Architecture Commons^™

Framing The Future: Imagining The City Through The Lens Of Film, Sofia Zavala Ferreira

Architecture Senior Theses

With a great interest in the relationship between film and architecture, this project establishes its subject matter on the possibilities presented in science fiction cinema and speculative design. By extracting attributes from these that would influence design and architectural concerns, a bridge between the disconnected imagined and real, current and future, can be created through the creation of a speculative scenario and a narrative.

It seeks to utilize cinematic design and storytelling conventions to successfully convey the desired atmosphere, architectural realities, and life conditions of a fictional city. By utilizing advanced digital techniques often used in cinema itself, including but …

Y'All Come Back Now, Ya Hear: A Reflection On Nashville's History And The Carnivalesque, Kolby Forbes

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to utilize the technique of allegorical image in understanding both the past and present histories of Nashville. By collaging aspects of past and present, the images produced seek to present the emerging alternative. This otherness constructs an in between in which the narratives of both instances begin to merge and mutate. These collages establish a landscape of Nashville which is no longer constricted temporally or spatially, remaining open to interpretations and resisting a clear sense of closure. The designs that I propose are meant to clarify the neglected traumas and occurrences of the past to demonstrate that …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the issue of lacking self-identity and missing narrative under contemporary Chinese architecture discipline. Using ancient landscape paintings as design source, this project aims to create an environment that provides personal experience and exclusive meaning from a participant’s point of view instead of an omniscient view.

Paintings are selected from different dynasties and artists, but all based on one important cultural theme: Reclusion. Thus, the reconstructed narrative would provide a tranquil environment for inhabitant to have a temporary retreatment from the city life through making, seeking and thinking.

Gold: Stories Of A City, Vivek Vijayan Njanappilly

Architecture Senior Theses

The thesis explores the latent influences of gold and its value systems on the urban geo-politics of a South Indian city. It is an anthology of sporadic narrations recording the growth and transformation of a city over time. These narrative compositions contain traces of the past, the city of the present and speculative futures. They indicate change without erasure. Their values are embodied in gold; malleable, ductile and fungible in its different forms.

The intention of the thesis is not to merely speak of a specific commodity nor is it to narrate the history of a city. It is an …

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Thesis Prep

In this thesis, we will continue to address the issue of self-identity and missing narrative in contemporary context. Differently, we will use landscape paintings as our design source to revive the narrative quality. We will use the methodologies developed from the research to deconstruct the selected landscape paintings, transform them into narratives, and reconstruct the narratives into architecture.

By extracting events, atmosphere, and spirits from original painting narratives, and by borrowing the principles of paintings to transform them into sequences, we will set up architectural narratives in contemporary context for people to experience.

The Architecture Of Collapse, Alison Sekerak

Architecture Thesis Prep

The world is changing around us. There is no more denying it. We are running out of resources. We are polluting our air and water. Sea levels are rising, and with it, natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, wildfires, drought. We are killing each other. Economies are collapsing and countries are dissolving. The world is changing. Stories of apocalypse have been prevalent in our society for decades, but they may not be a thing of science fiction anymore. When the world does change, what are architects going to do about it?

An architecture must be designed to enable the survival of …

Gold: Stories Of A City, Vivek Vijayan Njanappilly

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis explores the latent influences of gold and its value systems on the urban geo-politics of a South Indian city. It is an anthology of sporadic narrations recording the growth and transformation of a city over time. These narrative compositions contain traces of the past, the city of the present and speculative futures. They indicate change without erasure. Their values are embodied in gold. Malleable, ductile and fungible in its different forms.

Framing The Future: Imagining The City Through The Lens Of Film, Sofia Zavala Ferreira

Architecture Thesis Prep

With a great interest in the relationship between film and architecture, this project establishes its subject matter on the possibilities presented in science fiction cinema and speculative design. By extracting attributes from these that would influence design and architectural concerns, a bridge between the disconnected imagined and real, current and future, can be created through the creation of a speculative scenario and a narrative. It seeks to utilize cinematic design and storytelling conventions to successfully convey the desired atmosphere, architectural realities, and life conditions of a fictional city. By utilizing advanced digital techniques often used in cinema itself, including but …

The Manifest Narrative, Kelsey Devries

Architecture Senior Theses

The United States is a Nation of Immigrants. A central part of the myth and narrative of the United States is based on the historical patterns and phases of various immigrant populations, their struggles, and their assimilation into the diverse culture of the United States. Each of these successive waves of immigration, however, has met with strong resistance by the existing population, a phenomenon that has persisted to the present day. This dual nature of this American narrative is reflected in the simultaneous existence of the Statue of Liberty, as a symbol of welcoming, and the ever-growing U.S.-Mexico border fence, …

Architecture Cover To Cover [Entry To Exit], Ryan Kowalczyk

Architecture Senior Theses

"By making an architecture that offers successive ideas to complete a coherent whole, the true art of architecture can be re-realized."

Newark Noir: A Study Of Film And Architecture, Tom Mcinerney

Architecture Senior Theses

"Through the investigation of the filmic narrative and the semantics of the visual style inherent in film noir, I intend to establish a precedent that can be used to construct an architectural product in Newark that serves to investigate the city's past, present, and anticipate the future."

An Agitated (Co)Existence - The Conquest Of Timeless Meztisaje, Joaquin Bonifaz

Architecture Senior Theses

"The success of the Marvelous Real is in the acknowledgement as existing of the pre-existed, implied or unnoticed and its revelation through unusual juxtaposition and interweaving narrated in a passive tone. The contention of this thesis is that if this type of juxtaposition of existing, pre-existed, implied and unnoticed is translated into an architectural concept where the tools of juxtaposition are space, form, program, materiality, and order it is possible to create, by addition and subtraction, a heightened reality of the historical layering of site."

Narrative Architecture, Leah E. Cohen

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Architecture reveals narrative through the facilitation of sequence and the expression of ritual. Ritual is based on archetypal actions."

Education Through Architecture: Carnival And Merengue Museum, Andres Pastoriza

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis examines the ability of architecture to educate through experience. Architecture creates environments which represents the history, folklore, and tradition of a region by way of semantics. individuals interact with the building and become part of it by providing their knowledge and recollection of the signs and symbols. Through the representation of symbols and the recreation of events, the building evokes the collective memory of the individuals who experience them. Folklore relies heavily on experience, as does architecture. The interaction of event, program, space, and form result in architecture that provides all the elements necessary to educate folklore. By …

A Paradigm For The Construction Of Architectural Narrative, Sarah F. Holmes

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This proposal concerns the inquiry into the physical and metaphysical structure of place. In this thesis I propose a system of analysis resulting in the creation of a structure from which an architectural narrative may be revealed."