Architecture Commons^™

Adaptive Typologies For Permanent Crises: Options For Rehabilitating Aleppo, Katherine Barymow

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

There is little doubt that the Syrian civil war has catalyzed what experts and onlookers now consider the greatest humanitarian crisis in the 21st century. Per the UNHCR, the UN Refugee relief agency supporting refugee camps across the globe, roughly half of Syria’s 22 million pre-war population has been displaced, most which have fled to neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and beyond to seek refuge. 13.5 million of these people, whether unable to leave their homes or awaiting permission to do so, are in dire need of international support from non-for-profit relief agencies struggling to provide basic necessities of …

Speculations On A City For Mars, Edouard Terzis

School of Architecture - Theses

This thesis proposes the reinterpretation of architectural forms as the index of the constitution of the idea of the city. “Speculations on a City on Mars” is paradoxical in a sense as it superposes both the managerial representation of a city, that is Zoning, along with the speculative aspect of an extra-terrestrial city.

Method Meditation: An Experimental Demonstration Of Systemization In Architecture, Armand Damari

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Method Meditation is an architectural design method developed during my exploration of systemization in the design process. Systems have been used throughout architectural history in an attempt to create space that can affect an occupant exactly the way the architect intended. However, these attempts have had inconsistent outcomes. This inconsistency has been attributed to several factors, from the variety to individual experiences that skew an observer’s viewpoint, to the lack of provable, causal relationships between environment and behavior. Due to these obstacles, other designers have used systems not to create perfect results, but to push their designs to new extents, …

Dinner Parti, Evangeline Soileau

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This capstone is a body of work that investigates the architectural relationships among event, documentation, material production, and user interaction through the lens of social dining. A Picnic, Thanksgiving, and Solo dining are the three dining scenarios that are the subject of these analytical and design investigations. The architectural design process is a part of the creative nonfiction narrative through the design of three corresponding artifacts that perform as the events’ spatial and material analogs: The Picnic Mound, The Thanksgiving Tables, and the Solo Couch. These artifacts aim to create new readings of user interactions with the social dining event …

Rural Retreat / Urban Myth, Celeste Pomputius

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

In his recent publication describing the evolution of the American campground, Martin Hogue explains: “this fundamental displacement—from the city to nature, from the indoors to outdoors—forms the basis of a defining experience.” Today, that displacement and distance has evolved into a disassociation between the experience of city and nature. However, the strategic pairing of architecture and policy can mend that disassociation to bridge the divide between city and nature that makes camping, or simply spending time outdoors, such a foreign concept to urban residents who have grown so accustomed to their urban setting.

This thesis proposes a destination for recreation …

Engaging With Craft: Concepts For Today's Architect, Stanislav Nedzelskyi

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This thesis proposes a solution to the disconnect between today’s designers and makers. Specifically geared towards the profession of architecture, these discussions should be applied in any process of making. After providing a historical reading of the crafted object and the people involved in making it, the paper proposes a new way to perceive craft in today’s world. When defined as an indexical quality, both in the mathematical and in the pointing sense described by Charles S. Pierce, the craft of an object becomes an accessible and efficient tool for the analysis and comparison of artifice.

Mausoleums And Mortuary Architecture, Nicholas Kronauer

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This paper addresses the relationship between the organization, structure, and location of three types of cemeteries; the churchyard, the rational, and the garden cemetery, to understand one’s relationship to death. The research of these cemeteries explores the sociological and emotional perceptions of the cemetery and how they have evolved over time to produce new readings of funerary space and its place in the urban context.

@The_New_House: An Online-Offline Manifesto, Ana Paola Hernandez Derbez

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The house, as one of the most fundamental architectural archetypes, has long been used as unbuilt or built manifestos to declare the avant-garde of the discipline. Formally they are likely to offer the most intimate scale at which to work and symbolically they have always maintained a potent force, both as vivid representation of lives lived inside their walls and as a powerful influence over the changing course of architecture over the centuries (Rapoport). Iconic houses have become part of an essential language and shorthand of architecture itself.

Follow me as I investigate a return to the design of a …

Architecture Amidst Smog, Hui Sheng

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is an investigation on smog and architecture.

Challenging The Pattern, Gary Thurston

Architecture Thesis Prep

Christopher Alexander and Yona Friedman suggest the architect is necessarily limited in his or her ability to construct the built environment for all people, or should be limited in favor of participation of the non-architect. While I agree that all parties of the world should take part in design and construction, I assert that architects through their training are better equipped to design and construct our built environment and in this sense, I am directly challenging the claims made by Alexander, et al.

