Digital Commons Network^™

Repair Rolodex: Exchanges, Changes, And Patchwork Parables, Ethan Howard

Masters Theses

This book is an index of nine exchanges with strangers whom I met online through email Listservs or by word of mouth. In these transactions, I offered to repair broken things for a trade-in-kind payment. Through the brief relationship between owner and designer, each interaction suggests that an object is almost never entirely obsolete despite its perceived obsolescence.

At the core of these trades is a grassroots protest of the landfill and a critique of our global capitalist commerce system. The apparent desire for and nature of these trades demonstrates that stories make our objects meaningful. Each interplay studies peoples’ …

Beyond Display: Crafting Emotional Journeys For Belonging And Connectivity, Jiamin Yang

Masters Theses

In bustling urban areas like Manhattan, New York, the majority of interactions between individuals occur amidst the whirlwind of daily life. Yet, there is an absence of genuine connections within local communities, particularly among neighbors who are geographically close, creating a sense of detachment, untrusting, and anonymity. This thesis involves exploring innovative interventions with the ultimate goal of uncovering novel possibilities in interactive exhibitions, distinct from traditional displays. All of this is an effort to curate emotional journeys that transcend routine, fostering vibrant community belonging and connectivity. Against the backdrop of the city’s vertical living, where neighbor encounters are often …

Thickness Of Place: Urban Stratigraphy And Rammed Earth Construction In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alexandra Goodenough

Masters Theses

How can people connect with a place through a new understanding of its stratigraphy? In urban environments, there is an inherent separation between people and the ground beneath us. We experience our landscapes solely through what is visible on the surface, and lack an understanding of the complex underground strata which create the world around us. Too often, landscape architecture contributes to this dissociation through superficial designs which mask the history of a site, bury its internal workings, and rely on global materials, resulting in landscapes which lack a sense of place and strain the planet's resources. In order to …

Recomposing Museums: Designing Rhythmic Experiences For Short Attention Spans In The Digital Age, Yujiang Wu

Masters Theses

Learning, being the primary aspiration of museums, “is a byproduct of attention.”¹ A visitor’s ability to focus and sustain attention on the objects, narratives, and messages within the exhibition environment profoundly influences their overall experience and the educational impact of their visit.

In an era of rapid digital evolution, changes in how information is consumed and communicated have led to shorter attention spans. Traditional museums, which are rooted in continuous, linear storytelling, now face a need for adaptation. This thesis advocates for an innovative exhibition design approach tailored to the realities of shorter attention spans, proposing curatorial and design …

忘年交 / A Friendship That Transcends Age, Zichen Zhou

Masters Theses

In today’s swiftly aging society, China grapples with the challenge of elderly individuals gradually becoming disconnected from the social fabric, often leading to the phenomenon of empty-nesting, especially in China’s eastern urban areas. Understanding and addressing the needs of the elderly is crucial for designing environments, that give continued meaning to the lives of the elderly, and create connections with the rest of society. Further, the elderly are a resource for families, capable of providing childcare and even housing to younger generations, whether the younger generations want this help or not. In response to the challenge of keeping the elderly …

Witnessing Timelessness: Revitalizing Heritage Tourism In The Ruins Of Saudi Arabia, Reem Habis

Masters Theses

Well-known historic sites in Saudi Arabia, such as Historic Jeddah, are designated as heritage, meaning they are protected from deterioration over time. However, in the Aseer region, there are over 4500 unprotected modest sites that provide an integral sense of identity and authenticity to the culture of not just this region, but the entire Kingdom. The absence of preservation guidelines has left these sites vulnerable to indiscriminate developments attempting revitalization. Undesignated heritage sites must be safeguarded and rehabilitated rather than neglected and left at risk of further decay, especially with the encroachment of tourism.

To preserve the sites’ authenticity and …

Never Real Historians, Emily Bluedorn

Masters Theses

Never Real Historians is a graphic inquiry into how surfacing hidden histories can lead to a liberatory and layered design practice. It is both a record of my process and a template for future making and future ancestors. Mining inheritance can be an ambiguously murky territory, full of contradictions, collisions, and tension between the past and present. My hope is that this thesis functions as a model of navigating that terrain, by interacting with storied objects and ephemera, in order to revive forgotten and marginalized histories. By re-examining my own shared and personal inheritances, as an American woman designer living …

Unruly And Unresolved: A Shared, Precarious Survival, Sara Inacio

Masters Theses

I'm just a little rat trying to survive,

To exist and not be perceived.

