Architecture Commons^™

Head Space: An Exploration Into Design Code, Gaylon Lerch

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores the field of medical research for data to support the assertion that today’s coding standards are not performing in a way that fully addresses the needs of occupants of the built environment. This thesis will pull from the fields of psychology, physical medicine, and architecture to establish what current codes are, how they are deficient, and how they can be rectified, improved upon, or added if not already existing. The method used to establish the criteria of basic needs for healthy human function is established through understanding of how light, sound, and overall spatial quality effects ...

Technological Augmentation: Creating A Public Center For Making, Timothy Hardeman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

We live in an era where technology is driving forward at an unprecedented pace. We have access to tools, materials, and processes which weren’t even conceptualized 50 years ago. 3D printing, CNCs, and Laser Cutters allow us to create incredible designs, and at affordable prices. We have carbon fiber, advanced composites, and modern alloys.

But where do we experience these things? In a classroom? Through screens as we read about these intangible leaps in technology? Why don’t we have a place where we get to experience these things first-hand, and experiment with our own ideas about how they ...

Elevated Education: Approach To Inclusive Pedagogy For Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Elijah James

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

My mother is a huge inspiration in my life. She is a special education teacher. And throughout the years she has continually expressed the dramatic increase in autistic students. When she first began, she had 4 students, she now has 28. According to the CDC, throughout the last four years the number of autistic students has risen about 8%. This brings the autism rate to 17.8% for students aged 3-17. That is about 1 in every 6 students.

The views of autism are often misconstrued just for being different. I too was guilty of this. Until the day I ...

Community In Crisis: A Reformation Of Behavioral Health Hospitals In Atlanta, Georgia, Niki Crawford

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Behavioral health hospitals in America are failing to treat their patients with lasting success upon patient release. These facilities appear to be safe, sanitary, and pleasant, but our state behavioral health hospitals in the United States are still cold, stark prisons to those trapped within their walls.

Impersonal and insufficient for caring for those with mental illness, these institutions meant for treatment can do more harm than good at a time when an individual is most vulnerable. Used as holding cells where sedated patients are kept until their crises pass, the spaces are no more than prisons designed to maintain ...

Medkit: Modular Emergency Deployment, Christian Ladefoged, Zamila Karimi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis began with exploring low-cost prefab dwelling units to be implemented in struggling communities with extreme poverty, homelessness, and unemployment. The initial research on modular units shifted to focus on our healthcare infrastructure challenges here at home given the COVID-19 crisis.

“Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a substantial impact on racial and ethnic minority populations and essential workers in the United States …”¹ This disease disproportionately impacts poor and rural communities in the United States, showing double the mortality than urban areas simply due to the neglected environment². Emergency assistance is needed to expand the care capacity ...

Nex-Us, Julianna Decocco

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

A THESIS ARGUING THE BASIC FUNCTION OF ARCHITECTURE IN ITS PRIMITIVE MEANS OF SHELTERING THE BODY AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT SHOULD BE INSTEAD RETHOUGHT TO THE INTERCONNECTION OF THE BODY AS A CONDUIT BETWEEN PHYSICAL EARTH AND THE COSMOS. ARCHITECTURE FOR CONNECTING THE PHYSICALITY AND MENTALITY OF HUMAN’S HIGHER SELF TO ITS SURROUNDING ENVIRONMENT, RETURNING TO WHAT THE ESSENCE OF ARCHITECTURE IS AND REDEFINING ITS PARAMETERS. IT WILL FORMULATE ITSELF AS A MEDIATION, NON-DENOMINATIONAL TEMPLE CENTER. IRONING OUT WHAT ARCHITECTURE MEANS MORE HOLISTICALLY THROUGH THE INTERPRETATIONS OF NATURE, COSMIC GEOMETRIES AND THE TUNING OF CONNECTION IN HUMANS TO THE ...

In Process: Storytelling Through Architecture, Rourke Brakeville

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

How can stories be told through architectural space? For millennia, humanity has told stories, passing narratives down from generation to generation through dance, song, sculpture, and other art forms.

Today, architecture is conceptualized as a series of characters: form, space, program, materials, codes; characters that are then stitched together to generate a design. Yet in the current era of architectural formulation, there is a dereliction in the importance and beauty from the previous ages.

Through examining historical precedents that communicate a narrative, this research outlined techniques of metaphor, allegory, and symbol that translate a story into architecture. Primarily, allegory was ...

Retrofitting The Future, Lindsay Pannell

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The architectural world has felt the push toward building more efficiently and more environmentally-friendly. Programs such as LEED acknowledge well designed, energy efficient buildings that have done their part to build structures that don’t further damage the environment. However, many buildings are being torn down and replaced by these energy efficient buildings. The demolition process and the waste and disposal of materials from these older buildings are negatively affecting carbon emissions. In many cases, the new environmentally efficient buildings would take decades to offset the carbon emissions from the demolition and reconstruction process, while retrofitting buildings can cut back ...

H2opulent, Reese Zimmerman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This project is an experiment on resilience, in an attempt to set forth guidelines for a new architecture that is designed with water, for water, and against water. The intent of this project is to create a self-sustaining architectural model that will exist entirely detached from dry land in order to mitigate the affects of flooding and water level rise.

For this project I am analyzing projects in three categories: land, water and hybrid. Land includes projects built along the coast on solid ground, water includes projects that either float on top of the water or are built on stilts ...

From Shelter To Home: Creation Of Home In Areas Of Poverty And Scarcity, Claudia Rateb

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Areas of scarcity among third-world countries are often subject to poverty stemming from a various reasons. Focusing specifically on Minya, Egypt, extreme poverty is a result of a combination of factors. These factors include but are not limited to systematic targeting of religious minorities, lack of potable resources, lack of education among the region, poor transit and distance from employment opportunity, and governmental corruption. As a result, slum-like conditions arise within and directly outside the city of Minya, creating unsafe and undignified living conditions to people affected by poverty. These living conditions further the wedge between the poor and wealthy ...