Urban Archtifice: Regenerating Residential Facades Through Acupuncture, Ran Mei

Architecture Thesis Prep

To legitimize and make use of weirdness in the Chinese cultural fascination of symbolism and objectified architecture, I decide to put it in the most function-oriented program in the city _ collective housing, or more specifically, the transformation and regeneration of existing housing types in Chinese megacities. To inject iconicity into the most banal and repetitive structures of Chinese cities, the residential high-rises, I aim to create a human layer that parasites the faceless facades of housing blocks; to take advantage of the novelty value of collectively generated iconicity to legitimize the personal appropriation of “public” space; to bring back …

We Die As We Live, Yücel Güven

Architecture Thesis Prep

Each person is made up of different characters that build his/her complete identity. It is possible to identify these individual personas and design a different mausoleum to each one, specific in architectural language and function. The mausoleum should architecturally be unique to the persona and functionally serve the same purpose.

The "D.A.R." Object, Zhe Wang

Architecture Thesis Prep

The D.A.R. Object discusses a method, which to redesign a selected object through Disassembling - Analyzing - Reconstructing, 3 main process. When the method of "D.A.R." is adopted, the inherent form logic of an object will still be kept. Because designing like this way will make challenge to the original object ideologically. This challenge is embodied in the dramatic conflict between the process, which has a strong relationship with the object's inherent logic, and the result, which will blur the original reality of the object.

And my method of "D.A.R." initially comes from my study of structuralism and deconstruction. More …

Breaching The Divide: An Inquiry Into Border Passage, Russell Scheer

Architecture Senior Theses

This project is an inquiry into the existing threshold that currently separates Israelis from Palestinians in the West Bank. Through the dismantling of the Israeli border checkpoint and reinterpretation of its parts, this project reimagines the sequence of passing through the threshold. By framing the mundane activities of border passage through dramatic scenes, this architecture can reveal themes religion, resources, and surveillance. This architecture also intends to highlight the imbalance of the current conflict and those involved in it, by creating an architecture equally absurd.

Configuring Narrowness: Formulating Vertical Vernaculars In The Forgotten, Teriya Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

The thesis is convinced that a memorable narrowness can be achieved in an urban void if the architect shifts focus from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane. Indeed, a large portion of what can be seen when approaching a narrow street is not "the front," but "the sides." By using the current vernacular palette to develop vertically-oriented shacks, the thesis proposes two alternative designs to reimage these cracks in the city, in order to fill these cracks in memory.

What Is Sacred, Maxwell K. Baum

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis aims to reinterpret the notion of sacred space and explore architectures role in the creation of sacred space. Stripped of the religious connotations of the sacred, this thesis hopes to create an architecture that balances between the individual and the collective, fosters both introspective reflection and extrospective contemplation, and proposes architecture for the experiencing of the sacred.

Architecture can serve as the platform for the transcendental experience. This can be achieved through a thorough understanding of criteria this thesis has identified as constituents in creating sacred space. The concept of Le Corbusier’s “L’espace Indicible,” the ideas of phenomenology …

Ruin-Naissance, Fatma Gonca Tunc

Architecture Senior Theses

Ruin-naissance is the term I use to describe not only the resurrection of an archeological site, but also the rebirth of an idea about how we think about ruins and how new construction can enhance the experience of these kinds of sites.

The principle contention of this thesis is that a better understanding of the fragmented evidence presented by an archeological site can be seen through the lens of a contemporary architectural intervention that responds sensitively to an ancient site. In doing this, the intervention needs to address issues of identity, narrative and historiography. The new architecture should not ignore …

Emergency Homes, Denise A. Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

“Designers cannot just stand by and watch as the refugee crisis unfolds,” and although architects and designers can’t save the world, through design, we can alleviate consequences of scarcity. It’s not about creating a structure that will withstand the ends of time or endure the most extreme climate, it’s about how to respond in an emergency with the most geographically intelligent prototype that utilizes the utmost importance of on site materials so the bare minimum of an instruction manual or few key tools to offset distribution obstacles. This thesis is aimed to design for the 99 in disaster relief.

The Moving Image, Eujean Cheong, Andrew Kim, Sol Yoon

Architecture Senior Theses

Form in architecture has become synonymous with geometries as opposed to the philosophical Aristotelian notion of form. This thesis rests on two beliefs: space and form are co-present, as space without form is nothing and likewise form without space leaves no room to materialize itself. An object results when space and form are co-present; architecture as an object then subsequently reveals itself when a third element of human movement is introduced.

This thesis contends that if architecture is perceived through the introduction of human movement, then it is peculiar that architectural representation has historically been represented through means of …

Rethinking "Stuff", Jonathan Anthony

Architecture Senior Theses

As our methods of storing grow, our storage environments tend to not adapt. Rethinking "Stuff" contends that our established storage environments have the potential to be more closely correlated to the complex nature of our stuff today. This thesis attempts to leverage the effects of stuff in storage by capitalizing on three notions that stuff is increasingly challenging: ritual, temporality, and ownership.

