Architecture Commons^™

Embodied River: Deliberate Unbuilding In Post-Dam Landscapes, Travis Kelley

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the possibilities and challenges that legacy hydro-powered dams and mill complexes offer. Through historical and contemporary analysis of New England’s 14,000 dams and of a particular site in Maynard, Massachusetts, the research delves into the factors that make these interventions so challenging. It begins from an assumption rooted in the ethical and environmental imperative to remove or modify legacy dams, which are those built for a purpose that is no longer being utilized, and rejects the existing binary of “remove” vs “preserve,” which is the dominant narrative in the dam removal conversation as it exists in 2026. …

Blight Pink: The Reclamation Of Vinegar Hill, Jalen J. Mickle

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

Through critical analysis, speculative design, and spatial interventions, this project aims to reveal how the built environment and narrative structures co-produce the concept of “truth,” and how alternative practices can both challenge erasure and validate the Black American experience. Architecture, as a synthesis of form, identity, philosophy, and order, reflects and shapes societal hierarchies.

Space And Place: Preservation Between The United States And Japan, Daniel J. Judy

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This thesis explores how preservation can reconnect ecological responsibility with cultural continuity through material and spatial care. Architecture is placed as a mediator between environmental systems and cultural ethics, where existing structures are not treated as static relics but as active participants in transformation. Rather than responding to sustainability as a purely technical practice, preservation is framed as a deliberate process that allows space to evolve while maintaining its historical and environmental presence across both United States and Japan. Through ideas of restraint, transience, and a relationship with nature, this thesis examines how materiality shapes atmosphere over time. Drawing from …

Architecture As Political Symbolism: Power, Authority, & The Built Form, Naomi Minwalla

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

This study examines how architecture functions as a medium of political symbolism, exploring the ways in which built environments communicate authority, ideology, and collective identity. Drawing on theoretical perspectives from Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Murray Edelman, the research first establishes how political symbols shape social cohesion, legitimize authority, and construct political meaning. The study then applies architectural interpretation frameworks developed by Martin Warnke, Erwin Panofsky, and Alois Riegl to analyze how symbolic meaning is embedded within architectural form, spatial organization, and ornamentation.

Using a qualitative comparative case study design, the research analyzes two major religious structures: the Seville Cathedral …

Lightness Shaped By Stone, Jared Arredondo

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

In a period defined by industrial standardization, automation, and increasing distance from material reality, architecture has become increasingly detached from the physical knowledge of making. Processes once grounded in time, touch, and material consequence are often replaced by speed, abstraction, and systems of production that conceal labor. This thesis begins from that condition and examines stone as a material through which architecture can recover a deeper relationship to time, craft, structure, and responsibility.

Stone resists speed. Its weight, density, and permanence demand precision, patience, and consequence. Each cut, joint, and surface operation requires an understanding of the material’s limits and …

Kattam Choreography- A Facade Of The Virgin Islands, Kiyani J.M. Ottley

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Kattam Choreography reimagines a historic building in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI as a vibrant cultural hub that celebrates dance, memory, and commerce. Rooted in the embodied traditions of the qudrille folk dance, this project explores adaptive reuse as a performtive act—where architecture becomes a living archive of movement and heritage.

The design treats the building’s layered history not as a static artifact, but as a choreographic score. Quadrille’s spatial logic—its symmetry, rhythm, and communal gestures—informs circulation, program, and atmosphere. The building unfolds as a triptych: a dance pavilion, multi-purpose educational spaces, and a gift shop. Each element responds to …

Interweaving Cairo's Urban Fabric: The Formal, The Informal And The Contemporary, Hagar Ahmed

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture is a negotiation between memory and change, preservation and erasure. In Cairo, a city layered with history, rapid development threatens historic areas and informal settlements (AlSayyad, 2011). While monumental heritage preservation is institutionalized, informal urban fabrics are often excluded from heritage discussions and planning. This research explores Mansheyet Nasser, or Garbage City, an informal settlement between Islamic Cairo and the Mokattam plateau. Over the past fifty years, Zabbaleen residents have built a communal waste collection and recycling system that processes up to 80% of materials, outperforming many regulated cities (Fahmi and Sutton, 2010; Didero, 2011). This infrastructure is both …