Building a home,

In a place unnatural to me.

Destroyed and rebuilt again,

I've learned to live in the toxic world you've created.

In a world that is not made for my belonging, I’ve had to find my way, to exist and build with what’s within reach. Such a constant state of construction feels oddly familiar and comfortable to me, home is always in the process of becoming. As I build, I think about how the home building process always takes up the space of others, …

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 …

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 …

(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.

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 …

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 …

Detroit Jazz Geographies: Marronage And Speculative Urban Futures, Denzel Amoah

Masters Theses

The Detroit Jazz Clubs of the 1920s-1960s existed as an emblem of marronage, or as an escape from a colonial world, becoming a spot of refuge and freedom for Blacks living in Detroit. There they were able to create a subculture that was antagonistic to hegemonic norms.

Currently, Detroit is on the precipice of a new development plan, titled ‘Detroit Future City” which aims to revitalize the city through the bolstering of industrialization and commerce. The history of Detroit has shown the dangers of what industrialization can do and alternative modes of development should be explored.

To honor the legacy …

Conspicuous Repair: Drawing Attention To Brokenness In Public Landscapes, Ashley Pedersen

Masters Theses

Repair, as a design provocation, encourages material conservation, hands-on engagement with materiality, and evaluation of maintenance routines all of which contribute to a model of sustainability that values a circular economy and degrowth. Through visible repairs that focus our ongoing attention on brokenness, repair has the potential to illuminate, and start to address the systemic causes of brokenness. In this way, repair can be a catalyst for increased stewardship of a place.

Conspicuous Repair: Drawing Attention to Brokenness in Public Landscapes investigates clay as a suitable material for the repair of masonry in urban landscapes which has the potential, through …

Fluid Futures: The Revitalization Of Yangzhou Through Its Historical Waterways, Feiyang Wu

Masters Theses

In China, cities such as Yangzhou, which in pre-modern times played central roles in the political, cultural, and economic functioning of the country based on their geographic location, proximity to water-based trade routes, and connections to the imperial court, are today facing uncertain futures due to waterways no longer being critical to trade, and government-driven development being focused on first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. With this, the working-age population migrates from smaller cities toward these urban giants, leaving behind aging relatives, a less robust and diversified economic base, and few attributes other than cultural tourism that …

New Craft: Craft Practices In The Digital Era, Paulina Bereza

Masters Theses

Advancements in technology point to a thriving future through the allure of new tools and the promise of enhanced performance. With the current environmental crisis, military invasions and broader global conflicts, how can we utilize new digital media in a way that dismantles oppressive positions of power? Looking towards the future, I explore the potential of materiality and new methods of making, to reshape our relationship with the environment and each other. I collaborate with newly adopted forms of intelligence, artificial and automated, to express and reconcile the accelerated cultural shift. From ancient fibres to digital circuits, what will the …

Tethered By Nourishment - Exploring Sovereignty Within An Urban Food Apartheid, Benjamin Bailey

Masters Theses

“Tethered by Nourishment” explores how the principles of food sovereignty could be spatially cultivated within an urban environment afflicted by a food apartheid. The urban environment I explore is the Elysian Fields Ave. neutral grounds (colloquial term for road medians) in New Orleans. Working with a series of food-generating landscapes, the proposal imagines multiple cultivation sites to support neighborhoods and communities struggling with fresh food access. These sites allow for varying levels of engagement from start-up farming plots for urban agriculturalists to food forests for more passive food collection. Approaching a multifaceted problem like equitable urban food access requires a …

A New Grounding, Corey Watanabe

Masters Theses

Amidst our climate uncertain reality, the question arises as to how we address the seemingly endless spiral of ecological degradation and loss we witness each and everyday? Through a cultural reframing of our relationship with invasive species, A New Grounding asks how collective ritual may serve as a vehicle to understand, heal through, and eventually embrace the trials and tribulations of ecosystem change.

Invasive species have become a major driver of the evolution of our landscapes. Research has shown their disturbance is often rooted in an underlying human environmental disturbance, however, for many these highly adaptive plants have become a …

Design With Decay, Charlotte Wyman

Masters Theses

The following project is an exploration and argument for greater acceptance of material change. The argument finds its narrative through the story of five historic coastal properties in Rhode Island that have become increasingly threatened by rising sea levels.

