Architecture Commons^™

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 …

Recovery In Reverse, Shiyu Bei

Masters Theses

This project provokes awareness of natural resources protection in Tibet, and it raises questions about its political, environmental, and cultural impact. Through constructing a 2.5 km wall out of pre-cast concrete blocks over a long period of time, it works to provoke people both on-site and off-site.

The wall acts as a new injury to the land just like the extraction of resources from the earth again and again. Starting with another wound, I am hoping to raise awareness of the status of this landscape, helping it to recover in reverse. When facing this large international issue, I am not …

Recharging Bangkok : A Climate Adaptive Vision For Saen Saeb Canal, Ratchu Surajaras

Masters Theses

This proposal aims to investigate an extensive role of Bangkok’s canal system that can potentially serve as a climate-adaptive and multi-functional infrastructure to help address the city’s environmental issues and to support the complex social needs. Together with municipal hydrological systems, the canals can mitigate flooding, land-subsidence and sea level rise while regaining lost cultural functions specific to Thai ways of living with water in both a contemporary context and future scenarios.

The investigation focuses on Saen Saeb canal as a primary study area which is historically one of the most important canals at the heart of downtown of Bangkok …

When The Wind Blows, Yiying Wang

Masters Theses

Climate change is causing extreme weather to become more frequent and intense. However, at present, existing landscape-based strategies to deal with such disruptive natural events are not systematic or effective. Additionally, most projects in landscape and urban design focus on flooding but pay little attention to the effects of high wind. My graduate thesis focuses on the Island of Hainan, in the South China Sea, and explores how to use resilient planning and design to promote passive cooling and reduce high wind damage caused by typhoons and other tropical storms. Based on the solid analysis of hydrologic and meteorological processes, …

Emerging Ecotone, Tongyi Zhang

Masters Theses

Along with the development of society and economy, waste landscape becomes an inevitable result of urban involvement where technological innovation plays a very important role. Computer science, as the most important technology in the 21st century, also affects the physical spaces by enlarging our social distance. People prefer to contact physically less with others unless necessary, causing shrinkage of our community spaces. Abandoned commercial space, which has lost its social function, is one of the typical effects derived from both economic evolution and community shrinking.

In fact, Josh Sanburn (2017) in TIME mentioned “by 2022, analysts estimate that 1 out …

Evolution Of A Type : Street Vending As Urban Strategy In Guangzhou, China, Yuying Shen

Masters Theses

As China continues its program of building new cities and encouraging urban resettlement from smaller towns and the countryside, informal activities that were once typical of urban areas – such as street vending – are being evicted by the government in the name of cleanliness and beautification. In reality, the motivation of eviction has to do with land values and the desire to replace the low-end population: street markets in the downtown areas could be developed into programs that bring large-scale money-making, like shopping malls; street vendors are viewed as undisciplined, messy and outmoded.

If we recognize the conflict between …

Walking Mediation : Bringing Back Rituals On Temple Visits On Mount Putuo, Zhejiang, China, Tianjie Chi

Masters Theses

Mount Putuo is a culturally significant Buddhist pilgrimage site with over a 1000 years history. Traditional walking paths were marginalized on Mount Putuo after a new bus circulation was developed to accommodate more visitors efficiently.

In the past, people were arriving at the old dock, walking through the forests, meeting pavilions and gates, and finally reach the temple. Linear spaces and trees embracing the path help them clean up their mind before they meet burn the joss sticks. Nowadays, most visitors arrive at the modern new dock and spend 20-30 minutes to wait in line for the bus, playing phone …

In The Wake Of The Atoms+Sphaira, Jesús Meléndez Vázquez

Masters Theses

In the Wake of the Atmos+sphaira is an architectural thesis that investigates the roles of atmospheric events in reimagining architectural space. The framing of events is the subject of revision, where atmosphere emerges as both spatial content and container. This architecture of atmosphere reconstructs the dialogue between body and space, creating a new trilogy of relationships: space, atmosphere and event.

