Architecture Commons^™

Young Adults In A Costly World: Can Accessory Dwelling Units Serve As An Alternative Form Of Accommodation For Recent College Graduates Amidst The Rising Cost Of Housing And A College Education?, Aaron Schlosser

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Over the past few years, young adults have been put in a rather tough situation concerning personal finances. As college tuition has risen, so has student debt accrual, leaving many recent college graduates near-crippled financially. Along with this issue, which is large in and of itself, is the fact that housing prices have risen in many of the metropolitan areas in the United States. Both of these problems, when coupled, lead to a decrease in quality of life for most young adults, and people in general. Because of this, the approach of this thesis is to find an affordable form …

Design Is A Social Process: A Survey On Inclusive Practice, Gabriel De Souza Silva

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This inquiry pivots the discussion on design practice toward process, and seeks to elucidate how inclusivity is achieved in it, and by what means it is maintained. The design process is interrogated through a series of case studies on contemporary practitioners that either describe themselves or are recognized by the wider design community as inclusive of gender, race, sexual orientation, ability level, and are sensitive to history of place. The case studies are selected to demonstrate a diversity of project types, management structures, and design tools, and they comprise the practices of LA Más, Assemble, and Bryony Roberts. The product …

Architecture As Stress Relief: What Makes A Meditative Space?, Angela Brown

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Stress is a prevalent issue today. People can become stressed or overstimulated for various reasons, whether it be due to their physical environment, their physiological nature, psychological factors, or a combination. Although the causes of stress for our prehistoric ancestors were mostly periodic events such as predators or weather, modern-day stressors are often persistent and environmental, leading to chronic stress. Also, in today’s world of constant new information and stimulation, especially in urban locations, sensory overload is common. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic and its mental effects have brought new attention to the interaction between physical environment and well-being. The prevalence …

Spaces Of The Tragic: Modern Dramatic Tragedy And Contemporary Memorial Design, Shiloh Bemis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Humans use narrative to understand the world around us. At early ages we are exposed to storytelling with variable intent, from cautionary tales to the inspirational and everything in between. The dialectic strength of narrative mediums is well-known and well-studied. Theatre is one of the world’s oldest enduring forms of storytelling and has a strong ability to reflect and adapt with cultures as they develop, as a means of commentary and cultural reflection.

Architecture shares theatre’s ancient roots and has always been an important method of communication and expression. However, its tactics have historically been less narrative-centric than theatre and …

A Story Of The Social Life Of Yulupa Cohousing, Kayla Ho

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone is a study of the lived social experience of one cohousing community. Cohousing communities are designed with the intention of fostering a community with a mixture of privately-owned units and publicly shared spaces and responsibilities. The study is conducted at a significant point in American history: these communities are a fast-growing phenomenon in the United States yet they remain unknown and/or unattainable to many Americans.

Qualitative information from the community’s current residents is gathered by using research tools of interviewing and photography. Interviews were completed virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographs were created during a three-day visit …

Anthropomorphism In Architecture: An Investigation Into Anthropomorphism Through Ancient Greco-Roman Religious Structures, Emily Wilcox

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper will outline and detail an investigation into religious Greco-Roman structures of antiquity through the lens of anthropomorphism. Through defining anthropomorphism, three lenses of thought have presented themselves as means of inquiry: metaphor, scale and proportion, and ergonomics. Previous research into these structures and cultures has shown that there was indeed consideration for the human body in designing in construction; this project hopes to solidify these claims and present new supporting information regarding specific relationships to the body using anthropomorphism. Many contemporary buildings approach the relationship to the human body as a mask or an afterthought, disregarding what reflecting …

The Future Of Urban Technology: Exploring Smart Cities And Transportation Through Game Theory And Scenario Planning, Matthew Wilson

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Technological innovation is occurring at a rapid pace in the world of personal devices. This trend of change has not been able to occur as fast in the city infrastructure. Consumers are curious about the next generation of technology and the integration of artificially intelligent technology in transportation and the urban fabric. In this project, I study the motivations and values of a set of characters involved in the integration and innovation of Smart City Technology. These characters create potential future scenarios of the city from their actions and reactions to specific decisions.