Library To Nowhere, Anna Sernicki

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores the idea of the architectural paradox, which questions the ability of experiencing exterior (pyramid) and interior (labyrinth) spatial conditions simultaneously. The pyramid makes places of architecture, while the labyrinth respectively displaces architecture. New York City, as the site of the project, is an example of how the architectural paradox works on an urban scale, whereas the Library to Nowhere condenses these ideas consciously into a local scale. Besides the physical layer of architecture as a labyrinth, the Library to Nowhere enters a psychological realm that forces visitors to transcend reality into the sublime …

Materializing Light, Lirong Tan

Architecture Senior Theses

Artificial light, especially volumetric light, can be materialized and transform the existing ruin. Specifically, I would choreograph the interaction between people and light to exaggerate, or dramatize, the tragic feeling of Hiroshima Memorial Dome.

Dinner Parti, Evangeline Soileau

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is a body of work that investigates the architectural relationships among event, documentation, material production, and user interaction through the lens of social dining. A Picnic, Thanksgiving, and Solo Dining are the three dining scenarios that are the subject of these analytical and design investigations. Architecture is treated as a form of creative nonfiction through the design of artifacts that perform as the events’ material and spatial analogs. These artifacts aim to create new readings of the social dining event as it is understood, misunderstood, and taken for granted in the contemporary context.

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.

Optimized Density: Rehabilitating The Tower In The Park For The 21st Century, Emmett Walker

Architecture Senior Theses

Optimized densification is the exploitation of under utilized space to create a more dynamic cooperative based density often times adding onto what is already exists. The pursuit of maximizing intelligently can help to relieve socioeconomic exclusivity, create a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle and influence social mixing. Though architecture can only have a limited influence on the social climate of a place like New York City, re-envisioning and optimizing the density of the tower in the park typology can lead to a more harmonious engagement between buildings and their surrounding context or population. Optimizing density could be the modern day American …

Food Form Function, Travis Telemaque

Architecture Senior Theses

By 2050, the global population will have grown to over 9.7 Billion people. Traditional farming practices will no longer be able to sustain food production for the increasing population. This thesis demonstrates how architecture and urban food production can be used to educate and reconnect our cities with locally sourced food. Integrating food production into dense urban settings will create a more efficient and resilient city.

@The_New_House: An Online-Offline Manifesto, Ana Paola Hernandez Derbez, Domenica Velasco

Architecture Senior Theses

The house, is one of the most fundamental architectural archetypes, has long been used as unbuilt or built manifestos to declare the avant-garde of the discipline. As designers, we need to re-visualize design concepts to create architecture that integrates and corresponds to the way we dwell. Innovating design in the same way technology and digitalization have been innovating production and the way we live. This thesis investigates a return to the design of a house as a manifesto, focusing on today’s advanced modes of fabrication and evolving ways of living to challenge the current design mindset.

As Above, So Below: Tapping Into The Latent Energy Of Abandoned Underground Infrastructure, Alexandra N. Ramirez

Architecture Senior Theses

How can architects formalize the use of surplus energy to reach more people in a more systematic way? Abandoned underground infrastructure is an example of an untapped surplus in energy that the architect has the opportunity to repurpose. Tunnels in particular, can be used as systems to heat or cool a network of buildings above ground to create more sustainable urban environments. In addition the system could also have beneficial social implications within segregated cities by providing fluid connections between divided neighborhoods.

This thesis will establish a framework for repurposing underground infrastructures. The strategy operates under an umbrella of sustainability …

The Graduate School Collaborative, Jake Copich, Stanislav Nedzelskyi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a solution to the disconnect between today’s designers and makers. Specifically geared towards the profession of architecture, these discussions should be applied in any process of making. After providing a historical reading of the crafted object and the people involved in making it, the paper proposes a new way to perceive craft in today’s world. When defined as an indexical quality, both in the mathematical and in the pointing sense described by Charles S. Pierce, the craft of an object becomes an accessible and efficient tool for the analysis and comparison of artifice.

Method Meditation, Armand F. Damari

Architecture Senior Theses

The place of psychology in architecture has always been a contentious topic. Though the physical environment influences how occupants feel and behave, neither architects nor psychologists have been able to produce environments that can consistently create a desired effect. In this thesis, I have continued to test the legitimacy of systemization in architectural design by using a rigorous survey of potential users. My system is informed by previous experiments, yet also employs the critiques of these systems to inform the rules. It’s theorized the byproduct of this unlikely system should be the “perfect” space for calmness and relaxation.