Architecture Commons^™

Residential Housing Renewable Energy Savings Calculator, Eric J. Robinson

Honors Thesis

Frequently renewable energy investment has been thwarted by principal-agent disconnects. Chief among these is the disconnect in the rental market between tenants and landlords; whereby, the tenant may desire to invest in renewable energy sources but has no means to. An additional disconnect occurs between homeowners and their utilities providers. This study seeks to explore the disconnect between tenants and landlords and better align their motivations through intelligent contract design for sustainable investment. If renewable energy is proven profitable as a long-term investment, landlords will be more apt to invest and collect an energy/utility fee included in the cost of …

Cultivated Edge: Mediating Rural And Urban Gaps In Informal Settlements, Camila Hellebuyck

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Usually when you think of agriculture, you think of a farm, of production and of profitability and not on how can cities benefit from these practices, specially informal settlements. Urban agriculture is practiced almost as a hobby in industrialized nations, but it’s a response to a need in developing countries. In the case of Ciudad Bolivar, an informal settlement on the edge of Bogota, Colombia, urban farming resulted from food scarcity and poverty. The project develops design placemaking strategies aimed at improving the built environment and, as a result, the social cohesion of the neighborhood. The thesis proposes a community …

Emulated Ecology, Erik Graves

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Natural versus built environment. Nature versus man made. Organic versus inorganic. These are arguments that have been stated and debated since the early architectural times of Vitruvius and are still prevalent even in today’s popular practice. As a whole architecture has moved towards a more green direction with the introduction of programs such as LEED and Architecture 2030. We have become more and more strict on the way we grade and evaluate the sustainability of a project, not just in the energy used and stored in the construction and operation of a building, but we have even begun to look …

Verge Of Erosion: Adaption To The Coastal Climatic Change, Jamison Barger

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Today the question of coastal erosion and the devastation that it brings is no longer a matter of if, but when.

This project aims at developing an adaptive approach towards design in attempt to develop a new coastal typology that adapts to the dynamic condition of coastal erosion, and addresses future projections of sea level rise. The proposal will be applied in Fuveme in the Volta Region of Ghana, West Africa, which is presently on the verge of being wiped out entirely due to a vastly reseeding shoreline. The thesis will center on elements such as the environment, ecology, society, …

Reawakening Quality In Architecture: A Contemporary Idiom Of Pattern Language, Christopher D. Richardson

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

“Life peeks out of a thousand masks, One of these is architecture.”

As technology advances forward architecture has continuously tried to find its place within the production of each new technology. This has led to thinking of architecture as causalities as an attempt to make it closer to a production line of efficient outputs. This has caused the problem a lack of evocation, the poetics, connection to memory, the idea of mind, body, and spirit being captured in the design.

This inquiry began by looking at a missed opportunity within Christopher Alexander’s work A Pattern Language. Pattern Language introduced the …

Social Inclusion Through Art, Christian Aguilar

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

My thesis project aims to develop an Art Center, which will provide art and its many forms to the residents of Atlanta’s Westside neighborhoods. The art services will provide the residents with the opportunity to enhance creativity, promote economic growth, and bring people together; allowing themselves and the community to overcome the challenges of segregation and unemployment present in these neighborhoods. Since, art is often a non-verbal process, it will also provide individuals the platform to raise awareness about inherent issues in the neighborhoods.

Underground Atlanta Revisited, Salvador Jimenez

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is commonly thought of as individual buildings, usually someone would think of an enclosure, that we often think of it as an "interior" space, while our surroundings outside of these enclosures are considered "exterior" space. Transitional spaces bridges the gap between solely interior and solely exterior. These spaces, in being transitional, take people from outside and, through the overlap of the outside nature and building, transfer individuals to a destination defined as inside. In doing this, transitional space helps to ease architecture's relationship with the natural environment, creating a relationship with each other rather than a conflict. This thesis …

Cultural Embrace, Jeremy Penja

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Cultural embrace creating an identity on a larger scale in modern society. Architecture is a symbolic catalyst of a threshold, it is bound by the physical presence as well as “enriched by both the memory and dreams, past and future” Juhani Pallasmaa. It captures the sensibility of expectation and fulfillment, sense of symbols that resonated within. It evokes the absolutely necessary association of visual-tactile and identity to connect the history to present. It is an absolute cultural responsiveness and symbolism that cultural embrace strives for. Spaces have become empty container lacking true essence. The current architecture does little to address …

Student Mixology, Brandon Arroyo

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In colleges around the country student homelessness is a problem on the rise. Students who are affected often reside in cars, abandon buildings, or shelters. This thesis focuses on integrating underprivileged groups like homeless students and underprivileged youth, with other school related user groups such as traditional students, parent students, and faculty. The unique needs of each of the user groups are defined and a understanding of the building typology associated with each user group will be integrated together to create a project where six unique user groups will be able to live together while gaining a mutual benefit from …

Beyond Flat Space: Representing Architecture In Virtual Reality, Holden Holley

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

As architects, most of us go through years of training and experience just to read and draw plans, sections, and elevations. As students, we are taught how to read a plan and dissect the information we need to understand the spatial relationships. There are many times, however, that a plan doesn’t really tell us what experiencing this space is like. And how is the untrained client supposed to understand how this space really works? Isn’t that our job as architects, to represent our designs well enough to our clients that we communicate to them everything necessary for understanding this space …

