Architecture Commons^™

Shapes Of Gray: Concepts In Concrete, Ford Bostwick

Architecture Senior Theses

Concrete is plastic and highly manipulatable. Its characteristics and the forms it takes are vastly diverse and its history as a building material is broken and nonlinear. By charting the trajectory of its manifestations and uses over time, as well as the trajectories of constituent things (chairs, pneumatic structures, blocks, and relevant artwork), I’ve reached an understanding of what some possible valuable futures for concrete might look like. I have proposed three of these possible futures in doodle form. The doodles appear later in this book.

Fixing The Forum: Re-Inventing The Typology That Once Was, Jonathan Bruno

Architecture Senior Theses

With the loss of the public forum, a sense of society, interaction among people, and a public place for everyone has vanished. With that in mind however, the old programmatic planning of the public forum is no longer adequate. I am proposing for the creation of a new typology, a contemporary forum driven by our consumerist culture.

Dead Space, Aimee Michele Hultquist

Architecture Senior Theses

Deadspace might seem like it would refer to a sequestered location, but it is more of an ephemeral idea. The universality of death as a condition of life means that deadspace exists across all cultures and even transcends human creation. Deadspaces can be for no one and for everyone, or they can be open only to particular constituencies. A cemetery may be open to everyone, or it may be accessible only to those who practice a certain faith; it may even be a place so feared that no one is to be there except for the dead. A nuclear contamination …

The Tectonics Of Turning The Corner: A New City Hall For Boston, Massachusetts, Hillary Barlow

Architecture Senior Theses

The corner is a unique architectural condition that serves as a rhetorical device through its role in the configuration of space. How architects "turn the corner" or the "problem" of the corner has long been rooted in architectural discourse however as Eisenman notes, "corners are elusive and thus rarely thematized in architecture. For example, when Rosalind Krauss said that architecture will always have four walls-that is, an enclosure-she never said that architecture has corners, either external or internal." The corner specifically can produce multiple layers of meaning since the corner can define form either as a series of edges, surfaces …

Political Dialogue: Spatial Opportunities Within The Lima Food System, Santiago Dammert

Architecture Senior Theses

"I propose to inteverne this otherwise spread out and disconnected environment and insert programmatic interfaces that result in interactions between the different users to be located there, without compromising the market’s need for efficient transactions. An other important factor is time. This will be done by the formulation of two different strategies that deal with different scales. On a larger scale, zoning is to be redefined, concentrating administrative, leisure and event program relevant to the 3 clients so as to spatially unify already built structures. On a smaller scale, this program acts as a creator of visual and spatial connections …

Specifying Spectacle: Architectural Representation & Image-Oriented Society, Patrick Ruggiero

Architecture Senior Theses

"The project will critique current modes of operation by a linear problem-solving design process. By acting through representation as both a vehicle for developing design and as a means of communicating and experiencing it, the project will engage the design of a tactile deployment of architecture and effective means of communicating its intent. The architecture will function in the way that the visual arts do in terms of their scale and engagement in cultural issues. Research into tangible artifacts of the site will yield a combination of image, drawing and model forms of representation. Through this analysis, a strategy of …

Experiential, Anticipatory, Unreal: This Fairy-Tale Does Not Have A Happy Ending., Laya Pattana

Architecture Senior Theses

"The methodology will be tested in the cinema type because of its promise of escapist hyperreality. It is spatial, highly personal and privatized, and firmly anti-architecture. Because the film is self-contained, its space is irrelevant. The representation of experience can be reclaimed as a design strategy to activate the movie theatre typology--a typology that architecture has long since lost."

Essen(Ce)Tially Authentic: Contemporary Design Within A Historical Context And The Parameters Of The “Preserved”, Danielle Ciccone

Architecture Senior Theses

Contemporary architecture needs to solidify its role amongst the pressures of preservation. It is crucial to build reflective of our time, even within a historical area. Though the past should be appreciated, it cannot be revived. Architectural design should exhibit a successive evolution instead of white washing its progression. The essence of a place must be interpreted, distilling and capturing its characteristics while establishing a more authentic architecture of the present. Identity endures not in appearance but with the culture, tradition, technology and people of a particular time.