This body of work can provide a …

Built Environment, Land Use, And Crime: A Las Vegas Study, Stacey Lynn Clouse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examined land use and crime against persons and crime against property in Las Vegas, Nevada at varying spatial levels of analysis. Using crime data provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and the Clark County Assessor’s office, results at the macro-level of analysis reveal that property crime rates concentrated on commercial, transportation, communication and utilities, and industrial land use, whereas violent crime concentrated at commercial, multi-residential, and civic, institutional, and recreational land use. Upon examining the subtypes of land use that generate or radiate more crime, property crime concentrated on transportation land use, class 1 resorts, and …

Land Rich, Cash Poor: Hispanic Subsistence Agri-Culture On Acequia Farms Of Northern New Mexico, 1880-1950s, José A. Rivera Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Acequia-based agriculture in Hispanic northern New Mexico originated with the arrival of settlers from the central valley of Mexico in the late sixteenth century and later following the Camino Real into the upper Río Grande and its tributaries. The high desert environment required irrigation for food production and survival. Land parcels in the rural villages of northern New Mexico were small, and crop yields were limited to home consumption on a subsistence basis, an economy that lasted well into the territorial period and statehood of New Mexico. Despite a wage economy introduced with the arrival of the railroad around 1880 …

Memorial Craze: How War Memorials Have Been Changed By War, Jillian Bass

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that memorials constructed after 9/11 were designed specifically in a way that privileged and focused on the dead individually. By taking a look at memorials throughout American history, the study of memorialization sets up the stage for the way the lives of ordinary people have been memorialized throughout history. 9/11 is one of the most memorable days in the history of the world in the 21st century. However, the academic world has generally ignored the study of war memorials throughout American history as a subset of memorials. Chronicling memorials from the Civil War period to present …

Case Studies On Architecture And Economics Of Public Housing, John Kent

Honors Projects

Public is an historical and contemporary issue faced by many cities. Many new developments often include plans for some form of public or affordable housing. The purpose of this paper is to explore a few case studies in public housing through the lens of community development, architectural and urban design, and economic investment. The selected projects included: Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Missouri (1954), Cabrini Green in Chicago, Illinois (1962), Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, Austria (1930), Caoyang New Village in Shanghai, China (1951), and various Soviet housing projects in the former Soviet Union (1922-1991). Historical and contemporary research was used …

2022- The Twenty-Sixth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Twenty-sixth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 19, 2022. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Using Anaerobic Digesters As A Sustainable Approach In Creating Sustainable Cities In Egypt, Rania Rushdy Moussa, Laila Atef Elsawaf

Architectural Engineering

The first digestion plant was built in Bombay, India, in 1859. But since 1895, anaerobic digestion has been used to recover gas as a waste management system in England. Anaerobic digesters are one of the most well-known systems that are used worldwide to get rid of waste and generate energy, yet they have never been employed in Egypt. This research aims to determine the economic, social, and environmental impacts of anaerobic digesters in Egyptian cities and districts. From an economic perspective, the study estimates the energy produced from storing organic wastes in anaerobic digesters, using a quantitative approach to measure …

Albuquerque Public School’S Vision Zero For Youth Initiative: Engaging Student Youth In Designing A School District Transportation Safety Program, Cordell S. Bock

Architecture and Planning ETDs

The APS (Albuquerque Public Schools) Vision Zero for Youth Initiative adopts the global Vision Zero traffic safety movement’s goal of eliminating traffic fatalities and injuries to pedestrians and cyclists from vehicular crashes. The APS Vision Zero for Youth Initiative is comprised of a traffic-safety curriculum for K-8 students, an action plan that sets traffic-safety goals and progress evaluation frameworks for the school district, and a campaign to build a new culture of traffic safety for students, families, and local communities.

This project employs participatory methods that build the capacity of students enrolled in local public schools to produce and share …

Mapping The Impact Of A Trailway System On The Amount Of Trash Present Within Two Watersheds Of Lynchburg City, Virginia, Lillian Smith

Student Scholar Showcase

Transportation of trash debris within water systems is a prominent occurrence which has been linked to natural and artificial processes such as wind, rain, and littering. Recreational areas, such as activities along greenway trails, have been determined to be a source of debris found in waterways. This study examines whether the presence of an established recreational trail system limits trash accumulation in the entirety of a watershed. Trash data collected at Blackwater Creek, which contains an established trail system, was compared to trash data collected at Fishing Creek, containing a non-established trail system, to answer this hypothesis. A distance of …

Using Remote Sensing Technologies In Relocating Lubrak Village And Visualizing Flood Damages, Ronan Wallace

