Digital Commons Network^™

Memory And Experiential Lab, Yufan Xu

Masters Theses

In the tapestry of our lives, there exist moments and places that we can never revisit, scenes etched into our memories that fade with the passage of time. These experiences and memories are treasures, provide us with an anchor to our past. Unfortunately, many of these moments are like fireflies in the night, here one moment and gone the next. Yet, they remain invaluable, forever etched in our hearts and minds. I wonder if it is possible to trigger cherished past experiences and memories in our daily lives, allowing individuals to re-experience similar moments, thereby nourishing the spiritual world. Therefore, …

Timeless Teachings & Unbridled Possibilities, Ruijie Tai

Masters Theses

I am looking at is process of TRANSLATING AND BRIDGING.

Qi, traditionally understood as the vital force that flows through and animates living beings and the environment, lies at the edge of our perceptual capabilities.

The notion that what we cannot "see" holds significant influence over our world suggests that there are aspects of reality and forces at play beyond our direct sensory experience. AI, with its capacity for analyzing vast amounts of data and recognizing patterns beyond human capability, offers a unique tool for exploring these unseen forces.

The potential of AI to perceive and understand Qi could open …

Revitalizing Public Spaces: Integrating Mental Exercise Into Contemporary Landscape Architecture Design, Silin Wang

Masters Theses

The most popular video games have attracted a large number of young people with their immersive digital landscapes which offer rich opportunities for active navigation and thought. This has likely led to many spending more time exploring virtual environments rather than the real, outdoor landscapes. Meanwhile, many citizens have expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of interaction and spiritual resonance in modern urban public spaces. In this context, a common criticism of Landscape Architecture is its frequent use of a formulaic design language in contemporary landscape design. Critics such as Christophe Girot argue that this approach causes landscapes to lose their …

Spirit Of Place: Examining Chinese Principles Of Place-Making In A Contemporary Urban Context, Junyi Shi

Masters Theses

Cities are carriers of both spiritual civilization and physical space. The concept of Chinese cities has existed for about four thousand years, embodying China’s extensive cultural and philosophical heritage. Feng Shui is a specialized theory in Chinese urban planning. Therefore, discussing Chinese cities inevitably involves examining the role of Feng Shui in urban construction.

However, contemporary Chinese urban planning development has almost abandoned traditional Feng Shui. As a result, Chinese cities have become homogenized by Western models, losing their distinctiveness and cultural expression.

Given this issue, this thesis project will use traditional Chinese philosophy as a foundation to study the …

Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman

Masters Theses

The abstraction of land is a colonial process by which physical land is transformed into a conceptual or symbolic entity. This transformation occurs through various economic, architectural, and cultural practices that imbue land with abstract values, meanings, and functions beyond its physicality. This includes the division of land into parcels for economic transactions, the design and construction of built environments that shape human interactions with the land, and the cultural narratives and representations that ascribe significance to particular landscapes. Through abstraction, colonial powers devalue indigenous perspectives and relationships to the land, reducing them to mere obstacles in the path of …

Equivision Habitat: The Collective Dreamworks, Shixuan Zhou

Masters Theses

近年来，武汉这座充满活力的城市在经济快速增长的同时，也经历了重大的社会变革。城市的天际线不断扩大，新的商业和住宅区正在迅速涌现，吸引了更多的中产阶级家庭。作为武汉的长期居民和观察者，我看到了这种向中产阶级社会转变的诱惑力，但我也敏锐地意识到随之而来的社会成本。武汉向中产阶级社会的转变不仅体现在消费水平的提高和生活方式的转变上，更重要的是，体现在城市空间和社区角色的重新配置上。曾经为低收入居民提供住房的旧社区正在被改造成高端公寓和商业空间。虽然这种转变改善了城市的整体形象，但也导致了原住民的流离失所。这种深刻的变化凸显了中产阶级化的双刃剑性质。在这种背景下，我开始关注那些被这一进程边缘化的人的声音和需求。老年居民失去了熟悉的社区环境，年轻人尽管渴望加入新兴的中产阶级，但仍在为高昂的生活成本而苦苦挣扎。这种日益加剧的社会分层，让我深刻反思了城市更新的公平性和可持续性。本文提出了一种基于集体所有权和通过社区土地信托进行管理的社区模式。这种模式将土地所有权从个人转移到社区集体，确保开发活动优先考虑社区的长期福利，而不是短期的商业收益。其目的不仅是提供经济适用房，还旨在培养一个具有共同愿景的社区，探索在城市发展的同时维持社会多样性和包容性的方法。

The Future Is Over, Dotan Appelbaum

Masters Theses

History is constructed out of the narratives by which we organize the substance of all that has ever happened. Our understanding of the contemporary moment is determined by how we shape our history. The future is a promise that emerges from how we contextualize our place in time.

