Architecture Commons^™

Model For Play | Creating Environments For Learning Through Playful Exploration, Ana Giron

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Cultivating imagination in early childhood education is a fundamental stage in the development of children. This cultivation is set aside when children reach school age. The traditional classroom has become a workstation environment, where children move from task to task—creating a singular type of student and disregarding the inherent differences of the human condition. Educational experience has become stagnant and repetitive, with little to no room for the development of individual imaginations. The design of the classroom setting is a critical point of exploration—as the mechanism for change in the education of children. This thesis aims to explore the learning …

Alfred Hitchcock As A Cinematic Architect Of Suspense, Hannah Both

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Film has the ability to evoke powerful emotional reactions from its audience through the emotional atmosphere it creates. This almost intangible quality is difficult to quantitatively describe. Architecture, to the learned few, has a similar ability to evoke emotional reactions to the spatial atmosphere it creates. Broadly, the goal of this research is to investigate the emotional influence of suspense in cinematic space and how it might quantitatively be described through a series of definable principals or space making strategies evident through an analysis of Rear Window. The medium of film allows space to be released from the physical …

An Alternative Approach To Food Market Design: Strategies That Nurture Human Health And Well-Being, Kendall Marsh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Access to food is being implemented in newer and more convenient forms now more than ever before. However, many of the methods that people utilize to purchase food may have substantial adverse health effects. Markets were once centered around a direct exchange of locally grown food and intimate social gatherings. Major developments like the industrialization of agriculture, rapid urbanization, and technological advancements introduced a shift in food market settings. Redefining the design of the market environment can transform a routine task into a valuable experience that nurtures human health and well-being.

In addition to a review of literature, the method …

Solving Pollution Through Design Integration: A Sustainable Model For Underdeveloped Mexican Cities, Marcos Cruz

Master of Science in Architecture Theses

Oaxaca requires an architecture that can cleanse the environment, provide affordable and clean energy, and mitigate the crime and poverty within their city. Community awareness is key to the development of this architecture, and this project will focus on creating a design that influences and informs the community about a safer and more sustainable way of life. This project will focus on using the United Nations sustainability goals to address the global challenges we face including poverty, climate, and inequality. This thesis will create a building that will integrate these goals while still maintaining the cultural aspect within the region. …

Which Activities Do Those With Long Commutes Forego, And Should We Care?, Eric A. Morris, Dick Ettema, Ying Zhou

Publications

Commuting imposes opportunity costs on travelers since those with long commutes have less time to participate in other activities. This paper examines how commute duration is associated with activity patterns. It utilizes a two-day time use survey administered in the United Kingdom in 2014 and 2015. Focusing on full-time employees and controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, we regress time spent engaging in 22 different activities on commute duration using OLS and Cragg two-part hurdle modeling. We separately test the effects of commute duration on activity participation for men versus women and for single persons versus persons in couples. We also report …

Towards Community: A Resource-Based Rural Development, Christian Newman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The Caribbean nation of Haiti has experienced much hardship in providing services and opportunities to its general population and even more so to its rural populace. Of the scarce services the government provides, most are not accessible to millions in the countryside and smaller cities beyond. According to the United Nations Development Program Haiti, poverty Is much more prevalent in rural regions at 75.2% compared to 40.8% in urban regions. I have personally witnessed this in my own trips to Haiti. The concentration of services and centralization of power to Port-au-Prince can make living outside the capital seem like a …

Eco-Hub, Diego Vazquez De Santos

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Since the dawn of civilization, humans have generated waste. With the age of industrialization came urbanization, and as a result, large populations quickly multiplied within cities. In 1842, a report entitled The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population, Edwin Chadwick argued for the need for proper removal and management facilities of waste. This report played an important role in securing the first law addressing waste collection. Today, only 26% of the estimated 75% of recyclable goods get recycled. This problem is more eminent within New York city which currently is the topmost wasteful city. New York City residents throw out …

Solving Pollution Through Design Integration: A Sustainable Model For Underdeveloped Mexican Cities, Marcos Cruz

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Oaxaca requires an architecture that can cleanse the environment, provide affordable and clean energy, and mitigate the crime and poverty within their city. Community awareness is key to the development of this architecture, and this project will focus on creating a design that influences and informs the community about a safer and more sustainable way of life. This project will focus on using the United Nations sustainability goals to address the global challenges we face including poverty, climate, and inequality. This thesis will create a building that will integrate these goals while still maintaining the cultural aspect within the region. …

L.I.F.E. Is Beautiful, Adalia Fullbeck

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

My title Life is Beautiful: An inquire on the use of small living and architectural design. I chose this title because my focus is in looking at the phases of architecture and creating beautiful and life changing architecture with the help of engineering. I aim to transform my families life by creating a small living space that does not only let earth blossom but also our family. Everyone asks me why I wanted to become an architect. If I had to sum it up, I would say I became an architect so that I could mix my love of art …

A Phenomenological Approach To Performance Architecture Through Light And Acoustics, Bree Chambers

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Throughout history, performances, the fine arts, and music have brought society together to persuade, inspire, and bring to light the pressing issues of their time. The Roman’s used the coliseum to distract their people with games and spectacles from political instability and famine. The Greeks performed in open amphitheaters to communicate tragic stories of morality. I want to influence the entertainment of our time, that is music festivals, from America’s first 1954 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island to 1969 The Woodstock Aquarian exposition reported 500,000 people in attendance. Festivals are an escape from a conventional society into a counterculture …

