Architecture Commons^™

Reclaiming Identity Through Spectacle, Miguel Antonio Felices

Architecture Senior Theses

"The space of cultural spectacle can lead to a re-definiteion of identity in Condado through architectural implications that capitalize rather than 'sole' its state of ambivalence. For the foreigner who seeks the exotic and the denizen who seeks the authentic, the cultural spectacle can become a point of convergence.

Architecture has the capacity to mould an ambiguous cultural identity by facilitating and sustaining the cultural expressions of a people though a space of spectacle."

Fragmented City: The Intersection Of Surrealism And Urban Reality, Lauren Hackett

Architecture Senior Theses

"The concept of the experience becomes relevant in the surrealist view of the city. It is one that has been embraced by the situationists in their concept of the derive. The psychological understanding of urban space can supersede the retinal understanding of rationalized space. The search for truth within the city is what guides a civilization toward absolutism.

In treating the city as a field for discovert and the formulation of ideaas and pure thought, urban space enters a realm of surreality."

Perartisan Intervention: Place Syntax As Socio-Urban Catalyst, Fahir Burak Unel

Architecture Senior Theses

"Culturally-informed spatial network analysis, achieved through the joint use Hillerian Space Syntax Theory and traditional understandings of place-making in architecture, can enable and facilitate the creation of effective, site-specific social condensers that can ultimately act as a solution to Galata-Pera's post-20th-century problem of community attrition caused by the erosion of traditional commercial culture that historically defined Istanbulite social identity."

Deregulatory Space: A Project To Revitalize Mccarren Pool, Thomas Reeves

Architecture Senior Theses

"By embracing the deregulatory, informal, and indeterminate production of space, architecture may operate as framework for the inhabitation of public space that both enables and demands public agency. As such, the architecture operates to assist rather than prescribe, relying on the energy of the general public to construct a more dynamic and social-viable public space: one that is constantly in flux."

Digital-[Pre]Fabrication, Ryan Noone

Architecture Senior Theses

"Architecture holds the capacity to reflect time. Inregards to pre-fabricated housing, digital fabrication processes demonstrate an advancement from our past, Modernist pre-fabricated predecessors by successfully wedding function, performance, and construct ability (manufacturing processes). The implementation of a digitally prefabricated housing typology informed by the past and utilizing the technologies of the present will create a responsible housing typology, one which is truly a reflection of our time."

Democracy In The Post Soviet Landscape, George Dolidze

Architecture Senior Theses

"The citizens of Georgia have been empowered with new opportunities to participate in their own governance through fair elections and the right to hold political demonstrations. I contend that the production of a new type of urban 'theater' can invoke a new political activity. This version of place making requires the ability to 'assemble' at a local and national scale for social and political expression. The program must absorb traditional customs as well as provide the 'playing field for new opportunities to voice political goals."

Leaving A Smaller Footprint: Optimizing Passive Systems For Single Family Attached Housing, David J. Silver

Architecture Senior Theses

"Creating the best internal comfort conditions for the resident, while using little to zero non-renewable energy, is ideal in creating a sustainable, innovative, and contemporary structure that embraces both a flexible and efficient lifestyle and, at the same time, addresses important energy issues that will be a solid foundation for a new modern world."

Secretive Occupation Along The Us Mexican Border, Zach Kuehn

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Surface Culture: A Museum Of Contemporary Persian Art For Los Angeles, Nicholas Williams

Architecture Senior Theses

"Primacy of surface and script as screen and texture are, along with visual distortion and flattening, embedded in the Persian artistic tradition. To build upson these concepts and conditions through the medium of a museum of contemporary Persian art will allow for a synthesis of the conditions produced b the acquisition of the strip with a visual manifestation of the compositional tendencies of Persian art, The result of this synthesis is an institution that furthers the central role that Westwood Boulevard plays for the local Persian community."

Euro, Ryan A. Doyle

Architecture Senior Theses

"How does Europe represent its idealized form as a whole... and is flexible enough to represent its changing interests? By organizing these functions through their identities, a legibile yet changing whole emerges.

How does Europe represent its idealized form as a whole... that distinguishes itself within its urban position, and is flexible enough to represent ies changing interests? By shaping its identifiable image into a clear form, a legible yet changing whole emerges."

How does Europe represent its idealized form as a whole... that participates in the public realm, awhile maintaining the identities of its parts? By conforming its idealized …

Lattice Architecture, Elizabeth M. Quick

Architecture Senior Theses

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The pervasive proliferation of complex tracking systems such as GPS and simulation gaming environments such as Full Spectrum Warrior are transforming the built environment into an immersive 1:1 map where all flows and transactions are measured, monitored, and tracked. The gap between map and real experience disappears resulting in an immersive map. The spatial implications of this real time 1:1 immersive map creates an opportunity for architecture itself to monitor, track, and measure flows and transactions. This tracking and simulation agenda plays out specifically in the design of a surface that integrates military training, military artifacts, and civilian recreation …

Media-Flex, Gerard Deromanis Jr.

Architecture Senior Theses

"The objective of this thesis is to look into and explore the effects of rigid programming on design. Included in this research is an in depth look into the process of demolition from the motives for destroying a preexisting building to the participation of all parties involved."

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."

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."

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.

