Architecture Commons^™

Compact Community, Abdulrazzak Alanjari

Architecture Thesis Prep

Small and compact spaces achieve a certain lightness

and “smallness” that large-scale architecture obviously

cannot achieve. The contention for my thesis is to explicitly

study the obsession with the large in Kuwait and

reasons for it, which might include climate, expanses of

land, and rapid oil industry development. By doing so,

a new typology for small spaces can be introduced in

Kuwait City and integrated into Al Sawaber Residential

community, the site, by expanding on certain elements

unique to the foreign labor communities and formally

creating spaces for that community, since they tend to

live with so little (space, luxuries, …

Parking, Alyssa Francis

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project re-conceptualizes the parking garage structure from a building type deemed as an utilitarian object, to a multi-functioning public service provider, to not only store cars for the individual but also as an infrastructured platform for providing urban amenity, providing much needed urban public space. This structure looks at the concept of garage to look beyond its normative function of purely car storage, and sees the potential of using the building both with and without vehicles, to ultimately act as a form of urban rehabilitation.

Fields In Fields, Or Infinite Space, Joshua Graham

Architecture Thesis Prep

I contend that the Field is important and

worth examining because it values the

“Typical” as a means of generating the

atypical, to borrow the term from Koolhaas.

This condition of “typical-ness” can criticized

for its repetition or sameness, however it is

only because of this repetition and sameness

that differences, mistakes, slips can emerge!

Therefore, I will begin with fields. I will

collect them. I will read about them. I will try

to diagram them. I will rescale them. I will

combine them. I will use images to make new

fields; reimagine territories.

Sitopia, Cesi Kohen

Architecture Thesis Prep

In the projected future urban world where NAFTA doesn't exist, fresh/organic fruits and vegetables are produced within the urban realm. The goal is to create a symbiotic relationship between agriculture and architecture; analyze how spaces and typologies are challenged in order to accommodate farming; and systematize new spaces through restructuring of the code.

Infra[Re]Structure, Sara Minsley

Architecture Thesis Prep

This project contends that through the mediation and expression of systems, energies and flows the pedestrian can reclaim the experience of the street.Crucial to this is an understanding of what is on the street and how objects and people are situated on the streets currently. Through exploiting these issues New York City the pedestrian is offered a more engaged experience of moving through the city.

Empowered Pursuit: A Reflective Essay On Using Creative Learning In The Syracuse City School District, Danielle Mae Lewis

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Within the Syracuse City School District, students have been struggling to thrive in an educational environment that focuses on standardization. In 2012, only 48% of high school seniors graduated with a high school diploma in the city of Syracuse. Numerous theories have been discussed as to why students have failed to succeed, with a large portion of these centered on the problems created by the No Child Left Behind Act.

This reflective essay constructs and deconstructs the research and conceptual work produced surrounding the topic of creative learning within the Syracuse City School District. Initial research, summarized in this paper, …

2041: A Communal Life, Nathaniel Thomas Danciger

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I posit that an architecture of collective cultural spaces, shared human and animal habitat, and affordable local building techniques, implemented through the design of a co-housing community, would promote a collaborative and communal way of life in harmony with the natural landscape and offer a model for the future development of former agricultural and suburban sites in a manner preferable to the current practices of the American suburb. This project is concerned with redefining the way that people in the United States will occupy rural landscapes in the future. The site for this new co-housing model is a field outside …

The Manifest Narrative, Kelsey Requeña Devries

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

I posit that architecture can serve to expose the vital immigration, labor, and consumption processes underlying food production in the United States through a clear narrative made evident by techniques of sequence, mimesis, and composition in a functional monument containing an Immigration Advocacy Center, Community Garden, and Farmer’s Market for the city of Sacramento.

In architecture, narrative is the observation, interpretation, and implementation of ideas developed through stories. The architect formulates an observation about something in a society that exists or should exist in the form of a story, finds a time and place where the narrative is applicable, and …

Making By Taking: An Investigation Of Architectural Appropriation, Victoria Lee

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The project contends that explicit appropriation can be a legitimate method of architectural production. The scope encompasses four canonical works of architecture: Villa Rotonda, Villa Savoye, Fallingwater, and the Farnsworth House. These works are appropriated as the basis of a retrospective analysis and as the foundation for a speculative, generative design strategy. Following the height of postmodernism, the notion of explicit formal appropriation was characterized in a negative light, seen as inauthentic imitation. However, an increasing number of contemporary artists and architects are utilizing explicit appropriation and historical reference as a primary method of production. This mode of thinking can …

American Picnickers, Yuxiang Luo

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

This thesis investigates the eating practice of American commuters. The issue of food is addressed through a social lens, affected by spatial conditions. The project thus aims to reinvent the operation of roadside food business, through the design of a series of spatial conditions that activate new social relations.

