Architecture Commons^™

Viewing Heaven: Rock Crystal, Reliquaries, And Transparency In Fourteenth-Century Aachen, Claire Kilgore

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis examines reliquaries and objects associated with medieval Christian practice in fourteenth-century Aachen. The city's cathedral and treasury contain prestigious relics, reliquaries, and liturgical items, aided by its status as the Holy Roman Empire's coronation church. During the reign of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (r. 1349-1378), reliquaries, pilgrimage, and architecture reflect late medieval interests in vision, optics, and transparency. Two mid-fourteenth century reliquaries from the Aachen Cathedral Treasury, the Reliquary of Charlemagne and the Three-Steepled Reliquary, display relics through rock crystal windows, in contrast to the obscuring characteristics of earlier reliquaries. Not only do the two reliquaries visually …

Aug City: The Cyber-Spatial Impacts Of Augmented Reality On The Field Of Urban Planning, Colton Berck

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

In the summer of 2016 a technology revolution swept the world from an unsuspecting place, a mobile game called Pokémon: Go. Almost immediately upon release, this application reached white-hot growth with a user-base spanning the globe, sparking new methods of interacting with communities. Behind the app, a driving force of the popularity, is the technology known as augmented reality (AR). This innovative medium, which intersects the “real-world” with the “digital-world,” is set to impact many aspects of life. As planning professionals are closely involved with the development and growth of communities, this thesis serves as a tool to determine how …

Funding Strategies For Non-Traditional University Ms4 Stormwater Programs, Elizabeth M. Garrett

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

Stormwater programs have historically been stymied by lack of proper funding resources. Unlike drinking water and sanitary sewer utility services that long ago transitioned to enterprise funds, a stormwater utility continues to evade stable and direct revenue sources throughout much of the United States. Inefficiently funded stormwater programs utilizing general funding practices leaves stormwater management programs unable to properly plan for long-term improvement, management, regulatory compliance, and maintenance. Funding research has established that forms of direct funding sources are crucial for successful stormwater programs, however, focus has been directed to strategies for municipalities. This paper will attempt to analyze, through …

Dinner Parti, Evangeline Soileau

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This capstone is a body of work that investigates the architectural relationships among event, documentation, material production, and user interaction through the lens of social dining. A Picnic, Thanksgiving, and Solo dining are the three dining scenarios that are the subject of these analytical and design investigations. The architectural design process is a part of the creative nonfiction narrative through the design of three corresponding artifacts that perform as the events’ spatial and material analogs: The Picnic Mound, The Thanksgiving Tables, and the Solo Couch. These artifacts aim to create new readings of user interactions with the social dining event …

Rural Retreat / Urban Myth, Celeste Pomputius

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In his recent publication describing the evolution of the American campground, Martin Hogue explains: “this fundamental displacement—from the city to nature, from the indoors to outdoors—forms the basis of a defining experience.” Today, that displacement and distance has evolved into a disassociation between the experience of city and nature. However, the strategic pairing of architecture and policy can mend that disassociation to bridge the divide between city and nature that makes camping, or simply spending time outdoors, such a foreign concept to urban residents who have grown so accustomed to their urban setting.

This thesis proposes a destination for recreation …

Engaging With Craft: Concepts For Today's Architect, Stanislav Nedzelskyi

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This thesis proposes a solution to the disconnect between today’s designers and makers. Specifically geared towards the profession of architecture, these discussions should be applied in any process of making. After providing a historical reading of the crafted object and the people involved in making it, the paper proposes a new way to perceive craft in today’s world. When defined as an indexical quality, both in the mathematical and in the pointing sense described by Charles S. Pierce, the craft of an object becomes an accessible and efficient tool for the analysis and comparison of artifice.

Mausoleums And Mortuary Architecture, Nicholas Kronauer

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper addresses the relationship between the organization, structure, and location of three types of cemeteries; the churchyard, the rational, and the garden cemetery, to understand one’s relationship to death. The research of these cemeteries explores the sociological and emotional perceptions of the cemetery and how they have evolved over time to produce new readings of funerary space and its place in the urban context.

@The_New_House: An Online-Offline Manifesto, Ana Paola Hernandez Derbez

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The house, as one of the most fundamental architectural archetypes, has long been used as unbuilt or built manifestos to declare the avant-garde of the discipline. Formally they are likely to offer the most intimate scale at which to work and symbolically they have always maintained a potent force, both as vivid representation of lives lived inside their walls and as a powerful influence over the changing course of architecture over the centuries (Rapoport). Iconic houses have become part of an essential language and shorthand of architecture itself.

Follow me as I investigate a return to the design of a …

Importing The Vernacular: An Analysis Of The Panama Houses Of The Former Charleston Navy Yard As An Adapted Regional Building Typology, Benjamin Cunningham Walker

All Theses

Military architectural designs are often overlooked in vernacular architecture due to the widespread use of standardized plans at military installations. However, factors including climate in certain regions force the development of new designs for military bases that are better suited to local conditions. This is arguably the case for the Panama Houses of the former Charleston Navy Yard, which are an example of a vernacular building type imported from a foreign context. While scholars have looked from a broad perspective at the Navy Yard and the more prominent structures, no study has been completed considering the history and form of …

Statements In Stone: The Politics Of Architecture In Charlemagne's Aachen, Mary Katherine Tipton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Statements in Stone is an intersectional and preliminary study of the architecture and Social aspects of the palatine complex of Aachen Germany during the reign of Charlemagne approximately spanning from the 790s to 814CE. The interplay between built space and its Social uses inform the larger Social understandings and interpretations of power and authority. Court poetry written by contemporaries and courtiers of Charlemagne allow readers to glimpse the court as it moved through and interacted with the built environment. Architectural precedents inform the connotations associated with the spaces of Aachen, while spatial theory will provide a framework for understanding the …

