Architecture Commons^™

Adaptive Reuse Of The Suburban Office Building, Olivia Mora

Architecture Theses and Projects

My thesis addresses the current issues of office vacancy and the housing shortage. Living in the Portland, Maine area my entire life, I’ve noticed a lot of gentrification happening in the city downtown, including my dad’s little neighborhood he grew up in. I want to create a space where people of all incomes levels have the opportunity to live in.

After a thorough GIS analysis, the ideal site was determined to be 300 Southborough Drive in South Portland. This is only 10-15 minutes from downtown Portland. When adapting a vacant, standalone suburban office building like this one, there are a …

Jiquilisco Bay Mangrove Restoration Center, Julio Romero

Architecture Theses and Projects

Due to advanced degradation of mangroves, local ecosystems and social structures suffer. Non-profit organizations, consisting of community volunteers and researchers from abroad, are on the forefront of these restoration practices. Protecting these forests prevents local families from starving and keeps their homes from flooding. Applying research-based thinking to create a lab and education space for better implementation of restoration policies on a site-by-site basis was crucial, and the result was a low-tech space with serious material considerations based on local construction and best practices based on improvements in relatively low-tech seismic and water impermeable technology. The result is a celebration …

Hawaiian Health: Community Health Through Design And Nature, Michael Welch

Architecture Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

Amtrak Staples Mill Station: Strategic Vision Plan 2023, Daniel S. Longest

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

This plan proposes the replacement of the current Amtrak Staples Mill Station with a new facility designed to incorporate civic art, multi-use development, and fast and easy train boarding. Drawing on successful examples like Union Station in D.C. and Main Street Station in Richmond, this plan encourages stakeholders to adopt a strategic vision for the station and its vicinity as an asset to the region. An independent commission with equal representation from state agency representatives and residents would enact these improvements through a public-private partnership, including a transit-oriented development scheme for adjacent land.

Building Services Engineering January/February 2023

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Contemplative Nearby Nature: A Design Proposal For Peralta Hacienda Historical Park, Russell Corbin

Pomona Senior Theses

In this Environmental Analysis thesis project, I analyze what contemplative landscapes are, why they are important, and how to design them, and then implement those learnings in a design proposal for a contemplative landscape at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park. In addition to this writing component of the thesis, I created diagrams, drawings, section renderings, a plan, and two 3d models that all help inform the intentions, meaning, and components of my design. These elements have been woven into the writing and attached as additional documents. Five key contemplative design elements have been identified which I hope can prove useful for …

Bicycling For Sustainable Urban Mobility: Comparing Urban Transformations In Paris And Bogotá, Luba Masliy

Pomona Senior Theses

Promoting cycling is one of the low-hanging fruits to decarbonizing transportation, with further extensive benefits to quality of life. The main deterrent to the adoption of cycling for transportation is the lack of safe and connected infrastructure. This thesis explores and compares the case studies of Paris and Bogotá, where cycling modal shares grew significantly within the last decade. Plans outlining ambitious goals around sustainable transportation were put in place, and total bicycle network lengths increased rapidly in both cities. My work focuses on examining policy and infrastructure developments that lead to increased adoption of cycling over time in Paris …

Trolley Line Trail Creative Placemaking Plan, Courtland Caldwell

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Capstone Projects

The Trolley Line Trail is a planned multi-use trail along the historic Richmond-to-Ashland Trolley corridor. The purpose of this plan is to identify potential creative placemaking locations and installations to highlight the trolley's unique past and present. This plan sets forth a vision for creative placemaking by gathering community feedback, analyzing properties along the Trolley Line Trail, and making recommendations for placemaking and public art. Ultimately, the recommendations laid out in this plan aim to preserve and acknowledge the community's unique identity while creating a safe, accessible experience for all users.

A Review On Sustainable Disposal Of Plastic Waste By Integration In Construction Materials, Yara S. El-Metwally, Iman El-Mahallawi, Khaled M. Dewidar, Mostafa R. Refaat

Architectural Engineering

Over the last decades, plastic waste (PW) has increased exponentially and has become a serious threat to our planet, aquatic system and human health. Recycling or reusing PW in producing ecofriendly materials is an efficient solution to reduce plastic pollution and to minimize the depletion of raw materials as well. Previous studies have shown promising potentials of using PW in the construction sector, such as binder, aggregate, or substitute of cement and sand in concrete, brick or mortar. Laboratory results indicate that implementing plastic waste as aggregates in cement composites obtains higher thermal resistance and acoustical performance. However, a reduction …

Urban Streets: Remaking Human-Based Places, Mona Helmy

Architectural Engineering

Over the past few decades, due to the emerging compactness of cities considering the increase in population, and consequently the increasing demand for fast mobility, many streets have lost their human dimension. They have been transformed into fast roads, giving priority to vehicles, and reducing the rights of pedestrians. This transformation has affected streets in terms of planning, design, function, and scale. The paper argues that remaking cities’ urban streets as human-based places seeks to achieve a better balance between urbanism, people, nature, and culture, thereby improving their urban life in general. Through a literature review, this article chronologically investigates …

Urban Screens As A Tool For Placemaking, Mona Helmy

Architectural Engineering

Urban screens, as part of the lightscape of places, can play a fundamental role in placemaking. They have the flexibility to be positioned in various locations in spaces with various sizes, shapes, moods, and effects for functional or aesthetical reasons. They can be temporary or permanent, active, or interactive instruments for creating a dynamic, stimulating, and unique public realm atmosphere that engages people and encourages social interaction. This research aims to create a theoretical framework for urban screen typologies as tools for placemaking. It investigates, explores, analyzes, and discusses different approaches where urban screens are used as a main tool …

