Architecture Commons^™

Community-Based Initiatives For Neighborhood And Community Rehabilitation: A Case Study Of The Mission District, San Francisco, California, Francesca Monique Gallardo

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Through the case study of San Francisco, CA’s Mission District, this research project addresses how community-based affordable housing development is operationalized to rehabilitate communities and neighborhoods experiencing effects of gentrification, mass displacement, and cultural dilution. My goals were to identify how the processes of building a sense of community, trust, and cohesion- rehabilitating and critical to affordable housing development efforts in the Mission District? And, how are nonprofit community development organizations engaging with these processes in collaboration with citizen and community partners? The final objective is to provide evidence-based strategies to assist other at-risk minority communities and neighborhoods in the …

Community Wildfire Planning And Design: A Review And Evaluation Of Current Policies And Practices In The Western United States, Carlene C. Klein

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wildland fire is an important and complex issue, particularly in the fire-prone ecosystems of the Western United States. At the same time that the number of catastrophic wildland fires is increasing across the United States, more people are moving in to wildland areas growing the interface between urban and wildlands. Managing wildfire in the Western United States is becoming increasingly more complex and costly as growth and development continues to push the edge of municipalities into undeveloped wildlands. Communities in this wildland urban interface are exacerbating the problem of wildfire in the West.

With more people living in wildfire prone …

Reuse And Regeneration Of Industrial Zones, Rineta Jashari, Zana Prelvukaj, Faton Spahiu

UBT International Conference

The research in this paper deals with the industrial heritage, analysis of industrial buildings built during XX century in Europe and in Kosovo, where as the case study is taken the city of Pristina and industrial revitalized buildings as good examples in Europe.

Industrial heritage is part of the cultural heritage that deals with the buildings and artifacts of the industry that are inherited from the past, and preserved for future generations, as a symbol and urban identity.

In Western European countries, the phenomenon of resurrection and industrial heritage is constantly growing and developing, in Southeast Europe is still a …

Characteristics Of Urban/Architectural Developments In Tirana And Prishtina, During The Last Decade, Binak Beqaj, Armand Vokshi

UBT International Conference

Rapid urbanization as a process of societal transformation and intensive architectural developments in urban areas in Tirana and Prishtina, as capital cities of Countries in transition in sense of achievements for community living there and their urban qualitative life. Considering the planning process and role of different partners towards urban prosperity, the urban developments during the last ten years in both capital cities, based on research done and presented in this paper, using comparison methodology on some contextual bases:

• Policy context
• Physical space context
• Site landscape context

With analyses aiming to explain which are effects of three-dimensional mentioned above “contexts” …

Planning For A Community Wildfire Protection Plan In San Luis Obispo County, Justin Sauder

City and Regional Planning

San Luis Obispo County has a long history of wildfires and can be expected every fire season. Agencies providing fire protection do an excellent job at reducing the risk to loss of life, property, and natural resources in the area, but there is always room for improvement. California in general is experiencing increasingly longer, hotter, and drier fire seasons due to climate change, and San Luis Obispo County is no exception. As the population increases urban development is pushed to the outer limits of city boundaries where it often conflicts with forests in an area called the wildland urban interface. …

How To Get School Children Access To Urban Farming By Activating Vacant Land And Rooftops, Yixin Ren

Masters Theses

The thesis topic is how to get school children access to urban farming by activating vacant land and rooftops.

Phase one focuses on research about the rooftop urban farming systems in New York. As a high density and high land value city, New York is one of the cities with the largest number of rooftop farms in the United States. People use urban rooftop farms as a medium to improve community engagement and improve environmental issues. For phase one, this thesis researched the operation and conditions of existing rooftop farms, and evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of them to figure …

The Impact Of Housing Insecurity On Community Health Outcomes: Exploring Collective Community Solutions And Housing Models In The Western Addition, Jacqueline V. Brown, Jacqueline Victoria Brown

