Architecture Commons^™

Exploring Virtual Reality As An Approach To Resurrect Destroyed Historical Buildings - An Approach To Revive The Destroyed “Egg Building” Through Vr, Aya Chehab, Bilal Nakhal

Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ)

An important part of a city, that gives it a sense of community and character, is its history. One way of acknowledging this heritage is by preserving historic building and structures. Old buildings are witnesses to the aesthetic and cultural history of a city, helping to give people a sense of place and connection to the past. Unfortunately, despite their importance within the city, historical buildings are most of the time subject to demolition and to be replaced- leaving behind stories told and untold of what use to be. The paper, therefore, aims to explore the capability of the metaverse, …

Da Ste Zhivi I Zdravi: May You Be Alive And Well An Exploration Into Play, Ruination, And Preservation, Levana Elena Rashba

Senior Projects Spring 2023

My thesis explores unconventional architectural representation and themes through the lens of memory and play. I am drawn to the everyday, less heroic moments of architecture and to the celebration of lived life. I use the thematic structure of play throughout my project as a way to approach a site and rethink its space, history, and meaning. The surface is the site with which I am operating, inspired by motifs of weathering, pastiche, palimpsest, and collage to illustrate fractured memory and layered histories. These approaches manifest in a memory map informed by two walks I took this February with my …

Preservando La Playa Del Pueblo, Tasha A. Sandoval

Capstones

After more than 80 years, the only queer beach in New York City, the People’s Beach at Jacob Riis, is in danger. In 2022, the city announced the demolition of the Neponsit Hospital, a long-abandoned structure that shelters the beach from the street, creating a sense of privacy and safety. Can Riis Beach live on as a safe and joyous utopia for queer communities without the presence of the hospital buildings? Some beach-goers are campaigning to ensure that whatever replaces the hospital space centers the queer community and preserves the beach’s queer history, including the legacy of Ms. Colombia, a …

Law School News: National Housing Advocate Named To Lead Rwu's New Real Estate Initiatives 02/08/2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Accessing 3d Data, Francesca Albrezzi, John Bonnett, Tassie Gniady, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lisa Snyder

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

The issue of access and discoverability is not simply a matter of permissions and availability. To identify, locate, retrieve, and reuse 3D materials requires consideration of a multiplicity of content types, as well as community and financial investment to resolve challenges related to usability, interoperability, sustainability, and equity. This chapter will cover modes, audiences, assets and decision points, technology requirements, and limitations impacting access, as well as providing recommendations for next steps.

Border Town: Preserving A 'Living' Cultural Landscape In Harlingen, Texas, Shelby Parrish

Masters Theses

The preservation of cultural landscapes takes an understanding of a region’s shared history, their sense of place, and the sensory and spatial behavior of their appropriated spaces. That being said preserving cultural landscapes in urban areas can be especially challenging. They are constantly growing and evolving which requires special considerations to avoid suffocation of the space and the inhabitants’ spatial behavior. The practice of preserving cultural landscapes on an urban scale has been relatively lacking in the United States. The same preservation strategies are used for various types of cultural landscapes that have their own characteristics and stories. Different tactics …

Critical Spatial Practices: A Trans-Scalar Study Of Chinese Hutongs And American Alleyways, Gregory Marinic, Rebekah Radtke, Gregory Luhan

Interiors Faculty Publications

Across time and cultures, the built environment has been fundamentally shaped by forces of occupancy, obsolescence, and change. In an era of increasing political uncertainty and ecological decline, contemporary design practices must respond with critical actions that envision more collaborative and sustainable futures. The concept of critical spatial practice, introduced by architectural historian Jane Rendell, builds on Walter Benjamin and the late 20th century theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau to propose multi-disciplinary design practices that more effectively address contemporary spatial complexities. These theoretical frameworks operate through trans-scalar means to resituate the built environment as a nexus of …

"Introduction" To Presenting Difficult Pasts Through Architecture: Converting National Socialist Sites To Documentation Centers, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

This study deals with the question of how architectural design, when applied to his­torical places, can assist in bringing an extremely difficult – notable and troubling – past to the present in meaningful ways. In particular, it examines postwar architectural designs that converted National Socialist perpetrators’ places into documentation centers on National Socialism whose explicit purpose is, above all, to present and discuss the community’s involvement in the National Socialist ideology and actions.

