Architecture Commons^™

Urban Palimpsest: Re-Placing Memory In War Torn City Dresden, Xinyi Sun

Masters Theses

Urban landscapes can be envisaged as a palimpsest of historical layers, some of which have disappeared while others remain active in constituting contemporary identities.

Yet memory is tricky and one’s memory can be false, distorted or erased consciously or unconsciously from brain. Like history, some memories can be lost, while others others might be retained and continue to influence the present.

This thesis explores memory as active construction. Construction and reconstruction are ongoing and as layered and nuanced as the history itself. Moreover, memory is both personal and collective. It is shared, appropriated, and reassigned depending on whose personal filter …

Clay Beneath The Tree: An Exploration Of Design Processes In Community Development, Shiya Zeng

Masters Theses

Parents bought their kid a new toy and said: “Here you go, enjoy.” he plays with it for three hours, and then I go back to play with the clay beneath a tree. The “new toy” is an analogy of a traditional Design-Funding-Implement design process. The reason why “clay” is more attractive is that clay is flexible and manipulatable, which allows for continually engaging, reshaping, destructing, and exploring. More importantly, clay unleashes one’s imagination that unlocks thousands of possibilities. Community design process is “heartwork” that enhance well-being, equity, and agency for change. This is why the process matters.

This thesis …

Urban Ecotone: Restoring The Water-Land Balance As A Strategy For Social Equity, Yuzhe Ma

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on Dhaka, Bangladesh, and the urban interface between the more formal developed parts of the city and the less-formal and more economically-vulnerable urban neighborhoods.

It seeks to reframe this interface as an ‘ecotone’ versus a hard boundary. By reframing this area along ecological lines, this interface is positioned as a place with a great diversity of ‘species’ and fertile conditions and collisions, which allow it to act as a generator of new opportunities benefitting both of the communities (biomes) which transition into it.

This ecotone is seen as being further fed by the presence of urban ecology …

Restorative Urbanism: Redefining Socio-Ecosystems In Manila, Kaixin Zhang

Masters Theses

This thesis explores coastal cities and the narrow zone lying between their developing urban areas and the waters of the open sea. Worldwide, there are more than 14 cities with populations over 10 million are situated along endangered coastlines. The fact that many of these continue to experience rapid growth, are economic centers of international importance, and are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, is a matter of global concern. In this work I examine the implications and possibilities of restoring urban coastline defenses and ask how I can learn from past efforts while adapting such strategies to …

Fluid Urbanism, Huachen Zhang

Masters Theses

As we stepped into the 2020s, technologies keep emerging, such as the autonomous vehicle. We can already foresee some of the future cityscapes. Some of the largest vehicle manufactures have already road-tested their autonomous vehicles and shifted their focus to electronic powered vehicles. So what will the future city look like with new autonomous vehicle technology? What does an autonomous vehicle actually mean? What's the potential of this technology? In my thesis, I am not focusing on the impact of existing autonomous technology, but am trying to dig deeper and find its fuller potential. In my thesis autonomous technology as …

Change Of Plans: The Subversive Kit In The Planned Community, Hugo Caldwell

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between the prescriptive forces of urban planning with architecture. Through extracting elements and characteristics from an existing context, I implement a subversive system/kit of parts that work together to challenge the ideas behind top-down planning while painting a new picture of Columbia, MD, and planned communities as a whole.

Vacancy Never Vacant, Marina Bibidakis

Masters Theses

Vacant buildings are never truly vacant. They might not be used as originally planned but there are still signs of life inside them. Even in a state of ruination, nature takes over or undocumented humans use them as temporary shelter. Instead of going the route of completely redesigning, I would like to embrace the qualities created from the transition periods in between to categorize and articulate the thesis, the focus will be on industrial buildings. My interest is directed on revitalizing buildings. My interest is originally designed for human occupation or appreciation, but rather for machines. Part of the research …

In-Between Through : Bordering Bodies ; A Spatial Containment, Aroly Enamorado

Masters Theses

Due to the continuous struggle for undocumented migration, the U.S. Mexico border has always been on of the most misunderstood. This thesis tries to form awareness of the number of migrants that are seeking asylum in the United States. Most of these people are coming from Central and South America to experience the American dream, a concept that many do not get to achieve. Understanding the physical and cultural aspects from departing their homeland, arrival at the border, possible deportation, the admission into the country, and starting from zero. Nowadays, the southern border wall has turned into a cancerous divider …

Climate Resilience For A Neighborhood Without Privilege: East Boston, Peter Niels Heller

Masters Theses

This architecture thesis is about climate change and unprivileged populations – sea-level rise in particular, and the neighborhood of East Boston. Across recorded human history, the burdens of climate stress have fallen disproportionately on marginal populations, and today is no different. We don’t have to travel to a South Pacific island to see the risk posed by sea-level rise – that risk can be found right here along the New England coastline. Neighborhoods with a minimum of privilege face challenges to their existence – and those residents want to stay in their homes and preserve their communities just like anybody …

The Official Showreel Companion To Framed Familiarity In 4 Acts : A Defamiliarization Of The Tropes Of Architectural Practice, Through An Expanded Frame Of View And Frame Rate, Julie Kress

Masters Theses

In the spirit of Resier and Umemoto’s Atlas of Novel Tectonics, this work does not propose solutions to a stated problem in the field of architecture. Instead it provokes an entry into subjects that are taken for granted, yet are in dire need of re-framing in a postdigital age of architecture.

