considered in architectural design. Although research demonstrates that the built environment significantly affects stress, regulation, and healing, these insights are seldom applied to spaces dedicated to mental health awareness. This thesis investigates how architectural thresholds within a mental health awareness museum in Harris County, Texas, can bridge the gap between spaces of experience and spaces of care.

Reframing thresholds as therapeutic elements, the study draws on trauma theory to examine how transitions between openness and enclosure, stimulation and pause, and exposure and protection can spatially express …

Walking Easy, Grayson P. Isley

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis aims to aid in connecting an otherwise fragmented inaccessable area through safe and enjoyable spaces.

Un|Veiling Walls, Olivia F. Aratea

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores how trauma-informed design principles can be integrated into Kennesaw State University’s Marietta Campus to promote psychological safety, emotional resilience, and reduction of trauma triggers for survivors of sexual assault. While trauma-informed approaches have been implemented in healthcare and counseling, their application within academic architecture remains limited. This gap is important to consider given the rising rates of sexual assault, which have increased 62.5% since 2020. Current data shows that four in five women (81%) and two in five men (43%) experience sexual assault in their lifetime, specifically noting that college-aged women are three times more likely to …

From Sprawl To System: Reframing Suburban Thresholds For Density And Social Connectivity, Quincy A. Smith

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Suburban form is a fragmented and low-density system of sprawling divisions which prevents social connection, carrying a particularly adverse effect for low-income families that cannot offset these attributes with economic bandages. My thesis asks how suburban elements can be implemented at the urban and architectural scale to create an accessible and connected system which results in both individual expression and communal opportunity. More specifically, this thesis aims to translate the thresholds of prototypical suburban typologies into a structural and circulatory framework.

Stan Allen’s field condition concept is explored for the urban level research methodology, introducing repetition and the grid to …

Skill Yard, Shannon Jones

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Juvenile crime is rising in many U.S. communities, amplifying stress, anxiety, and safety concerns for teens—especially in high-crime neighborhoods where supportive spaces are scarce. This thesis examines whether environmental design practices in teen-focused third spaces—specifically lighting, materials, and restorative views—can measurably reduce stress, anxiety, and violence among youth. Grounded in environmental sociology, trauma-informed design, and biophilic theory, this study centers on creative third-space design that locates maker spaces for cooking, coding, woodworking, welding, and ceramics within a calm common area and an outdoor setting.

The proposed design integrates skill studios, creative labs, and maker spaces connected to shared commons and …

The Patina Of Care, Jose Alejandro Carpio

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis aims to address the urgent need for adaptable, socially responsive housing in Sapporo, Hokkaido. The area currently faces a crisis in rapidly aging populations, youth out-migration, housing insecurity, and high rates of domestic violence. These problems are intensified by economic strain, harsh winter conditions, and periods when cultural stigma limits access to safety and community support. As it stands, current housing systems cannot evolve with the rapidly shifting demographics and social needs of the city.

Confront these challenges. The thesis proposes a megastructure-framework grounded in the metabolism movement and the works of Metabolist architects such as Fumihiko Maki, …

Green Building Certification And Global Warming: Between Environmental Performance And Greenwashing, Marcel Michalak

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper addresses the role of green building certifications in addressing global warming. The growing trend of pursuing certificates, such as LEED or BREEAM, can be perceived as a great symbol of resilience and desire to improve the quality of our environment. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, developers or companies use sustainable labels more as a marketing tool than a real commitment to environmental effectiveness. This paper explores whether green building certifications effectively reduce global warming and how they may serve as tools for greenwashing. Chapter One lays the foundation for why green building certifications exist and why they …

Nurtured By Nature:Designing For Bodily Well-Being In The Urban Core, Maggie K. Haynes

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis investigates how architecture can function as a framework of systematic urban interventions that cultivate spaces of refuge and restore human well-being within dense urban environments.

Beyond The Policy - Designing A Healing Campus For Xinhua's Children, Katharine Massey

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

To some people children are seen as a blessing, but for China, they were considered detrimental to the economy status of the country. For 35 years China implemented a policy that limited families to one child so they could curb their rapid population growth and keep their image of being an economic leader of the world. This thesis will look at the lasting impact the one-child policy had on the population of China and the results that have emerged since the law has ended, along with the 2024 stop on foreign adoption programs and who was most impacted by it. …

Demi-Lune (Half-Moon): How Can An Educational Center, Enhance Climate Adaptive Agricultural Practices For Farmers In Say, Niger?, Mari Sadou

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Niger is currently facing a severe food crisis worsened by climate extremes, with 80% of its population depending on rain-fed agriculture. The country ranks 19th among those affected by climate change and is the second most vulnerable nation in the world in terms of climate adaptation. It is experiencing rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall that threaten health and food security, particularly for vulnerable groups such as children and mothers. In 2022 alone, over 4.4 million people required humanitarian assistance due to crop failures caused by drought, with nearly half of the children suffering from stunting. To tackle these challenges, a …

Reimagining The Urban Neighborhood Library: A Sanctuary For Restoring Human Connection In The Tenderloin, Ahmed Shaker

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Childhood in the United States, aged 3-14, today is increasingly defined by social disconnection and digital saturation. Environmental pressures, political instability, and especially the pervasive presence of screens and AI tools are displacing tactile, imaginative, and relational experiences that once nurtured connection and play (Erstad 2024; Costanza et al. 2023; Turkle). Families, too, feel this rupture: parents and children may sit side-by-side, yet remain socially worlds apart. Public libraries have historically served as civic anchors: equitable access points for knowledge, safe gathering spaces, and trusted social infrastructure supporting health equity and civic engagement (Mersand et al. 2019; Philbin et al. …

The Legacy Of Lead: Lead Exposure's Harmful Effects And Its Concentration In Poc Communities, Layla Sophronia Barber

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis examines the disproportionate burden of lead exposure carried by low income, POC communities. The systemic nature of this problem is a symptom of a longstanding legacy of environmental injustice in the United States. Decades of federal neglect are reflected in the higher statistics of lead exposure and poisoning in predominantly black communities. While it is understood that lead exposure poses a serious threat to physical health and early cognitive development, there is a discouraging lack of urgency to remove the toxin from non-wealthy communities. The material covered by this thesis aims to identify and correct the discriminatory social …

Green Infrastructure As A Strategy For Revitalizing Old Residential Neighborhoods: Evaluation Of Carbon Footprint And Energy Performance - Case Study Of Heliopolis, Cairo, Ahmad Abouisaadat, Eman Gameel, Shoroq Adel

Mansoura Engineering Journal

This study aims to address the challenge of reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in urban areas, particularly in aging residential neighborhoods. Despite the benefits of Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) and residential retrofitting, current research often examines these strategies separately, leaving a gap in understanding their combined impact at the district scale. The research proposes a methodology that integrates GIS-based spatial analysis, Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM), and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to evaluate the effects of UGI (e.g., green roofs, urban trees) and retrofitting strategies on energy use, CO2 reduction, and urban microclimates. The study will provide …