Primary Focus, Breck Small

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis proposes a new construction method that looks beyond the physical needs of a community to train and equip unskilled laborers to continue expanding their own build environment. In areas where electricity along with running water are sparse and construction materials are expensive in contrast to average income, this method of construction will look at the manipulation of indigenous materials, climate, and passive systems to design a project that is both respectful to the surrounding community and innovative in its final design. This method could be replicated in sites with similar context, training unskilled labors to build structures in …

Golden Scrutiny | Compositional Subtlety, Devon Sams

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The golden ratio in relation to architecture revolves around the use of composition, geometry and mathematics. The mathematical ratio informs a specific set of parameters that a design can adhere to and is believed that, when utilized properly, gives a creation a beautiful aesthetic. My approach to understanding this system is by exploring its specific functions and how ‘I’ as a designer can inform my design with the golden ratio as the key principle.

My research examines a comprehensive set of studies and explores through a set of experiments in both drawing, model making and digital fabrication to combine the …

Defining The Relationships Of Authority, Noah Bieber

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores the “disciplinary mechanisms” that define individuals in space. The formation of tactics into a strategy galvanizes an individual into what Michel Foucault describes as a “docile body” (Foucault 1978,135). These tactics find traction in the classification, coding, and organizations of bodies in space and time, through repetition, observations, and documentation. The dynamic between these tactics forms the strategies to create docile bodies.

In the end, discipline mechanisms are used everyday subversively and or subliminally. However, good or bad, we are byproducts of our environment and under a system of control that coerces us to act and behave …

Informational Space, Jacob Beal

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the future potential impact that the library typology has on society and how the architecture of these spaces can influence usage andchange. Libraries have been one of man-kind’s most inspirational systems that have provided spaces to store information and to educate oneself. As the typology progressed it became an important part of each community and provided patrons with new opportunities that they might not regularly have. With the role that this typology currently takes, it allows for the possibility for improvements of social issues within multiple communities. By focusing on select issues, …

Between Aesthetics And Ethics, Seth Landis

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Violence and political unrest in Central America led to high numbers of refugees at the US-Mexico border at the end of 2017 and continued into 2018. Tent cities like the one outside of Tornillo, Texas is one example of many that shows how unprepared and unwilling we are as architetects to become involved in sensitive issues like immigration.

While the immigration policies of the government seem distant and abstract, the consequences are concrete: the buildings and tents that held these children were designed and implemented by engineers, builders, and private contractors. What can the architect contribute? We are taught to …

Re-Place The Big Box, Matthew C. Harkin

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Within the suburban environment of the United States it is not uncommon to see a large big box store, centered upon the landscape without rhyme or reason in relation to the local physical or social attributes. These big box stores are not designed at all. They are cookie cutter buildings, copy and pasted structures that give no regards to their context. The mass is plopped onto the site, and surrounded by parking, roads, and barriers cutting the shopping center off from pedestrian access and its general surroundings. These commercial zones do not hold a sense of place, but rather are …

An Invisible Minority: Creating Agency For The Lgbtq+ Community, Zach Hart

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

4.5% of Americans make up an invisible minority - the LGBTQ+ community represents over 9 million Americans. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people have a history of being targets of discrimination, which is indisputable when we see that LGBTQ+ relations are illegal in 74 countries, a criminal offense in 72 countries, and punishable by death in 12 countries. The LGBTQ+ youth population makes up less than 10% of the overall youth population, but 40% of the homeless youth population. When compared to their straight peers - gay and lesbian adolescents are almost 4 times more likely to attempt suicide, …

Culture Confluence, Nhan Luu

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The goal of this Museum is to provide the community with an identity based in Vietnamese culture and heritage. The Museum strives to develop a secure connection with the community, providing confidence and helping people to grow as individuals and as members of their community. This engaging Museum aims to attract a diverse crowd to reflect the complexity of a changing society and to represent the community through various exhibits and programming. The Museum in the twenty-first century is not just a place to enjoy art, but also a place to raise questions and stimulate new thoughts and provoke discussion.

Informing Space: A Human Centered Approach To Designing An (Adaptive) Modular Dwelling On Mars, Hala Alfalih, Hala Alfalih

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

With tech giants like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Lockheed Martin teaming with NASA to spearhead the mission to Mars, this provides an opportunity for architecture and design to engage in the conversation of the inevitable future of space exploration.

Research will explore structure, module and habitat as a means of developing an adaptive and parametrically designed dwelling for the first astronauts that will land on Mars. This thesis explores the intersection of the physical built environment and the psychology of astronauts in a remote, foreign and harsh environment. How can a shelter provide the essential needs to inhabit Mars while …

Partition & Connection, Lei Liu

Fall 2019 Confluence: St. Louis and Hinterlands

Shipping, the transportation of materials goods, is a worldwide industry that influences everyone’s life. Shipping is part of our lives. We consume large amounts of material goods, but this process also implies a huge transportation process. This is significant because the emission of carbon dioxide from shipping also contributes to climate change. On average each, person in St. Louis is responsible for enough carbon emissions to fill 3 largest size containers, by volume. Additionally, railways and highways divide our cities. These are connectors but also dividers, and I am choosing my location year railroads. My site is also near the …