Digital Commons Network^™

Confluence: From Barrier To Connection: Reconnecting The Lower Ninth Ward To The Industrial Canal Through An Inhabitable Water Edge, Ciara Albrecht

Architecture Theses

Confluence reimagines the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans as a resilient waterfront community shaped by memory, ecology, and adaptive housing. Located along the Industrial Canal at the site of the 2005 levee breach, the project replaces defensive separation with an inhabitable water edge composed of amphibious housing, public circulation, constructed wetlands, visible water systems, and an underground memorial. The thesis argues that post-disaster rebuilding cannot be measured only by infrastructure or replacement housing, but by dignity, return, cultural identity, public health, and long-term stewardship. Through buoyant foundations, concealed mooring systems, passive climate strategies, and a spatial sequence that moves …

Resilient Placemaking: Enhancing Community Identity, Streetscapes, And Public Spaces In Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, Ellen R. Nampel

Landscape Architecture Theses

This thesis provides a plan to revitalize downtown Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, by improving its public spaces. While the downtown is currently stable, this research proactively addresses future risks like economic decline and the loss of local identity. By combining placemaking with urban resilience strategies, the study shows how better street designs can bring people together and support local businesses. The proposed design focuses on three goals: turning empty lots into flexible event spaces for community gatherings, making streets safer and easier to walk by reducing car dominance, and using local branding to celebrate the city’s history. These changes aim to …

Redefining An Icon: Stadium Integration Into The Urban Center To Promote Community Engagement, Culture, And Identity In Dallas, Texas, Brandon Lee Peterson

Architecture Theses

This thesis is an exploration into how stadium design can foster community engagement, cultural identity, and urban vibrancy in the United States. While many American stadiums often remain isolated from the urban fabric, located on city outskirts or suburbs and used solely for events, European models demonstrate the value of walkable, accessible, and integrated stadiums within mixed-use neighborhoods. Through a multidisciplinary review of urban design theory, economic factors, and programming needs, this research highlights the limitations of current U.S. stadium developments, such as issues of accessibility and underutilized public investment. Using a proposed downtown Dallas soccer stadium, the thesis offers …

The Oasis: Decompression For Urban Living, Gabrielle Moede

Architecture Theses

The modern metropolis has evolved into a landscape of sensory bombardment, where chronic noise and visual clutter trigger a state of constant psychological strain for its inhabitants. Despite the density of these environments, there remains a critical deficiency in intentional architectural interventions that offer accessible, high-impact relief from urban alienation. This project challenges the convention of water as a decorative feature, instead re-engineering it into an active therapeutic tool designed to trigger specific restorative neurological responses. By meticulously layering the auditory, tactile, and visual properties of aqueous elements, the design creates a sequenced sensory journey that transitions from urban chaos …

Behind The Badge: Rethinking The Police Department As A Functional Workplace, Benjamin Michael

Architecture Theses

While traditional design approaches often emphasize public engagement and community visibility, this project centers on the needs of law enforcement personnel, recognizing the high-stress, high-stakes nature of their work. By integrating architectural strategies that reduce stress, foster relaxation, and support daily workflows, the design aims to improve officer morale, enhance focus, and increase job retention. Key features include dedicated decompression zones, wellness and fitness facilities, natural lighting and biophilic elements, and spatial layouts that support efficient operations while promoting a sense of safety and comfort.

Border Patches: Reconnecting Ecology And Human Experiences At The U.S.-Mexico Border, Shima Goodarzi

Landscape Architecture Theses

International borders are among the most engineered and ecologically fragmented landscapes in the world. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, infrastructure systems such as walls, patrol roads, and cleared enforcement zones have disrupted wildlife movement, fragmented habitats, altered hydrological systems, and limited social interaction between neighboring communities.

This thesis develops a digital environmental twin framework to evaluate ecological and social connectivity within the San Diego-Tijuana border region. Using ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Urban, spatial datasets including land cover, habitat suitability, hydrology, circulation networks, and urban density were analyzed to identify areas with high ecological potential and opportunities for intervention.

