Architecture Commons^™

Architecture Raising Awareness Of The Wider World: A Centre For Haiti In Boston, Thomas Burns

Architecture Theses and Projects

This project proposes a Centre, an architectural space that will help the people of Haiti, (many of whom live in and around the city), while also educating and engaging others in Haitian culture and reality. This Centre includes a combination of programmatic elements within an appropriate urban setting. The site of this project is in Boston’s Back Bay at the intersection of Commonwealth Ave and Clarendon Street, in between Copley Square and the Boston Commons. With the objective of raising public awareness, this site has the ideal balance between the tourist and local community use. This Centre

Waite Potter House: Artifacts From Archaeological Dig

Documentation

Artifacts found during the 2009 archaeological dig at the Waite Kirby Potter Site in Westport, Massachusetts. Dig was completed by Katharine M. Johnson and Christa M. Beranek from the Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

For the full report, please see Documentary Research and Archaeological Investigations at the Waite-Kirby-Potter Site, Westport, Massachusetts. Prepared for Community Preservation Committee, Town of Westport, MA by Katharine M. Johnson and Christa M. Beranek, May 2010. https://scholarworks.umb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=fiskecenter_pubs

Identity Factory: The Mass Production Of The Masses, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Peter W. Bartash

Architecture Theses and Projects

Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is a location whose identity is its layered manufacturing history. Within the infrastructural system of corridors that organizes its urban fabric exists a tectonic language of an architecture whose purpose is in providing opportunities for making. Operating within one of these corridors, the Identity Factory allows that an individual become aware of activity shaping his or her own identity, the relationship of that identity to a greater context, and the potential to define oneself engaged in a cultural landscape through the process of manufacturing

Learning Through Nature: Mount Holyoke Environmental Research And Education Center, Sari M. Lipnick

Architecture Theses and Projects

I plan on doing this by creating an area located along a river or body of water that people will be able to interact and learn from its ecosystem and wildlife. I would like this to be a space that allows for the public to come and learn either indoors or outdoors with a variety of tools. By creating two defined areas functioning as elementary learning and university learning it would allow the variety of participants to come into the space and even interact with each other. One goal of mine would be to explore this interaction and control it, …

Strabismal Existence, Jordan Dubreuil

Architecture Theses and Projects

This thesis experiments with small prefabricated living spaces to examine the notion of existence. How small can a space become before an individual must expand and how to channel that expansion through architecture using several types of structures. The first is a Self Sustaining Mobile Living Unit that provides freedom and enriches the basic needs for existence. The second is a Demountable Structure where people are provided tools for expanding themselves creatively. The third is an existing mill structure within a local artist community in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Mother Building: Communal Architecture Incubator, Richmond Downey Jeffrey

Architecture Theses and Projects

The Mother Building is an architecturally-themed social experiment in most respects. It is an endeavor into understanding the mind of the architect, the creative drive and the particular aspect of motivation. Meanwhile, it is also an enterprise to reestablish high architecture as a primarily public art: to remove the more grandiose aspects of our practice from the ivory tower and back to the streets, to create a new dialogue between architect and society. In other words, how do we put together a building that acts to best facilitate the genesis of more buildings and stimulates public interest in a practice? …

Bridging The Gap: A Symbiotic Approach, Nicholas Czarniecki

Architecture Theses and Projects

Some architectural themes to be explored in this project have to deal with sustainability, passive environment systems, the play between new and old, and public and private. These themes are important because of the obvious need for solutions for energy usage when it comes to building sustainably. The goal of the thesis is to creat a culture that is sustainable through the interaction of young and old people in a built environment.

Newport Aquarium Oceanic Research And Discovery Center: To Further Our Knowledge Of The Ocean, Steven R. Toohey

Architecture Theses and Projects

This project is to design an Aquarium building both for the public and for researchers. There will be connections to the ocean visibly for the public and physically by docks and piers for the researchers. The building needs to tie into the landscape visually and will be using as many sustainable techniques as possible to support the building. A building that teaches how to save and preserve this planet should help the cause by creating its own power.

Allston Artist Village, Meaghan Earner

Architecture Theses and Projects

Architecture should evoke community. The built environment should encourage engagement between people in both public and private realms. We will teach, learn, sell, and celebrate art. This artist village explores the idea of the individual and their relationship to the whole. The project delineates individual and community spaces through their separations and connections. The goal is a more diverse engagement of all members of the community.