The Legacy Of Lead: Lead Exposure's Harmful Effects And Its Concentration In Poc Communities, Layla Sophronia Barber

Student Theses 2015-Present

This thesis examines the disproportionate burden of lead exposure carried by low income, POC communities. The systemic nature of this problem is a symptom of a longstanding legacy of environmental injustice in the United States. Decades of federal neglect are reflected in the higher statistics of lead exposure and poisoning in predominantly black communities. While it is understood that lead exposure poses a serious threat to physical health and early cognitive development, there is a discouraging lack of urgency to remove the toxin from non-wealthy communities. The material covered by this thesis aims to identify and correct the discriminatory social …

Objects In The Sunset, Iskander Guetta

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

This research explores everyday design practices in the Maghreb shaped by economic, political, and ecological struggles amid transnational debates on decolonizing design. To do so, it looks at objects in, through and with the sunset. Taking المغرب — the place where the sun sets — as a conceptual lens, Objects in the Sunset illuminates the savoir-faire born from dispossession, scarcity, and epistemic violence. Working across different scales of the built environment — infrastructures, spaces, objects, and materials — it shifts design away from Eurocentric conceptions: from rationalization to resourcefulness, homogeneity to heterogeneity, optimization to adaptation, disposability to repair, and universal …

The Log Cabin | Public Perception And Mediated Reality (1840 – 1980), Aspen M. Regan

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone examines the evolution of the log cabin from 1840 to 1980. At its core, the project questions the legacy of the log cabin from its origins as simply being a traditional dwelling typology to its establishment as a cultural icon or rather, an enduring vessel that established the American Dream and ideals of self-reliance, freedom, and individualism deep within the heart of American culture.

Chapter One situates the log cabin historically and architecturally, defining the popular frontier dwelling as being a single-pen horizontal log constructed cabin. It then explores the cabin’s emergence as a cultural image through political …

Accessibility On Campus: How Universal Design Can Make A Difference, Samantha Wittenberg

Honors Projects

This research is meant to showcase how survey those who self-identify as having a disability so see how feedback they provide can help guide changes to make to the Maurer Center on Bowling Green State University’s campus. By utilizing principles found in Universal Design, much of the feedback was able to be applied. Much of what was found are small modifications to help with general accessibility such as visualization to help with navigation.

The Carolina Rain Porch: A Southern Vernacular Considered, Jackson M. Dent

All Theses

The “rain porch,” also known as the “Carolina porch,” is a distinctive vernacular porch type concentrated in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region and sporadically found in neighboring states. Despite its strong regional identity, the form has received little sustained scholarly attention. This thesis presents a comprehensive study of the rain porch, examining its origins, chronology, geographic distribution, and architectural variation. Defined by an extended porch roof supported by free-standing columns set forward of porch deck, the rain porch represents a purposeful environmental adaptation within nineteenth-century domestic architecture. The research integrates archival sources, National Register of Historic Places survey data, mapping, …

Rainbow Row: Tourism, Color, And The Making Of A Civic Icon, 1930s – 1960s, Samantha E. Threlkeld

All Theses

This thesis investigates the emergence of Rainbow Row in Charleston, South Carolina, as a civic and tourism icon through an integrated analysis of visual culture, preservation governance, and material evidence. While Rainbow Row has become one of the most recognizable images of Charleston’s historic district, the chronology and cultural mechanisms through which its colorful façades were produced, interpreted, and disseminated have remained largely unstudied. This study addresses the primary research question: How Rainbow Row’s painted façades were leveraged in marketing and tourism narratives between the 1930s and the 1960s, and what those representations reveal about the construction of Charleston’s civic …

A Fine Arts Program For No. 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, Paul Richert-Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reads Chase Manhattan's 1959 art program as a reconstitution of ornament. The spatial and affective work historically performed by murals, carved stone, and mosaic was now performed by collecting—contemporary art, ethnographic holdings, folk art—deployed by committee across a corporate modernist master plan stripped of the handcraft tradition.

