Digital Commons Network^™

Memories Unboxed: Connecting People With Stories Of Our Possessions, Megan Tzu-Hsien Chao

Masters Theses

We constantly fall into a cycle of consumption that involves acquiring, retaining, and relinquishing items, whether we need them or not. Even though we are influenced by popular media to declutter more as we acquire new things, the root of the problem will still exist if we continue to neglect the reasons why we own things in the first place and why we hold onto them.

Why is it less stressful to make a list of possessions we enjoy having than to make a list of things we need to throw away?

This thesis hopes to relieve people of making …

Shifting Landscapes, Zahra Tyebjee

Masters Theses

Landscapes are never stable. Light, color, and weather interact to create dynamic atmospheres. As a designer who works with textiles and immersive spaces, I observe sensorial and fleeting elements of optical phenomena and textural landscapes. The goal of this collection of knitted fabrics is to capture the experience of these effects and bring atmosphere from the outdoors in. My memories of landscape are filled with impressions of light, color, and weather shifts. I draw from my experience of shifting landscapes to emphasize textural material exploration. I activate space through material contrasts, ephemeral qualities, and large-scale knitted fabrics. I seek to …

Soul Soiree: How “Sunday Best” Dressing Encourages Celebration Of Self, Olufisayo Quadri

Masters Theses

Celebration is an important part of living a fulfilled life. From significant milestone events like weddings and birthdays to smaller moments of serendipity, the act of celebration is an affirmation of one’s place in the world. Across cultures, communities have used festive textiles to show an appreciation for their values and histories.

X-Era: Adaptation To The Future Uncertainty With Sustainable Indigenous Wisdom, Ruoyuan Chen

Masters Theses

Due to human impacts on earth’s geology and ecosystem, the future of this planet and our society is uncertain. To navigate this uncertainty, it is urgent that we understand and explore new strategies to adapt to this unknown future. Over the millennia, indigenous communities around the world have developed advanced and nuanced ways to adapt to living in harsh environments. X is commonly used in science to refer to a variable that can change or be changed. Therefore, the thesis project – X-Era, aims to learn from the sustainability of traditional ecological knowledge to help inform how we may adapt …

We Walk, We Live: Reclaiming The Rights Of Female And Other Gender Minorities To The Urban Commons, Wenxi (Hillary) Huang

Masters Theses

Urban street environments are often described as not being beneficial for persons who identify as female and other gender minorities. This thesis responds to the urgent call for further transformation of the public realm through a reimagination of walking environments in the city. It examines gender biases prevalent in realities within the female’s experience in urban settings, and more specifically on the streets, and explores intersectionality as a form of reclamation of the female and other gender minorities’ rights to the urban commons.

The inquiry is divided into two parts - research inquiry and design implementation. The study investigates and …

Aquatic Assemblages: Improving Dragonfly Habitat And Water Quality In An Urban Park, Yan Liu

Masters Theses

Many scientists have claimed that we are entering into the sixth mass extinction. According to IUCN, about 16% of the 6,016 species of dragonflies and damselflies are at risk of extinction. Dragonfly occupies an essential link in the food chain. Fluctuations in dragonfly numbers can affect the numbers of other species, such as mosquitoes and birds. Dragonflies are also closely related to the health of the water environment. Healthy water bodies can attract more and different species of dragonflies and other aquatic animals. Dragonflies’ decline is a symptom of widespread loss of the marshes, swamps, and free-flowing rivers they breed …

Trash Matters: Material Strategies For Prolonging The Life Of Single-Use Plastic, Zixin Li

Masters Theses

Plastic pollution has become one of the most pressing environmental issues. Communities worldwide have addressed the importance of facing the problem of plastic pollution control and issues relevant policies to effectively reduce the use of plastic products. The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 has made the urgency of the problem less significant. Nevertheless, the use of disposable plastics to comply with public health protocols has hugely increased making plastic pollution all the more severe.

Through material experimentation, this thesis reappraises different types of single-use plastic waste and attempts to transform them into longer-lasting reused solutions. It focuses on finding alternative materials …

Offshore Speculation: Generative Ethics For Submerged Lands, Leigh Miller

Masters Theses

Where is the line between land and sea? As the United States begins to extend renewable energy infrastructures offshore, it will fundamentally blur the boundary between submerged and visible lands. In communities unfamiliar with landscapes of extraction and generation, the realities of this emerging industry will challenge notions of ownership, aesthetic values, and environmental ethics.

