Architecture Commons^™

Returning To Roots: Adobe Structures In San Antonio, Shine Trabucco

Capstone Projects

This project articulates the importance of the preservation of adobe structures in San Antonio. In it, I identify and map adobe structures that remain today using an accessible digital platform. This project incorporates community engagement including stories of local residents of San Antonio and providing public workshops.

“Circular Economy” As An Imperative Indicator Of A Sustainable Urban Development Derived By Construction Industry – Case Study Pristina, Binak Beqaj, Blerta Vula Rizvanolli

UBT International Conference

Construction field is an important industry for improving resource productivity and with impact on urban development and GDP of the Country (actually in Kosova, as calculated on the level of 15.76%). The intention of the system promoted by the European Union as “Circular Economy” is to keep the added value of the products for as long as possible and virtually eliminate waste from urban spaces as a fundamental guide of urban sustainability. The process of turning waste into a resource of new modes seems to reshape the development of construction industries, especially now when the need for building materials is …

Solar & Rain Catching Canopy "Urban Oasis" 1.1, Afolabi Ibitoye, Alexander Aptekar

Publications and Research

Accumulation of water runoff during rain storms affects New York City’s combination water system, forcing water treatment plants to release untreated excess water. Rather than allow this grey water to overfill the sewer system, pocket parks and gardens can be used to absorb rainfall. By harnessing nature’s resources through today’s technology we can also create solar and rain catching canopies to beautify, educate, and bring growth and social awareness to local businesses.

In order to design the canopies to collect the maximum amount of rainwater and maximize solar collection, we analyzed expected rainfall and optimal solar angles. The canopies will …

Proposal For An Advanced Structural Elective Pertaining To Fire Protection, Avery James Kwong, Taylor Sanchez, Lindsey Macdonald, Alvaro Gonzalez

Architectural Engineering

ARCE 401 Fire Protection is a class that will finally give ARCE students an introduction to fire-resilience and its major importance in the structural and planning spheres. The class would have a structural emphasis along with interdisciplinary qualities, unlike the graduate classes offered in the CE and ME departments. ARCE 401 covers a broad spectrum of topics and is meant to bring ARCE students closer to a comprehensive understanding of the overall work environment.

Adhocracy, Sara Denney

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Adhocracy Sara Denney The Situationists of the 1960’s were cultural revolutionaries critical of passive consumerism and encouraged the reawakening of everyday life. In the spirit of the Situationists, and operating as an “ad-hocing” machine, this project proposes a machine to repurpose objects of everyday life -- reimagining what things might become and transcending limits of their inherent definitions. Why can’t a stroller be a shower head? Categories by default create opposing forces within a situation. Arthur Rimbaud, a French poet who influenced situationist thought, coined the quote “Il faut changer la vie”, “we must change life”. By freeing things from …

Undeveloping The City, John Jones

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

What will the city of the future look like? This thesis investigates the ongoing growth of the city of Atlanta and proposes design strategies that responsibly manage future growth with an ecological mindset. The current metropolitan area occupies thousands of square miles of land with low-density development that blankets many natural ecosystems with little consideration to the impact of this sprawl. By utilizing the applications of transit oriented development and low-impact design, a section of the city can be used as a test bench for responsible future development. This growth would need to be managed from a two-sided approach: retracting …

Cultural Embrace, Jeremy Penja

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Cultural embrace creating an identity on a larger scale in modern society. Architecture is a symbolic catalyst of a threshold, it is bound by the physical presence as well as “enriched by both the memory and dreams, past and future” Juhani Pallasmaa. It captures the sensibility of expectation and fulfillment, sense of symbols that resonated within. It evokes the absolutely necessary association of visual-tactile and identity to connect the history to present. It is an absolute cultural responsiveness and symbolism that cultural embrace strives for. Spaces have become empty container lacking true essence. The current architecture does little to address …

Hurricane Communities, Katie Masters

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Hurricane Communities: An Analysis of Florida Housing is a thesis that aims to reexamine how we can, as architects, design for hurricanes more effectively at the residential scale, through investigations of lateral forces, form, structure and site. The intent is to minimize the physical and emotional damages that are left behind. The thesis examines wind uplift and changes in water level as hurricane category rise.

Geofutures L Urban Integration, Adam Leicht

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Bring nature back to the city. Integrate neglected migration patterns in sprawling cities such as Atlanta. Mend urban fragmentation. The purpose is to make a cleaner environment in the city. My project looks at the Anthropocene as a fence. And how place has been fundamentally “displaced”. Resulting in a boundary or separation between man and nature. To study and research the Anthropocene (age of man) and how man has taken over as the main force behind the change of the environment. Looking through an architectural lens of ecology, how can we use this lens to help us slow down society …

Solar And Rain Catching Canopy. Urban Oasis, Afolabi Ibitoye, Langston Clark, Elena Zimareva, Evan Banks, Alexander Aptekar

Publications and Research

The Urban Oasis is designed to work within existing “pocket parks” in New York City as a combined rainwater collector, personal electronics charging station and resting designation for New Yorkers. Intended to not only lessen the demand on the city power grid by using renewable energy to charge devices, the urban oasis is also intended to mitigate grey water overfill in New York’s combined sewer system and, in general, serve as a model for responsible environmental stewardship in urban areas.