Master's Projects and Capstones

In a city where housing is scarce and prices continue to rise, the lower income residents of the Western Addition are in panic. Historically, the Western Addition/Fillmore is ground zero for Urban Renewal. This community is still bouncing back from the negative effects of the out migration of Black residents, Japanese internment, and rapid gentrification. For twenty years, this part of the city was known as Harlem of the West due to its world-renowned Jazz and Blues composers, and is informally known as “Tha ‘Mo”. San Francisco has set the tone nationally for public, mixed income, and private housing that …

Migrant Archives, Byronaé Lewis

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Migrant Archive is the cultural exploration of what design can be when it intertwines with the depth of ethnographic narratives . No longer allowing stationary boundaries to define where a culture begins and ends, as the space explores the migration patterns between divisions of each neighborhood within a city. The migrant hub works to capture and drop-off memory relics to tell the history of each region. The focus is to understand a culture through design while celebrating the positive and negative aspects within the past that have influenced the current moments.

Healing Architecture: Engagement, Nature, Community, Antonio D. Hinson, Antonio D. Hinson

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

My thesis focused on exploring death as a part of life rather than looking at death as a separate entity. I reframed a Cancer Center that engaged life as part of a community with nature rather than a hospice center that embraced death. In today’s society, healthcare institutions are very isolated and disconnected from the public like gated communities. Most people I know do not like to go to hospitals if they can prevent it. I felt there needed to be a place where people with cancer could go that offered some respite from the conventional healthcare institutions. A place …

Sport In Society: Enhancing The Experience, Sean Fuller

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

As an avid sports fan myself, sport has become a huge cultural event in today's society. It’s evolved from a social interaction aspect to a physical experiential standpoint. When you arrive to a sport stadium, the first thing you notice is the amount of people and the size of the structure. How can that many people fit comfortably in one space? Does the experience become something more than just finding your way to your seat and watching the game? By understanding the breakdown of stadiums and how they perceive experiential architecture, these massive structures can open up to the community …

Creating Better American Cities: A Study Of Circulation And Common Spaces Of Public Housing, Jessica Wood

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will analyze common spaces and circulation spaces in terms of configuration (in relation to each other) and quality (whether they are interior, exterior, or allow space for interaction between residents) in an attempt to determine how stairs, elevators, hallways, and common spaces impact the level of community within a public housing project. Community in this study refers to lasting relationships among residents living in the same housing project. The goal is to answer the question “What role do circulation and common spaces play in the success or failure of a public housing project?” and to determine the best …

A Simulation-Assisted Workflow For Outdoor Thermal Comfort Design In Downtown Syracuse, Pouya Zhand

Architecture Senior Theses

Cities are not just about the buildings and skylines. Cities are also about the space be­tween buildings (the ground in figure-ground). More importantly and fundamentally cities are about people and the life that happens between buildings. Simulation tools can inform the design of attractive public spaces by pro­viding insight about the environmental conditions.

Architectural Intervention: The Resilient Community Center, Matthew A. Baumgartner

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

In the city of Centralia, Illinois, several issues govern the city’s future, all stemming from the same major problem: the economy. To intervene, this community center proposal aims to encourage economic development and growth in the city, assisting small businesses with starting and expanding in the region.

Transcultural Interaction Between Refugees And The Bowling Green, Ky Community, Emily Hamilton

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

In Bowling Green, Kentucky there is an expanding refugee population which is leading to a manifestation of problems in the form of cultural isolation, immigrant alienation and refugees failing the U.S. citizenship test. To combat these issues, a social intervention should occur in the form of a community resource center.

Vincennes Rehabilitation Center, Callahan H. Jordan

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

This project proposes the Vincennes Rehabilitation Center which will provide adequate therapy for people with alcohol and substance abuse in Vincennes, Indiana. Each person handles recovering from an addiction differently. As such, this facility will include both active and passive rehabilitation techniques. Support by counselors and community volunteers helps promote a socially encouraging environment, and a drug and alcohol free future.