Painting As Data: A New Way Of Analyzing The Landscape, Hannah F. Moll

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Painting as Data tells a story of the Arkansas Agricultural Research and Extension Center through painting as a way enrich site analysis, as well as discover and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data in landscape architecture. The thesis is composed of three central works that analyse the landscape over eight months through data driven and experiential lenses, including hydrology, geology, and ecology, and the people who cultivate the land with the help of modern machinery and engineered chemicals. These works include:

Field B4 - 7:00 AM Triptych

32” x1 44”, Acrylic on Panel

The study of time on the shifting …

Design And Simulation A Novel Three-Phase, Five-Level Inverter Topology, Fares Al Juheshi

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is a high integration of renewable energy sources in modern building electrical systems. The main components of these new systems are power electronics switches that inherit their foundations from signal amplifier technologies and then developed to drive high powers. Nowadays, the static converter can connect systems with different electrical characteristics. For instance, choppers connect two DC systems with different voltage levels, whereas inverters transform power from DC to AC with variable amplitude and frequency. Since multilevel inverters offer a better quality of the output waveforms than standard inverters, a novel three-phase, five-level inverter topology is proposed. The goal of …

Exploring The Correlation Between Occupied And Unoccupied Noise Levels In K–12 Classrooms, Laura Caroline Brill

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Students learn in occupied spaces, yet acoustical standards specify recommendations for unoccupied levels. While some studies have quantified the relationship between occupied and background noise levels in classrooms, their definitions of background noise level were often inconsistent with those recommended by the standards. The research presented in this thesis examines the relationship between occupied and unoccupied levels in 110 classrooms in two Midwestern school districts. Acoustic levels were logged for a total of six days in each classroom. Occupied and unoccupied levels were parsed from the logged data using k-means clustering, an unsupervised statistical learning technique. The results from this …

Improving The Estidama Rating For New Adec Prototype Schools By Renewable Energy Integration Joud Abdalla Al Jumaa Al Dakheel, Joud Abdalla Al Jumaa Al Dakheel

Architectural Engineering Theses

The building sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has experienced a tremendous expansion in the last forty years due to population growth and economic development. Presently, the UAE has one of the world’s largest energy consumption per capita, with the building sector accounting for 70% of the consumed energy. In the last decade, the government intensified its efforts to implement stringent environmental regulations and schemes by mandating environmental policies and regulations. It introduced “Estidama”; the local sustainability framework, and the Pearl Building Rating System (PBRS) to promote the development of sustainable buildings. All governmental buildings must achieve …

Integrating Tiny Houses Into The American Urban Fabric: A Comparative Case Study Of Land Use Policy Change In The Carolinas, Krista Evans

All Dissertations

The concept of the American dream, manifested in the ownership of a detached single family home, remains a driving force in the housing market. Historically, small homes have held a prominent niche in this dream in both urban and rural areas. However, the expansion of restrictive urban land use policies to protect property values, paired with the rapid diminishment of the American middle class, has made homeownership increasingly difficult to achieve. The tiny house movement has emerged as a means to promote small, affordable, and sustainable home ownership. However, the construction of tiny homes, or even the traditional cottage, is …

On Craft, William Lentjes

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

Craft is a relationship - a dialogue - between craftsman, tool, and material. Craft begins with the intent of all of these loci, and all of these loci are rooted in Being.

Being is known through the consciousness, awareness, and perception of a subject. Being is the inherent existence and totality of "what is."

Being crafts us; Craft imbues Being.

This thesis re-examines the pedagogical approach of an architectural education. The focus is placed on craft through presuppositionless phenomenology.

In an age of endless mechanized production and spiritless materialism, the practice of craft can teach us to return to the …

Overused And Neglected: Conceptual Designs For Spaces On Campus, Cayla A. Riehl

Senior Honors Projects

As humans, we routinely spend time in the spaces we perceive to be comfortable and serve a purpose centralized to the individual. Most do not recognize the science behind what goes into making a space serve its purpose and that is done best by interior designers. Over time, it is common for the needs of a space to change in accordance with the changing times and current trends. The University of Rhode Island has recently made grand investments in the programs that attract the most students, leaving many other spaces overused and neglected. There has been continuous neglect to certain …

The Atascadero Printery, Kaylee Efstathiu, Jami Hahn, Tyler Pizarro, Elizabeth Townsend, Mark Luzi

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Income Inequality, Rapidly Rising Housing Prices And Overdevelopment Of Houses In China, Tao Guan

All Dissertations

Four phenomena can be observed in China’s housing market in the past 16 years. First, the vacancy rate of new condominium properties has increased significantly. Second, housing prices have been increasing very rapidly. In fact, the prices have rarely decreased even when strict housing policies have been mandated. Third, housing transactions are active, as indicated by the new condominiums that have been recently developed and have been sold very quickly. Finally, new construction/development had also been very active. Phenomena 2, 3, and 4 are inherently consistent, but the coexistence of phenomena 2, 3, and 4 with phenomenon 1 is very …

A Comparison Of Design Processes Between Sustainable Sites Certified And Noncertified Urban Open Space Projects, Jennifer A. Wiseman

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In response to the World Commission on Environment and Development’s Brundtland Report (1987) and other documents that have brought the need to address environmental, economic, and social issues to the forefront of the awareness of the public, the Sustainable SITES Initiative was modeled after LEED certification and was formed to establish a rating system and comprehensive framework of guidelines for development. It is a collaborative effort between the ASLA, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, and the United States Botanic Garden. In June 2015, the Green Building Certification, Inc. of the United States Green Building Council acquired SITES and will …