Mars: Where Humans Become Martians, Briana G. Keith

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

What qualities will influence the culture that a Martian architecture responds to? Soon enough, as dwellers begin to influence this barren habitation, a new and divergent society will soon cultivate in response to the environment of The Red Planet. These changes will bloom in accordance to Mars’ Seeds of Culture- one that reinvents the connection between the inside and outside world. These “seeds” are defined by the atmospheric and geographic conditions that we will be susceptible to everyday: rusty red days and calming blue sunsets, powerful dust storms that encompass the entire planet, no vegetation to speak of, and low …

Vertical Essence, Didier Porter

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In the late 1800s, the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution created a new typology of architecture, the high-rise. Through architecture, people could truly live and interact with one another in clouds, while experiencing breathtaking views of the world around. To accommodate the urbanization of cites, architects and urban planners adopted the concept of vertical living within the social housing sectors. Ambitious desires towards desirable, vertical living became undermined by poor construction and problematic living conditions. Built in deprived areas and isolated locations, these experiments of social housing became a concentration of poverty, crime, and violence. Dysfunctional social environments resorted …

Solar And Rain Catching Canopy. Urban Oasis, Afolabi Ibitoye, Langston Clark, Elena Zimareva, Evan Banks, Alexander Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Urban Oasis is designed to work within existing “pocket parks” in New York City as a combined rainwater collector, personal electronics charging station and resting designation for New Yorkers. Intended to not only lessen the demand on the city power grid by using renewable energy to charge devices, the urban oasis is also intended to mitigate grey water overfill in New York’s combined sewer system and, in general, serve as a model for responsible environmental stewardship in urban areas.

The important technical aspects of the canopy specifically analyzed were:

a) how much rainwater could the canopy be expected to …

Architecture Of Democracy, Devin Perkey

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The goal of this thesis is to explore how architecture can play a role in democracy. The traditional “Architecture of Democracy” is a branch of neoclassical architecture called Jeffersonian. This type of architecture is modeled after Greek temples which is not the inclusive space you would expect an architecture of democracy to be modeled after. I believe the imposing, exclusive architecture has played a part in the current state of affairs between representatives and citizens and the solution lies in creating a new Architecture of Democracy based on the principles of democracy.

Modulating The Craft, Lee Martin

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Technology has brought a new paradigm to the act, art and Craft of Making. Digital technologies that utilize optimized production tools have transformed the traditional paradigm of the design-build construct. As new technologies have developed, most makers disregard the tools and skills of the past. Neglecting traditional craft has given rise to the term “fabrication.” Fabrication is a method of constructing which can be described as the absence of soul and character, in other words, one that is disposable in a contemporary culture. This thesis problematizes a design process between the Craftsman of pre-twenty-first century tool making, and those of …

A Green Dialogue For Aging Society, Dian Tan

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis addresses the issue about disconnections of communication between human to human, and human to environment. It seems like we got connections with other people via various smart devices, meanwhile we are so disconnected with the people and environment where we are currently living. Technologies sometimes hinder the communicating ability of human. Architecture could become a media that contains more messages send to human, helping on the communication between human to human, and human to environment.

Daylighting Optimization Study: Rock Creek High School Commons Skylight Optimization, Razieh Hosseini Nezhad, Ashley Mcdaniel-Harpster, Nicholas Papaefthimiou, Rosemary Hill

Student Research Symposium

The aim of this study is to optimize the shape of the skylights in order to enhance daylighting. Rhino, Diva, Grasshopper, and Galapagos are the softwares utilized to test differing shapes on top and bottom of the shaft of the skylight, and the findings show preference to those with beneficial impacts on Spatial daylighting autonomy (sDA) of greater than 55% and Annual Solar Exposure (ASE) of less than 10%. Selecting metrics within the above parameters result in optimal skylight geometry with highest daylighting output. The initial purpose of the experiment was to optimize the design of the skylight shaft with …

The 21st Century Energy Hub, Farhaan B. Samnani

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Developing countries face problems like pollution, unsafe construction, poverty and lack of clean stable energy. These areas are the most in need of sustainable and net positive design since they lack the resources to design long-term solution. An architecture that can make energy affordable through onsite rapidly renewable resources, help reduce on site pollution and provide stable housing would be a welcome intervention. As we approach the new century, buildings will aim to become an energy hub. Cities do not look at a building as an energy source. Currently Energy production centers sit on the outskirts of the city. But …

Re-Hanok-Ization, Joel Lee

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

South Korea is a relatively small country of roughly 38,000 miles^2 which to put it into perspective is about half of the state of Florida, this country has a GDP ranking of 12 worldwide. From an architectural prospective, this country has the resources to build new & innovative structures. And South Korean’s have been doing so by modernizing commercial buildings and they have enlisted the services of famous architects from around the world such as Zaha Hadid, Tadao Ando, & Richard Meier. What about their most commonly used buildings? Out of the 30% of land that is buildable in South …

Shrinking Cities In The Rust Belt: An Ecological Urban Design Intervention In Cairo, Illinois, Dakota Lewis

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Shrinking cities are those which have experienced sustained depopulation over time. This phenomenon typically occurs in industrialized countries around the world as a result of economic downturn, social tension, or climate related change. When depopulation occurs, remaining communities are often met with unsustainable conditions as they are forced to function in a city designed for many times their population. While these conditions could be seen as negative, this design thesis aims to re-frame urban shrinkage as a condition that reveals unprecedented sustainable design opportunities. The United States Rust Belt region contains many shrinking cities such as Cairo, Illinois which due …