Offshore Speculation opens a dialogue between the discipline of landscape architecture and the spatial politics that support the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels. Reimagining the sea as a new urban territory on submerged land allows honest interrogation of the land-sea binary. Because landscape architects …

We Got This..., Julian Wellisz

Masters Theses

Working nonstop? Not sleeping enough? Feeling alone in your deadlines? Are you struggling with work-life balance?

Know that you are not alone. Since the covid-19 pandemic began reports of loneliness, mental health issues, and burnout have increased.

It’s quite possible that you are opting-in to an individualistic culture of overwork. If you go to RISD that's almost certain. This is true for students and teachers alike.

While these current systems work for some (primarily those at the tops of their respected hierarchies), for the majority of us there are better ways of being. Providing social and emotional support and creating …

Emotional Experience: An Exploration Of Reestablishing The Connection With Nature Through Novel Street Tree Planning In Providence, Ri, Xiuyan Qin

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the causes of the unprecedented disconnection of humans from nature experienced in modern society. To improve this disconnect, this proposal seeks to place the street tree at the intersection of nature and culture through urban installations that intensify urban sensory experiences. By strengthening human sensory perception, promoting stewardship through diverse participatory planting plans, enabling urban ‘foraging,’ creating community-led and household maintenance regimes, the street tree installations will increase public health outcomes and create environmental agency within the public realm. I sincerely believe that the ultimate mission of landscape architecture lies in encouraging a healthy, poetic, and joyful …

Zoopolis: Repurpose Urban Infrastructure To Welcome Invisible Neighbors, Yu Xiao

Masters Theses

Humans take a dominant role in shaping the world to fit what is best for us, while claiming vast cities and our territories. However, shrinking natural habitats together with availability of resources and shelter have attracted abundant wildlife to cities. These animal species have adjusted their habits to adapt to the urban environments and to avoid direct contact with humans, becoming invisible inhabitants in the city. Despite their initial harmonious coexistence, in recent decades, increasing wildlife sightings – often causing conflict or panic – bring those liminal animals to public attention. This situation encourages us to reframe how cities could …

Shalom, Zoe Schwartz

Masters Theses

I am a Jewish Filipina American, a hybrid of two hyper feminine archetypes: the Jewish American Princess and the Pinay Beauty Queen. Generations of assimilation, colonization and genocide taught my matriarchs to internalize the white male gaze. It was not until I looked in the mirror that I saw her. She understands the importance of performance and appearances because she knows, in a world that will not protect you, there is safety in conforming to feminine norms. She uses her knowledge of pop culture, beauty standards, humor, class symbols and social acceptability to imitate and perform desirable [white] femininity and …

Transnationals; Or, The Modern Frankenstein, Kai Ji

Masters Theses

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”

The title of this thesis is adapted from the title of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and the quote above is said by the scientist in the novel. To associate the word “Frankenstein” with “transnationals” is not to refer to the transnational as the monster, but to …

Slow Down: Investigating How Pop-Up Installations Transform Multi-Use Space, Yuanrui Wang

Masters Theses

According to a study from the 1990s by Richard Wiseman, pedestrians’ walking speeds in a city provide a reliable measure of the pace of life in that city. If people’s walking speeds in a city are fast, their life rhythm will be relatively fast. People in fast-moving cities have more pressure and have higher rates of coronary heart disease.

Because cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally, to get a more healthy life, we all need to slow down and lower the risk of stress. Pop-up spaces are a commonly used method by designers to create a …

Agricultural Landscape As Cultural Practice : Through The Lens Of Rice Farming, Yumeng Yan

Masters Theses

The thesis departs from the understanding of landscape as a cultural practice – an idea that has been thoroughly discussed over the last three decades, namely by Gary Snyder in the influential book of essays, “Tawny Grammar” – to research rice farming landscapes in the geographical contexts of Africa, Asia, and America. By studying the methods and infrastructural systems involved in rice production that developed independently in Asia and Africa – where they were less affected by capitalist frameworks and dualistic ideas that exclude farming from landscape architecture – the thesis seeks a more nuanced intersection of different models of …

The Urban Fabric: Upcycling Textile Waste Into Raw Material For Urban Ground Surface Design, Wenlin Yang

Masters Theses

Landscape surface materials have the opportunity to ground us in our experience and use of materials in the built environment. Surface materials describe the physical textures of the urban areas and include soft and hard landscape solutions, streetscapes, and roads. In modern landscape design, turf, concrete, asphalt, brick or rubber are the most common materials for urban parks or playgrounds. However, the unlimited use of, and lack of awareness about urban landscape surface materials has become a common trend. This “take-make-discard” culture has negatively impacted our environment ecologically, economically, and socially.

