Architecture Commons^™

The Polycentric Urbanism Of The Combined Statistical Area, Michael Freedman

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This investigation focuses on architecture's role and potential at the interstices of the multiple cities/countries that constitute the fractured landscape of the contemporary Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is here that the seed of a growing density must be placed."

Landscraper, Erik Maso

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The LANDSCRAPER project challenges the re-establishment of perceptually stable and natural orders. It is specifically attracted to the claim that one of the largest infrastructural projects exists in the intermountain region of western United States with the abundance of reclaimable mining territories. The project is in the conception of organizational system that instrumentalizes mining techniques to shape, stabilize, and revegetate unclaimed waste rock edifices, maximizing the potentials of a nature whose production and consumption is perpetually fueled by cultural needs and desires. Its intentions are to consider the imaging of nature, extend the perception of nature in the context of …

Outerdisciplinary, Tessa Franzese

Architecture Thesis Prep

"By taking cues from quilt theory and from emergent social science theories, I will formulate a methodology for working that opens a feedback loop, exposing the discipline to outsiders and outsiders to architecture."

Informal Brand, Casey Allen

Architecture Senior Theses

"The informal brand aims to become a process of design that answers questions of identity in architecture. By establishing a methodology for design with an emphasis on program context and performance, a building will be able to become a "brand" for the company it represents, the context the project is situated in, and the typology of program it represents. The following pages set out to document this design process through site and program analysis derived from case studies and text reference. The preceding analysis will result in a speculation of programmatic relationships and there implications on the site."

The Synagogues Of Piedmont, Samuel D. Gruber

Religion - All Scholarship

History and architecture of the synagogues of Piedmont, Italy.

Graduate Sessions 5: Johnston Marklee, James Degennaro, Amanda Jones

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Sharon Johnston, AIA & Mark Lee are the principal founders of Johnston MarkLee Associates. Sharon currently teaches at UCLA's Department of Architecture and Urban Design and has directed visiting critics studios throughout the country. Mark Lee is an integral faculty member at UCLA and is currently the Vice Chair.

Founded in 1998, Los Angeles-based Johnston MarkLee & Associates designs and develops distinvtive architectural environments that are responsive to the variable intermix of specific conditions of site, program and economics. Recent projects include an exhibition design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art entitled nano, numerous award-winning houses that are …

Crossection: An Exploration Into Assembling Sustainability, Brian Goehle

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The field of architecture sits at a crossroad today, we have an opportunity to rethink the way we design using new materials and building techniques to reduce the negative impact architecture has on the wider environment. As architects, we must critically look at our constructions methods and question whether they are appropriate and the best choices we could be making for the environment. My thesis has generated a framework that used a set of sustainable materials that outperform their conventional alternatives, to produce affordable and highly efficiently built homes that leave a neutral impact on the environment."

Architecture News: The Newsletter Of The Syracuse School Of Architecture, N.3 Fall 2007, Mark Robbins

Newsletters from School of Architecture - ArchitectureNews

Architecture News: The Newsletter of the Syracuse University School of Architecture No. 3, Fall 2007.

Urban Engagement: Social Interaction Through Urban Spectacle, Philip Gleason

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Cinematic devices are utilized in film to distort and alter perception, layer events and situation, and manipulate the understanding of time. The translation of such ideas through architecture will lead to the development of a Cinema Center that will function as an extension of film into habitable space. The Cinema Center is intended to be a multi media experience capable of interrupting ones sense of time and place while altering emotion, and perception of the urban environment, much like ones reaction to film. The Cinema Center has the potential to energize the newly developed Boston Greenway by creating new connections …

Design Outfit An Interdisciplinary Think + Act Tank, Douglas Jack

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The Design Outfit is a real project derived from a conceptual program. The program, or set of concepts from which the project sprang, critically approached three aspects of design practice:

I) reality: how design proceeds from initial sketches to finishing touches, with all steps and scales given comparable attention

II) collaboration: how designers interface with one another and others throughout a design process

III) social awareness: how designers can shape and place their efforts in relation to social significance

The project was designed to explore and test these aspects of design.

Based at Henninger High, a public Syracuse City school …

Architecture News: The Newsletter Of The Syracuse School Of Architecture, N.2 Spring 2007, Mark Robbins

Newsletters from School of Architecture - ArchitectureNews

Architecture News: The Newsletter of the Syracuse University School of Architecture No. 2, Spring 2007.

