Architecture Commons^™

Regenerative Assemblage : Future Vision For The Canals Of Pingdingshan, Meng Wang

Masters Theses

Most northern Chinese cities have inadequate drainage infrastructures, especially those tertiary cities that were built after World War II. These cities have small to middle size urban area but with high density. They are served by drainage infrastructures which are in the form of canals. These canals were built at the same time as cities with goals of protecting themselves from flooding and transporting stormwater in summer. With the growth and development in the past 80 years, the urban area has become much denser. Many cities have been installing underground pipelines to collect and transport stormwater. Thus the water level …

Architecture As Magnet : Extension To Fort Adams, Mingyi Hu

Masters Theses

According to a study from KADK (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture), social interaction mainly depends on whether people have common interests, such as the economy, politics or ideology.¹ However, it is difficult for some who feel they have different experiences or beliefs to interact within a group, which will affect their psychological state. These people need a physical environment designed to create conditions for more extensive and effective communication opportunities.

Architecture can provide a platform to help people gather together, share ideas, and create a sense of community. Architecture that holds visitors in an enclosure …

Hab Mitigation : Wetland Restoration In Farmlands, Jae Won Wang

Masters Theses

How could landscape strategically contribute to the collection and filtration of the nutrients that get transported in the river and introduce a new wetland system in the farmlands that utilize existing underdrainage systems and introduce a new paradigm of agricultural practice that could be applied in the future and eventually mitigate the Harmful Algae Bloom issue?

Slowness In The Fray : Architecture That Orients To Nature, Colin Christensen

Masters Theses

We currently live in a digital age that is marked by the rise of virtual reality and instant access to information and entertainment through smartphones. These technological developments are not inherently bad, but they have reduced our attention span and ability to focus on the world around us. This phenomenon is best stated by social scientist Herbert Simon,“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a …

No Long Urban, Can't Be Rural, Definitely Not Suburban : The Experience Of Detroit, Karin Jane Hostettler

Masters Theses

Detroit is a city of makers, dreamers and doers. When pushed to the brink the city does not step down, but instead continues to fight through grassroots movements, community advocates and neighborhood innovators. In this way Detroit has regained notoriety, not through corporate industry, banking or sports, but through those residents who have put their own difficulties aside for the betterment of their communities. However, the current economic and social developments in the city are centered around the downtown core of posterity, ignoring the work done by those individuals within the greater community context. In these neighborhoods, where autoworkers once …

Kippee-Ki-Yay : An Energy Case Study, Madison Blaize Russ

Masters Theses

6:00am, a mid-August morning in 2030: the sun is up, a dew floats above a crop-scape that kisses the horizon line, seemingly continuing past infinity. Cattle sprinkle a pasture munching lethargically on grass, flicking their tails at the occasional fly buzzing about. The land stretches for miles interrupted only by 30’ vertical turbines whooshing softly. Nearby, 4th Street stretching four and a half miles East to West in the heart of Canyon, TX hums to life. Street lights fade out and begin to oscillate in rhythm as the daily wind picks up speed. Solar Canopies unfurl, prepared for the small …

Landscape As Framework : Downtown Revival Through Rebuilding Spatial Identity, Dawei Tang

Masters Theses

In developing revitalization strategies for depopulating, shrinking districts, the economic and psychological disciplines remain the key focus. In contrast, landscape architecture has long been underestimated as a guiding framework in city revitalization. This thesis book presents how landscape architecture could function as a framework to revive a city through spatial comfort and spatial identity. Using downtown Fall River as an example, this book speculates how landscape transforms a city physically and mentally. By rebuilding Fall River’s spatial comfort and spatial identity, landscape architecture could drive social engagement, revitalize local economy, recall lost history, and ultimately, allow the city to revive …

Breaking Barriers, Opening Doors : Integrating The Formerly Incarcerated With Community, Ruoyi Song

Masters Theses

We have all experienced the trauma of building new relationships from little or nothing. Some of us were able to blend in quickly, while others remain outsiders or foreigners. As a student studying interior architecture, I believe that design can influence human behavior and help to reshape the relationship between communities.

485 Plainfield St, a historical building built for ice cream production is currently owned by an organization called “Open Doors,” who provides temporary housing and skill classes for the formerly incarcerated to re-enter society. Interactions between the surrounding community and formerly incarcerated are infrequent, and due to the lack …

Exhibiting Materiality : Object For Love Attachment Therapy, Yunhong Hu

Masters Theses

What is the interaction material culture and the monetary value of museum objects through by highlighting the opposite sides of exhibited objects’ value and design commodities’ commercial value, an exhibition aims to question and confuse the traditional understanding and distinction between museum objects and design commercial objects. Corporate museums serve as the reference for this discussion because they represent a hybrid of a traditional museum whose exhibited objects are also commercial products collected for their material worth. The exhibition space mixes traditional museum objects with retail design merchandise in order to encourage visitors to discuss the meaning of material value, …

Tea Journeys : Exhibition As Experience, Liujun Liao

Masters Theses

In the past, the public came to see the exhibition because it was a rare opportunity to learn about the culture on the other side of the earth.

With the development of science and technology, exhibition forms are becoming more and more diverse. People can see more exhibits and smaller details without leaving home.