Although the cases I have selected for close study vary stylistically and in many other ways, these centers have a number of common attributes that make the …

Brutalism And The Public University: Integrating Conservation Into Comprehensive Campus Planning, Shelby Schrank

Masters Theses

The University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Commonwealth’s flagship campus, is home to several Brutalist buildings. Similar to other buildings of this genre, they have gone unrecognized for their importance to the campus and their prominent architectural significance. Additionally, due to the ravages of close to 50 years of exposure coupled with limited maintenance and, in some instances, neglect they are now at a point where restorative maintenance is critical in ensuring their future contribution to the campus.

This thesis addresses the importance of creating a comprehensive, long-term plan for these buildings, by first looking to the University’s most prominent, yet …

Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, Lauren Paljusaj, Anne Savage

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Creative Works Winner

Most of us know Nevada beyond the Strip. It’s a place of houses, of shopping plazas, of movie theaters, and grocery stores. A place of hotels that are also places of work. A place of basins, ranges, vistas, and nature. A place of personal history. For Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, curators Lauren Paljusaj (ENG BA ‘20) and Anne Savage (CFA BA ‘22), draw on photographs found in UNLV Special Collections to uncover the intimate visuality of a Nevada of past centuries. The exhibition focuses on how the imaged built landscape of early 20th century Southern Nevada …

Ecofoodway Architectures: Wisdom From The Past; Knowledge For The Future, Sara Khorshidifard

Sara Khorshidifard

Community, Preservation, And Street Art: A Proposal For San Francisco’S Mission District, Marissa Nadeau

Master's Projects and Capstones

The Latinx community is an integral part of San Francisco’s rich history. From Mexican missions in the late 1700s to an influx of immigrants from various Latin countries starting in the early 1900s, the Mission District (‘the Mission’) of San Francisco has served as a hub for this mix of residents, fondly called “Raza,” emphasizing the people of a community rather than the country they have come from. Wars and issues dealt in their homelands were close to the hearts of the entirety of the Latinx population of the Mission, and their voices and opinions were heard through a type …

Urban Heritage And Place-Making: Preservation Through Mobility Enhancement In The Historic Centre Of Prizren, Lorika Hisari

UBT International Conference

Since the armed conflict ended and during a decade of state building Kosovo has gone through substantial reforms required for its European Union integration. This was reflected into its built environment including the historic areas and cultural heritage preservation. Legislation, plans, policy documents and strategies foresee an all-inclusive and a balanced way of development. Practice, however, informs the opposite as the drafted documents are hardly implemented. This paper discusses and examines the mobility in a public space in the Historic Centre of Prizren in relation to the preservation of urban heritage. The paper reveals how the institutional (non)action and, the …

Atlanta: Reconstructing A Fractured History, Clayton Odom

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Today we live in a world where the development of our cities has resulted in the destruction of historical and magnificent architecture that stood as monumental symbols of human achievement and evolution. This has been a problem for Atlanta in which the foundations of the city's architectural heritage and legacy has been destroyed as a result of Atlanta's fragmented development over time, leaving the city's architectural legacy and history in a state of fragmented ruin. For Atlanta, it is important to restore this lost architectural heritage by reconstructing the memory of the city's destroyed architectural icons by recreating and reassembling …

The Democratic Architecture Of George W. Maher: A Preservation Perspective, Cody Chase

Historic Preservation Theses

As a branch of the international Arts and Crafts Movement, American Prairie Style architecture was a nostalgic ode to the horizontality and natural landscape of the Midwestern prairie and a departure from European design. Today, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan comprise the most memorable examples of the era, leaving a considerable number of architects largely understudied. One of these architects was the prolific theoretician and designer George W. Maher.