This proposal for speculative architectures that are only possible through animation, is antithesis to the format of the printed book. The format of this document assumes that it is not viewed alone but is treated as a behind the scenes companion to the 3 minute showreel “Framed Familiarity in …

Playgrounds : Symbiosis Of Humans, Nature, And Architecture, Hannah Langmuir

Masters Theses

As we have adapted to learn how to best take advantage of our natural resources, we have evolved into the beings we are today. However, once we shifted away from natural environments to embrace new technologies and confine ourselves to our human-built spaces, we began to take a step backwards in our evolutionary timeline, returning to a confined, limited state.

As a result, this project examines play as a solution to connecting humans, nature, and architecture. By integrating these new programs into existing offices in downtown Providence, this process was an exploration in adapting our architecture to provide spaces where …

About Intimacy, Jiamin Lin

Masters Theses

Imagine that there is a person who goes everywhere carrying a chair. From the moment she places her chair down on the ground, this action defines a space around her. The shape of this invisible entity keeps changing. However, I still feel a specific way of “closure”. My thesis started from this moment, about defining intimacy.

Time may be translated into measures of movement and occupancies of space. Film and architecture both mobilize spatial and temporal modes of perception. My exploration of spatial intimacy started from filming the interaction between human being and larger entities. It exploits the filmic capacity …

Wrinkle Architecture : The Public Relaxation Pavilions For Geriatric Community In Cities Of Zhejiang After 1980'S, Yi Lu

Masters Theses

Wrinkles of the city just like the wrinkles of human. They are symbles of aging as well as the carriers of story. They are existing in unexpecting places in the city or in human faces. The wrinkle of the city is the texture of city during its urbanization process. They are small and chopped. They are between temporary and permanent.

This thesis integrates the “wrinkle architectures” of Hangzhou to improve the relaxation space and provide a better environment for in the elderly community of Hangzhou.

Adaptive Reuse Pattern Book : Re-Evaluating Historical Capital, Taylor Mccabe

Masters Theses

Vacant buildings in post-industrial America are produced by a metabolism of neglect and disinvestment. Challenging the conventional approach of demolish and rebuild, an alternative path is possible that acknowledges the built environment as it exists.

I am specifically looking at vacant structures in the city of Baltimore. Currently there are approximately 16,000 structures consisting of mostly rowhouses. Inherent to these buildings are shared walls and continuous facades which when subjected to decay will directly impact the physical condition of adjoining properties. Baltimore City is characterized by blocks and blocks of rowhouses, which tell a history of the development of the …

A City's Culture Should Include Birds : To Rethink Of Architecture With Birds In Mind, Pan Sun

Masters Theses

The truth of a city’ s culture is that Birds and Human live in a single-shared ecosystem boundaries. Architects as human always think of architecture according to human’s needs and neglect animals’ demands. However, the architecture and a city should acknowledge and response to the cultural need and value of the society of which it interacts—birds and human. Architecture needs to create spaces connecting these two species by boundaries. The thesis seeks to explore the transition area between these boundaries—a type of space providing a chance for birds and human living tog ether harmoniously.

Blueridgelivin' : Environmental Development And Suburban Sprawl, Chris Villalta

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on investigating how precolonial Blue Ridge Cherokee construction was resilient to time and weather, integrated place, and respected the environment, traditions, and politics, to better integrate landscape, climate, ecology, and regionally specific architecture.

Uncanny Genericism, Eamon Wagner

Masters Theses

For the past two decades, disciplinary discourse on con­sumerism has been largely focused on vast commercial spaces - the shopping mall, the airport - the "Junkfood" of architecture . When it has ventured into the realm of the do­mestic, it has largely been in service to the specific object. This thesis attempts to reconsider the role of representation relative to ideas of the generic object, and understands these objects as sources of authorship that can be architec­turally generative in a time when objecthood evades clear definition.

Relocation Community Revival, Zhan Zhang

Masters Theses

The thesis tries to revive/re-imagine the public spaces of relocation community in Jiangsu, China by re-designing the in between spaces of the existing apartment buildings, dealing with the misfit of relocated residents to their new living environment during the rapid urbanization process.

Possibilities In Void, Fangyu Wei

Masters Theses

The interaction between architecture surfaces and urban environment is being more active, this transient boundary demarcates the inner core and external diverse environments to provide a different experience for human. The uncertainties in attitudes that have existed over time to the interior and exterior conditions, thus, the spatial tension between these 2 surfaces naturally form into several void spaces. As I observed that through individual action, ideas, and criticality, urban voids have become catalysts for social interaction and creative experiments. Re-appropriation of vacant sites by means of inhabitation or (new) subtle ecologies to emerge in the Taipei urban area. Residents …

Reviving The Hollowing Rural Village: Research On The Coastal Mountainous Region Of Kaihua, China, Rui Tao

Masters Theses

My research focuses on one county in China and the regional and local structure to understand the existing flows between urban and rural areas, including both ecological, industrial and social exchanges. Kaihua county, located in north-west Zhejiang Province, is currently the poorest county economically in this region and has more migrant workers and a more severe hollowing degree.

This thesis aims to revive the hollowing rural village and improve the village’s value as a hybrid public realm - a space encouraging reciprocal flows exchanged from both “rural ground” and urban “new comers,” strengthening the ecological and social ties among water …