The Aesthetics Of Memory, David Trinidad

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The Aesthetics of Memory is an exploration into the role that Architecture plays in the Resolution of Trauma and Loss. The thesis explored the various places that Architecture is involved, broad research was done on hospitals, graveyards, and then eventually focused on Memorial Design. Memorials serve a unique purpose; much the same way music organizes our emotions at a visceral level Memorials make tangible the emotions around loss/trauma events. The goal was to leverage this unique capacity of memorials to create a space for “Rolling Loss”. A space dedicated to the universal human experience of Loss, a space where ...

Black Holistic: A Response To Respiratory Health And Equity Through K-12 Environments And Community - Based Design, Azha Parker

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

The overarching aim of this thesis is to investigate the causes of higher amounts of absenteeism due to asthmatic disease within African American students as it pertains to building-related illness and environmental harms. With this information, design decisions will be made to respond to asthma symptoms amongst students and introduce new outlooks towards health within the communities non-intrusively. Looking at Lakeview Elementary School in Portsmouth, Virginia as a case. This majority African American school sits adjacent to a preexisting landfill that has been capped before construction of the school. This site will act as an example, showing the relationships between ...

Shifting Perspectives: A Travelling, Interactive Installation Educating Youth, Mary Branon

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

If I were to ask a group of people to explain what countries make up the Middle East, they likely wouldn’t be able to list more than a few. Despite the internet, technology, and social media being within reach, it is still common to see generalizations about groups of people, their origins, and the boundaries of those origins. This leads me to wonder why. Is this an issue within our educational system? Is this due to lack of accessible information? Or maybe information isn’t presented in a way that is easily understood and digested? An abundance of information ...

[Re]Discovering Nature | Ecotourism & Natural Resource Conservation: The ‘Potential’ For A Sustainable Symbiotic Relationship, Amber Bennett

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Humans are more disconnected than ever from the natural environment. Architecture and ecology, both providing distinct conceptual frameworks for the city, one for nature and one for culture, these thesis explores the frameworks that call for them to be intersected to further an actionable ecology for the city and its architecture. Interaction with the natural environment is crucial to human well-being and development, but sadly this connection has diminished drastically due to the over-reliance on modern-day advances and technology. This severed relationship attributes to the lack of awareness of pressing environmental issues that are threatening our shared communities. Islands, remote ...

Encapsulating Sound, Jackie Soto

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis aims to identify the acoustic anomalies of Cannon Chapel by understanding how its visitants typically occupy the flexible space, the use of materials, and the shape of the spaces, and therefore to accurately resolve those acoustic anomalies, improving the auditory experience of those visitants and advancing architectural acoustic research.

Contemplative Retreat: Examining The Fundamentals Of Spiritual Orientation Through Architecture, Daryl Rowe

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

With over 4,200 faith practices documented all over the world and 84% of the world's population identifying with one of them, the studies of the Pew Research Institute clearly show that there is a need for spiritual spaces worldwide. Throughout history, these places were held as sacred and the land and building of these structures were treated as such. They offered a connection with the energy of the earth and orientation of the soul. All religions have their own defined religious rites that aid in the continuation of your practice of the faith. These involve rites of passage ...

Rethinking The Needs Of The Invisible Society Through Empowerment, Jada Ross

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis addresses the issue of homelessness and is intended to spark an open conversation about how we can redefine our perceptions of families who experience homelessness. The proposal aims to explore and establish an transitional intervention for “invisible” families to live and develop into contributing residents of society. In the United States, the most vulnerable population are families with children, accounting for 33% of the homeless population. As Covid19 cases continue to rise, and policies continue to neglect affordable housing options, the number of families experiencing homelessness will continue to grow in the future. Through the analysis of case ...

Remembering A Hidden Space: Stitching Memorial Architecture With A Subterranean Tunnel System Of The Slave Trade, Olivia Harrell

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

To my ancestors. Imagine the British raiding your homeland in the middle of the night… being taken away from your family all to be taken to the dungeons of Cape Coast Castle…being forced on a dark ship, stacked on top of another flesh, praying to God to survive the long voyage. Gracefully, you reach landfall, only to be examined and sorted, to have your last name stripped away from you…seeing the sick woman that lied next you on the voyage, be dumped into the Atlantic Ocean and left to drown…being forced to build the underground barracks, that ...

Creating A Home: Designing A Supportive And Meaningful Intergenerational Environment For People With Intellectual And Developmental Disabilities, Sally Murtadhi

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

According to the CDC, Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I.D.D.) face numerous issues that prevent them from being self-sufficient such as, lack of accessible environments, lack of employment opportunities, and a negative stigma in society. Due to these obstacles, individuals with I.D.D. are isolated and dependent on direct family members which contributes to poor well-being. The aim of this thesis is to create design solutions that will allow individuals with I.D.D. to live meaningfully and independently. This topic will be approached in two parts: a research and design component. The research component includes ...

Revitalized Complex: The Redevelopment Of Abandoned Malls, Kyle Mccormick

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

This thesis explores two issues with one solution.

The first issue revolves around a large number of dying malls across America. While some still survive, others have become a deserted wasteland. It is reported that close to 2,000 stores will be closing in 2020. According to Business Insider, over 9,300 stores were closed in 2019, breaking the record of 2018, which was an estimated 8,000 stores.

The second issue involves large cities pushing the limits for population density. In cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix the rise in population cannot keep up with the current housing ...