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As weather patterns change across the world, there are communities impacted by climate change that are left unnoticed. In the Himalayan mountain range, communities have suffered, experiencing an increase in flash flooding and droughts. For Lubrak Village in Lower Mustang, the community faces the threats of flash flooding. Over the last ten years, the amount of flash flooding has increased, occurring more than once each monsoon season. After every flood, concrete-like sediment is left behind, hardening across the riverbed and increasing its elevation. As the riverbed elevation increases, this sediment encroaches on Lu-brak Village’s agricultural fields and ancient mud buildings, …

Murals & Mother Nature: Urban Environmental Art In Lisbon Reveals Great Concern And Appreciation For The Environment, Ana Gunther

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Urban art is a novel dimension of the environmental movement. Utilizing highly trafficked areas, urban art has the potential to spread environmental messages both because of the size of the audience and because of the contrast between nature-centered art and the urban context. The paper discusses 15 environmental urban artworks in Lisbon and conducts a visual and thematic analysis. The analysis revealed five themes present in Lisbon: the power and beauty of nature, connection with nature, environmental loss and degradation, waste management, and climate change. The most prevalent theme in Lisbon was the connection with nature, followed by a tie …

Destruction Is A Must-See: Coastal Heritage Site Erosion And Public Perception Of Climate Change, Haley Borowy

Senior Theses

Archaeological sites in South Carolina are vanishing. As sea level rise, and therefore coastal erosion, worsen, more sites will disappear. The questions of how erosion at these sites is measured and how the public perceives the effects of climate change have been studied separately, but not together. Here, the intersection of these is discussed, alongside how sites are portrayed affects how the public perceives them, and therefore their importance. Studies on measuring coastal erosion, local news reports, government documents, and public perception of coastal management and sea level rise illuminate how people eventually decide what is worth saving.

Restoring Dignity In The Gardens Of Ekhenana, Jordan Buser

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This case study investigates the lived experiences of eKhenana, a shack settlement under the leadership of Abahlali baseMjondolo, as they attempt to navigate the increasingly unequal urban landscape. The research presented is focused on theories of urban marginality, food sovereignty, and dignity. I advocate that, in the margins, dignity can be restored through the implementation of a communal garden. Presented as a case study, this research centers the voices and experiences of the commune. The paper first depicts a brief timeline of eKhenana, and explains how they have created not just a place to live, but a community and a …

Reviving The Neglected Urban Spaces Using Recreational Facilities, Malek Demashkieh

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Neglection is the act of failing to care about something, it is the act of carelessness and forgetting. Adding to that in the same context, neglected urban spaces are barren lands that have been forgotten by the government making these lands gaps scattered in the city like rivers that are natural freshwater streams that flow into a canal that leads to the sea, a lake, or another river. Harmonizing these areas into the society will offer opportunities for these spaces to become a liveable, social, urban public spaces. Unfortunately, forgotten, and neglected riverfronts areas are found in the cities, thus …

Role Of Public Spaces In Re-Activating The Cultural Identity, Reem Al-Zein

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Culture plays an important role in defining a society's values and identity. Craftsmanship has remained an important aspect of Lebanese cultural identity and history, contributing to the shaping of many public and private spaces as well as supporting families and people's livelihoods. Unfortunately, considering the significance of craftsmen cultural production in the country's social and economic development, it is still a lost field nowadays. Therefore, as result, this tradition is diminishing, threatening Lebanon's intangible cultural heritage. Therefore, this paper aims to develop convenient solutions to regenerate and to preserve the city's social, historical, and cultural image and identity through creating …

Proposing Guidelines To Upgrade The Open Public Spaces In The Informal Settlements, Lena Hosni, Ayman Afify, Hiba Mohsen, Maged Youssef

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Informal Settlements have expanded rapidly in the last fifty years and have kept rising. With rapid population expansion has come an increase in haphazard urbanisation and informal settlements, frequently referred as slums. Defined as a settlement that was formed in an unplanned and uncontrolled way, which means they are mostly unrecognized. Unfortunately, focusing on the problem of current challenges in informal settlements, on the socio-cultural and environmental levels, which are facing a massive shift in the quality of life in these sites, this is reflected in urban fragmentations, social and infrastructures are lacking, service systems that have become progressively inefficient …

Black Cemeteries Matter: The Erasure Of Historic Black Cemeteries In Polk County, Florida, Juliana C. Waters

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the past several years, the Tampa Bay area has experienced a reckoning with regard to the intentional erasure, destruction, and abandonment of historic African American cemeteries such as Zion Cemetery in Tampa or St. Matthews Baptist Church Cemetery in Clearwater. Scholars, journalists, community members, archaeologists, and others have contributed to a growing movement that aims to identify and document these sacred sites in an effort to prevent further destruction. In this vein, this project aimed to identify and record cemeteries in Polk County, examine the processes leading to the erasure of historic Black cemeteries, the history surrounding erasure on …