The research informed …

Cold Climate Urban Riverfront Development: Using People-First Design To Connect Fargo's Downtown To The River, Jade Biewer

Architecture Theses

This thesis examines the intersection of urban design, riverfront development, and cold climate design to establish a framework for a mixed-use riverfront project in Fargo’s Downtown. By synthesizing theories on public space revitalization, key considerations in waterfront development and research on climatic responses for cold weather cities, this research identifies key principles to support year-round urban life along the riverfront. By using downtown Fargo and the Red River as a reference this research synthesizes knowledge on these subjects in order to work towards creating a design proposal for an urban riverfront development prioritizing outdoor space, year-round use, resiliency, and a …

Living Shorelines: A Regenerative Landscape Approach To Coastal Protection And Community Resilience In Bhasan Char, Bangladesh, Anamul Hoque Mojumder

Landscape Architecture Theses

Bhasan Char is a newly formed, unstable silt island in Bangladesh which is home for more than one million Rohingya refugees—an ethnic Muslim minority from Myanmar who have fled decades of systematic persecution and violence—suffering from an ecological and humanitarian crisis. This community faces extreme vulnerability from cyclones and sea-level rise on a landscape of profound precarity.

Traditional hard-engineered defenses are costly, ecologically damaging, and ineffective against the island’s dynamic geomorphology. This research proposes a regenerative "Living Shorelines" model, intersecting coastal resilience with refugee empowerment through Blue-Green Infrastructure. Drawing on successful global precedents in Vietnam and the USA, the study …

Fields Of Home: Dignified Housing Design For Migrant Farmworkers In Rural North Dakota And Rural Minnesota, Kenady Slominski

Architecture Theses

Migrant agricultural workers are often faced with challenges regarding their housing. These housing conditions lack privacy, permanence, and a connection to the community. Existing solutions tend to prioritize efficiency and cost over the emotional, social, and cultural needs of residents. Therefore, the existing solutions are unable to create a sense of dignity. Additionally, there is limited regional research addressing migrant worker housing conditions in Minnesota and North Dakota specifically.

This project explores how architectural design can improve living conditions through a focus on dignity and community integration. The proposed development consists of duplex homes in one- and two-bedroom units with …

Cooling Washington Avenue: A Guide To Urban Heat Island Effect Mitigation For Detroit Lakes, Mn, Nathan Johnson

Landscape Architecture Theses

This thesis explores the redesign of an urban corridor in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Detroit Lakes is a small urban city characterized by its year-round tourism, vibrant downtown, and sandy beachfront. Like many other urban environments, it faces growing challenges associated with the urban heat island effect, as well as stormwater management and pedestrian safety. To address these issues, this project proposes integrating green street design strategies to mitigate the urban heat island effect and increase pedestrian safety. Using design principles drawn from four case studies, this project introduces natural stormwater management systems, designated bike lanes, increased canopy cover, and decreased …

Erasing Boundaries: Strategies For Universities And Cities In Developing Integrated Planning, Jack Quinn

Architecture Theses

The population of the Fargo-Moorhead area is steadily growing per year, however since 2010 both Concordia and Minnesota State University Moorhead have seen a steady decrease in students. Factors such as President Trump’s immigration policies, lower birth rates, and high school students who are doubting the value of a college education has set the stage for a difficult future for universities in the United States of America. This thesis will explore Town-Gown relations, studentification, and the strategies behind the best designed campuses in America. It will explore the relationship between neighboring schools, P3 developments, dive into what the Metro college …

Cultivating Wellness Through Architecture: A Community-Focused Approach, Olivia Marie Haakonson

Architecture Theses

This thesis addresses the deficit of nature-integrated, accessible public wellness infrastructure in the United States, often threatened by the commercialization of wellness and harsh winter conditions in northern climates. Through an analysis of global wellness rituals, “Winter City” design strategies, the importance of social infrastructure and “third places”, the health benefits of nature, and urban policy logistics, this research culminates in a design framework to recenter holistic health in the public realm. This project integrates architectural interventions, programmatic activation strategies, and urban policy recommendations to create a holistic, accessible, and nature-integrated building to serve as a hub for urban activity.

