Digital Commons Network^™

Distilling The Narragansett Bay, Parker Ives

Masters Theses

My thesis is an investigation of material vernacular and a celebration of process and material. I am manipulating locally sourced materials to pull out unexpected qualities in order to distill a unique identity associated with a place and the things that give that place its character.

The resulting work focuses on distilling the Narragansett Bay through the lens of three categories. Reminiscence, Impression, Composition. These works fall into the categories of being reminiscent of a place, impressed upon by a place and composed of a place.

This thesis is not a conclusion of this area of inquiry, rather it seeks …

I Think We Have Some Connection Difficulty: A Review Of Architectural Vocabulary And Representation In Our Condition Of Remote Communication, David Waite

Masters Theses

The distance required to slow this pandemic created a need for Zoom technology in maintaining our economies of mental production and social closeness. Just like scientists examined the COVID-19 virus globally in its petri under the electron microscope, Zoom exposed our domestic interiors. This platform stitched together our personal existence into an infinite interior. To some extent this places Zoom attendees into a new space of vulnerability where the platform turns passive observers into active participants in a hyper self-aware virtual world where all are forced to share their fragile environments of everyday life.

While videotelephony software thankfully facilitated communication …

Polyrhythms, Kevin Costante

Masters Theses

This work strives to integrate seemingly ‘distant’ practices into a concept by emphasizing their differences. A syncopation between a maker and designer, a planner and improviser. A search for commonalities in the middle of what otherwise creates conflict. I cultivate a space to play alongside my inherent formalities by incorporating color and movement. I find rhythm persists uninterrupted through the discrepancies of my process and inspirations. I want to see it in the outcomes of my work.

How can I be compatible with this world of rudiments and structure and also comply with my reliance on ‘chance’?

Reclaiming Modern Architecture: An Urban Visual Narrative Of Kuwait City, Yara Hadi

Masters Theses

For a city to be remembered, to be successful, to be desired, a distinct connection has to be made between the city-dweller and the city itself. In 1938 Kuwait transformed from a town that relied on trade into a single resource exporter of oil, fueling a booming modern economy. The influx of the automobile and modern solutions to Western ways of living would forever change the city. In the speed of these developments, critical aspects of city planning such as the pedestrian and the harsh desert climate were overlooked. Kuwait began to lose a connection between the city and its …

Augmented City, Xing Huan

Masters Theses

Racial hatred, diplomatic conflicts, financial wars, environmental destruction, Covid-19 raging. In this imperfect world that doesn't run in the way we want, we may grow numb, weary, and look for alternate realities that act as a relief from these increasingly bizarre events. And due to the current pandemic, ordinary individuals forced into isolation in a strange foreign city risk losing their psychological identity as well as their connection with the society. The city becomes a metaphor of this alienation as, in some cases, it lacks a sense of belonging by already built urban structures that disenfranchise both the individual and …

The Future Of Beijing Urban Courtyards, Zhuoqi Xu

Masters Theses

The Beijing Siheyuan is typical and representative of traditional Chinese residential construction. It is not only an architectural form but also a reflection of the traditional modes of living in Beijing. However, with the changes in family structure and people’s living needs, the spatial pattern of traditional courtyards has been unable to meet the life and economic needs of modern society. The scarce public space, poor living environment, and the low-quality of residents’ life led Siheyuan to lose its original status. Despite these challenges, whether for the protection of the overall style of Beijing’s old city or the renewal of …

A Better City For Her: Design Safer Public Spaces For Women In The United States And China, Geruihan Xu

Masters Theses

Gender dynamics in public spaces are important issues to study. Here, I challenge the patriarchy in the built environment because it intensifies the oppressed status of women in modern cities. Listening to women’s concerns is the first step of doing so. Meanwhile, I am aware that different socio-cultural backgrounds would affect women’s attitudes, preferences, and other aspects of public spaces. Thus, the thesis will be discussed in the contexts of mainland China and the United States due to the limitation of my experience.