Initially, this thesis developed an apparatus that has the operational capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, categorize and diverge atmospheric events into two predetermined conditions: temperature and temperament. Positioned between the technical and the aesthetic, temperature and temperament …

Tanzania : A New Architectural Pedagogy, Cameron Leandri

Masters Theses

According to Habitat for Humanity, the impact of poverty on education in East Africa remains one of the biggest challenges faced by the region. Self sufficiency is the most sustainable way to advance a society and is a missing link that would help empower developing communities. This thesis imagines a more accessible network of education for the greater region of Kigoma, Tanzania. It proposes this through a two-step system, the first programmatic, the second architectural. Both strategies seek to strengthen the connection between local and global communities, as an education mission.

The proposed educational network utilizes a Central Hub located …

Urban Acupuncture : Can The Deliberate Use Of Tactical Interventions Reinvigorate Informal Settlements?, Robert Samir Diaz Vicente

Masters Theses

Due to the rapid development of informal settlements, essential urban conditions such as public spaces, infrastructure, and amiable living conditions are lacking from the urban context. These hyperly urban communities lack an overall organizational strategy that preserve their successes i.e. human scale, community interrelations, hyper functionality while addressing its downfalls organic chaotic growth and lack of general systems.

Conventional design and planning used in “formal’ urban spaces focus on long lasting strokes of urbanisation, this means that the built geography moves slow, and are designed for this slow pace changing. Informal Settlements are dynamic and perpetually rearranging themselves to suit …

The Hospitality Design Laboratory: Testing A Growing Global Resource For Architectural Planning Research In The Tourism/Resort Industry, Glenn Nowak

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

The HD-Lab at UNLV is an experiment in merging academic research teams with industry leadership to address the ever-changing landscape of global tourism, gaming, and hospitality as it pertains to the built environment. This poster session seeks to share overviews of previous studies, lessons learned, and opportunities for future architectural research. Collaborations amongst diverse teams aim to foster interdisciplinary research and continued contributions to the intellectual capital of hospitality design in Las Vegas and around the world. The presentation is structured across six broad and intertwined areas of foci: 1. Integrated resorts’ future evolutions and innovations, 2. Tourism architecture’s advanced …

Machine Learning In Architecture: Connectionist Approach To Architectural Design, Andrew Chase

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Previous applications to design processes intend to enhance a building’s schematic design using quantitative data. Therefore, most applications to the early design phases are passed by as simple overarching ideas informed by the designer and users’ knowledge. Although this is a preferred method of choice making, the knowledge used to inform conceptual and schematic design process can be limited. With the increase of computation in all major industries, a new increase in data to describe forms of infrastructure is required. These forms being objects to analyze their performance and potential, and active forms that can describe the disposition of urban …

Architectural Stewardship: Exploring Interpretation Architecture Through The Lens Of The Visitor, Graham A. Oden

University Honors Theses

This undergraduate thesis investigates the experiential impact of interpretation architecture in the natural setting, specifically through the lens of its users. The need for this study arose when visitors were not approached or included to be part of the design process or studies in the renovation of Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve's Visitor Center. The only visitor related information used by the contracted firm was ten year old demographic and quantitative studies provided by the NPS. This gap of knowledge was then addressed by the proactive engagement of visitors in a design workshop ranger program at the park. …

On The Inference Of The State Of Turbulence And Mixing Efficiency In Stably Stratified Flows, Amrapalli Garanaik, Subhas K. Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Scaling arguments are presented to quantify the widely used diapycnal (irreversible) mixing coefficient Γ = ∈PE/∈ in stratified flows as a function of the turbulent Froude number Fr = ∈/Nk. Here, N is the buoyancy frequency, k is the turbulent kinetic energy, ∈ is the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy and ∈PE is the rate of dissipation of turbulent potential energy. We show that for Fr≫1, Γ ∝ Fr^-2, for Fr∼ O (1), Γ ∝ Fr^-1 and for Fr ≪ 1, Γ ∝ Fr⁰. These scaling results are tested using high-resolution direct numerical …

Detection Of Sand Boils From Images Using Machine Learning Approaches, Aditi S. Kuchi

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Levees provide protection for vast amounts of commercial and residential properties. However, these structures degrade over time, due to the impact of severe weather, sand boils, subsidence of land, seepage, etc. In this research, we focus on detecting sand boils. Sand boils occur when water under pressure wells up to the surface through a bed of sand. These make levees especially vulnerable. Object detection is a good approach to confirm the presence of sand boils from satellite or drone imagery, which can be utilized to assist in the automated levee monitoring methodology. Since sand boils have distinct features, applying object …