Building On Memory: Towards A Digital Future Informed By Historical Theory, Lucas Laskow

Architecture Theses

This project synthesizes 2,000 years of architectural theory to establish an ethical framework for integrating artificial intelligence into contemporary design. The research culminates in “The Chandler,” demonstrating how AI can enhance, rather than replace, human-driven spatial and cultural values.

The assertion that human design is inherently superior to artificial intelligence relies on the flawed premise that intuitive leaps outweigh data-driven synthesis. Rather than diminishing the architect’s role, the evolution of AI demands that designers become ethical interpreters who ask the right questions. This project investigates how past architectural theorists, from Vitruvius’s foundational triad to Bruce Allsopp’s humanist return, provide a …

Range Children's Therapy And Learning Center, Medea Clusiau

Architecture Theses

The rise in childhood developmental disabilities coupled with co-occurring emotional disorders is placing significant stress on current support structures and hindering students’ academic potential (Zablotsky et al., 2023; Leeb et al., 2024). While the need for intervention is critical, available resources are often insufficient. This thesis proposes the Range Children’s Therapy and Learning Center (RCTLC) as a comprehensive, centralized facility dedicated to ensuring every child recieves holistic suppport for academic and life success. The center integrates a wide spectrum of interventions across three areas: Developmental, Behavioral & Emotional, and Cognitive therapies. This approach is designed to build foundational learning strategies. …

Adaptive Reuse At The Hmongtown Marketplace: Using Food As An Agent For Gathering Through A Closed-Loop Circular Food System, Sulia Sheng Lee

Architecture Theses

This thesis explores the built environment through social and architectural lenses: examining how food connects communities, particularly ethnic and diasporic groups like the Hmong, and how adaptive interventions can create spaces that foster closed-loop food systems.

Research into the Hmong diasporic journey has shown that growing, making, and sharing food has been a central aspect to the community. The Hmong community's food assimilation in the United States has replaced traditional agrarian lifestyles with reliance on local American grocery stores. These stores operate within linear "take, make, use, waste" systems that disconnect consumers from food origins. However, spaces like the HmongTown …

Increasing The Value Of A Property Using Architectural Principles, Alexander Robert Hoiland

Architecture Theses

This thesis researched the intersection between real estate investing and architectural design, by exploring the relation between architectural interventions and investor theory with the focus of maximizing ROI and raising property value. This research is applied to a residential site in Lindstrom, Minnesota, as the primary case study. The research will illustrate the task of documenting the site and creating an existing model to replicate the conditions of the property. This model will be used to simulate different architectural interventions and illustrate how value was added to the site, by breaking down cost and the different methods of calculating value. …

Designing For Neurodivergent Learning In Early Education, Brooklyn Wegner

Architecture Theses

This architectural thesis explores the redesign of a 4K-4th-grade school to foster an inclusive, safe, and supportive learning environment for neurodivergent learners. Recognizing that traditional classrooms and makeshift special education spaces fail to meet diverse student needs, this research analyzes the learning processes associated with ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyspraxia, and Dyscalculia. By integrating Montessori and Erikson’s pedagogical theories, the study advocates for universal and flexible design frameworks. The primary outcome of this project is a proposed classroom module and comprehensive school redesign in Osceola, Wisconsin, focused on five key environmental elements: colors, lighting, acoustics, textures, and zoning. …

How Architecture Can Support Anishinaabe Cultural Identity, Dakota Davis

Architecture Theses

This thesis investigates how architecture can support Anishinaabe cultural identity through The Gathering House, a living cultural infrastructure for the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa context. The project responds to cultural disconnection, preservation through separation, restricted access to knowledge, and the absence of a persistent public cultural gathering space. Through research, storytelling, fragment studies, artefact work, precedent analysis, and architectural translation, the thesis develops a spatial framework where culture is practiced rather than only displayed. The final proposal is organized around the approach, the process of descent, and three programmatic realms: Material Making and Memory, Ceremony, and Recorded History. Together, …

