Architecture Commons^™

Re-Wildin Detroit: Return Of A Blighted City Back To Nature, Nivedita Keshri, Shreeya Shakya

Architecture Thesis Prep

Detroit’s complicated history of corruption, racial tensions and economic decline have made conventional strategies for growth, repopulation and infill inadequate for dealing with ongoing and overwhelming urban vacancy. Dealing with voids within shrinking cities have been difficult because it lies outside the existing experience and vocabulary of urban planning, architecture and socioeconomics. Most have failed to recognize that voids are not useless and there is potential value in keeping them as voids.

What is the current conditions of these voids? How do we make use of it without erasing it? How can we revisit ideas of a city that embraces …

P.E.T.S.: Personal. Empathic. Topological. Series., Ian Mulich, Jose Sanchez

Architecture Thesis Prep

Within the current conditions of our globalized society, market structures and logics have come to organize culture, economy, and politics in an increasingly interrelated manner. Contingent to this triangulation, architecture needs to be critical about its turn towards the market and the commercialization of its production. By performing as a brand that expands and evolves serially, architectural practice can maneuver commercial systems of exchange and act as a cultural agent that promotes deeper engagement with design. Corporeal forms that induce empathic relationships can serve as the architectural products necessary to fuel consumption practices that craft individualized disciplinary interaction. The empathic …

Baita, Xiong’An: Towards And Alternative Urbanism, Minglu Wei, Ying Zuo

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project focuses on Xiong’an, the new special area established in April 2017 by the Chinese government, as well as the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in China, both as a typology and political and economic events. By documenting and understanding the urban development pattern that has been implemented in China since 1978 and by revealing the process of translation and materialization of this capital and politics driven utopian model in the past forty years, the objective is:

1. To construct an alternate portrait of the development of Xiong’an, which is arguably a unique urban typology in China, from pieces of …

[Chinese Urban Villages Research], Yan Liu

Architecture Thesis Prep

“Throughout history, expanding cities have always run over villages, hamlets, estates, gardens, and soft elements that constitute the countryside, the domain that hosts agriculture and nature.” Urban Villages, essentially a composite of these “soft” elements, remained as one of the hardest anchors among the residual or by-product in China’s urban development. Until 1985, the Pearl River Delta region had been mainly dominated by farms and small rural villages. The onset of economic reform and the open-door policy brought an influx of foreign investment which fueled the unstoppable train of urbanization. Rapid urbanization let to the formation of Urban Villages, a …

Multiplicitous Realities: Hybridizing The Virtual And The Physical, John Carino

Architecture Thesis Prep

User spatial experience is no longer solely determined by objective physical realities in today's architecture. A new set of tools allowing for seamless virtual overlay and a new architectural disciplinary and industry interest in creating "virtual" environments are changing the way users understand and experience physical space. These tools include elements such as projection mapping, augmented reality, holograms, and digital display systems. These tools are able transform static physical spaces into dynamic spaces creating multiplicitous realities that transcend spatial physicality.

Researching nightclubs and discotheques as a precedent has revealed the many scales, programs, and possibilities of virtual materials to transform …

Urban Rangers: The Scope Of Medellin Through Informal Waste Collection, Christina Rubino

Architecture Thesis Prep

Waste Collectors: Urban Rangers proposes that looking at Medellin through the scope of an informal waste collector allows for the visualization of the relationship between the user and distribution of repurposed values in the city. The analysis focuses on the existing infrastructure and legislation that frames this practice; it provides a critique of current working elements that could be designed to function as a network to assert a new spatial agency with user specificity. This thesis uses the scope of the waste collector, an urban phenomenon, to reexamine the city of Medellin and its legislative practices regarding this issue. Addressing …

Old Buildings, Progressive Forms: Exploring Radical Methods Of Historic Preservation, Ian Masters

Architecture Thesis Prep

Old buildings when coupled with -- or challenged by -- contemporary form produce new visual and spatial compositions, fundamental in developing more investigative methods of preservation that enrich architectural identity. Since the 1960s and the formation of the National Register of Historical Places, American ideas regarding antiquity have been idly manifested in historic preservation, where old buildings are forcefully cemented in their original state to reflect their ‘peak’ condition. It is important to understand and visualize historic buildings as they were conceived; however, universal concessions to historical preservation fail to stimulate architectural progression. Preserving historic buildings means supporting and enriching …