Ambitious from a young age, Maher had his own firm by his mid-twenties and produced over 160 structures in his thirty-eight-year career. During that time he was …

Preservation Of A Vietnam War-Era Slide Collection: A Master’S Project To Research, Catalogue, Digitize And Exhibit The Photo-Documentary Collection Of Kenneth L. Swain Jr., United States Air Force Veteran, Amanda L. Niemi

Museum Studies Projects

The purpose of this master’s project thesis is to explore and implement the necessary professional museum practices to care for and preserve the private Vietnam War-era slide collection of Kenneth L. Swain Jr., an Air Force veteran. Through museum practices presented by leading museum professionals, the slide collection was examined and a plan implemented for slide care and maintenance. In conjunction with the preservation of this slide collection, an exhibition was curated in honor of Swain’s unique photo-documentary slide collection.

Ruin-Naissance, Fatma Gonca Tunc

Architecture Senior Theses

Ruin-naissance is the term I use to describe not only the resurrection of an archeological site, but also the rebirth of an idea about how we think about ruins and how new construction can enhance the experience of these kinds of sites.

The principle contention of this thesis is that a better understanding of the fragmented evidence presented by an archeological site can be seen through the lens of a contemporary architectural intervention that responds sensitively to an ancient site. In doing this, the intervention needs to address issues of identity, narrative and historiography. The new architecture should not ignore …

Violence Against Architecture: The Lost Cultural Heritage Of Syria And Iraq, Heidi James Fisher

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines ancient architecture within Syria and Iraq that has been deliberately destroyed by violence. The act of destroying architecture and monuments in both Syria and Iraq, which is often-historical UNESCO protected, will invariably violate various laws, such as the 1954 Hague Convention or the Rome Statute. Since post-2011 Syria, all of humanity has been shocked by continuous warfare that, in addition to causing untold loss of human life and suffering, has included a series of episodes of violence against architecture, all of which is so egregious that foreign governments and non government organizations are constantly engaged in efforts …

St. Mary’S Episcopal Church: Architectural History And Preservation Possibilities, Anastasia O’Neill

Historic Preservation Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on the architectural and historical significance of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. It comprises two major sections: a historical narrative and a research narrative. Thus, it is meant to illuminate the history of St. Mary’s and to guide future research. The historical narrative contains information regarding the context into which the church was built, the founding of the parish, the construction of the church building, and selected significant changes. The research narrative contains a list of archives consulted, suggestions of uses for the information obtained, and a description of the necessary steps to list …

Gra[In]Vincible, Kimberly Ann Wojcik

Masters Theses

This thesis is about the stitching of a community back together at a scale that is appropriate to the existing demographics. The memory of place and time are still evident in the relics that are the Buffalo Grain Elevators; the only changing variable is the rate of population and affordability in the adjacent Old First Ward.

The economic downturn of big business and the havoc it wreaked on the worker community created a ripple effect in large enough scale to grab hold of an entire city. In an attempt to bulldoze rust covered structures and knock down abandoned homes rather …

Heritage Tourism In Washington County, Tennessee: Linking Place, Placelessness, And Preservation, Chad F. Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the formation of spatial theory and the linkage between space and place and their relationship with historic preservation and heritage tourism. First, this thesis analyzes the terms space and place, and how scholars define each term. Second, this thesis focuses on the concept of placelessness. Third, this thesis examines historic preservation as a strategy to help alleviate placelessness and as a crucial link to heritage tourism. This thesis also will use regional examples of preservation and tourism as exemplified by the preservation efforts of private organizations, citizens, and government officials in Jonesborough,Johnson City, and Washington County,Tennessee. This …

Orland Park Community Center, Jarett Dewitt

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

Orland Park, a southwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois, has successfully implemented the idea of integration of natural, open space with its residents. However, the recognition and understanding of these spaces can be further executed through community connectivity and education. Educating the public on the sustainable management of natural resources can help create a better appreciation of conservation in their living and natural environment.