Volvo Museum Of Automotive History: Boston Massachusetts, C. Patrick Mccabe

Architecture Theses and Projects

The Volvo Museum of Automotive History places people and product in direct physical contact. The visitor travels on a pace towards a closer personal relationship with the product understanding its history components and underlying generative concepts. Visitors will gain valuable information about Volvo’s products but they will not feel forced to purchase anything. They may later decide to purchase a Volvo because they have reached a total understanding of the product and recognize it as a logically optimal solution to a personal need.

Vertical Communities: An Alternative To Suburban Sprawl, Zev O’Brien-Gould

Architecture Theses and Projects

In an age where space has become limited, resources are becoming both scarce and expensive, and populations grow with steadying pace, our definition of need must change. What we expect and understand to be normal will eventually change and evolve into something different. We must shape how we live in advance of such a change. We must accept a better way of life. We must produce a better way of life. The answer shall come from a higher density of living, where we will not have to give up privileges, but redefine them. It will have to be an exploration …

Adaptive Reuse Of The Big Box Store, Mark C. Roderick

Architecture Theses and Projects

The project reuses and adapts a big box store into a mixed-use space that is pedestrian friendly, with paths allowing access to multiple modes of transportation. Located in Providence Rhode Island, the site is wedged between Amtrak rail tracks and Route 146, and bisected by the Woonasquatucket River. The river provides opportunity for people to enjoy the water. A focused effort was employed to enhance the river by diverting stormwater runoff to swales located on site. The project minimizes grey-fields and maximizes green-space, with a concerted effort to reconnect the site with the Charles neighborhood to enhance community. The reuse …

Dignified Housing: A Community In North Conway, New Hampshire, Christian Lanciaux

Architecture Theses and Projects

This document outlines and explores my interest and investigation of how architecture affect’s one’s state of mind while addressing a specific social need in a particular area. The project is a mixed-income housing development in the town of North Conway, New Hampshire.

Soundview Center For Acceptance: Youths Learning From Each Other, Amanda Cerqueira

Architecture Theses and Projects

This project is one that is designed to the needs of the children using it. Children seem to learn better and quicker from each other, so my building will be a space where they can get together after school and keep learning while staying safe. This building is designed to be environmentally friendly and take advantage of its open site. Any land removed from the site during construction will be reused somewhere within the site as well as adding a green roof to make up for the grass removed for the footprint of the building. Since it was previously a …

Awakening Experience: Amish Youth And The Search For A Modern Identity, Nicole Secinaro

Architecture Theses and Projects

This Thesis investigates Amish Youth and the proposal of a center for modern identity development that facilitates the opportunities to to experience a new, worldly perspective during their only period of “choice”. My goal is to generate modern experiences through fundemental communication and mediation between Old Order Amish teenagers and modern amerricans during their Rumspringa. This center for development will enable the teens to retain a modern identity successfully until they make a decision to be baptized into the Amish community. I want to execute this primarily focusing on education for the amish teens. This center will also allow them …

Center For The Creation And Performance Of The Arts, Dennis P. Mcgowan

Architecture Theses and Projects

The design is geared towards experience and interaction both in and outside the building, as well as the interaction with the city. The Project creates a place that wants to give back to the community. If the building and space is popular, it will attract people and make them want to become a part of the environment. For instance, after the center is constructed companies and businesses would be attracted to be part of the neighborhood because of the energy and activity that is generated by the building.

Re-Conceptualizing Performance And Event In The Public Realm: A Multicultural Funeral Home, Ashley Rodrigues

Architecture Theses and Projects

Architecture is about space and space supports place and event. When someone spends time in a building for the first time it is not the architectural details of the edifi ce that will be branded in their mind; it is often the event that took place there, and the activities that they participated in that one will remember. It is the responsibility of the architect to foresee the events that will take place over the seasons and architecturally plan for such experiences. To be an architecture of this moment architecture must continually reinvent existing rituals, typologies, and tectonics through a …

Social Rejuvenation: A New Community Center, Lancaster, Pa, John Snavely

Architecture Theses and Projects

The goal of a new community center, set in the Southeast Ward, Lancaster, Pa, is to create an iconic place that will unite people in a downtrodden neighborhood by providing a setting that will bring the community together, once again. The principle element that these downtrodden communities lack is a cultural or social bond. By providing a place where members of the community can gather together, celebrate and share their different cultures will ultimately create a new cultural and social bond within the neighborhood and the greater community. Also by providing a place for everyday activities to take place within …

Movement Architecture: An Investigation Into The Manipulation Of Movement Through Form And Space, Rachel Hampton

Architecture Theses and Projects

This project will investigate the effect of movement on one’s perception of space and their surroundings. Means by which movement can be altered, manipulated and designed in order to alter perceptions will be explored. These means will focus on architectural organizational strategies such as nesting, layering and revealing certain types and speeds of movements. These organizations will occur at various scales, but the main exploration will occur at the program and site level, and their associated movements. The differing motions of the project and urban site will be forced into architectural interactions and relationships with one another. This investigation will …