Real Estate: Urban Renewal At Shibati Community, Chongqing, Wenxin Zeng

Architecture Thesis Prep

The project is a “urban renewal” project at Shibati Community in Chongqing, China. The title “Real Estate” suggested that the land never become “real” until there are activities, communications happened between the occupants. The government did several renovation project in Chongqing, either totally destroy the entire site and build a copy on the site by saying we are preserving the history, or solely refurnished the façade of the houses but leave the inside of the house at a rough condition. The project is a critique of what the Chinese government and other official agencies in China have tended to respond …

It's Not Easy Being Whole | Reevaluating The Relationship Of Part Whole In Pursuit Of A New High-Rise Vernacular, Josh Bransky

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has the power to structure societal relationships. Specifically, architecture's form can bring the balanced relationship between community and individual identity, as exhibited in vernacular single-family homes, to the housing tower. This thesis plans to achieve such a social orchestration through a nuanced understanding of formal part-to-whole relationships, or "differentiated" parts within the whole, exhibited in a 300' housing tower in Seattle, WA.

By carefully balancing the relation, material, scale, and form of each part, this project will achieve this difficult whole (of differentiated parts). Mining this middle ground will produce a housing tower in Seattle, which actively balances the …

Absorbency In Tidal Resiliency | The Thickened Pier, Shauna Strubinger

Architecture Senior Theses

The inevitable truth of climate change has placed coastal cities at great risk. Past natural disasters in the United States such as Hurricane Sandy and Katrina, displaced many people because these communities’ only protection was their failed infrastructure.1 Although hard and soft infrastructure strategies have addressed the rising sea level, architecture at the building scale creates static surfaces and divisions that are slow to adapt to flooding and leave little to no room for the ambiguity of tidal flooding and storm surge. Though numerous areas are at risk of sea level rise across the globe, the Chesapeake Bay area is …

Community Renewable Energy: The Potential For Energy Generation On Public Land In Cedar City, Utah, Betsy Byrne

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

As the world's population rises and becomes increasingly more urbanized, there is a greater demand on our resources. Current energy production practices are based on resources with finite supplies and are associated with environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas and particulate emissions, water resource use, and resource extraction. In contrast, renewable energy production is based on free, continually replenished sources with relatively few environmental impacts. Distributed renewable energy generation involves producing energy close to the point of consumption. The distributed generation model increases energy autonomy at the local level.

Distributed renewable energy generation is fairly common at point of use. …

Continuation Of A Life Worth Living: Empathetic Design For The Alzheimer’S Community, Leslie Hulbert

Architecture Theses and Projects

This thesis’ mission is to create a comfortable environment for those suffering with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The institutional environments of the past are not sufficient for such individuals and their families. A community atmosphere is what they need; an entire complex just for them. The victims of this terrible memory defeating disease just want to go home. For many, this is not possible, therefore they should be given an environment that reminds them of home. They should have their own space that is customizable and warm. They should also be free to wander at their leisure. Their freedom should not …

Best Practices In Community-Based Water Projects, Deborah Anyaibe

Architecture and Planning ETDs

International potable water projects are becoming more common in underdeveloped countries. The necessity of getting clean drinking water to remote areas, or areas with limited access to water is becoming more desperate. This desperation is causing more people to seek to give aid to those in need but often times this comes with a price to the community. This price comes in the form of infrastructure that is unsustainable, building materials left behind instead of disposed of properly, and systems that require upkeep without proper training, as well as many other cultural and economic negative impacts. Many times aid organizations …

Creating Urban Sense Of Community Through Façades, Binak Beqaj, Blerta Vula Rizvanolli, Gent Hasimja

UBT International Conference

Urbanization is a continuous process, affected with different elements in different development periods. Knowing that urbanization is a multi-sectorial process oriented to different activities with the aim of harmonizing urban –architectural landscape with natural landscape to achieve as much as possible urban sense of community living there (in behavior or sociological aspect). Considering that role of different buildings all over urban area not only through their interior view functions-destinations but also through their exterior view architectural form-façades is unsubstituted; this research is trying to give answer on question: At what level façades can create urban sense of community living in …

Constructing Community: An Exhibition Of The Voices Of Goodloetown, Patrick Hobgood