The Other Tradition Of Modernism: Writing Contemporary Chinese Architecture, Guanghui Ding Dr

Publications and Research

The Other Tradition of Modernism emerges from a pedagogical experiment at the City College of New York, where the editor taught a course on modern and contemporary Chinese architecture to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. Combining thematic lectures, student presentations, writing workshops, and intensive editorial mentoring, the course sought to illuminate an alternative trajectory of architectural modernism. Geographically, it introduced modern Chinese architectural practices that developed outside Western modernist paradigms; culturally, it foregrounded context-based approaches that resist the hegemony of iconic, spectacle-driven architecture under contemporary neoliberal market logics.

This edited volume, composed of student contributions, articulates several key insights. First, …

Hotels As Placemakers In Downtown Los Angeles, 1890-1950, Chrissie Alea Rensing, Megan Kendrick

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Early twentieth-century Los Angeles is often characterized as a rapidly expanding metropolis shaped by informal segregation along lines of race, class, and gender. Yet within this landscape, hotels and lodging houses sometimes functioned as unexpected sites of inclusion and community for marginalized populations. This project investigates how these spaces of hospitality served women and racial minorities between 1890 and 1950 in Los Angeles. Drawing from recent scholarship from Natalia Molina and others, we set out to examine the role of vernacular hotel architecture and the “placemakers” who operated them.

The project involved examining hundreds of handwritten census pages and original …

Italian Architectural Heritage In Libya's Old Town Of Al-Marj, Ali Eltraposli

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

In the urban heritage, preserving the urban heritage is a priority for countries, as the past constitutes a rich legacy that is an extension of the present in terms of urban form and cultural diversity in people's lives. In addition, it represents an extension of history that helps in understanding the lifestyle in a chronological sequence. Accordingly, the role of international and local organisations came in issuing the necessary legislation to work on maintaining and reviving these cities in a way that preserves the continuity of living in them according to sustainable standards that spread awareness of responsibility and enhance …

Bentuk Dan Ciri Khas Masjid Pathok Negoro Dongkelan, Anggun Rizka Amini, R. Cecep Permana

Multikultura

Masjid Pathok Negoro Dongkelan is one of the kagungan dalem mosques belonging to the Yogyakarta Sultanate, constructed as part of the spiritual and administrative structure of the Kraton’s territory. This study examines the architectural form and distinctive characteristics of Masjid Pathok Negoro Dongkelan using a comparative method with other Pathok Negoro mosques as well as the Great Mosque of Kauman (Masjid Gedhe Kauman). The findings indicate that Masjid Dongkelan possesses unique architectural features, including a fully enclosed veranda, a covered pulpit with a curved roof adorned with ornaments symbolizing the Sultanate, and two pawestren (women’s prayer spaces) that are not …

Actas Seleccionadas Del Simposio Arte 4.2: Migraciones En La Imagen Prehispánica: Transitando Territorios Del Pasado Al Presente. 58º Congreso Internacional De Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025, Victòria Solanilla Demestre, Annabel Villalonga Gordaliza

Zea E-Books Collection

El presente volumen reúne una selección de contribuciones derivadas del simposio «Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios», coordinado en el marco del 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas (ICA58). Nuestro simposio propuso detenerse ante un fenómeno a la vez antiguo y vigente: la travesía de las imágenes. Imágenes nacidas en la América prehispánica que, a lo largo del tiempo, atravesaron paisajes, rutas y memorias para (re)aparecer en territorios distintos de aquellos que las vieron surgir. Cada autor, desde su propio territorio intelectual, contribuye a desentrañar los movimientos, apropiaciones y metamorfosis que experimentaron las imágenes amerindias al viajar de una sociedad …