Village Methodology For Grandfamily Housing, Meghan O'Reilly

Architecture Senior Theses

"The study, analysis, and use of a village as a model for housing, specifically grandfamilies housing, allows the opportunities to see the bridge between community spaces in a village, a community spaces in housing. Villages operating as a community through the creation of spaces [such as: town squares, meeting halls, churches, stores, schools, and places of worship] can be used as an architectural model for how in the housing typology of grand families, the same spaces [such as: gathering halls, gardens, communal kitchens, counseling centers, after school care, and spiritual spaces] can allow the community to operate as an analogous …

33.3% - Creative Entrepreneurship In Buffalo, Ny, Bruce Molino

Architecture Senior Theses

"This work has emerged out of an interest in the idea of the resilient city. It is an experiement intended to test ideas and suggest ways in which to reconsider architecture within a directed urbanism. Directional urbanism is a term that I use to describe how insertions can redirect or reinvent the trajectory of a city. This thesis privileges resiliency as the objective of that new trajectory; not as a moment of realization, but rather a continually changing adaptive process that allows cities to act, and react, in a constructive way."

Mps Movement Public Space, Matthew R. Kanewske

Architecture Senior Theses

"Portland provides an opportunity to examine the way this can relate to formal construction because cities' primary sites of public spaces will be integrated with the flows of movement, but this creates a dichotomy between the nature of site as a singular entity and the requirements of multiplicity required by a system. In this lies an opportunity for architectural invention of new forms of communicative public space."

Building Urban Texture, Fernando Pabon-Rico

Architecture Senior Theses

"This investigation is based on the contention that a city is made up of an urban construct where certain elements are continuous in their presence. This continuity provides legibility to an urban environment. The fact that elements or parts are an integral part of the legibility of the city fosters the reading of the city as a function of their integration. The role or place of architecture therefore lies on the formation of the city through its parts."

Dwelling In The Stability Of Change: Creating Identity Through The Repetition Of Site Specificity For The Foster Care System, Emily A. Wiles

Architecture Senior Theses

"This thesis contends that an integration of the associations that modernity and dwelling have with foster care will enable place identification in the deinstitutionalized system. When the two work in conjunction with each other, opportunities for dwelling will be created within, between, and around the framework of the modern grid."

Activating The Void: Programmed Pedestrian Infrastructure In Syracuse, Ny, Karissa Kizer

Architecture Senior Theses

"To deal with the abundance of vehicles, much of the land immediately surrounding highways is occupied by parking facilities. These facilities, however, are neither spatially nor economically beneficial to the site, and are considered voids as they lack any meaningful use or activity. The scales of highways and pedestrians must be reconciled and the voids activated in order for cities to continue to survive with the ever-increasing presence of transportation infrastructure."

Points Of Control: Complexity And Crisis In Animated Architecture, Andrew J. Lynn

Architecture Senior Theses

"The 'traditional' use of computers in architectural design has focused on CAD as a productivity tool for design and construction drawings and 3D visualization as a method of presenting designs to clients and the public. In other words, the computer as a tool for creating representation. However, in the last decade, a movement has emerged that uses computation as a medium for design."

Suburban Adaptability: Urban Context, Joshua Seidner

Architecture Senior Theses

The urban environment historically fosters anonymity among urbanites denying individual expression, user flexibility, and family adaptability. The result is the draw to the suburban house model which inherently concedes ones' expression of individual identity. The urban landscape has historically formed with the core and periphery. Over the last sixty years the periphery has harbored the creation of suburbia. Traditionally, the urban landscape has, and continues to suppress individualism and flexibility to create uniformity and homogeneity[...] Arguably by default, suburbia creates a basic template which the end-user can customize. On the contrary, the urban environment does not foster the ability to …

Obstruction And Transcendence: Trespassing On The Border, Adam Sheraden

Architecture Senior Theses

"The border is an element of both spatial obstruction and cultural transcendence. I propose that there should be a physical manifestation of this cultural transcendence as there is a border fence to register the material obstruction that the border fence produces. The border, as a political and spatial construction, allows for the formation of separate cultural distinctions and therefore is as much a defining element in the city as other social institutions. The border is the final punctuation mark on this arid landscape."

Boundaries And Thresholds, Kathleen C. Czerw

Architecture Senior Theses

"The American city is an agglomeration of definitive districts of program and groups of residents, and it is these bounded urban groupings that allow the city to maintain its diversity districts, allowing them to maintain individual identities, and specifically placed thresholds become spaces where the boundaries are broken and two districts momentarily come together. Often times these thresholds are defined by spatial voids within the urban fabric, and through the use of engaging architecture the threshold can become a place of social exchange and mutual cognizance.

The site is a lot that runs parallel to Genesee River and Exchange Street …

Unearthing Threshold, Maggie L. Cookman

Architecture Senior Theses

In addition to responding to its immediate physical context, architectural form has the capacity to reveal and celebrate history, promoting an understanding of the relationship of site and region to historic conditions no longer in their original form. Within the built environment, architecture has an inherent ability to influence the experience and perception of historical relationships. This can be achieved through prescribed interactions with the constructed form, beginning before one enters the building, and continuing through the program. The exterior begins to engage the visitor through both site and facade. The building itself, as well as its response to physical …

Place And Collective Living, Madoka Yuasa

Architecture Senior Theses

"Japanese contemporary urban houses have list their traditional relationships to nature, to seasons, and to natural landscapes. And the urban landscape with respect to architecture in Tokyo is chaos. This situation is due to the rapid economic growth they followed in the process of modernization after WWII. In this project, I would like to propose a housing which reconnects people to their traditional cultural roots through intensifying sensorial experience within contemporary urbanity."

Urbanisms With Japanese Culture And Its Living Style, Madoka Yuasa

Architecture Senior Theses

"The current urban Japanese houses have lost its richness closely related to its nature, landscapes, and seasonal events which their traditional architectural spaces had an important role as a part of their lives. This situation is due to rapid economic grows they followed in the process of modernization after the WWII, and the urban situation with respect to architecture in their city is complex. In this project, I would like to propose a housing system that has their traditional design aspects to incorporate five senses with nature and also complex contemporary urban situation to enhance their livings."