In this thesis, I want to find out what are the needs of women in public spaces …

“Venerated For Their Bloody Deeds” English Medievalism In Literature, World War I Aviation, And Memorials, Levy Walton Pait

Masters Theses

Aviators of World War I were trailblazers of the sky. That much is certain. However, there has been a historical debate about their reputation as “knights of the air.” During the war and for many years afterward, World War I aviators were compared to medieval knights battling in honorable duels amongst the clouds. This was an idea popularized by the pilots themselves. David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister during World War I, described pilots, “‘They are the knighthood of this war… they recall the legendary days of chivalry not merely by the daring of their exploits but by the nobility …

Loyalist Preachers During The American Revolution (1765-1783), Christena Renea Leaverton

Masters Theses

“Loyalists were those who remained loyal to the British Crown and did not support America’s fight for independence leading up to, and during, the American Revolution. Being loyal to the crown was the normal practice for all Americans prior to the increasing call for independence.” In the time leading up to and during the American Revolution (1765-1783), Loyalist preachers defended their stance on remaining loyal to Great Britain utilizing Bible themes and specific verses. Oftentimes, as with the Patriots, these Loyalist preachers took these themes and verses out of context or misquoted them. They also used Bible themes and verses …

“Beyond The Character Of The Times”: Anglican Revivalists In Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Frances Helena Watson

Masters Theses

In eighteenth-century Virginia, the Anglican church held the monopoly on religion in the colonies despite the efforts of Revivalists. Yet, little research has been conducted on Evangelical Anglicans during this period. Some historians, such as Dr. Jacob Blosser, have begun to call attention to this gap in the scholarship. Still, no one has made a thorough investigation of Evangelical Anglican ministers in Virginia. Out of all the Anglican ministers in Virginia at this time, only three have been confidently identified as Evangelical. These three men, Devereux Jarratt, his friend Archibald McRoberts, and his student Charles Clay, stand apart from the …

The Toughest Apologetic: A Study On Christians Who Deconvert, Jeffery L. Childress

Masters Theses

Christianity is distinct from any other world religion, philosophy, or ideology in how it explains universal origin, meaning, destiny, and morality. The Christian message is also unique in promise of a personal and life-changing relationship with the Creator God. One can hardly deny the influence of the Christian faith has had on humanity over the past two thousand years. However, a growing number of those believers who once claimed commitment to the transcendent message and transformative power of Jesus Christ eventually rescind belief in their faith and renounce their deeply held spiritual convictions. This paper explores why people with roots …

Ploughing Of The Sands: The Refugee System Of World War Ii And The Man That Tried To Hold It Together, Mitchell A. Gehman

Masters Theses

As the world began to transition to the East versus West struggle of the Cold War, the United Nations created the International Refugee Organization to handle the concerns of the displaced persons and unwilling refugees left in the wake of the victorious Allied armies. However, the creation of the IRO was not an event that occurred in a vacuum. It was preceded by a number of previous bodies made to address refugee concerns, like the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees, the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. These bodies worked both before …

The Retrieval Of Memory: Holding Time In The Shanghai Gasometers, Liman Wei

Masters Theses

Shanghai was primarily an industrial city from the 19th century to the 20th century. By serving as a carrier of time, the past industrial architecture in Shanghai is invested with the collective memory of its past inhabitants. Now that Shanghai has entered the post-industrial period, according to the Shanghai 2035 Urban Plan, the Yangshupu Industrial Zone will be transformed into a new Central Activity Zone. As a result of this plan, old residential neighborhoods nearby will be demolished and replaced by new high-rise residential buildings. The relationship between old residential areas and industrial buildings will be uprooted. Memories of industry …

Terminal: Through The "Windows" Of A Tram Car Museum, Yuyi Si

Masters Theses

The typical city museum is more concerned with the city’s past: focused on founding myths or historical events. The content is frozen and lacks engagement. Simultaneously, the city itself develops rapidly and shifts, just as the citizens move and change. To address this disconnection, it is necessary to create an active city museum that joins place, memory, and people by putting museum learning in context throughout the city and engaging audiences in their daily lives.

Dalian in Liaoning Province, China, is recognized as a historical and tourism district with a unique city fabric and collection of architectural styles. The city …

Architecture Of Aging Care: A Field Through Architectural Innovation, Eve Huining Guo

Masters Theses

A thesis is original.