Tallina Linnahall: Arquitectura Soviética Y Mundo Prehispánico, Isabel Bargallo, Montserrat Bargalló Sánchez

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

Existen construcciones que nos recuerdan morfológicamente aspectos de la arquitectura precolombina que no tienen, en principio, relación cultural alguna con el pasado mesoamericano y que no responden tampoco a la función que desempeñaban las construcciones originales, o quizás sí. Éste es, sin duda, el caso del Linnahall de Tallin, donde no podemos dejar de preguntarnos los motivos que llevaron a unos arquitectos europeos, específicamente a dos profesionales estonianos, a inspirarse en las formas prehispánicas para proyectar y construir un espacio monumental que formó parte de las instalaciones de los Juegos Olímpicos de Moscú (1980) en la capital de Estonia. ¿Podemos …

Las Representaciones Figurativas Del Sitio Arqueológico Cuidad Del Jaguar (Honduras): Espacio Sagrado, Conceptos Compartidos Y Diálogo Entre Mesoamérica Y La Zona Andina, Geydy Rodríguez Wood

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

El sitio arqueológico Ciudad del Jaguar-T1, se encuentra ubicado en el noroeste de Honduras. Pertenece al Área Intermedia, considerada zona de frontera y paso entre Mesoamérica y la Zona Andina. Esta ubicación facilitó que, durante la época prehispánica, fuese un sitio de migraciones e interacción constante entre culturas del norte y del sur del continente, que dio origen a una civilización hasta ahora desconocida, que se formó, desarrolló y tuvo una significativa producción artística. En el presente trabajo propongo el estudio y la lectura e interpretación de las imágenes figurativas representadas en los objetos excavados, como también su utilidad y …

Aves, Felinos Y Ofidios En Los Templos Montaña Amerindios, Sarai Ramos Muñoz

Actas seleccionadas del SIMPOSIO ARTE 4.2: Migraciones en la imagen prehispánica: transitando territorios del pasado al presente. 58º Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Novi Sad, Serbia, 2025.

El siguiente estudio se centra en la comparación de las representaciones pictóricas de aves, felinos y ofidios de algunos de los principales Templos Montaña, tanto de la zona andina, como de Mesoamérica. Dentro de él se pueden apreciar las similitudes y diferencias arquitectónicas y escultóricas simbólicas de estas imágenes. El análisis comparativo se realiza a través de un estudio iconográfico e iconológico de la arquitectura escultórica de dichos templos y de cada una de las representaciones zoomorfas relacionadas con el concepto del Axis Mundi prehispánico, centrándose en el águila, el jaguar y la serpiente. Al mismo tiempo se analiza la …

The Spiritual And Emotional Impact Of Color In Luis Barragán’S Convento De Las Capuchinas Sacramentarias, Ivana Martin

MA Theses

This thesis examines how Luis Barragán’s Convento de las Capuchinas Sacramentarias (1955) is a medium for spiritual experience. In his work, Barragán explores the use of color, light, and emotion as central elements and the ways in which they transform sacred space into an embodied, contemplative experience. There is also a comparison to other churches and other similar projects that were done during the same time period, specifically in Mexico. Modernist architecture in mid-century Mexico was largely defined by rationalist and more functional ideals, but Barragán separated himself from these tendencies to create an architecture that privileges silence, intimacy, and …

Civic Grammar: Why Classical Architecture Endures In The American State, Jesse Walker

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The dominant visual language of American federal buildings has been classical, surviving repeated ideological challenges, professional revolts, and political controversy. While this persistence has been widely observed, the mechanism behind it has not been clearly identified. This thesis isolates that mechanism. Drawing on architectural history, federal procurement policy, and primary sources from Jefferson's correspondence through the executive orders of 2020 and 2025, it argues that classicism endures not because its meaning has remained stable, but because federal architecture is governed by a persistent functional constraint: government buildings must be immediately legible to an ordinary citizen, without signage or prior knowledge, …

Waxing And Waning: Hidden Interiors Of Grassroots Expression, Asmita Baskar

Theses and Dissertations

Concealed interiors historically emerged from necessity in response to dominant systems around surveillance, control, and visibility. These hidden spaces carefully regulated access, cultivated intimacy, and enabled self-expression within grassroots groups and marginalized communities. Operating free from surveillance and in contrast to surrounding architectural and urban systems, these concealed spaces were not formally “interior designed”, yet they reveal how communities activate the interiors they encounter to retain agency.