Therefore, I would like to ask: " When it becomes so convenient to get information in modern life, is there any reason for people to enter the exhibition hall?" "When people go into the exhibition hall, what do people really want to get? ”“What can be …

Can You Shut The Door? : Exploring The Personal As Political In The Domestic Bathroom, Hannah Winders

Masters Theses

In reaction to contemporary society, where women’s authority over space and body is constantly at stake, an unapologetic utilization of the feminist lens, as both disciplinary positioning and generative design device, serves as a means to confront and redefine architecture’s relationship with body. The work of feminists within the discipline of architecture and beyond provide crucial precedents for reclaiming the subjectivity of the female body through a spectrum of subversive misuse.

While cultural and societal roles of the woman in the home has existed for a long period of time prior, the Cult of Domesticity introduced an explicit vernacular and …

Integration As A Catalyst For Change : School For Rohingya Children, Naeera Ali

Masters Theses

Ruplal house, built during the rise and growth of the merchant class in Dhaka, is now neglected and decaying. How can this space be repurposed as an education center for refugee children, become a long term stratergy for basic education that provide relief,hope for the community of refugees and revive the dying heritage of Old Dhaka?

The Rohingya refugee crisis is said to be the world’s fastest growing human rights disaster. The Rohingya are an ethnic group consisting of a majority of a Muslim population who have lived in the Buddhist majority country of Myanmar. Due to ongoing violence the …

[Super] Structure : Expanding The Network / Reclaiming The Path, Anna Albrecht

Masters Theses

In 2016, the Human Rights Council at the United Nations declared internet access to be a basic human right. In rural West Virginia, 30% of residents do not have access to reliable broadband internet. This lack of access limits economic development and opportunities and contributes to the divide between rural and urban communities. That divide has resulted in, among many things, a dearth of innovative design in rural America.

Often with technological and economic progress comes homogeneity, erasure, and environmental devastation; the latter has been endemic in the region since the Industrial Age. By reviving a network of fire lookout …

Road Home : Family Renovation In Rural China, Guijiadong Lin

Masters Theses

As a traditionally rural- based country, the countryside of China has undergone drastic changing settings since the hasty urbanization procedure and township development over last thirty years. One outstanding manifestation is how residents take shelter. The centuries-old dwellings with rich ornamentation or great historical value caught eyes of researchers, designers and developers, while the rising defective undertow in civilian houses is somewhat neglected.

Rural residences are no longer related to their local context, through wide acceptance of western styles and easy access to modern, standard non-regional materials. In the lower Yangtze River region (also known as Jiangnan district), where the …

Re-Activating Collective Memory : Museum As A Workshop, Sfoorti Sachdev

Masters Theses

Many of Delhi’s national treasures are dying due to apathy and neglect. With centuries of history embedded in these places, they lie in the heart of densely populated ‘urban villages’ and yet are isolated, increasingly subject to vandalism and encroachment - their cultural significance seemingly lost. In the last century, the collective memory of the communities around these monuments has been shaped by poverty, depression and an influx of immigrants with no prior connections to these places. This is clearly illustrated by the state these monuments are suffering.

Research suggests that sense of identity comes from a sense of place. …

Trash As Culture : Culture As Trash, Sara Naja

Masters Theses

Trash as Culture - Culture as Trash uses garbage processing to re-imagine Beirut’s city center, while using the city center to reinterpret the pathway of trash.

The Urban Shelf : A Hybrid Between Architecture And Infrastructure, William Morales

Masters Theses

As one of the most prominent and in-famous pieces of infrastructure in the built environment of the city, the freeway has created nasty conditions of socioeconomic division, segregation, mono-functional zoning and land use, and urban sprawl. In the case of Downtown Los Angeles, the city has evolved into two predominant zones of manufacturing and commercial uses. This process has pushed out housing and other necessary infrastructure to the outskirts of the city, making commutes to work, grocery stores, healthcare, and other basic necessities long and burdensome. In general, the ability to acquire resources is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive.

With the …

Regeneration Of Memory And Home : Rebuilding Urban Resilience And People's Mental Perceptions After The Camp Fire In Paradise, Ca, Xinye Xie

Masters Theses

We are losing, we are forgetting, we are moving forward, we are adapting to the dynamic world. Just like the growth and regeneration circle of the forest, cultures, and cities are all regenerating themselves based on what they have, what they have lost, and what has been erased. Memories of the past are essential parts of our modern society; they reflect our current situation and are also a metaphor of the future.

As designers, when facing a landscape which has been partially ruined or erased, how can we help people to reconnect themselves with what has been erased, rebuild their …

Time Traveler : Interpreting Landscape Process Through Time By Immersive Narrative, Zhiyuan Yang

Masters Theses

Phenomenon1: A fact or situation happens in the present or current period, like this moment’s wind or this spring’s raining. People usually have a sensory experience of the phenomenon.

Landscape Process: a. The phenomenon is extending and changing through time. b. Nature tries to take back its space/land verses human construction and expansion through natural powers like tsunami, forestification. c. The landscape designer is using ecological methods to recover or improve the environment.

Problems: Landscape process, whether through natural behavior or human behavior, usually takes decades or even centuries to see its impacts. For instance, the ice age2 iteration is …

Lost & Found : A Model For Retreated Landscapes, Madison Murray

Masters Theses

I feel as though it is crucial to structure this book in a way that takes you on the same journey I have taken through thesis, and life.

Growing up along the California coast has left me with an intense passion for environmental awareness and sustainability. I excelled in these courses throughout high school and eventually found myself taking more Environmental Science courses in college, during which I took a trip to India. There, I studied the environmental and economic effects of globalization. I remember stopping in Mumbai to witness the effects that clothing dyeing operations had on the downstream …