The Concept Of Happy: Bartonville, Illinois, Kelsey D. Kauffman

ASA Multidisciplinary Research Symposium

While working to solve the underlying multiplicity of issues, Bartonville will need to focus on being HAPPY; that is the residents will need to actively engage in Health, Advancement, Purpose, Preservation, and Youth. The concepts of HAPPY are proposed to be expressed architecturally in the form of a community center.

Planning A Greenway Network For The “Impressions From A Lost World” Exhibit, Kellie Fenton, Tasuku Kamei, Yue Li, Yanhua Lu, Maozhu Mao, Emilie Marques Jordao, James Prendergast, Michalagh C. Stoddard, Ruoying Tang, Jing Wang, Nelle Katharine Ward, Yuqing Yang, Yi Yang, Yu Yu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

This report describes a proposed multi-modal greenway network that links dinosaur-related sites in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The study conducted by the fall 2015 MLA studio at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst included assessment and design work at regional, sub-regional, and site scales. The proposed Dinosaur Trail Project greenway network was designed to incorporate the goals of the client, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, a historical and cultural organization based in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The project will help preserve, interpret, and highlight the rich history of dinosaur track discovery in the region for future generations.

Preservation Through Design: Reclaiming Franklin Park's Place In The Future Of Boston, Junzhi Yu

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

This project is a demonstration of heritage landscape preservation done through a new design for Franklin Park in Boston, Massachusetts. Design from a preservation perspective requires sensitivity to the interacting forces between site history, existing conditions, and future needs, especially when engaging a historical landscape that was designed by a renowned figure like Olmsted. The goals of this project are to rehabilitate the Franklin Park site, securing its integrity and historical value, while allowing changes and future growth to take place.

Commemoration And Controversy: The Memorialization Of Denmark Vesey In Charleston, South Carolina, Sarah Katherine Dykens

All Theses

The commemoration of contested historical figures is a topic that is increasingly addressed by preservationists, historians, and those in local government. One such figure is Denmark Vesey, whose failed slave insurrection plot in 1822 forever altered the social and physical fabric of the United States. The ways in which this polarizing figure has been memorialized in Charleston, South Carolina, speak to the multivalent nature of Vesey himself as well as the shifting and complex racial politics in Charleston. In studying the four major commemorative efforts for Vesey that exist in Charleston, this thesis sheds light on the ways in which …

Picturing Milwaukee: Washington Park Neighborhood, Jared Schmitz, Arijit Sen

Architecture Faculty Books

The Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures collaborative project at UW Milwaukee and Madison introduces an interdisciplinary research track concentrating on the examination of the physical, cultural, and social aspects of our built environment. The program serves students enrolled in the UW Milwaukee and Madison campuses respectively. It involves faculty members on both campuses with diverse research and teaching interests, including urban and architectural history, cultural landscapes, urban and rural vernacular architecture, public history, and environmental history. The 2015 Buildings-Landscapes-Cultures field school examines a complex urban edge where a bucolic Olmstedian park meets the residential neighborhood of Martin Drive and a 19th Century industrial corridor …

Historic American Buildings Survey: Investigation And Documentation Of The Halfway Schoolhouse In Eastpointe, Michigan, Whitney D. Gravelle

Historic Preservation Final Projects

No abstract provided.

Renewing Spokane: A Study Of Motivating Forces Behind Downtown Revitalization Projects, Kara K. Mowery

All Master's Theses

This study examines the motivating forces behind downtown urban renewal projects through qualitative interview research. Using Spokane, Washington, as a case study, interviews were conducted with key players in downtown revitalization, including public administrators, private developers, and non-profit representatives. While neoliberal theory indicates that economic return serves as the primary motivation for investment, interview questions were designed to uncover whether additional motivating factors stimulate renewal work. Results indicate that those conducting renewal projects are primarily motivated by economics, but additionally cite heritage preservation values and community development as significant factors. Moreover, contemporary renewal projects are found to be small-scale endeavors, …

Landmark Report (Vol. 32, No. 2), Kentucky Library Research Collections

Landmark Report

Newsletter published by the Landmark Association; this local group advocates the preservation, protection and maintenance of architectural, cultural and archaeological resources in Bowling Green and Warren County, Kentucky.