Commuters’ eating practice is problematic; the drive-thru as a prevalent building and business typology has created spatial and social isolation for various parties in the society. The social isolation has two implications. On one hand, as drivers eat alone in the car, they are isolated from other eaters, thus degrading the …

A New Suburban Elysium: A Headstone For The Dying Periphery, Samuel David Chertock

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The proposed “cemetery” and retail center for the Idora neighborhood of Youngstown, Ohio is the result of one research semester and one design semester. The design proposal arose from dissatisfaction with the architectural community’s propensity for using jargon and clichés when describing the contemporary suburban condition. Many critics and commentators understand suburbia through the lens of the postwar period. It has been suggested that suburbia was developed for use as a media weapon – and thus, at the conclusion of the Cold War, should have been rendered architecturally irrelevant. However, suburbia has remained stagnant. Design standards employed by developers continue …

Representing Rurality, Carolina Esther Jimenez

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Architecture is a system of representation. Architecture’s power is that through representation we may change previously constructed conceptions and misperceptions, and ultimately it can transform patterns of spatial inhabitation. Through words, images, drawings, and built work, we define modes of experiencing space. This project seeks to redefine Nebraska as a territory of critical social, political, economic, and physical importance through architectural representations.

Engaging Holistic Health Through Active Design In Public Space, Alec J. Hembree

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The design proposal for a health center and urban network of active pathways in Pittsburgh, PA is the cumulative result of two semesters of research and a partenership between myself and Emily Sholder (non-honors; B. Arch. May 2014). The ideas behind the research and design work included within originated from the pressing need to address physical health issues, educational shortcomings, and community disparagement present in many cities in the United States today. By addressing these issues at the scale of the individual, the school, and the urban environment through design in public space, we feel that architecture can empower people, …

The Knowledge Accident Situating The Built University Within The Virtual, Alanna Beth Rosenblatt

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Abstract

The increasing un-sustainability of the built university and the rise of the apparent mass democratization or synchronization of higher education through the virtual Massive Open Online Course [MOOC] is occurring concurrently with the mutation of the historically grounded Accident into the Knowledge Accident. The standardization of higher education through the MOOC has created the conditions for the Knowledge Accident, the “integral accident”, of the built university. This is where we find the present state of the university, in a moment of crisis grounded in unconstrained "progress".

The current form of the MOOC, begun in 2011, has expanded and evolved …

Five Rings To Rule Them All / Olympus The Architecture Of The Olympics & Global Media, Harsha Royyuru

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

900 million people across the globe tuned in to watch the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony on television. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) own broadcasting division circulated over 100,000 hours of coverage to respective national networks, extending the breadth of the Olympic telecast into every one of the 204 participating countries. At the conclusion of the Games, more than 1 billion views had been recorded on NBC’s YouTube webpage specifically designed for Olympic coverage. In a time when occupation of space via digital media is the preferred method of experience, what is the agency of the architect? Stadiums once designed …

Guerrilla Tourism|The Anti-Resort In Cuba, Michael Kowalchuk

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Guerrilla Tourism: Between the Resort and the Casa Particular The justification for guerrilla tourism in Havana draws from the political experiences of the urban guerrilla movements of the 1970s which transplanted rural guerrilla strategies to the city. The same basic rules continued to apply: a working knowledge of the terrain and local communities, an ability to strike and retreat quickly and a network form of military-political power. The anti-resort is a collection of micro-hotels in the city that rely on public support programs and fit within communities instead of dominating them. The current tourist infrastructure of Havana is socially unsustainable: …

Enhancing Sensory Environments Of Crematoria, Tanya Bhatia

Architecture Thesis Prep

How can technology today enhance or amplify the social interactions of people in crematoria through the simulation of nature? Crematoria typically, are religious and neutral spaces appropriate to those who want to participate. One of the most significant aspects of crematoria is location. Most crematorium complexes today are located next to either a noisy motorway or in an industrial park. The reasoning behind this is usually to make sure it is not open to the public for viewing unless they want to be a part of it. Usually the crematoria end up in an open landscape, but have walls that …

A City Within A City: Protecting The Spirit Of Hutong, Yuan Yuan

Architecture Thesis Prep

The ancient Chinese believed that humanity should exist coherently with the nature. In Siheyuan, which are the houses stand along the Hutong, the connection with nature is expressed through the centrally located courtyard. The grey brick walls and the low-angled tile roofs create the ancient atmosphere in that historical area, because the materials are quite different from the factories processed materials of the modern buildings, such as the pre-cast concrete and glass. At the same time, the relationship between family and family is pretty closed in that area. Many tenants have to share a courtyard, sometimes they have to share …