The New Urban Artifact, Ricardo Rodriguez Huerta

Architecture Thesis Prep

This is a study of the architectural and historical construct of the Urban Artifact. For the purposes of this exploration, an Urban Artifact is to be understood as the physical manifestation of the city and its collective memory. It is the product of the history and character of its place and the embodiment of an idea of its type and the memory of its lineage. In contrast to the fixed intention and permanence of a monument, an Urban Artifact has its own autonomy and value gained over time until it ultimately becomes also identified as a monument. These concepts, defined …

Mirage: Architecture's Confounding Experiences, Nuofan Xu, Ziyao Zhang

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis explores the experiences created from mixing architecture elements with projections, in order to make projections melt into architecture as an inseparable element. By proposing an architecture that integrates the effects and infrastructures of digital displays at the start point of the design process, the project seeks to explore digital displays’ ability to blur physical boundaries, to apply temporality on eternal structures and isolate the exterior from the interior.

The project uses mirage, an optical phenomenon which produces illusory images of distant objects, as an analogy to speculate digital displays in architecture. On one hand, mirage shows an ordinary …

Finding A New Center: A Study Of Neo-Industrial America, Juliet Domine, Virginia Paulk

Architecture Thesis Prep

Globalization moved manufacturing in America overseas, leaving the middle of the country with forgotten industrial zones. As a result, the edges of the country, with greater access to international markets, have flourished, creating a distinct divide between the middle and the edge. Moving out of the post-industrial era into the current age of the neo-industrial, revitalization of the middle can occur by reintroducing industry utilizing previous skill sets needed for agriculture and manufacturing. We are arguing that the center of the United States can be made relevant again through the programmatic revitalization of post-industrial sites. The Mississippi River is historically …

Public Space With Character: A Late, Late Entry To The Chicago Central Public Library Competition, Kokeith Perry Ii

Architecture Thesis Prep

The city of Chicago has a complex relationship with the aesthetics of civic monuments and infrastructures. The cities most canonical projects validate its apparent biases - an oscillation between iconic modern and postmodern figures proliferate the urban fabric. The dynamic between these two paradigms creates a complex relationship between architecture, urban space, and the public mirroring the cities longstanding and complex history of segregated urban space and peoples. This project draws precedent from the format of the 1980 Stanley Tigerman exhibition Late entries to the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, a then-radical competition set to reinvigorate the discipline the way the …

Crude Urbanism, Ahnaf Chowdhury, Anuradha Desai

Architecture Thesis Prep

Mumbai’s formal and informal components operate in interdependence. Matter from the formal is absorbed by the informal, where it is hacked, recycled and repurposed. The output, now lucrative, is spat back into the formal. For example, the city’s trash is collected, sorted and prepared by the informal as a commodity that is sold back into the formal. This cycle creates crucial nodes, where the formal relies heavily on the informal for its flexible and resilient systems.

Though these systems may be independent and engrained in Mumbai’s economy, the worker’s relation to the system’s matter reveals needs that the informal sector …

The Cultural Mosaic: Knowledge, Conflict And The Power Of Place, Shanaya Girdharlal

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis explores how contemporary architecture can recreate the authentic experience of a historical site by intervening in a historical context such that both historical continuity and contemporary additions manifest in a symbiotic and didactic way.

The project examines how the history of a place is represented and reflected logistically, and how it materially manifests in its built form. In the context of Rajasthan, identification means to acknowledge the ruling past, to embrace its traditions, crafts, and architecture, and to create a contemporary language for the site based on past evidence. The thesis tries to establish a historical continuum using …

Surfaces Of Exchange: Formulating Connections And Experiences In The Physical And Digital Landscape, Brooke Calhoun, Ross Hanson