Vertica 'L' Exchange: Public Interaction And Community Identity Along The 'L' In Chicago, Dena M. Wangberg

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis proposes to counter the 'genericness' of network identity in public transportation through the transformation of two nodes along the network of the 'L' in Chicago, Illinois.... Through this thesis investigation, the larger network of public transportation infrastructure is particularized by the introduction of new urban program that not only reveals the identities of a given place, but also helps to construct a richer identity throughout the entire network."

Kinder Arch: Promoting Social Responsiveness & Progressive Pedagogy Through Architecture, Rachel Kenney

Architecture Thesis Prep

"It is my contention to design an elementary school that promotes a social responsiveness and progressive pedagogy through architecture that frames a multiplicity of learning environments. Using architecture and space to establish and frame meditated and immediate learning environments through the creation of non-traditional program to explore culturally based learning within a diverse community."

Achieving Gender Equality Through Economic Empowerment, Danielle Sara Pactovis

Architecture Thesis Prep

"The implication that the social construct of our private lives [stereotyped gender roles associated with the nuclear family] controls the development of the public sphere is an ineffective way to define our role as architects. I propose that standards for equal rights need to be initiated in the public real,. Based on theory from the Modern Movement, architecture has potential as an economic and political means for improving the environment through building and urban planning. My interest in the social implications of architecture has led to exploring embedded gender distinctions in the urban environment, specifically studying how economic markets influence …

Architectures Of Integration: A Study Of Transient Communities, Casey A. Harris

Architecture Senior Theses

"Through an analysis of the city of Philadelphia, I hope to distinguish various political boundaries that exist and demonstrate that these boundaries are frequently problematic due to their locations, which are often at odds with social boundaries.... I assert that architecture can participate in a commentary on the existing social sondition in West Philadelphia by becoming a physical representation of this condition. Such a representation is possible when the architecture blurs the boundaries between social demographics.

Avalanche: Architecture Of Emergency, Joshua M. Lacasse

Architecture Senior Theses

"A buildign for rescue must perform its function seamlessly during times of emergency. The consideration of landscape in terms of an event leads to an evocative solution that best accommodates the program of the project. Using a thorough investigation of spatial, infrastructural, and conceptual networks on the site, I will design a center for avalanche rescue in the White Mountains of New Hampshire."

Architecture Thesis, 2007-Dale Lunan: Virtual Terror Tribunals, Dale Lunan

School of Architecture - Theses

"Tribunals determining the identities of captured terror suspects are necessary.  The Geneva Convention of 1949 demands that these tribunals occur as close as possible to the 'theater of operations'. In the War on Terror, the 'theater of operations' can exist anywhere.  Therefore, the tribunals must have the capacity to exist anywhere."

This thesis focuses on the possibilities of virtual terror tribunals, as influenced by airplanes, technology, and expanding networks of modern communication.

Foreign Body Politics: Inflammation Of Micro Cities In The Urban Environment, Ariana Douso

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis focuses on the intense rigidity of government affordable housing and the homogenization of those designs that condemns them to become foreign bodies in the more flexible surrounding urban environment. Mike Davis categorizes these foreign bodies as modern-day slums. Project housing bracketed in the slum category associates it with the condemning qualities of its predecessors. Such developments are dangerous and unhealthy; they become massive sores on the city. How can this be remedied without offering project developments up to the same fate that their predecessors in the 1930's suffered (slum clearance)? "

Aqua_Culture: Recognizing New Institutional Models For The Reactivation Of Inherent Values In The Urban And Cultural Landscape Of Arecibo, Cynthia M. Dorta-Quinones

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Natural resources have dictated the sucessful development of the city of Arecibo until the dissolution of the city's industrial models. This thesis aims to create a Marine Research and Educational Center that promotes the engagement between the city's urban dwellers and its waterfront in a desire to recover the city's valuable historical landscape while promoting new forms of social revitalization through the means of education.'

The Experience Of A Lifestyle, Brian Lonsway

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

This essay traces the evolution of themed environment design from theme parks to a series of new architectural types – Urban Entertainment Destinations, Lifestyle Enhancement Centers, and Lifestyle Villages – as a chronicle of spatial mediation from urban décor to urban design technique. Culled partly through semiotic deconstruction and partly through ethnographic investigation, this history examines the environmental design techniques employed in these spaces in order to better understand the relationship of design practice to the cultural practices of work and leisure.