Liquid Borders: (Re)Claiming The Coast Through Resilient Urbanism, Natasha Valldejuly

Architecture Senior Theses

Infrastructure, architecture, and landscape have been commonly understood as three different entities within the urban fabric. Nevertheless, climatic uncertainties such as rising sea levels have proven that the division between these systems needs to be re-thought. How can this boundary be transformed into a more flexible urban development in which the water is seen as a habitat rather than a threat? The project I am proposing will use the Caño Martin Peña in San Juan, Puerto Rico as a testing ground to re-think how these systems can come together to form a more holistic architecture of resilience. By building for …

Housing Indeterminacy: Responsive Design For Diverse And Changing Households, Mark Sousa

Architecture Senior Theses

This project hopes to create a new outlook on the future of housing design. Ray Forrest wrote, “The pace of demographic change need not be that dynamic to outpace the capacity of markets or states to provide appropriate dwellings in appropriate locations. […] Dwelling placement or adaptation is always likely to lag.” The preceding statement reflects the belief that housing is static and rigid, and that dwelling replacement or major structural adaptation is necessary to accommodate a continually evolving population. On the contrary, responsive housing can release significant pressure on housing systems by anticipating change and providing a lower cost …

Reconsidering The User, Nathan M. Aleskovsky

Architecture Senior Theses

My thesis, Reconsidering The User, is a proposal for a digital application that unites the architect and the occupant in the design process of a home by transforming how design criteria are obtained and controlled.

Within the scope of the detached single-family house, my thesis argues that a design process that engages the expertise of both the architect and the occupant has the potential to create a design solution that is more accurately tailored to the preferences of the occupant. This is possible through reconfiguring the information phase of architectural design. Given my background and current entrepreneurial pursuit, best way …

Stigma For Regeneration: A Hub For City Efficiency And Saturation, Tanner Halkyard

Architecture Senior Theses

In many cases today, the train station as a connection point between the commute and the stationary mode of living or working, is a congestion point of personal and community modes of traffic resulting in an underthought chance for saturated development.

Incorporation of a Chicago high-speed rail station will pioneer new solutions to congestion and economic growth within this particular sub-standard city, drawing on landscape traditions while incorporating water, energy and pedestrian networks to connect the futuristic ideals to compound issues. It will alleviate housing shortages and provide a platform for reinstallment of impoverished families into the climing economic core.

Bookspace: Re-Evaluating How Books Occupy The City, Rhett C. Bruno

Architecture Senior Theses

I contend that a new space for books is required in the city. One which blurs the boundary between public and private - between seclusion and exposure. This space, or “Bookscape,” will integrate those who read books with those who craft him, offering a new level of interaction that benefits all parties involved.

Revitalizing Waterfront: The Sinking City, Clifford Shih

Architecture Senior Theses

The existing waterfront condition presents a separation between the water and urban. I propose this separation between the water and urban is an interacted space of urban and water. Waterfront constructed in this way protects the city from floating, yet a solution of creating a public space, ports, and water filtration facility will blend the separated condition. Thus, architecture exemplifies a vehicle to constitute physical and visual connection for dichotomy edge created by the waterfront in a rapid stratified urbanization and industrialization.

A Duck But Not An Animal, Trevor Manders

Architecture Senior Theses

Program and scale are destabilized. Site is emptied of meaning. The ultimate way in which these outrageous forms mean something is through their iconography. The surprising legibility of the frat house in the shape of a snowflake crystal, the enormous familiarity of an office tower in the form of an earbud, how at home we feel in front of a bungalow sculpted like a bacterium, etc., and then it will make sense why on yelp.com the Long Island Duckling has a 4.5 star review.