This thesis study focuses on upcycling textile waste into …

Sensory Resilience In Urban Walkingscapes: Space Making Strategies For Streetside Public Systems In Neuro- Inclusive City Visions, Yingying Wang

Masters Theses

The thesis asks spatial designers of the public realm to pay attention to sensory profiles and related issues in contemporary urban contexts: sensory overstimulation, lack of safety, security, accessibility in public, absence of clarity, and legibility in the navigating system. These features have characterized rigid and homogeneous representations of and solutions for existing public spaces, mostly developed with a lack of knowledge of humans’ diverse sensory needs in different environments. They fail to offer users – especially neuro-minority groups – alternative ways to interact with the public sphere.

The study researches the reasons for such approaches while investigating the relationships …

World Settings, Elizabeth Meiklejohn

Masters Theses

Acoustical building materials, with their ability to absorb and diffuse sound, can reshape the character of interior spaces in profound ways. Woven textiles often perform as acoustical materials, whether by coincidence or by design; strategic use of textile structure and dimensionality can yield specific experiential qualities in homes, offices and shared spaces. The way certain materials manipulate sound can feel otherworldly, as if they break the laws of physics or the familiar parameters of one’s surroundings. The same properties can be found in emergent visual patterns and illusory lighting conditions, which provoke an investigative, deliberate way of looking.

In this …

Accidental Commensality Eating, Belonging, And Mazaa On The Streets Of Jaipur, Rini Singhi

Masters Theses

Commensality is more than just eating together at a shared table. "Who can eat with whom and what" is a divisive issue in India, where food and eating serve as functions of inclusion and exclusion. In this paper, I examine street food stalls in Jaipur as sites of eating together with strangers and ask, What forms of commensality do street food stalls enable? Can eating together on the street expand ideas about eating together in public? As part of my fieldwork in Jaipur, I observe the surroundings of street food stalls, participate in heritage food walks with guides, and document …

Sacred Pleasures : A Patronage Festival Of The Erotic And Play, David Dávila

Masters Theses

Sacred Pleasures emphasizes human connection and experience. The transcalar use of the erotic and play in spatial design can redefine the current cultural value of production and capital. The proposal addresses three scales of these socioeconomic and spatial conditions: system, architectural, and human scale. The erotic is used as power and resistance. Play is used as a method to achieve agency and to mediate human connection.

The thesis resists from within the context of Puerto Rico, an island product of colonization by two entities, Spain and the United States of America. It addresses the relationship between Puerto Rico and the …

!, Nick Larson

Masters Theses

This thesis uses the exclamation point to represent a way of thinking and working methodology. The exclamation point in mathematics represents a factorial function, an operation for determining all possible orders of a set. Colloquially, the meaning of the exclamation point relies entirely on context. Within a yellow triangle, it means caution or danger, but at the end of a sentence delivering good news, it means excitement. In the context of this thesis, the exclamation point represents enthusiastically and exhaustively reordering objects, words, and processes to highlight shifting meaning.

Fertilizer Waste Mistreatment Facilities: Investigating The Barrier That Keep Waste In And Attention Out At Central Florida's Phosphogypsum Stacks., Harsha Devaraj

Masters Theses

This project investigates the physical and narrative barriers constructed by the phosphate mining and processing industry to dissuade public engagement with its phosphogypsum sites in Central Florida, USA. The barriers around PG utilize decades of misinformation, racial geographies, and misrepresentations of scale, origin, and risk to create powerful narratives about how we should imagine and relate to these materials. These barriers hinder sustained public attention to their sites, enabling extractive industries to expand while avoiding oversight and responsibility. Attention to how these barriers around phosphogypsum are constructed allows us to recognize these strategies at work in how we see and …

Other Realms, Louis Rakovich

Masters Theses

Can a system existing in rigid order be taken back to a state of malleability, a space of potential not yet actualized?