A thesis for me is the process of finding my hidden voice toward society and making it stands in my own language. Not saying the first or second language I speak, but the unique language that I have created after years of learning and experiences in both the Architecture field and across the other disciplines. A thesis then introduces it to the world.

A thesis is living in the present, it reveals the current stage of my perception of big concerns towards the world-scale phenomenon and my focus towards how it relates to the individuals like …

An Evolving Process: Patterns And Objects, Shreya Tuli

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates my life experiences,inspired by the surroundings in New England and India.

My process is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach. I integrate diverse media moving fluidly between two dimensional and three dimensional work, creating multiple layers of pattern and objects.

Ctrl Shift, Kit Son Lee

Masters Theses

CTRL SHIFT makes a case for design under contemporary computation. The abstractions of reading, writing, metaphors, mythology, code, cryptography, interfaces, and other such symbolic languages are leveraged as tools for understanding. Alternative modes of knowledge become access points through which users can subvert the control structures of software. By challenging the singular expertise of programmers, the work presented within advocates for the examination of internalized beliefs, the redistribution of networked power, and the collective sabotage of computational authority.

Taking Care, John Dixon

Masters Theses

We’ve come to live our lives on a quest for what we deem as efficiency, but has our view on the matter been focused on the wrong measures? Taking Care investigates efficiency utilizing a variety of different comparative measures through the creation of 8 chairs. When our emphasis on certain variables is shifted, is mass production the most efficient means of making? What about one-off production utilizing local materials? Does industry’s approach to ergonomics focus on efficiencies benefitting the employer while sacrificing those of the employee? Working from a Wendell Berry quote contrasting care to efficiency as a point of …

Black Exposure: A New Typology, Teisha Bradley

Masters Theses

It is clear that the Euro-centric exclusivity and misrepresentation of Black bodies in space has left a void in architectural representation and design. The aim of my thesis is to highlight Black bodies and their experiences in the built environment. Photography is a crucial tool in documenting and narrating these stories. This typology has three identifiers: the figure, ground, and cultural context.

Dress Your Chair, Yumeng Gai

Masters Theses

Upholstery is the dress for furniture. As apparel for humans, upholstery has the power to shape the identity of furniture. By changing different upholsteries, furniture will have fresh identities that bring vitality to both the furniture itself and the surrounding environment. And during the process of changing “cloth” for furniture, people will build a deeper relationship with the furniture they already have.

Ritualizing Of Space In The 21st Century: Fostering Of Communal Identity Through Celebration Of Tamil Culture, Mridula Swaminathan

Masters Theses

South India is known for its traditional belief systems and the numerous architectural manifestations of these beliefs. The scale and extravagance of temples and the palaces for the kings are an example of how important culture and ritual were in the past. Now some of these structures, such as the Thirumalai Nayakar Palace in the city of Madurai, the cultural capital of Tamil Nadu, stand in a modified societal context with no cultural or ritualized significance. Moreover, the host of this project, the Thirumalai Nayakar Mahal, situated in a city brimming with multiple sacred rituals performed along the city streets, …

Beyond Pasta: Understanding Italian American Culinary Culture In Federal Hill, Chufan He

Masters Theses

Nuances of culture are lost from an outside perspective. This one–sidedness perception brings confusion and can lead to stereotypes. As a “Country of immigrants’” it is crucial to break stereotypes born in America to understand the complexity and uniqueness of every immigrant's culture. As for stereotypes of Italian culture in America, these are always related to food. As an Italian American neighbourhood with many layers of history, Federal Hill has experienced several transitions. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Fabre Line offered the only transatlantic route which brought a large number of Italian immigrants to New England. Providence …

Going Back, Zhiyi Hilary He

Masters Theses

The acceleration of social urbanization and education universalization in the past 30 years of China has promoted the popularization of mandarin among the public. Meanwhile, the dialect, as a unique regional language, is gradually dying away. In the city where I grew up, Taizhou, only the elders are likely to speak Taizhou dialect frequently in their life, while others prefer to use mandarin rather than dialect. The truth is the usage rate of dialect has gradually decreased from generation to generation. The primary goal of this thesis is to provide an opportunity for the public to “dialogue with the past” …

Cultural Acupuncture: Decentralization And Deocratization In Chinese Exhibition Design, Ruohan Duan

Masters Theses

There is an imbalance between the opportunities for aesthetic education in big cities and underdeveloped areas in China. Taking Shanghai and Beijing as examples, museums in big cities consume most art educational resources. People who live in rural or small towns hardly have access to the arts, making the aesthetic gap larger between cultural centers and cultural deserts.