(Im)Permanent Landform Built: The Edge Between "Natural" And Man-Made, Katharina Hoerath

Architecture Senior Theses

"I believe that the paramount interconnectedness between architecture and site should become apparent when examining the theoretical constructions, physical, metaphysical, and sensual dimensions. Having chosen the sites at two different threshold of erosion (Matterhorn and Holderness Coast), I claim that the gray zone between “natural” and man made needs to be addressed in an intriguing way to create an aesthetic form responding to landform change over time. This thesis offers an opportunity to contextualize past events and to provoke and imagine something new. Architecture as the permanent, solid element determines the edge towards the solidifying landform. Moreover, this topic provides …

Reconstructing Diplomacy, Stefan Kaiser

Architecture Senior Theses

Contemporary diplomatic functions have outgrown the typological embassy building. The barricaded sidewalks and streets are evidence that additional space is required to conduct business safely. Retrofitted embassies in London, Paris, and Berlin expand their security perimeter into the urban condition to maintain the architectural icon of diplomacy. New embassies should utilize the contested zone between the building and the city instead of relocating in rural neighborhoods. It is the purpose of this thesis to enable functional and symbolic diplomatic exchange at the location of intersecting sovereignty.

Re-Thinking The Green Belt: Sustainability And Development In Growing Cities, Maria Saavedra

Architecture Senior Theses

One of the major goals of this research is to study the relationship between nature and technology as urban generators. I agree with Lisa Tilder and Beth Bostein, who state that instead of using architectural technology to return nature to some impossible, pre-human pristine state, we should consider fully employing the power of architecture to produce new forms of nature. Instead of thinking about the River’s edge as a natural and physical barrier between the water and the city, we should consider it as an opportunity to challenge the image of nature, exploring how it limits or furthers our social …

Spatial Entrepreneurship: Rethinking The Environmental Conditions Of The Start-Up Business Model, Carson Davis

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis proposes a more dynamic relationship between the process of refining and testing a start-up business model and the spaces in which this process takes place. A short-term live/work facility that provides a support structure during the initial development of these companies will reduce risk for both investors and entrepreneurs. This is when young start-ups are in need of both physical resources, in the form of workspaces and temporary lodging, as well as intellectual resources in the way of business advice and mentorship. Venture Capitalists, who already fund this process, should provide these resources, thus leaving more money to …

The Mall Reincarnate: Putting Faith In A Failed Mall, Barbara Burke

Architecture Senior Theses

I propose that there is a symbiotic way of addressing the aforementioned issues. Using the architecture of a discontinued shopping mall to agglomerate religious houses of worship will establish the opportunity or an environment that promotes religious pluralism, while repurposing infrastructural scar tissue. While seemingly disparate, the mall and the house of worship afford similar opportunities. First, they bring together like-minded people, fostering a sense of community. Second, they are both quasi-public facilities (privately-owned but publicly accessible). They are targeted to a specific demographic and require behavioral conduct. Both are designed to promote an atmosphere conducive to their activity, and …

Simultaneous City, Robert George Little

Architecture Senior Theses

"The description of something happening, often of significance, can be understood by the word ‘event.’ I am not interested in the notion of a large gathering with cocktails and food on toothpicks; instead the kind of event that shapes the city. Since the beginning of man’s conscious creation of the built environment, there has been a combative relationship between the human and physical world. “There is no architecture without action, no architecture without events, no architecture without program. By extension, there is no architecture without violence.” Bernard Tschumi discusses notions of event in his essay “Violence of Architecture.” He describes …

En[Crypted]: A Memorial Archive For The Preservation And Sanctification Of Digital Remains., William Stattman

Architecture Senior Theses

Humans no longer leave behind solely physical remains. We accrue countless digital files, photos, etc. that are part of our lives and reveal who we are. We have well established architectural typologies for physical living, spaces for viewings and funerals [the threshold] and typologies for storing and curating physical remains. There is a pragmatic "architecture" for the living digital in the form of vast server warehouses, which additionally house digital artifacts from deceased users out of necessity as there has yet to be an established typology for their permanent archiving. There is also no respectful digital equivalent to the funeral …