Welcome To Peep Park: The Spaces Of The Voyeur, Christopher Malone

Architecture Thesis Prep

What exactly is that good ‘old fashioned’ voyeurism we find in architecture? It exists in overheard conversations. It lies behind loosely closed doors. It can be found in the corner of a room. sometimes it is hidden amongst the shadows cast by two vertical spaces. Voyeurism is tied to the proximity of performance that space allows to occur. Voyeurism becomes an affected, a want, a need facilitated by unnoticed, forgotten spaces. Sometimes voyeurism exists in the open. It is called upon to legitimize a space or action. These spaces become the most important part of any architecture because they encourage …

Street Market Project, Ying Zheng

Architecture Thesis Prep

What are the key features will give a city “vitality”? What are the features of a city will give a tourist (a stranger to a city, temporary visit) or a local resident (an acquaintance to a city, a person who lives in a city for a long time) a good impression so that people will enjoy the time in the city? One of the most important part of the impression of a city comes from STREET. Jane Jacobs said in her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” that: “Think of a city and what comes to mind? …

Suzhou In Prosperous: Representative Infrastructure-Based-Prosperous About Suzhou, Li Qiu

Architecture Thesis Prep

The thesis is trying to critique and evaluate the production-infrastructure-consumption model that contemporary Suzhou is based on. The model has been set up with the help of reading the scroll Prosperous Suzhou, which, is considered both as a precedent on representation and background of sites. Suzhou is a major city locates in the Yangtze River Delta region. For 2,500 years Suzhou is acting one of the most prosperous city in the wealthiest region of China. Suzhou is one of the greatest canal cities on the world, and it is also called “the Eastern Venice” for its competitive massive networks of …

Borderline- Part 5, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

The Urban Evolution: Stiching Mumbai's Eastern Waterfront With The Incremental Symbiosis- Part 2, Betsy Daniel

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Borderline- Part 4, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Compound City: Social, Economic, And Environmental Impact In The Production Of Generative Urban Space, Nathan Jones

Architecture Senior Theses

"Compound City" will focus on the implementation of an open source, social infrastructure, as a methodology in addressing the on-going urban crisis in Lagos. Dealing primarily with urban informality, Lagos will serve as a theoretical testbed, providing a natural precedent in which to test these ideas. How can open source technologies - softwares & hardwares - subvert or embrace existing infrastructures/processes as a means of alleviating inadequate living conditions? Identifying the coincidental pressures in Lagos will help establish project parameters, driving the development of design criteria to be addressed by the new, open source, platform.

Transient Solutions: Responding And Adapting To Rapid Change Through Temporary Design- Part 1, Casie Kowalski

Architecture Senior Theses

PART 1: RAPID CHANGES

The American City is characterized by a history of industry, rapid growth and stagnant economy, and a quick adaptation to consumer culture. In cities once characterized by specific industries, they now attempt to cling to their cultural identity and the arts to preserve their image beyond their industry, readdressing and reinvigorating permanent cultural entities such as the library, museum, and theater. This reviving is done in variety of ways, all of which require heavy funding both privately and publicly and primarily result in interventions of permanence. [Chicago's Millennium Park, Cleveland funding waterfront activity, New York City …

Borderline- Part 2, Francis Mckloskey

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Making By Taking: An Investigation Of Architectural Appropriation, Victoria Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

The project contends that explicit appropriation can be a legitimate method of architectural production. The scope encompasses four canonical works of architecture: Villa Rotonda, Villa Savoye, Fallingwater, and the Farnsworth House. These works are appropriated as the basis of a retrospective analysis and as the foundation for a speculative, generative design strategy. Following the height of postmodernism, the notion of explicit formal appropriation was characterized in a negative light, seen as inauthentic imitation. However, an increasing number of contemporary artists and architects are utilizing explicit appropriation and historical reference as a primary method of production. This mode of thinking can …

American Picnickers, Yuxiang Luo

Architecture Senior Theses

The thesis re-imagines the operation and impact of the roadside food business, by studying commuter drivers’ eating practice through a social lens. Proposing a manualproduct- test design mechanism, the thesis links roadside eating to the larger plurality of a city’s social life, and in return reconstructs the life of American cities based on the existing highway infrastructure and people’s common need for eating. Commuters’ eating practice is problematic; the drive-thru as a prevalent building and business typology has created spatial and social isolation for various parties in the society. The social isolation has two implications. On one hand, as drivers …

Guerrilla Tourism: Between The Resort And The Casa Particular, Michael Kowalchuk

Architecture Senior Theses

The justification for guerrilla tourism in Havana draws from the political experiences of the urban guerrilla movement of the 1970s which transplanted rural guerrilla strategies to the city. The same basic rules continued to apply: a working knowledge of the terrain and local communities, an ability to strike and retreat quickly and a network form a military-political power. The anti-resort is a collection of micro-hotels in a city that rely on a public support programs and fit within communities instead of dominating them.

The current tourist infrastructure of Havana is socially unsustainable: foreign tourists have the choice of staying in …