Architecture Commons^™

The Burning Building, Winnie Tu

Architecture Thesis Prep

When fire is controlled, research confirms that hearth and campfires induce relaxation as part of a multi sensory, absorptive, and social experience. Because fire ties heavily with community formation, this thesis aims to directly re-introduce the element of fire as a social phenomenon measured through four scales of human proxemics: public, social, personal, and intimate. Since fire involves flickering light, crackling sounds, warmth, and has a distinctive smell, the architecture will be designed around the exploration of these characteristics and its spatial qualities through the control of construction as well as heat and light dissipation to result in the design …

A Mat Response To Deinstitutionalization, Dominic Lipuma

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis references the wave of new ideas for architecture’s response to mental health during the 1960s, based on a new understanding and approach to mental illness in society, with the proposals for Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs). These facilities formed the architectural basis of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963, which was ultimately never fulfilled, marking the wave of deinstitutionalization and the closing of psychiatric hospitals without these CMHCs in place. Therefore, this thesis picks up where the ball was dropped back then, proposing a new architectural solution based on further research and insight that has since taken …

Never-Land, Xiaoyan Dong

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis re-imagines the operation and impact of construction sites under fast urbanization in China, by studying the live + work practices of migrant construction workers. The thesis criticizes the existing introverted “Wall + Hut” construction paradigm, proposing an adaptable architectural structure around construction sites, which provides spatially an alternative urban nomad lifestyle for Chinese construction workers, and in return reconstruct the urban experience in China based on the increasing demand for migrant-dwellings and omnipresent construction sites.

The Architecture Of Consumption: A New Transient Shopping Space, Ensam Lee

Architecture Thesis Prep

Research shows that while most malls aren’t actually dying off, the 3.4% that are failing are older malls relying on singular programming and older dumbbell plans with retail anchors referred to as Class C and D malls (Hurley 2015). Studies show that, as a result, more competitive malls in Class A and even some Class B malls are shifting their focus to branding a memorable experience for shoppers in the mall. And due to the volume of programs and activities that take place in Class A malls they are almost always very large. If a new type of shopping space …

Private Room On The Wheel, Kathy Teng

Architecture Thesis Prep

The American highway is nationly used for commerce and commuting, but it creates diverse lifestyles as well. The cross-country highway and road trip are deeply rooted in the American psyche, supported the vast Federal Highway Network and the rapid growth in ownership of automobiles by American families since the 1940s, establishing a sense of freedom in their mobile lifestyles. Other highway users have less control over their daily routine.

Truck drivers spend a majority of their times on the road, while the remaining part of their day is spent sleeping in fixed truck cabins or eating at all-night truck stops. …

Breathing Architecture, Yichao Kang

Architecture Thesis Prep

Breathing architecture use the physical property of nature to solve the problem from environment and replace the traditional mechanical system of the existing building in Beijing. Architecture is the expression of the nature and interaction with people.

Renegotiating Figure And Structure, Maxwell Rosner

Architecture Thesis Prep

Innie/Outie considers architecture as a simultaneously typological and teleological proposition. Architects from the advent of Modernism onwards have displayed a critical preoccupation with the discipline's teleological potential, the creation of form that follows function - a renunciation of authorship, a denial of intuition that pursues an architecture of transcendence that adheres only to the principles which govern that which is, rather than that which appears to be.

The Museum Of Ideas: Fantastic Wilderness Park, Alyssa Goraieb

Architecture Thesis Prep

The history of wilderness is the history of an idea. A missing element of the natural history museum is the human attitude within which nature is captured and displayed. This project wants to put the historical displays of the museum within a context by making an addition to the natural history museum that archives the historical attitudes, experiences and perceptions towards wilderness.

An Escape, Chen Xihao

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis contains that threshold space anticipates sensational enhanced experiences. An Escape propose a thresh old building that is composed majorly by thresh old space that directs people via sensory experiences and diverts them to a fantasyland — — a thermal bath house. Conventional programmatic space is underplayed – instead , this thesis emphasizes threshold space as the primary spatial design factor.

Subtraction: A Construction In Reverse An Event Of Metamorphosis, Sherina Zhang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis initiates with debates between entropy of a building’s finite ending and metamorphosis of a building’s new beginning. According to Robert Smithson entropy is “an irreversible condition, where everything is gradually wearing down”. The works of Gordon Matta Clark, infused with understanding resulting in the increase of entropy, prevents architecture to pass beyond the point of irreversibility. Clark performs a set of minimalistic acts that provide architecture in obsolescence with an after life.