Despite undergoing foundation upheaval, relocation and leveling onto stilts, all but two homes remain intact. This project is a proposal for an alternative past in which the homes are not moved or raised, but instead ushered into states of decay that challenge our notions around sub-natures and their viability.

Beach Autonomous Zone, Carl Garvey

Masters Theses

This thesis project responds to issues surrounding beach erosion on Long Island’s Atlantic Coast by envisioning policy and design decisions that activate a destabilization of the shoreline and a managed retreat away from beaches. Contrasted to methods and goals of conventional coastal engineering, a beach autonomous zone sets an extended, moving setback in which coastlines are treated, in effect, as conservation easements, allowing for and encouraging beaches to return to more natural states. On four sites of different scales representing different built beachfront conditions, I visualize the negotiations between human desires and the needs of a beach that arise under …

Corner Revolution: Beyond “Skynet”, Brightening Grey Space And Building Security, Caimin Shen

Masters Theses

The existence of surveillance areas restricts many bad behaviors, but why do we still feel vague anxiety and uneasiness when walking through street corners and promenades in a city protected by a network of cameras? As China has implemented grid management of cities through the establishment of the “Skynet”—— a system that uses facial recognition and surveillance cameras to strengthen public safety, the crime rate has dropped significantly. But public safety doesn’t just mean fewer criminal activities. Reducing people’s perceived insecurity and anxiety has become a new challenge in China today. “Corner Revolution” explores the transformative power of architectural design …

Absence Leaves A Mark: Illustrating Filipino Migrant Stories, Nina Martinez

Masters Theses

From July to October 2023, I volunteered at Damayan Migrant Workers Association, a New York City-based grassroots organization run by Filipino im/migrant workers dedicated to combatting labor trafficking. Every meeting opened with the same reminder: stories shared in this room do not leave it. Illustration became a tool for respecting the privacy of the members, many of whom were undocumented. Avoiding faces, I copied down objects, places, maps, and handwriting.

Absence Leaves a Mark explores the idea of illustration as field note when working with migrant populations. Beyond depicting visual witness, illustrated field notes can contain findings from research and …

Embodied Abstractions: Identity And Representation In The Digital Era, Srikar Hari

Masters Theses

The digital image is a copy in motion. As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, squeezed through

digital connections, resized, uploaded, downloaded, reformatted

and re-edited.

- Adapted from “In defense of the Poor Image” by Hito Steryel

With today’s digital technology, the image is no longer a stable

representation of the world, but a programmable database that

is updated in real time. It is not only part of a program, but it

contains its own operating code: the image is a program in itself.

Consequently, the image’s rhetoric has taken on …

While We Were At Dinner, Anna Glass

Masters Theses

Mealtime is globally recognized as a time to gather, as food catalyzes connection. This project delves into this human practice of commensality and both explores and emphasizes the significance of communal eating and its benefits through designed objects. Through a collection of six designed dining experiments, this study examines the role of novel tabletop objects and unusually curated meal environments. The way these experiments are designed highlights how communal mealtime experiences can be used as tools for social engagement and disruptors of cultural norms.

Furniture and tableware designs have the power to challenge the assumed arrangement of traditional mealtime rituals, …

The Effects Of Technology Based Self-Monitoring On Behaviors Related To Academic Engagement Of A University Student With A Disability, Rachel Mickelson

Masters Theses

College students with disabilities often experience difficulties with meeting the demands of university level courses due to challenges with time management and impulse control (Shmulsky & Gobbo, 2013). Self-monitoring has been proven effective for various populations and behaviors, although limited research has been conducted with college students with disabilities. I-Connect, a technology-based self-monitoring tool, is a digital application that utilizes momentary time sampling where users can select a behavior and interval of time to be prompted to self-monitor that behavior (University of Kansas, 2022). The app also collects real time data and automatically creates graphs to depict the responses collected …

That They Do Always Remember Him: The Impact Of Music And Covenant On The Modern Rite Of The Last Supper, Rebecca A. Ard

Masters Theses

This paper examines the function of music in the rite of the Lord’s Supper as well as similarities and differences in execution, doctrine and function within three major branches of Christianity. As Christianity has evolved the practice of Communion has been adapted to fit the beliefs and practices of various Christian traditions. The Catholic Church, Protestantism and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints represent three different applications of the rite. The use of active covenant making in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a unique characteristic of their Sacrament ordinance. Examining data gathered through surveys, …