Revitalizing Liberty: Creating A Train Station—Community Center—Business Incubator, Magan M. Baxter

Architecture Theses and Projects

This project will include a train station located in the Town of Liberty, instating a light rail line that will connect Liberty to the Middletown Station (currently the closest train station at approximately 40 miles away), which is directly connected with New York City. The city of Middletown itself has plenty to offer, with a shopping mall and several department stores adjacent to station, although currently there isn’t a pedestrian path connecting the train station to anything; so this project will also provide pedestrian access to these amenities. The rail line will travel from Middletown to Liberty, with the possibility …

Waite Potter House: Community Preservation Committee (Cpc) Application For Archeology Dig, Anne W. Baker

Documentation

Project Submission Sheet submitted by Anne W. Baker on December 18, 2008 for an archeology dig at Waite Potter House.

Waite Potter House: Silent No Longer, A Personal Narrative, Anne W. Baker

Documentation

Anne W. Baker's personal narrative concerning the Waite Kirby Potter House and its restoration.

Waite Potter House: Statement Of Significance For Community Preservation Committee Application, Anne W. Baker

Documentation

Waite Potter House Statement of Significance written for Community Preservation Committee project submission for an archeology dig.

Waite Potter House: Anne W. Baker's Presentation, Anne W. Baker

Documentation

PDF of Anne W. Baker's Powerpoint slides used for her presentation on Waite Potter House Restoration given in 2008 to the Westport Historical Society.

Reconnecting Schools And Neighborhoods: A Proposal For School Centered Community Revitalization In Baltimore Maryland, Cody Miller

Architecture Theses and Projects

This project explores the concept of school-centered community as a key aspect in assisting urban renewal through architecture. It employs this concept through the architectural design of a middle school in Baltimore, Maryland that has a focus on music. The existing context of an urban site in the Oldtown area is analyzed to generate a solution to the area’s educational problems as well as to provide an urban renewal plan. In order to develop a project that has great potential to succeed, the projects site was specifically chosen based on its context.

Community Wellness Center: Providence, Rhode Islan, Eva Marie Mercurio

Architecture Theses and Projects

The Wellness Center in Providence, Rhode Island incorporates alternative medicine, medical, and dental facilities for the benefit and education of patients within and around surrounding neighborhoods as well as for others who reside outside the immediate area. These services, all of which are available in one centrally located area have the potential to captivate and entice those who are interested in creating a better lifestyle for themselves. A predominant focus of this facility is to instill and promote healthy lifestyles while at the same time educating the public who can contribute to a society and become capable of addressing and …

Pushing The Green Envelope: Education & Research Center For Sustainability, Emma Fischer

Architecture Theses and Projects

I propose to design a Center for Sustainability that serves as a place to educate students and the public, as well as provide a place to research and experiment, in an effort to further the developing technologies of this ecological study. While living in a perpetually changing world, I believe a place is needed to teach about these changes as well as adapt to them. I propose to build a center that both educates people about the background of the subject as well as teaching them the present, practical aspects of sustainability. Classes and exhibits will give visitors the education …

Empathetic Design: Transitional Shelter, Anne Marie Loiselle

Architecture Theses and Projects

Empathetic design is a concept that can be applied to any building type, anywhere. Empathy has implications in all aspects of design from scale, to materials, to organization and circulation. Empathetic design needs to adapt to the people it is built for, and the context it is built in. It is understanding of the needs and concerns of its occupants and provides a bridge to connect people to space. This project explores the concept of empathetic design as applied to a TRANSITIONAL SHELTER. This shelter is so named because it provides more than a temporary place to sleep. It is …

A Model School In Massachusetts: Preschool, Kindergarten, First Grade, Robin Nichols

Architecture Theses and Projects

This school will provide students with a healthy learning environment that enforces proactive learning. It will allow for a variety of learning activities and play, a variety of spaces for independent and group activities, and overall freedom for the students. Also, the school will be flexible for whatever changes occur in the users and activities in the spaces over the life of the school. The building will be planned to maximize the amount of fresh air and sunlight to lessen the dependence on artificial light and HVAC systems.

Mind The Gap: Understanding The Interface, Edgar Adams

Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation Faculty Publications

This paper uses Transit Oriented Development as a means to explore different means of engaging transportation infrastructure within the "middle" or suburban landscape. The site is the former location of a train station in Taunton MA that occupies a sensitive location near the Taunton River.