Architecture Commons^™

America’S Finest Housing Crisis: Racialized Housing & Suburban Development, Vicenta Martinez Govea

McNair Summer Research Program

U.S. Government operations between 1940-1950 brought unprecedented direct and indirect employment opportunities to San Diego, exacerbating an already growing housing shortage. To accommodate the thousands of new defense workers, the government produced the largest defense housing project to date in the small neighborhood of Linda Vista. However, this opportunity and largesse was extended primarily to a select group of white working-class families who had access to defense jobs and, consequently, subsidized housing. Military presence in San Diego during World War II shaped the design of homes and exclusively allocated housing, as both shelter and financial instrument, to white working-class families …

Improving The Design Quality Of Housing Buildings, Ehab Nasr Elden Ahmed

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

Design quality is essential to improve the standards of living and is progressively being accepted as critical to successful new housing developments. A better design quality provides attractive and sensitively planned homes that form communities, and assists in creating a healthier and advanced fellowship. As new housing growth in Egypt has missed reaching the universal rules and guidelines of design quality, this research reviews several experiences of foreign offices and governmental programs that deal with amending the design character of housing buildings. Using these Guidelines enables commissioning high performance housing facilities that improve the general standards of a better design …

The Charms Of An American Queen Anne: Rediscovered A-Lá Covid-19, David T. De Celis

Interiority

This moment, the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, has provided an opportunity—sometimes forced via crisis, or via moments of quiet reflection—to consider the inside, interior time and space, in new ways. In America, like other countries, architectural styles have come to us from foreign lands. Numerous domestic structures were influenced by British events from the 1700s–1800s. These styles—these architectures—were transformed by local/regional/national influences and events—events like this current international pandemic—that push the proverbial pause button, and cause us to re-think design. The author, who now resides and works (along with his family) in an 1886 Queen Anne style home, contemplates the various …

Nai-Sig: Natural And Ideal Studies In Geometry, Steven P. Kane

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture through historical evidence seeks to find a straightforward development strategy for designing a place around Phenomenological views. Humans are one moment in time and space, seeking interactions between our senses and our environment. We are able to shape our reality over time, utilizing the characteristics given to us by history and nature. The Geometric Discipline assessed, explores how natural forces seen as vectors are applied in Different rational and irrational numbers. Natural structures and forms are looked at in a sensible fashion to give logic to our environment for design. The divide of design analysis for the hexagon form …

Investigations Of Mycelium As A Low-Carbon Building Material, Kevin Yang

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

With the building industry being responsible for 39% of global carbon emissions, there is an imperative need for low-carbon solutions that can decarbonize the built environment. This thesis aimed to address whether mycelium, the hyphal body of fungi, can be used as a building material. The first part of research involved developing a protocol for creating and testing mycelium samples. Mycelium composites were created by inoculating strains of mycelium onto agricultural substrates such as walnut shells, rice hulls, and a commercially available mix from Ecovative Design LLC. Mechanical compression and tensile tests, as well as thermal conductivity and fire resistance …

"Knotted Tubes" High Rise Residential Tower, Roman Lara Iv

Architectural Engineering

Knotted Tubes is an 800' residential tower designed by a team of two third year architecture students and one graduate architectural engineering student in the two-quarter high-rise design studio partnered with Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill LLP. The report documents it's design origins and narrative evolution throughout the studio's duration, as well as the design process and final iteration of the whole system, focusing on the structural system and tectonic integration.

Lilypaaaad - Structural Design, Katelyn Smith

Architectural Engineering

This report tells the story of the structural design process of the LilyPAAAAD tower. The highlights of this process include precedent studies, 2-D structural analysis studies, hand calculations, and drawings. Precedent studies gave insight into unknown possibilities and helped discover how other engineers achieved their design goals. Projects like Sendai Mediatheque and the HSBC Tower are innovative solutions to unique design criteria. 2-D structural studies revealed how the braced frame and outrigger systems worked. By changing member stiffness and studying the load path, the members that contributed the most to resisting the load could be identified. Hand calculations were essential …

Interdisciplinary Studio Pavilion [Isp] 2019 – Silicalion, Theodore Kenitchi Powers

Construction Management

The subject of this paper is an interdisciplinary project in which teams of two or three architecture, one construction management, and one architectural engineering student were tasked with working together to design a portable wine pavilion for the Wine History Project (WHP). The mission of the WHP is to preserve the history of wine culture and vineyards in San Luis Obispo County. Each team chose a theme of nature upon which to base their project’s design. The author’s team, Silicalion, used the Venus flower basket as inspiration for its design. The resulting design is a series of cells that form …

Brasilidade In Built Form: Tracing National Identity In Modernist Architecture In Brazil, 1922–1968, Angela Starita

Dissertations

The conceptual framework of Brazilian national identity in built form changed drastically between the 1930s and the 1960s, from the Baroque of colonial-era Brazil to the improvised constructions of the poor. The advocates of these architectural imaginaries were not suggesting that these styles be copied. Instead, they used them as a type of hermeneutic for explicating how Modernism should be deployed in order for it to be authentically Brazilian. The transition from the colonial model to an aesthetics of poverty was a result of a confluence of factors. These included the country’s relatively new struggle to define itself away from …

Specific : And Practices In The Urban Periphery, Sam Wesselman

Masters Theses

This body of work attempts to revisit the American suburban condition as a potential site of healing for the United States. Polarized politics have drawn hard lines between different groups of people in the US, typically along urban and rural identities. If the suburb is potentially defined as neither urban nor rural, what can it teach us about bridging cultural gaps that have opened up in America?