From spatialized branding strategies to the neo-urbanist configurations of location-based entertainment, leisure/entertainment ventures use these narratively motivated techniques …

The Interface Of Two Extremes: Preserving The Local, Connecting To Global The Question Of Architecture In A Third World Enironment, Ella Scheuer

Architecture Senior Theses

The world in which we live is evolving at exponentially increasing speeds[...] The constant upgrades are considered to be arduous in the U.S. but it can be overwhelming for a Third World country who has only been introduced to the advances secondhand...This striving for global equality, uniformity, and at times, excessive luxury, has led to ignorance and neglect of regional character and authenticity. Understanding this, I found the need to create an architecture that embraces local heritages as well as global progress. This duality will be expressed through the language of the architecture by studying both equatorial African building techniques …

Connective Ecology: Reclaiming The Postindustrial Urban Landscape, Thomas Smith

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that by considering the urban landscape as an evolving interconnected network, much like an ecosystem, architecture can create flexible, accessible public space as part of a larger scale system which affects as well as responds to specific physical and social forces of the contemporary postindustrial city.

Organic Architecture And Direct Democracy: Claude Bragdon's Festivals Of Song And Light, Jonathan Massey

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Graduate Sessions 3: Juan Herreros, Mark D. Linder, Beth Mosenthal

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

Juan Herreros is the founder and principal of Abalos and Herreros Architects in Madrid and teaches internationally as a Doctor of Architecture, Senior Professor and head of Teaching Unit Q at the Escuela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, as well as a Visiting Professor most recently at Princeton University and the Illinois Institute of Technology

The work of Abalos and Herreros ranges from published works including Tower and Office: From Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice and Recycling Madrid to critically-acclaimed built work including apartment and office towers in Vitoria and the Woermann complex in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. …

Boston City Hall: Rediscovering The Civic Center, Joshua Simoneau

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Architecture can restore the civic center as the symbolic and intrinsic heart of the contemporary city through the integration of government and market centers."

Mall | Memory | Morphology : Fragmenting / Adapting An Obsolete Building Type, Jonathan Danho

Architecture Thesis Prep

"facing contemporary retail trends, the age of the shopping mall is on the verge of obsolescence. An icon of late twentieth century economy and society, the mall holds significant importance to both individual and collective memory. In order to preserve its iconic presence, the type must be fragmented and adapted to a completely different program to avoid total demolition. Doing so will preserve the memory of its presence and experience while introducing a new layer of program and memory in its fabric."

Building A Sustainable Housing Environment, Shanna Telesco

Architecture Thesis Prep

"There are three major factors being studied throughout this exploration: sustainability, housing, and the environment. Each factor can be carefully examined separately under its own terms, but ultimately, the goal of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of their possible integration within the processes of architecture.

My housing project seeks to integrate and improve the existing methods of sustainability that have evolved in architecture by carefully considering renewable resources found in nature, especially the sun, air, and water."

From Peripheral To Central: An Urban Reintegration Of The Elderly Community, Anne Mcgee

Architecture Thesis Prep

"Throughout time, suburban sprawl has nullified the town center through the creation of satellite centers which cater to specific architectural typologies, programs, and demographic groups. The contention of this project is that the lost city center is an integral part of urban life, both architecturally and socially. A center shall be reestablished through combining typologically unrelated programs and urban conditions, while also bringing together otherwise isolated social groups."

Civic Architecture's New Setting In The Post-Industrial City, Donnie Garrity

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis argues that with a changing population and climate of a city comes the need to re-think how civic institutions engage themselves with their people. I contend that in order for civic architecture to regain its prominence in the city it needs to adapt itself to contemporary society and respond to its needs. The way in which this can happen is through program; if civic architecture can change its stigma by adopting new forms of program that respond to what its community needs, then the civic architecture will become more proactive in its community. Through a new way of …

Connective Ecology: Reclaiming The Postindustrial Urban Landscape, Thomas Smith

Architecture Thesis Prep

"This thesis contends that by considering the urban landscape as an evolving, interconnected network, much like an ecosystem, architecture can create flexible, accessible public space as part of a larger scale system which affects as well as responds to specific physical and social forces of the contemporary postindustrial city."