This thesis starts by acknowledging that the futurity promised by enlightenment liberalism is inconceivable in the face of contemporary horrors and climate catastrophe. Given this reality, what are we doing as designers? With a Benjaminian understanding of and a Foucauldian approach to history, this thesis constructs a history of design that follows …

Guilty Pleasure: Women's Perception Of Health, Body Image, And Femininity, Irene *Yi-Han Chung

Masters Theses

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Graphic Desire, Michelle Belgrod

Masters Theses

Before I knew about design, I knew about desire. A desire for the new, the beautiful, the promising. A desire that lives on a surplus of surfaces. On packaging, social media, on websites. A desire that makes the job of a graphic designer an object of desire itself. A practice that prioritizes aesthetics over meaning. Expectations over reality.

In Graphic Desire, I complicate the ways that desire affects both designers and consumers. Caught up in our own need for creative fulfillment, we often overlook our impact as the arbiters of desire. Under capitalism, we create work that over-promises a …

Industrial Tenderness, Elbert Girón

Masters Theses

Industrial Tenderness surveys the relationship between visual language, cultural expression, and diasporic practices through the design of functional sculptures. These designed objects seek to communicate cultural legibility, or intuitive cultural belonging, to Mexican-American peoples by challenging legacy notions of design language. Through a proposed design language framework and designed objects, Industrial Tenderness seeks to affirm a pluriversal practice of industrial design.

Legacy industrial design confines design language to a heavily prescriptive canon, resulting in a stark monocultural language that is unrepresentative of perspectives outside of a legacy dominant white eurocentricity founded in thinking from the Bauhaus and Ulm schools. Through …

Life Of Things, Things Of Life, Shiyue Wang

Masters Theses

In a world often captivated by the grand and explicit, my thesis, Life of Things, Things of Life explores the quiet yet profound narratives hidden within everyday objects. Drawing on my background in data design, I adopt a methodology that intertwines subjective narrative with rational analysis and challenges traditional hierarchies of value. Through processes of observation, collection, archiving, and re-contextualization, I elevate what is often overlooked as mundane and fleeting. This thesis not only uncovers the narrative potential of ordinary objects but also repositions them as protagonists in their own right, urging viewers to reconsider their conventional roles not as …

Revitalizing Decay, Owen Carey

Masters Theses

Revitalizing Decay focuses to reimagine brick design, diverging from the conventional standardized brick, to introduce a crafted brick integrated with flora. Through the exploration of innovative sustainable solutions, this research aims to breathe new life into buildings facing advanced decay by embedding flora within the very structure of the brick. Buildings slotted for demolition typically go through a long process of approvals, signatures, etc. This thesis also aims to address the long process and instead pose an intervention that would streamline a typical demolition plan. With a primary focus on enhancing air quality, ensuring cost efficiency, and offering a temporary …

Echoes Of Heights: Sustaining Tradition For Education And Community In The Tibetan Plateau, Junyue Wen

Masters Theses

In the Tibetan Plateau region, where most children need to leave their homes to attend boarding schools, this thesis research focuses on the development of Community Learning Centers (CLCs) as a transformative solution to bridge the gap between distant homes and schools. The development and design of tradi- tional Tibetan dwellings focuses on history, culture and nature in terms of appro- priateness and cultural heritage. By transforming Tibetan traditional dwellings into community-based learning centers, these centers will become multi-func- tional spaces that enhance mental health by promoting community engagement, supporting cultural preservation, and assisting students in transitioning between boarding school …

Homeward Bound: Moving Homes, Moving Home, Ella Nadeau

Masters Theses

The built environment has a powerful way of showing where our human attention and care is, a magic trick of emphasis and deemphasis. We proudly display our assets, wrapping them in light and gold while we shun the background people and places, choosing ubiquitous skins of plastic or brick in an effort to remove them from our visual language. Since we have had people we have had spaces to place them in but where some spaces relay the message that the person inside is a gift to the world, the majority chant a tired monotony of oppressive apathy: you do …

Furnicreature, Yijing Huang

Masters Theses

Project "Furnicreature" reimagines domestic furniture and furnishing as unique 'creatures' with anthropomorphic features such as 'facial' expressions, 'body' gestures, dynamic movements, as well as distinct personalities, to foster interactive experiences. By blending the inanimate with the animate and adding humor into the approach, the 'Furnicreature' project not only cultivates mindfulness, empathy, and care towards possessions but also promotes humility and responsibility. Its storytelling and dynamic design inspire imagination and prompt reflection on oneself, surroundings, and relationships. With sustainability as a long-term goal, Furnicreature aims to encourage a departure from everyday challenges and foster a more mindful and empathetic engagement with …