Illinois State University, One Hundred And Sixty-Seventh Annual Commencement, May 2026, Illinois State Universtiy

Commencement Programs

Illinois State University

One Hundred and Sixty-Seventh Annual Commencement

May 2026

Architecture As A Camera: Utilizing Photographic Principles To Tell Stories Through Design, Ryan Gabriel Scherf

Architecture Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between memory, photography, and architecture as a framework for spatial design, framing memory as a fragmented phenomenon contingent upon light and time. Drawing on the theoretical work of Goffi, Barthes, and Bordeleau, it positions architecture as a temporal montage in which meaning emerges through layered absences, material “puncta,” and the interpretive gaps between fragments. Situated at the Botallack Mines in England, the project explores the intersection of photographic logic and industrial ruin by treating the site’s extractive history as a series of active fragments. Through compressed volumes and curated views, it translates photographic principles into …

Weaving The Intangible: Architecture For Cultural Continuity, Eden Tesfaye

Architecture Theses

Weaving the Intangible begins with the understanding that culture is both carried and transformed when people move. It can create a sense of grounding in new places, yet it may also fade into memory when shared spaces to sustain it are absent. In diaspora, the difference between traditions that are still practiced and those that exist mainly in memory influences how younger generations understand and carry their cultural identity. This project explores how architecture can act as a medium for cultural continuity by giving spatial form to intangible heritage. Using the Ethiopian community in Alexandria, VA as the primary focus, …

Birds, Bees, + Butterflies: Restoring Suburban Wildlife Homes And Habitats In Bismarck, Nd, Elena Joubert

Landscape Architecture Theses

For centuries humanity has been expanding its borders, stretching in and across a wide range of ecosystems, optimizing the land for human use and habitation. Animal-aided design is a possible solution to the loss of habitats; a new methodology of designing green spaces for the use of specific native species. Green spaces are vital to the mental and physical well-being of people, and the presence of native species such as songbirds or butterflies can further increase those benefits. Only 4.2% of North Dakota is developed land, referring to urban and industrial usage, but within these spaces are opportunities to conserve …

Creative Placemaking: Using Makerspace Infrastructure To Support Circular Communities, Grace Dejong

Architecture Theses

This thesis investigates how makerspaces can function as critical social and economic infrastructure within processes of urban regeneration, particularly in post-industrial contexts. Drawing from creative placemaking scholarship, and quantitative and qualitative data on entrepreneurship and making cultures, the research examines making as both a cultural practice and an economic catalyst. Centered on a vacant industrial infill site, the project explores how spaces for production, learning, and gathering can support creative labor, small-scale manufacturing, and community resilience. By bridging societal issues with architectural application, the thesis addresses gaps between discussions of creativity, sustainability, and their spatial implementation. Through an integrated program …

Link To Home + Back: A Transit-Oriented Mixed-Use Bridge Between Neighborhood, Nature + The City Of Lynnwood, Wa, Rushell Paola Martinez Reyes

Landscape Architecture Theses

Link to Home + Back: A Transit-Oriented Bridge Between Neighborhood, Nature + The City of Lynnwood, WA. Is a project that seeks to help achieve a better connectivity in an area close to the City Center Station that is currently lacking connectivity in all aspects but, vehicular traffic. This is an important issue to resolve, since with a better connectivity and pedestrian and cyclist circulation the chances of people walking to and from the transit station to make use of it increase dramatically, which eventually helps reduce the pollution produced by vehicles. This research aims to study if transit-oriented development …

Re:Place: Leveraging Cultural Memory To Transform Communities Through Adaptive Reuse, Olivia Leingang