A Nation In Its Prime: A Pentadic Study Of Walt Disney World's Main Street, U.S.A., Casey Guise

Masters Theses

The purpose of this paper is to consider the entrance to Walt Disney World, Main Street, U.S.A., as a rhetorical text and apply Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad. Background is provided on rhetorical theory and The Disney Company. Meanings are derived from messages interpreted using semiotics and symbolic interaction within the location. The significance of Main Street, U.S.A., as a replica of historic architecture and an illustration of revival architecture in creating emotive messages is discussed. Further discussion includes the implications of this study on corporations and the field of rhetorical studies in addition to suggestions for further research.

Dpac 2013: Dixon Learning Center, William S. Perkins, Chris Wilson, Mark Childs

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

The University of New Mexico's Design and Planning Assistance Center (DPAC) was engaged to investigate the site of the Embudo Valley Library and explore alternative designs for its development. In an eight-week planning and design effort the architecture and landscape architecture student teams embraced the challenge and devised five distinct possible visions for the site and its buildings.

Reviving Mainstreet 2012: Doña Ana + Las Cruces Communitites, Michaele Pride, Susan Frye, John Barney, Mark Childs, Claudia Isaac, Chris Wilson

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

This year (2012), the Studio returned to two previous DPAC communities--Doña Ana Village and downtown Las Cruces. Addressing these communities concurrently this time presented the opportunity to consider how they are connected and the context they share. In cooperation with the New Mexico Mainstreet Program and local community organizations, DPAC students held conversations with local stakeholders, studied the communities and their larger context (in person and through secondary sources) to identify assets and challenges, and uncover strategies that build upon the region's history and existing strengths, preserve and restore valuable ecologies, make the most of scarce resources (water), and make …

Carlsbad Downtown Revitalization, Anne Godfrey, Jose Zelaya

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

It was a great opportunity for the students and faculty of the Design Planning and Assistance Center (DPAC) of the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning to work with the Carlsbad community. We enjoyed hearing your stories and gaining inspiration from your visions for the downtown. Our revitalization efforts for the downtown reflect your desires to connect the river to the downtown, make a pedestrian friendly commercial district and capitalize on the cultural assets of Carlsbad all in hopes of reinvigorating street life in downtown Carlsbad.

Raton Revamp, Efthimios Maniatis, Judith Wong, Anne Godfrey, Mark Childs, David Henkel

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

In conjunction with MainStreet USA, The University of New Mexico Design Planning and Assistance Center (DPAC) focused its collective and individual design efforts on Raton's historic main streets for the spring 2007 semester. Key among the studio's design objectives were attracting visitors off of Interstate 25 and State Highway 64, promoting walkability and vitality within the downtown core, connecting the east and west side of the railroad tracks, and highlighting the recreational opportunities that abound in the area.

Socorro Downtown Revitalization, Chris Wilson, Mark Childs

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

Over a seven-week period, 15 students in DPAC contemplated urban design issues of Socorro in the area of the Plaza and on Manzanares Street to the railroad depot. The students developed design suggestions that sought to celebrate Socorro's civic identity and enhance tourism revenue simultaneously.

South Carlisle Neighborhood Community Planning Concepts, Joe Brawley, Mark Childs, Paul Lusk, George Radnovich, Chris Wilson

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

This document resulted from a collaboration between the City of Albuquerque, Family and Community Services Department, and the Design Planning Assistance Center of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of New Mexico. The purpose of this study was to generate a set of strategies for potential urban improvements in the South Carlisle neighborhood (herein referred to as the Carlisle Village neighborhood). It is intended that the results of this study may initiate discussion on the future of the neighborhood within the community and within public agencies and departments of the City of Albuquerque. The ideas presented here …

Los Lunas Transit Center: An Urban Design Proposal, Mark C. Childs, Jose Zelaya

Design and Planning Assistance Center - Projects

A revitalization plan for Los Lunas, NM emphasizing transit-oriented design.