The Border Land, Zhuocen Yao

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to explore the issue of the conceptual space for the establishment of difference: the border, in both literal and phenomenal term. What can architecture do to change the way we perceive borders. How can the border politics construct border architecture and can the new border architecture in another way result in new border politics. How can we transform the indeterminate nature of the border from a threshold that demarcates into a new in between landscape typology that mediates between the need for quality space of hosted events and influences and security?

The Ottoman Han: Recovery Of A Lost Typology, Asli Germirli

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis will focus on the architectural interventions for the 17th century structure of Buyuk Valide Han. The project will be shaped through the multiple lenses of Critical Regionalism, urban planning, conservation and sustainability. The aim is to add value to the Hans District and to revive the commercial and cultural identity through the preservation of the older structures and the introduction of modern architecture.

New Beijing: Learning From New York, Bowen Zhang

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis aims to address the housing problem generated by the previously mentioned contradicting stimuli to create a new housing typology that is appropriate for a modern Beijing.

The Image Machine, Jeremy Min Burns

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has always been an image machine. From the Lascaux cave paintings to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to the multimedia installations of the Eameses to the early projects of Diller Scofidio, images and architecture have cohabited persistently and productively for centuries. However, since the dawn of the digital age, the ontological status of images has changed; and in turn so has the relationship between images and architecture. Rather than being anchored to a specific material support, images exist as manipulable data. While some have viewed the digital turns as the transcendence of information beyond the human subject, an era of …

Parity, Hamza Hasan

Architecture Senior Theses

Digital data contributes to an increasingly alienated aspect of our infrastructure. The complex practices of the Internet produce highly specified, engineered objects. Though their forms are ‘optimized,’ their intentions are not: the two primary considerations for the development of the infrastructure of the Internet are energy and security. Each category presents its own deliberations, but both often produce non-architectural, infrastructural elements beyond public visibility. The hidden infrastructure of data storage and mining (the indexing and analysis of data and traffic) produces spaces outside the agency of normative architectural discourse.

The key consideration for the design of the Internet is redundancy, …

Harnessing The Power Of Data Can Help Solve Our Housing Needs, Lorcan Sirr

Media

Ireland has traditionally been poor at collecting data, collating statistics and disseminating information. It’s not that we are an innumerate country; I think it is more that facts often inconveniently jar with opinion on a range of topics, from rural Ireland to road safety, to housing.

We Can’T Expect ‘The Market’ To Provide A Housing Policy, Lorcan Sirr

Media

As the government grapples with establishing a worthwhile housing policy, it would do well to remember that affordability is key. As companies increasingly choose to locate in or near cities, and people followjobs, most of Ireland’s housing needs will be in the greater Dublin area. In 2015, about half the population lives on just 20% of Ireland’s surface area, but by 2030 nearly half the nation will be living on just 10% of the land. Figures vary but the Dublin area will need 8,000-10,000 housing units per year.

Wiyot, Wiki And Batawat People, Susie Van Kirk

Susie Van Kirk Papers

In June 1900, Stewart Culin (1858-1929), self-educated anthropologist/ethnographer, traveled to northwestern California on a colleting trip. He was then Director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Paleontology, and the purpose of his trip to was to secure “a number of Indian curios and relics,” which he did, spending about $150 in Hoopa. He also secured curios from the Mad River Indians near Blue Lake (Blue Lake Advocate 23 June 1900).

Just what Culin collected is unclear, other than the baskets, probably all of which were either Hupa or Yurok, and possibly some Karuk. The tribal heritage of …

Review: City Choreographer: Lawrence Halprin In Urban Renewal America, Anthony Raynsford

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A Hybrid Approach For Increasing Baffling Factors In Contact Tanks, Justin J. Kattnig, Subhas K. Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A novel approach using a hybrid combination of internal baffles and industrial packing material is investigated in order to optimize the hydraulic residence time of a 1,500-gal rectangular concrete tank. Hydraulic residence time, which is commonly classified using the baffling factor (BF), was determined from residence time distribution curves obtained using both computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and physical tracer studies. CFD simulations were used to model two scenarios. The first scenario was a base system consisting of an unbaffled concrete tank, and the second scenario was a two-baffle system. Computational simulation results were experimentally validated via tracer studies on …