Kaleidoscope

This project presents four distinct voices of a Lexington community through the physical manifestation of an exhibition. The voices, consisting of maps, scholars, the press, and local residents, will be extracted and displayed as separate entities. It will be the role of the audience to put the abstracted pieces back together and to construct Goodloetown as a community. The humanities moves forward from feelings that are universally human and understands their meaning through investigation expressed through the arts. By specifically addressing two areas of social activity within Goodloe, the church and the garage, the project documents a fraction of the …

Living On The Edge: Landform Resilience, Pt. 1, Lauren Festa

Architecture Senior Theses

The program of a resilience center on the site serves as a way to engage the community with the threat of rising sea levels through education and office facilities, as well as providing a location to double as an emergency evacuation center. The community of East Boston is particularly vulnerable due to its identity as a low income neighborhood. An MBTA ferry terminal supplements the emergency evacuation center, providing an added source of public transit. A square, and a recreation building along the city of Boston's Harborwalk creates an opportunity for the public to engage with the waterfront park.

Rethinking The Food Narrative, Pt. 2, Danielle Foisy, Taskina Tareen

Architecture Senior Theses

If there is anything to be learnt from developed cities around the world, it is that the private sector will continue to play an increasingly important role in the urban food supply of emerging cities. In the context of Southern Africa, where the informal sector continues to serve a large percentage of the urban poor population, but is losing power due to the advent of modern agribusinesses, it becomes necessary to derive methods to integrate small-scale vendors into formal food marketing systems through the respatializing of logistical spaces of food aggregation and distribution in the city. Through a consolidation of …

Modernization Of Death Spaces: Solution To The Problem Of Lacking Death Space In Hong Kong, Simon Tse

Architecture Senior Theses

Digital media opens up a new dynamic in maintaining and recalling memories. It requires digital ancestral halls to provide spaces for the data to be stored, and for people to commemorate deceased people in the digital age. Using existing pedestrian bridges, these halls will once again be placed in the very center of the community. This thesis proposes the fashioning of a new culture of remembrance of those who have passed away. People will be able to visit casually as a daily routine. The proposed digital death spaces merge the traditional idea of ancestral halls with digital information. The Infusion …

Living On The Edge: Landform Resilience, Lauren Festa

Architecture Senior Theses

The program of a resilience center on the site serves as a way to engage the community with the threat of rising sea levels through education and office facilities, as well as providing a location to double as an emergency evacuation center. The community of East Boston is particularly vulnerable due to its identity as a low income neighborhood. An MBTA ferry terminal supplements the emergency evacuation center, providing an added source of public transit. A square, and a recreation building along the city of Boston's Harborwalk creates an opportunity for the public to engage with the waterfront park.

Cartography Of Power: The 47th State's Aversion To Graffiti Art, Priscila Poliana

Architecture and Planning ETDs

While unauthorized graffiti has been historically associated with crime, vandalism, and property damage, the visual incursions of corporate advertisers on urban landscapes have been mostly exempt from criminal characterization– by purchasing private and public spaces for cash, upfront. The persistent transfer of capital to the private sector, and by extension commercialization of public spaces and services, invades individual privacy by intensifying exposure to relentless, unsolicited advertisement. Guerrilla Art thus emerges as a force challenging the favoritism of consumer culture vis-à -vis the agency of ordinary citizens to utilize the urban fabric as a medium for expression and public discourse. Every …

Creating Place For A Placeless Generation, Laura Wilson

Theses and Dissertations

Making up one quarter of the current United States population, some 80 million Generation Y-ers are changing the ways in which we live, work and play. Dubbed “Millennials” this population is comprised of those individuals born between 1980 and 2000. This generation is the first to have been raised with cell phones, the internet, and reality television. The “Selfie” or “Me Generation” is snubbed for narcissism and an instant gratification attitude. Yet on the whole Millennials have progressive values, are well educated, are conscious of their health and are optimistic about the future despite coming of age during the Great …

Music And Movement, Yvonne M. Lefrancois

Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this project is to provide a musical hub for the learning, practice, and performance of music for students ages 10-18 in order to cultivate trust and education in the community. This project examines the role music plays as a vital part of our communities and city resources. The communities we live in should not only supply opportunities for the music but support the music. Support of the music can allow cultural learning in the community and create a new pattern of education between parent and child. Just as most school systems support the learning of math and …