The suburb, generalized into a concept I call “peripherality”, can teach practices that are decentered and heterogeneous. Architecture, as a discipline whose role could be defined in this peripheral sense, always acting in-between …

Field Notes On Seeing: An Archive Of Color, Mirrors, And Light, T. Deutch

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates memory through photographs, lights and mirrors.

Acoustic Signatures: Their Study, Representation, And Agency In The Experience Of Architectural Spaces, Nathalie D'Hennezel

Masters Theses

I am proposing to engage sound in the design of space through the representation, study, and creation of acoustic signatures.

Tolerance : Material Conversations On Life & Architecture, Keyan Hansen

Masters Theses

Tolerance is an investigation of the phenomenological aspects and latency of material in architecture through physical manipulation and sensory interaction. It is an investigation into the space between society and material, in which one can find new insight and appreciation for architecture at all scales. The word tolerance holds multiple definitions that wonderfully encapsulate the elements of this work:

• The ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular, the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.

• An allowable amount of variation of a specified quantity, especially in the dimensions of a machine or …

Un-Black Boxing Mitigation Infrastructures : Proposing Alternative Imaginaries For Mono-Functional And Under-Utilized Urban Backstages, Min Jin Kook

Masters Theses

Cities are full of risk-mitigation infrastructure to protect ourselves from floods, erosion and threatening natural disasters. These infrastructures include underground retention tanks, dams and channelized river. They are purposefully hidden away because they are under highways or underground. Most of risk-mitigation infrastructures are under-utilized ninety- five percent of the time. They only serve one function for two weeks every year. They are empty most of the year. Is there an alternative project to consider these risk-mitigation infrastructures while they are completely mono-functional and under-utilized?

Along with my inquiry to utilize risk-mitigation infrastructures, I am critiquing the “blackboxing” and “under-utilization” of …

Living Together : Revisiting The Sro + New Forms Of Collectivity, Elizabeth Parker

Masters Theses

The current affordable housing crisis has reached a boiling point. Home prices are increasing at double the rate of wage gains, and almost half of all renters in the United States are considered costburdened (spending 30% or more of their income on rent). There simply isn’t enough affordable housing available to meet the growing demand and people are being priced out. The housing market, as it stands, is in desperate need of re-examination.

Options that better reflect the demographics of growing cities and promote inclusion are of vital importance for a sustainable future.

This directed research project responds to the …

The Story Of Market House, Patrick Spence

Masters Theses

Our encounters of space are charged with narratives of the past. These narratives help us define who we are, speaking to our values and providing us with our identity.

The Story of Market House is an exploration into the narratives of the 245-year-old Market House of Providence, Rhode Island. Like the additions and alterations to its form, Market House is layered with generations of unique Providence history.

This project aims to remember and tell an unbiased and empathetic narrative, true to the comprehensive histories of this unique place; and from this present an architectural proposal that projects a new chapter …

Two-Gather / Collective Living : Housing And Recreational Facilities In Suburban Mumbai, Rashi Harshil Lalaji

Masters Theses

Collective form of living is a relevant framework to reconsider way of living in contemporary Mumbai. The thesis explores shared communal architecture elements in a specific housing typology called chawls. These elements are analyzed through its programmatic use of space and scale. Understanding the chawls as a module for communal living situated within a larger city context of Mumbai. The thesis further argues that collective forms of living are possible and should be a precedent for developing the present affordable housing typologies in the urban city.

Intimacy In Infrastructure, Andrew Sponseller

Masters Theses

This thesis employs public transit to establish regional reclamations of infrastructure, empowering cultural identities through a vernacular that is realized and matured into the capacity of today. The decaying state of our mass transit infrastructure is due to a decline of community ownership and regional identity represented in their architecture.

“Communities” can be considered cities, neighborhoods, towns, or entire regions of States depending on the scale of the infrastructure. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania clearly exhibits the range of this decline. A city that went from being the center of the Pennsylvania Railroad, now is sprinkled with infrastructural shells of the past. These …

Digital Duck, Zach Schumacher

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to further define “digital” for architecture in the 2020’s, by looking outside the discipline to expand upon the post-digital conversation.

Architecture Of Dreams, Alex Jing-Seng Wong

Masters Theses

Architecture, both of reality and of dreams, is constructed to serve the needs of its world. The environments of dreams are akin to movie sets in that they correspond to a particular story. Recognizing (“remembering” unconscious knowledge) the significance of objects and forms to the story of a dream reveals the essence of these things as perceived by the self. Those understandings not resulting from individual life experiences may be identified as inherited and universal.