Scholarship on grassroots resistance is largely examined through sociology, anthropology, psychology, or political science, with limited literature directly linking interiority, interior design, and resistance within covert spaces. This thesis addresses the gap in …

The Symbolic Language Of Militarized Orthodoxy In Patriarchal Sermons, Architecture, And Pseudo-Historical Memory, Oleksandr Lukyanenko

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article is devoted to a comprehensive cultural and religious analysis of the processes of militarization of religious worldview in modern Russia using the example of public speeches of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, as well as the symbolic space of the Main Temple of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Particular attention is paid to the study of the mechanisms of sacralization of war through the integration of historical memory, Orthodox rhetoric and the state ideology of the “Russian world”. The study analyzes the peculiarities of the interpretation of World War II as the sacred foundation of modern Russian …

Ottoman Wikālas In Cairo: Islamic Architecture Beyond The Mosque, Yumna Moussa

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis traces one of the largest architectural typologies in Cairo: the wikāla, a type of urban caravanserai unique to Egypt. Estimated to have reached more than five hundred buildings by the 18^th century, the wikāla was the building of choice for most patrons in Ottoman Cairo. This study initially investigates the evolution of commercial architecture within the Islamic city. It then explores the defining architectural features of Cairene wikālas built between the 16^th and 18^th centuries—their plans, decorative/iconographic programs, and urban distribution—based on waqfiyyas, chronicles, travelers’ accounts, and photographic archives. Since many of …

Structure As Civic Space: The Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge In Dialogue With Frei Otto And Shigeru Ban, Allison L. Ware, Ehsan Sheikholharam Ma

Symposium of Student Scholars

What if a bridge could be more than just a means of crossing from one point to another? What if it could become a place of gathering, reflection, and connection between people and their city? The Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge in Tehran, Iran, challenges conventional ideas of infrastructure by transforming a simple crossing into a dynamic public space that celebrates structure, culture, and community. Completed by Leila Araghian and Alireza Behzadi of Diba Tensile Architecture, the Tabiat Pedestrian Bridge received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2016. The bridge represents a shift in how infrastructure can serve urban life, not …

Light And Labor: From Monumental Beauty To Communal Craft, Jesus A. Anaya-Ruiz, Ehsan Sheikholharam Ma

Symposium of Student Scholars

What makes a building meaningful? The beauty of it or the craftsmen that put it together? This paper will dive into Louis Khan’s Kimbell Art Museum (1972) in Forth Worth, Texas, and Zhang Pengju’s West Wusutu Village Community Center (2019) in Hohhot, China, projects that have different approaches to how architecture engages people and defines space.

Louis Kahn’s design is praised for its ability to exhibit art, he uses daylight as his primary material to define space and emotion. Through the use of cycloid vaults and reflected light he enhances the occupants’ experience gently, expressing architecture through beauty, proportion and …

Adaptive Refuge: Reimagining Biophilic Settlements For Sudanese Refugees In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Neeya Yahaya, Robin Pottock

Symposium of Student Scholars

Every day, thousands of people are forced to flee their homes escaping war, disaster, and instability. What begins as a temporary refuge often becomes a lifetime condition. In Ethiopia, over 4.6 million refugees live within this state of protracted displacement, with more than one-fourth arriving from Sudan after the 2023 conflict. Most remain in remote, rural camps along border regions far from the educational, economic, and social opportunities of the city. These spatial and social divides reinforce dependency, limit access to livelihood, and erode personal dignity. Yet proximity to urban infrastructure could offer a pathway toward belonging, participation, and long-term …