“Touching The Untouchable”: Time As Material And The Fragmented Self In The Maximodern Era Shori V. Sims © 2024 Shori V. Sims All Rights Reserved Shorisims., Shori V. Sims

Masters Theses

In the conventional division of disciplines, film/video/moving images and stationary sculpture are categorized as formal and conceptual opposites. In my work and in this thesis, I am arguing that moving images constitute a form of sculpture in the style of assemblage by the manipulation of time around them. Yes, the image is flat and stationary on its own: but the cut of time which it represents exists multi-dimensionally (spatially and temporally) to be combined in a collage-like manner. In my practice, moving images constitute a form of assemblage that manipulates time and space in ways normally attributed to sculpture.

This …

Asili, Husna Abubakar

Masters Theses

ASILI is a Swahili word meaning ORIGIN, SOURCE, and ESSENCE. It can also mean the fundamental principal of a culture. It is not cognitive, it is metaphysical.

The work that I do explores the preconceptual, prespatial and pretemporal organization of culture, specifically African culture and even more specifically, Swahili culture.

I use multiple techniques to interpolate a visual voice to an othered people both continental and abroad. I explore the mythoform that connects the mystical and dive into what of it that becomes a practice within Swahili culture. I take experience from my life as a Swahili woman, from the …

Variations On Noise, Clinton Van Arnam

Masters Theses

Variations on Noise is a three-part collection: an index, a set of interviews, and a perspective on a working practice in graphic design and sound.

If noise is ubiquitous in our everyday lives, how do we define it and use it as a catalyst for dissonance and change? As a designer, I use noise algorithms to generate pseudo randomness and break up repetitive textures. As a musician, I use noise to create scores and performances that challenge our perception of what is comfortable and uncomfortable.

Seven interviews with designers, artists, musicians, and a Tibetan monk offer ways to approach the …

Navigating Transience, Nina Liu

Masters Theses

With advancing age, does the act of collecting and collections serve a purpose? Experimental psychologist Daniel Krawczyk claims that the act of collecting is deeply embedded in how the human brain registers time. Building upon the premise of Krawczyk’s research, I delve into a journey of collecting as I trace its evolution from childhood to adulthood, and its significance amidst the rapid digitalization of the modern world.

Through the lens of the transitional object and with a commitment to the preservation of memories, this thesis examines the intricate relationship between humans and their possessions. It proposes that the intimate activity …

Atelier Interloper, Isabel Jane Marvel

Masters Theses

Architects frequently specify toxic materials, like fiberglass insulation, for construction projects, materials they would never touch with bare hands, let alone wear as garments. So why incorporate such harmful substances into our buildings? Atelier Interloper, a nimble fabrication studio, intervenes in job sites and manufacturer waste streams, reclaiming industrial materials that are no longer usable at building scale but are suitable for clothing. The premier collection of garments draws inspiration from workwear and is crafted from industrial materials such as Tyvek and 100% recycled denim insulation. In outfitting the body with these materials, this thesis work brings visibility to substances …

Building The Body, Jasmine Flowers

Masters Theses

Bodies and space co-produce each other and the process of co-production originates racializing and gendering work.

The concept, thesis, and subsequent design are informed by the historical context around the House for Josephine Baker by Adolf Loos. Presented here is the culmination of research which grounds itself in the relationship between Primitivism and Modernism, theory on the body and flesh, architectural graphic standards, spectacle, gaze, surveillance, hypervisibility, invisibility, implications of privacy versus publicity, expressions of Blackness and its place in femmehood (a neologism that expands “womanhood” to be trans-inclusive), all of which directly engage in co-production.

This co-production changes how …

Intangible Shells, Elena Bulet

Masters Theses

The following essay mimics the constant disruption of a fragmented memory. It reflects on intergenerational gendered family dynamics since the civil war and dictatorship-era Spain and how memory articulates narratives of belonging within the matrilineal lineage. A process of excavation departs from personal memories, familial archives, contemporary interviews, theoretical readings, photographic reenactments, and observations of traces in the landscape of Almayate’s town. The author attempts to retrace her roots, as well as her family history, acknowledging the impossibility of making personal histories tangible.