This thesis proposes a new exhibition system that could send a series of accessible and sustainable exhibition structures around China to narrow the educational resources gap and synchronize cultural curriculum between different places. Decentralizing and democratizing the cultural center and bringing the …

Mutable Landscapes: Diversity Through The Lens Of The Earth's Biomass, Ilya Iskhakov

Masters Theses

This thesis explores conditions of mutability in the landscape through the lens of the Earth’s biomass, particularly the living beings whose systemic, functional and aesthetic values are misrepresented or undervalued. Relegated to the abandoned, derelict and forgotten landscapes, the presence of these living things has often come to represent decay, blight, lack of resources, and care. However, in the light of the global environmental crisis and in search of viable solutions to clean up the environment and curb greenhouse gas emissions, it has become apparent that the spontaneous, opportunistic qualities of these living beings can provide unparalleled opportunities to do …

Nossa Quadra, Nossa Historia: The Power Of Collaborative And Communal Outdoor Spaces As A Tool For Belonging & Agency, Rebecca Maria Pepl

Masters Theses

Brazil - a country with a history of colonization, slavery, precipitated industrialization, rapid urbanization, superimposed european modernism (architectural and ideological), unstable politics, growing inequity, socio-economic stratification and overpopulation combined with a lack of adequate housing for the wider population. The government has been trying to solve these issues with standardized, unsuccessful social housing projects along the periphery of the city, disregarding the population’s lifestyle and neglecting their visions. This perpetuates existing discriminatory divides, enforced through architecture and infrastructure.

This thesis attempts to improve the quality of life of the residents in the Cohab Neighborhood in Recife, which is one of …

Dive, Aparna Sarkar

Masters Theses

In my thesis paintings, abstracted bodies collide with sticky shapes and residues in otherworldly spaces to form a queer, diasporic mythology. Bodies are slick, crusty, diaphanous, partial, chunky, other—they vary in legibility, suspended in emergence and expulsion from the environment. Multiple selves make these works. One asks sensorial questions of painting: what feelings, memories, and experiences can I transmit through color and material? I embed the smell of marigolds, the swi!t temperature change of the California desert, or the thick haze of a three a.m. dance floor make-out. My trusting self follows visions of color and shape, believing that they …

Whores, Sluts, And Bitches; The Perceived Limits Of Sexualisation And The Affects On Space, Chloe Jenny Bennie

Masters Theses

Perceived sexualisation changes depending on multiple factors, this thesis is looking specifically at how tools and accessories are used in conjunction with altering power dynamics within a carefully orchestrated space to change how a person wants to be looked upon.

Preserving Modern Architecture & New Railway Infrastructure In New Delhi, Yash Sahai Gupta

Masters Theses

New Delhi/ Naiee Dilli is one of the cities in the world which has been destroyed and rebuilt 10 times since 3100BC. Starting with the name of Indraprastha and ending with Lutyens’s Delhi in 1911AD. Currently, Delhi still shows the footprints of all the 10 destroyed cities. The major change happened during the Lutyens’s planning and after the post-independence where India started getting engaged with the new construction technology with industrial materials which were introduced by the colonizers. The architecture of post-colonial Delhi was to change the image of a growing city to a developed city. An era where Indian …

Responsive Markets: Structures Supporting Economic Activity In Postcolonial Mumbai, Bilal Ismail Ahmed

Masters Theses

This project aims to envision a market that engages activity and brings in life from surrounding markets – connecting better into its environment. The project fits into a larger discussion on how architecture left behind by a colonial regime might be addressed formally and conceptually.