Occupying The Public : Humans, Space & Identity, Brittany Knowlton

Masters Theses

My thesis is understanding spectacle and the spatial organization of human society. What is the role of architecture to create performance?

Transform Through Architecture : A Journey Of Discovery At The Providence Place Mall, Haoning Li

Masters Theses

Changes can be subtle, but nevertheless they are ever lasting. When one encounters the other, the experience of the encountering changes us. It not only happens with people but also with spaces. Each space tells a story of it’s own, and when we encounter each space we are changed by it. Each space carries with it different imprint and shows different personalities. Therefore, when we encounter them, we are all listeners and transmitters to carry those stories onwards.

Seeing architecture as fertile and breeding ground to welcome, transmit and exchange ideas, the hidden potentials in common building types and structures …

Change Of Plans: The Subversive Kit In The Planned Community, Hugo Caldwell

Masters Theses

My thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between the prescriptive forces of urban planning with architecture. Through extracting elements and characteristics from an existing context, I implement a subversive system/kit of parts that work together to challenge the ideas behind top-down planning while painting a new picture of Columbia, MD, and planned communities as a whole.

Vacancy Never Vacant, Marina Bibidakis

Masters Theses

Vacant buildings are never truly vacant. They might not be used as originally planned but there are still signs of life inside them. Even in a state of ruination, nature takes over or undocumented humans use them as temporary shelter. Instead of going the route of completely redesigning, I would like to embrace the qualities created from the transition periods in between to categorize and articulate the thesis, the focus will be on industrial buildings. My interest is directed on revitalizing buildings. My interest is originally designed for human occupation or appreciation, but rather for machines. Part of the research …

In-Between Through : Bordering Bodies ; A Spatial Containment, Aroly Enamorado

Masters Theses

Due to the continuous struggle for undocumented migration, the U.S. Mexico border has always been on of the most misunderstood. This thesis tries to form awareness of the number of migrants that are seeking asylum in the United States. Most of these people are coming from Central and South America to experience the American dream, a concept that many do not get to achieve. Understanding the physical and cultural aspects from departing their homeland, arrival at the border, possible deportation, the admission into the country, and starting from zero. Nowadays, the southern border wall has turned into a cancerous divider …

Climate Resilience For A Neighborhood Without Privilege: East Boston, Peter Niels Heller

Masters Theses

This architecture thesis is about climate change and unprivileged populations – sea-level rise in particular, and the neighborhood of East Boston. Across recorded human history, the burdens of climate stress have fallen disproportionately on marginal populations, and today is no different. We don’t have to travel to a South Pacific island to see the risk posed by sea-level rise – that risk can be found right here along the New England coastline. Neighborhoods with a minimum of privilege face challenges to their existence – and those residents want to stay in their homes and preserve their communities just like anybody …

The Official Showreel Companion To Framed Familiarity In 4 Acts : A Defamiliarization Of The Tropes Of Architectural Practice, Through An Expanded Frame Of View And Frame Rate, Julie Kress

Masters Theses

In the spirit of Resier and Umemoto’s Atlas of Novel Tectonics, this work does not propose solutions to a stated problem in the field of architecture. Instead it provokes an entry into subjects that are taken for granted, yet are in dire need of re-framing in a postdigital age of architecture.

This proposal for speculative architectures that are only possible through animation, is antithesis to the format of the printed book. The format of this document assumes that it is not viewed alone but is treated as a behind the scenes companion to the 3 minute showreel “Framed Familiarity in …

Playgrounds : Symbiosis Of Humans, Nature, And Architecture, Hannah Langmuir

Masters Theses

As we have adapted to learn how to best take advantage of our natural resources, we have evolved into the beings we are today. However, once we shifted away from natural environments to embrace new technologies and confine ourselves to our human-built spaces, we began to take a step backwards in our evolutionary timeline, returning to a confined, limited state.

As a result, this project examines play as a solution to connecting humans, nature, and architecture. By integrating these new programs into existing offices in downtown Providence, this process was an exploration in adapting our architecture to provide spaces where …

About Intimacy, Jiamin Lin

Masters Theses

Imagine that there is a person who goes everywhere carrying a chair. From the moment she places her chair down on the ground, this action defines a space around her. The shape of this invisible entity keeps changing. However, I still feel a specific way of “closure”. My thesis started from this moment, about defining intimacy.

Time may be translated into measures of movement and occupancies of space. Film and architecture both mobilize spatial and temporal modes of perception. My exploration of spatial intimacy started from filming the interaction between human being and larger entities. It exploits the filmic capacity …

Wrinkle Architecture : The Public Relaxation Pavilions For Geriatric Community In Cities Of Zhejiang After 1980'S, Yi Lu

Masters Theses

Wrinkles of the city just like the wrinkles of human. They are symbles of aging as well as the carriers of story. They are existing in unexpecting places in the city or in human faces. The wrinkle of the city is the texture of city during its urbanization process. They are small and chopped. They are between temporary and permanent.

This thesis integrates the “wrinkle architectures” of Hangzhou to improve the relaxation space and provide a better environment for in the elderly community of Hangzhou.