Architecture Theses

This thesis investigates how adaptive reuse can leverage cultural memory to transform declining small-town economies, specifically addressing the socio-economic erosion in Mandan, North Dakota. By reimagining the 1958 Mandan High School as the "Mandan Marketplace," the research proposes a 165,000-square-foot multi-use commercial hub designed to reverse regional retail leakage and density imbalances. The project utilizes a research-driven Design Framework and Strategic Building Program to integrate 23 new amenities, including a food hall, business incubator, and wellness center, into the local fabric. Through a methodology of six adaptive reuse types, the design preserves the building’s role as a "custodian of memory" …

Farming The Future: Urbanizing The Naturhus For Small Scale Food Cultivation, Madysen Brooke Rath

Architecture Theses

Modern urban centers face the pressures of rapidly rising populations and food insecurity, leaving a landscape of “urban voids”-underutilized lots that remain dormant and unproductive. While the Naturhus typology offers a potential solution for symbiotic, glass-encased green living and food production in rural settings, it has yet to be adapted as a viable infill solution for the American urban grid. This thesis investigates the potential for urbanizing the Naturhus concept by reinterpreting a row-house typology as an infill strategy to create “greenhouse villages,” where residents actively participate in their own food production. It focuses on the cold-climate urban fabric of …

Byproducts In Bakken: Integrating Agricultural Waste Into Architecture As A Path To Sustainable Design In Western North Dakota, Noah Boen

Architecture Theses

Sustainable design can be seen as threatening in regions where local industries are expected to decline if introduced. This thesis explores how this can be solved in western North Dakota where fracking is a large part of the economy. North Dakota leads the nation in wheat production, and recent advancements have allowed for the waste product from harvest to be utilized in architectural applications. By introducing this as a feasible means for sustainable design in the region, through the typology of a visitor center in the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the local population can become better educated …

Architecture Of Healing Beyond The Institution: A New Model For Veteran Care, Megan Lyn Welk

Architecture Theses

The transition from military to civilian life presents unique challenges for veterans navigating trauma, yet traditional clinical settings often aggravate anxiety and disconnection through sterile, institutional design. This thesis addresses the critical “mismatch” between current healthcare environments and the neurological needs of veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Arguing that architecture must evolve from a passive vessel to an active therapeutic partner, this research proposes a comprehensive rehabilitation center located on O’ahu, Hawai’i, which integrates the island’s profound cultural connection to the ‘aina (land) with evidence-based design strategies.

The design methodology synthesizes three core …

Surgical Timing After Acromioclavicular Joint Separation: Association With Clinical Outcomes, Mallory B Lane, Jacob Siahaan, James M Gregory

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Treatment of acromioclavicular joint (ACJ) separations continually lacks consensus between providers, and while low-grade injuries generally respond well to conservative management, high-grade injury management is more complex. For patients requiring surgery, the effect of the timing of surgery with respect to the original injury on clinical outcomes remains unclear.

Hypothesis: Clinical outcome measures would worsen as the time between ACJ dislocation injury and surgery increased.

Study design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods: A large nationwide insurance claims database was queried for patients who had an ACJ dislocation injury using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth and Tenth Revision …

Severe, Non-Apneic Respiratory Dysfunction And Hypoxia Following Generalized Convulsive Seizures, Haley E Pysick, Rup K Sainju, Roshni Nair, Deidre N Dragon, Eduardo Bravo, Laura Vilella, Xiaojin Li, Samden D Lhatoo, George B Richerson, Brian K Gehlbach

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Objective: Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is a devastating consequence of some generalized convulsive seizures (GCS). Recent work has focused on seizure related apnea as a biomarker of SUDEP risk, frequently without characterizing the adequacy of non-apneic ventilation or identifying other dysfunctional breathing patterns. We hypothesized that GCS frequently induce immediate, severe, non-apneic respiratory dysfunction that can induce critical hypoxia and bradycardia and sought to characterize breathing patterns after GCS.

Methods: Adult patients admitted to an epilepsy monitoring unit were studied. The effects of GCS on breathing and heart rate were analyzed using nasal pressure transducers, chest and abdominal …