Structural Problems Of Latin American Cities 450 Years After Caracas’ Foundation, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Latin American cities face many problems that compromise them from different angles such as lack of infrastructure, government fragmentation, and environmental degradation. At the same time, each city tries to come up with its own solutions, but there are so many difficulties that in many cases it is difficult to keep attention and efforts focused on all these directions. For these reasons, this research aims to define some of the most common problems faced by cities in Latin America. Disseminating these similarities could help to face those problems, since, if local governments recognize that they face the same situations as …

The Rise Of Southern Nevada As A Cluster For Metropolitan Transit Technology Innovations, Arthur C. Nelson

Policy Briefs and Reports

Southern Nevada is emerging as the nation’s leader in private sector-driven innovations in transportation technologies. From the humble beginnings of a monorail system serving a portion of major hotel and gaming venues along the Las Vegas Strip, now supplemented by an array of people movers, Southern Nevada continues to attract transit innovations in tunneling, Hyperloop, and driverless vehicle delivery technologies. The region may soon anchor a high-speed rail system connecting Southern Nevada to Los Angeles. The purpose of this briefing paper is to frame the nature of this emerging transportation cluster and the opportunities this creates for Southern Nevada to …

Bioclimate Of Jericho In Palestine, Jehad Ighbareyeh

Palestine Technical University Research Journal

Jericho is an ancient Canaanite Palestinian city and one of the oldest cities in history, which dates back to more than 10.000 BC (Stone Age). It is located near to the Jordan River, north of the Dead Sea, and north of Jerusalem. Moreover, it considered the lowest area in the earth and has a unique climatic zone. during the study period (1975-1995), was utilized the Salvador Rivas Martinez scale to classify the bioclimate of the earth to analysis the climate and bioclimate data, which was obtained from one station from Palestinian Meteorology Department (Jericho station). The results revealed that the …

Visible/Near Infrared (Vis/Nir) Spectroscopy And Multivariate Data Analysis (Mvda) For Identification And Quantification Of Olive Leaf Spot (Ols) Disease, Nawaf Abukhalaf, Mazen Salman

Palestine Technical University Research Journal

Early detection of plant disease requires usually elaborating methods techniques and especially when symptoms are not visible. Olive Leaf Spot (OLS) infecting upper surface of olive leaves has a long latent infection period. In this work, VIS/NIR spectroscopy was used to determine the latent infection and severity of the pathogens. Two different classification methods were used, Partial Least Squared-Discrimination Analysis (PLS-DA) (linear method) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) (non-linear). SVM-classification was able to classify severity levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 with classification rates of 94, 90, 73, 79, 83 and 100%, respectively The overall classification rate was …

The Design Of An Agricultural Youth-Centered Rural Development Program In Rwanda, Laetitia Igiraneza Sinyigenga

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Rwanda is primarily a rural, young, and agriculture-based country. The referred variables- agriculture, rural population, and youth- can be creatively merged to engage and empower youth for rural development. This paper indicates the utilization of cross-disciplinary knowledge to design an agricultural youth-centered rural development program in Rwanda. The program uses the interdependence of economic sectors (agriculture and education) with resources (environmental & natural resources and human resources) to boost rural community development. The program’s main activities- mentorship, agribusiness training, tutoring, exposure visits, and community work- highly reflect the requirement for advancing the selected main economic sectors and resources. There is …

Presas Efímeras Of New Mexico, José A. Rivera Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The main title of this paper mimics a groundbreaking investigation by anthropologist Teresa Rojas Rabiela and ethnohistorian Ignacio Gutiérrez Ruvalcaba titled: Las presas efímeras mexicanas, del pasado y del presente (Ephemeral diversion dams of Mexico, past and present). Their study inspired the addition of counterpart cases from Nuevo México, a former Mexican province directly north of the Juarez-El Paso border. The work here describes the traditional dams of the northern Río Grande region and also serves as a guide to future research and the development of historic preservation projects. After introducing readers to Las presas efímeras mexicanas, …

Five Key Points In The Ipcc Report On Climate Change Impacts And Adaptation, Lisa Schipper, Vanessa Castan Broto, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looks at the impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities associated with the climate crisis, and we are three of the 270 scientists and researchers who wrote it. The document reports stark new findings on the way current global warming of 1.1℃ is impacting natural and human systems, and on how our ability to respond will be increasingly limited with every additional increment of warming.