Architecture Thesis Prep

The means and modes through which people and places have connected has drastically altered within the recent past. At the global scale, as recent as the mid 1800’s, the cross-cultural exchange of information was rare and occurred only through person-to-person connections. Expositions such as the Great Exhibition hosted in London at the Crystal Palace in 1851 is a clear example of how cultures communicated in our recent past. Information, machines, animals, plants, all the above, was removed from its natural habitat and placed on display in front of an audience; a one-point perspective through which one culture would understand another. …

Embracing The American Atlantis: Designing For A Post-Disaster New Orleans, Mikayla Beckwith, Katherine Truluck

Architecture Thesis Prep

In the year 2100, New Orleans is flooded and reduced to a fraction of its previous grandeur. The rising sea level has reduced the city to an archipelago settled between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. Through the implementation of a transportation and program core system, the archipelago of territories is reconnected and the programmatic organization of the land is redistributed. This project combines architectural, infrastructural, and utopian case studies to move beyond the mitigation of water and instead create a new condition that adapts to the water in a more symbiotic fashion. Through this intervention, New Orleans …

Building Translations: Narratives On Bizarre Preservation, Alexandra Allen, Scott Michael Krabath

Architecture Thesis Prep

In today’s globalized society, we’re confronted with a flood of images and data at a speed that strains our ability to fully process the information. This messy network often gives way to misreading’s and poor interpretations. In the architectural discipline, a suspension of critical disbelief is necessary to accommodate the lack of fidelity, clarity or resolution that exists in many of the documents we encounter.

We contend that there’s a productive tension between the object and its mediated representation and that the translations that occur between the two are embedded within the way that architects communicate with one another.

Robin …

Speculative Spoliation: Spolia As An Instrument Of Locus Making & Identity Mediation, Amelia Gan Wen Jiun

Architecture Thesis Prep

In this thesis, spolia is defined as the repurposing of found artifacts or material with ingrained place identities to new building matter in novel contexts. This includes architecture remnants or fragments from sites of historical ruins, urban derelicts and artifacts currently displayed in museums.

Architecture's impermanence results in demolishment, reconstruction, or exhibition of its fragments in museums or ruin parks. Attempts at preservation often only look at the surface-level significance of these artifacts without allowing for the addition of meanings over time. While displaying an artifact in a museum or turning ruins into tourist parks directly addresses the history of …

City Of Brick: Spatial And Material Explorations In 21st Century Urbanism, William Collins

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project I’m proposing, City of Brick: Spatial and Material Explorations in 21st Century Urbanism, will analyze the problem of and propose an alternative to the supertall residential tower in the contemporary city. Th ere is a trend in American cites toward the construction of ‘prestige’ projects, namely, skyscrapers of luxury apartments purchased as investments. Th is phenomenon is well-documented in the spacious floorplans of these towers; for example, 432 Park Avenue in New York City, though it is the tallest residential building in North America, only contains 104 units. My proposal seeks to provide a counter to the ultraluxury …

Political Archipelago: Repoliticizing Post-Umbrella Revolution Hong Kong, Dora Yui Kei Lo

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project aims to re-politicize the public sphere of post-Umbrella Revolution Hong Kong. Umbrella Revolution was one of the latest defining events of democratic struggles in Hong Kong. Like other protests, civil disobedience, and revolutions, the Umbrella Revolution was more than just “organized public dissents”; it was an experiment of an alternative democratic sphere for agonistic struggles. The occupation temporarily altered, reoriented, disoriented or debilitated the existing boundaries and thresholds in the city; it resisted the logic of the city to create a space of exception. However, these temporary alterations did not leave significant permanent imprints to the city. In …

Political Archipelago: Repoliticizing Post-Umbrella Revolution Hong Kong, Dora Yui Kei Lo

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project aims to re-politicize the public sphere of post-Umbrella Revolution Hong Kong. Umbrella Revolution was one of the latest defining events of democratic struggles in Hong Kong. Like other protests, civil disobedience and revolutions, Umbrella Revolution was more than just “organized public dissents”; it was an experiment of an alternative democratic sphere for agonistic struggles. The occupation temporarily altered, reoriented, disoriented or debilitated the existing boundaries and thresholds in the city; it resisted the logic of the city to create a space of exception. However, these temporary alterations did not leave significant permanent imprints to the city. At the …