If creation reduces the infinite to produce the finite, then in the simplest sense, creation is the process of bringing something tangible, real, out of the ether—out of the primordial chaos of possibility. The technique of defamiliarization can be viewed as an agent of de-creation, the active reversal of creation, in order to make creation possible once again. As such it holds spiritual power in its own right.

In pursuit of this state of renewed potentiality, I use …

Reengineer Value, Maxwell Altman

Masters Theses

Through adaptive reuse an equitable densified inhabitation solution can be instituted for the Broad Street Synagogue, using a doctrine of value defined by emotion instead of economics to generate positive experience through materiality.

An initial investigation into dwelling and the concept of value has instigated a desire to redefine value from the traditional economic stance. Value in living currently suggests a focus on qualities that directly influence and maintain aspects of monetary value, however value can be placed instead in what influences emotional well being. Equity becomes a powerful motivator for the inclusion of positive influences, even when not directly …

Openness, Qiwen Ju

Masters Theses

We perceive the world as flat when we close one eye. When both eyes are open, the world takes on a three-dimensional quality.

Our childhood, education, family, and environment form and bind our cognitive perspective. As the ancient Chinese proverb goes: “You can’t see Mount Tai by blinding your eyes with one leaf.” Truth is exceedingly difficult to discern. Like the obscuring leaf, there are blind spots in our vision. Prejudice is often the narrow leaf that obstructs perception, preventing us from seeing with greater dimension.

For actual comprehension, we can only see through the eyes, hearts, and minds of …

Connect: Translating Complexity Through Visual Simplification, Ilhee Park

Masters Theses

CONNECT: Translating Complexity through Visual Simplification brings complex data into concise visual systems that encourage ease of access. With a background in Human Factors Engineering, user engagement remains a central focus in my design. Whether reducing barriers to scientific information or untangling deeply complex data, design must contain intuitive concepts without the need for extended explanation. Using bold color and geometric shapes as the core design language to render pictorial narratives, this thesis maps my development as an information designer through modes of gathering, deciphering, and interpreting.

Anybody Home? Figural Studies In Architectural Representation, David Auerbach

Masters Theses

Architectural figures are charged with the task of bringing an architectural drawing, rendering, or model to life. They speak to us in ways that other elements of a drawing cannot, or rarely ever do. This is their charge, their vitality, their animacy, which can turn without moment’s notice, from the opening of a projective narrative in the tune of an invitation to live, to the swallowing of this extradimensionality by the overdeterminations of scale, proportion, order. I don’t want to assume that architectural figures serve a completely transparent, banal, self-evident role in architectural representation — the trope of human-as-scale. Instead, …

A Thesis On The Entanglement Of Art And Design, Racquel Clarke

Masters Theses

Design exists in the realm of functionality while art is used to invoke creativity heightened by one’s passion. Rather than perfect art and design as separate entities, we should find ways to entangle art, design, and visual graphics to create new languages that solve problems. Addressing color, and hybridity as it relates to form and identity allows for one to come to a foreground that heightens their experience to elevate. Utilizing the entanglement of art and design can birth a new language while altering the paradigm of how one receives and conveys an idea. Using graphic design as a tool, …

Rising To The Occasion : A Resiliency Strategy For Brickell, Miami, Stephanie Gottlieb

Masters Theses

As a result of climate change, there has been an increase in flooding all over the world, especially in coastal areas. The coastal city of Miami, Florida is about seventeen feet above sea level at its highest point, with much of the city at five feet or less above sea level. This study is focused in the neighborhood of Brickell. The neighborhood is on the coast and thus acts as a barrier between the Atlantic and other neighborhoods in Miami. The neighborhood has also been the center of a lot of recent growth and development and has become a cultural …

Youkoso Tokyo : Guidebook To A New Cybercity, Evelyn Ehgotz

Masters Theses

Tokyo exists in an urban Feedback Loop, a concept that takes from theories of post-urbanism and cybernetics. Essentially, there is a loop between the physical city and the image or representations of the city. Both versions of the city are accepted as valid, but by analyzing the image versions as heterotopias, there is a view into the social constructs and conceptions of the city. East Asian cities are especially impacted because of techno-orientalist tendencies of the West. Tokyo, being one of the most well-documented and temporal, has been imagined and reimagined as simultaneously high-tech and mysteriously ancient. This is most …