The Impact Of Noise On Employees’ Performance, Satisfaction, Stress Level, And Concentration In Open-Plan Corporate Offices., Dalia M. Rasmi, Ahmed Khaled Ahmed, Esraa Torky

Architectural Engineering

Noise is defined as any sound that obstructs or interferes with a person's ability to accomplish their job duties, whether it be background noise or noise from a loud workplace. An open-plan office is a workspace that makes use of available space rather than isolating staff members in offices or cubicles. An essential factor that influences both well-being and focus with relation to functional performance is noise, especially in enclosed spaces. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of noise on employees in an open-plan workplace regarding focus, task performance, concentration, and interpersonal communication, by conducting research …

Knowledge Management As An Approach For Enhancing The Performance Of Construction Firms: An Analytical Study, Ayman Ahmed Ezzat Othman, Marwa Abdelhafez, Essam Mahrous

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Lived Experiences Of Black Women Pursuing Managerial Positions In Corporate America, Edo Linette Branch

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The cultural and historical background of Black women represents unique complexities in the journey to management. The specific problem was that Black women often faced more gender and racial biases while advancing into management positions in corporate America than their White male and female counterparts. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Black women advancing into management positions who face more gender and racial biases than their White male and female counterparts in corporate America. The conceptual framework that grounded this study was the intersectionality of gender and race. The research question …

Power System Stability Enhancement Utilizing Phasor Measurement Units At Transient And Steady State, Moamen M. Mousa, Mahmoud S. Kandel, Sahar S. Kadah, Mohamed F. Kotb

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Abstract—Efficient power system stability monitoring plays a vital role in recent electric grid technologies. It supports operators at control centers to reduce overloading on weak elements and prevent power system from collapse. In this paper Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) technology has been used for real-time measurements that can obtain fast and accurate data samples from the electric network. The system stability responses during steady state and transient conditions have been studied based on the data driven from PMUs. The proposed study has been applied on WSCC 9-bus system. Test system Simulink has been modified to include the required PMUs and …

Experimental Study Of Photovoltaic Performance Under A Compound Parabolic Solar Concentrator With A Nanofluid Spectral Filter, O. Elharoun, M. Tawfik, Ibrahim I. El-Sharkawy, E. Zeidan

Mansoura Engineering Journal

The spectral splitting technique splits the sun's spectrum into two pieces to save photovoltaic cells from overheating. The first component is instantly converted into electricity, while the second is used to generate heat energy. Since nanofluid simultaneously serves as a heat transfer liquid and a spectrum splitter, several investigations have demonstrated that it is a very effective liquid-based filter. This work presents a novel PV/T design incorporating a compound parabolic concentrator (CPC) and a ZnO-water nanofluid filter over the PV cell. In this work, different ZnO concentrations, such as 50, 100, 150, and 200 ppm, were tested to assess their …

Enhancement In Strength Parameters Of Mortar By Application Of Bacillus Bacteria, A.A. Maaty, M.F. Ghazy, Y. El-Halmouch, G.R. Gadallah

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Cracks in concrete often occur because of environmental factors like moisture, chemical attacks, and temperature changes. This study investigates utilizing microbial induced calcite precipitation (MICP) to address concrete cracking. Bacillus Sphaericus strain is introduced into cement mortar to enhance its physical and mechanical properties, focusing on crack healing. (MICP) microbial induced calcite precipitation reduces water absorption and capillary coefficient by filling cracks with calcium carbonate using bacterial nutrients. After a duration of 90 days, the bacterial samples exhibit a noteworthy decrease in both capillary action and water absorption when contrasted with the control samples. The bacterial mortar demonstrates accelerated progress …

Video Anomaly Detection Using Residual Autoencoder: A Lightweight Framework, Mohamed H. Habeb, May A. Salama, Lamiaa A. Elrefaei

Mansoura Engineering Journal

This paper proposes an efficient lightweight deep spatial residual autoencoder (SRAE) model to detect anomalous events in video surveillance systems. A lightweight network is essential in real-time situations where time is critical. Moreover, it could be deployed on low-resource devices like embedded systems or mobile devices. This makes it a very useful option for real-world situations where there may be a shortage of resources. The proposed network is composed of a 3-layer residual encoder-decoder architecture that is adopted to acquire the salient spatial characteristics representative of normal events in videos. Then, the reconstruction loss is used to find abnormalities, where …

Modified Hcm Method For Delay Estimation At Unsignalized T- Intersections: A Case Study From Delta Region, Egypt, Ahmed Mohsen Geweda, Sayed A. Shwaly, Usama Elrawy Shahdah

Mansoura Engineering Journal

This study proposes a modified gap acceptance method to estimate control delay at unsignalized intersections in Egypt. The Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) method for estimating control delay at unsignalized intersections assumes that all lower-ranking movements yield completely to higher-ranking movements. However, this assumption may not be valid in Egypt, where drivers in lower-ranking movements sometimes violate right-of-way. The proposed method introduces an adjustment factor to account for the amount of real priority that higher-ranking movements actually get from lower-ranking movements. The adjustment factor was developed based on data collected from three un-signalized T-intersections from Mansoura and Damietta cities in Egypt. …

New Dialogue Between Old Crafts And Historical City “Case Study: The Historical Fez Factory In Fowah”, Dalia Shebl

Mansoura Engineering Journal

Traditional crafts are playing an important part of local identity in the city … Nowadays more efforts are being made to preserve them and establish a base and anchor point of economic and touristic development in the Egyptian cities. the paper clarifies the heritage values could evolve in a future through present one of the oldest site in fowah has a characteristic location of traditional crafts therefore it played a great role in contributing and developing many crafts in the other Egyptian cities using a Past-Present-Future framework. The research followed an historical and theoretical methodology for documentation then analytical studies …