(Matter)Ial Revolution, Aleza Epstein

Masters Theses

The (Matter)ial Revolution proposes a fundamental shift in how we approach the built environment, drawing inspiration from historical precedents like the Roman Spolia and adaptive reuse strategies of past civilizations. Instead of the conventional cycle of demolition and rebuilding, this architectural movement advocates for learning to work with existing structures and materials – re-appropriating and re-circulating them to create new forms. It demands a return to craftsmanship, methodology, materiality, and non-standardization.

“Modern Nomads”: Unfolding Domesticity, Yifan Hu

Masters Theses

Abstract: A project that rethinks domesticity through the lens of mobility, focusing on curating and unfolding personal narratives within the confines of a suitcase. Domesticity, as I perceive it, transcends static locations and is a dynamic accumulation of individual and collective histories shaped by intimate connections between, but not limited to, human and non-humans. In this context, the suitcase symbolizes both confinement and autonomy, embodying the transient nature and fluidity of modern life. The project draws inspiration from the scrutiny of x-ray security checks, where individuals and their suitcases undergo examination. The suitcase becomes a focal point for exploring identity …

Sircling The Cquare, Latika Balachander

Masters Theses

As we journey into an increasingly virtual and intangible reality, is there an opportunity for our tactile fabrics to journey with, and even reorient us? Can they exist in our future worlds to remind us of the value of current traditional, low-tech practices that we may soon forget?

Referencing the fundamental fabric languages of knitted and woven structures, this collection of garments, that I term “Earthsuits,” embody the stages of metamorphosis as we adjust to a new phase of our perceptive reality. With an emphasis on circling, we loop through virtual squares like screens and pixels, to the circles of …

A Thesis, Or Digressions On Sculptural Practice: In Which, Concepts & Influences Thereof Are Explained, Set Forth, Catalogued, Or Divulged By Way Of Commentaries To A Poem, First Conceived By The Artist, Fed Through Chatg.P.T., And Re-Edited By The Artist, To Which Are Added, Annotated References, Impressions And Ruminations Thereof, Also Including Private Thoughts & Personal Accounts Of The Artist, Jaimie An

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exercise in, perhaps a futile, attempt to trace just some of the ideas, stories, and musings I might meander through in my process. It’s not quite a map, nor is it a neat catalogue; it is a haphazard collection of tickets and receipts from a travel abroad, carelessly tossed in a carry-on, only to be stashed upon returning home. These ideas are derived from much greater thinkers and authors than myself; I am a mere collector or a translator, if that, and not a very good one, for much is lost. I do not claim comprehensive …

Winter Solstice, Jingwen Cao

Masters Theses

For a long time, I have been thinking about what contemporary photography is, what its position is, and what the relationship is between artists and audiences. At the same time, I was developing my concepts and photographic directions and trying to make my work and my perspective on photography relevant. Winter Solstice includes a series of essays that locate my thinking and my work. Its title references the longest night of the year.

The position of photography has changed significantly over the past few decades. The way people read photos is also changing. Perhaps because of reverence for art and …

House Calls, Gregory Goldstone

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the unique architectural challenges and opportunities present in rural communities, with a focus on addressing the crisis of affordable housing. Grounding the discussion in the author's personal experiences growing up in the rural town of Cambridge, New York, the thesis illuminates the diversity of identities, needs, and values that coexist within the rural context.

The thesis critically examines the architectural academy and its urban-centric biases, which have led to a neglect of rural design issues. It highlights the shortcomings of standard affordable housing approaches, such as public housing and mobile homes, in meeting the independent spirit and …

Going To The Sea, Lingyi Kong

Masters Theses

“Good-bye Icarus” is a work that aims to blend art, history, and environmental exploration through illustration, an interactive graphic novel, visual documentation, and programming language narratives.

A year of coastal life in Rhode Island has provided me with endless inspiration in terms of design language. I’ve ventured into blending dynamic visuals from TouchDesigner with illustration, a pioneering approach as far as I’m aware.

My narrative is based on seaside scenery and mythology metaphorical elements, making image programming to capture the essence of waves a focal point and central experiment of my work. Furthermore, after crafting a dynamic design visual language, …

A Dispatch From The Site Office, Adrian Pelliccia

Masters Theses

In the middle of the 20th century, a rare confluence of political, economic, and cultural forces aligned to produce a slate of highly progressive policy and design agendas for social housing in the United Kingdom. A widely shared utopian ambition to house all people with dignity was made real by a motivated government and its well-resourced planning and architecture offices, tasked with bringing this vision to bear in the built environment. In London, the London County Council Architect’s Office and later local council-led architecture and planning offices were at the forefront of designing and delivering high quality, formally ambitious housing …