The important technical aspects of the canopy specifically analyzed were:

a) how much rainwater could the canopy be expected to …

The Right To The City. Towards The Dictatorship Of The Digital Proletariat In An Age Of Total Planetary Computation, David Capener

Conference papers

Alexa, turn on the hall lights.’ Words taken from a 2017 promotional video for the Amazon Echo —‘a disembodied voice’, and ‘interface for an extraordinarily complex set of information processing layers.’ ‘Alexa, do x’. The discounted toilet-roll is ordered or the house lights come on, but before they do, travelling at the speed of light, a small packet of data arrives at a banal warehouse in the middle of somewhere where needs, wants and desires are farmed in a repository of disembodied voices. From the mining of tantalum, used in the manufacturing of the Echo, from the geological strata of …

Snacking In Bed: Blending Residential And Agricultural Typologies, Taylor Chin

Architecture Theses and Projects

The project will explore the generation of a productive residence in an urban setting. The thesis analyzes the cultural conditions of such a building and how it might fit into the urban fabric of a city. In addition, it will investigate the scaling of such a building and how a plot of land will answer to population density as well as agricultural use. A standardized set of building layers will be clearly defined as a rationale for designing a building that conforms to the site and cultural concerns. The summation of these considerations and intents will be a building that …

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 …

Renewal Of A Housing District From The Sixties In Budapest, János Gyergyák, Erzsébet Szeréna Zoltán, Bence Gál, Anett Gál-Mózes

UBT International Conference

At the time of its construction the housing estate József Attila (1956-1963) in Budapest was a sample project (installation, interior spaces, new structures and materials) which has been obsoleted in the last 50 years. After winning the architectural and urban competition using open-minded architectural thinking that can make the housing estate a new role model again - increasing existing values and give new ones, the paper presents the principles of design which could be standard for neighborhoods of similar history.

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” …

Scalar Resiliency In The Age Of Disruption, Brandon Aultman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Natural storm surges and global sea level rise cause devastating effects, whether it’s leaving over a million of residents homeless or dooming an entire

coastline ecosystem with little to no hopes of recovery. Current responsive methods consist the issue of unequal priortization within coastal resiliency

design because of site scalar characteristics. A design that incorporates an equity of attention towards all elements of resiliency will lead to a responsive

solution that can transcend any scale of site. I will begin to analyze the elements of effective resiliency; adaptation, affordability, community, sustainability

and customization, in order to provide a balanced solution …

Divine Intervention: Designed For Social Evolution By Integrating Natural Order, Anatoshia L. Wyatt

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

There is a long tradition in architecture of using ordering systems found in nature and science to create built space. This thesis builds upon such line of thought to propose new design methods based on ordering systems with a particular focus on social relations. It focuses on the design of a community center in the city of Atlanta which is considered as a catalyst for jumpstarting the betterment of society through improvement of social bonds, community involvement, activism, meditation, and the integration of nature in the community. The design is situated on the Bellwood Quarry site and creates an ecological …

Infrastructural Urbanism: Hybridizing Our Networks, Hannah Boyd

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

“The story of people can be told through our infrastructure. In the rise and fall of cities throughout history, the places best positioned for a thriving future have always been those that offer systems to create the lives that we want. And we can see that as the innovations of canals, aqueducts, railroads, and highways did in their time, the kind of infrastructure that we build today matters to our success. If we do it right, it will forever transform our way of life.”
– Ryan Gravel¹

Urban edges are created through interstices, spaces intervening between one thing and …

Infrastructural Urbanism: Hybridizing Our Networks, Hannah Boyd

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

“The story of people can be told through our infrastructure. In the rise and fall of cities throughout history, the places best positioned for a thriving future have always been those that offer systems to create the lives that we want. And we can see that as the innovations of canals, aqueducts, railroads, and highways did in their time, the kind of infrastructure that we build today matters to our success. If we do it right, it will forever transform our way of life.”
– Ryan Gravel¹

Urban edges are created through interstices, spaces intervening between one thing and …

The Collective Object: Realizing Collective Space In An Era Of Bigness, Laura M. Sherman

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture reacted to the Technological Revolution of the late 19th century with inspired proposals of optimistic expectation for the new era. The advancements of elevators, escalators and air conditioning meant almost limitless potential for the scale and scope of the built environment. However, society quickly realized the advantageous reality of this technology: Their buildings no longer needed the cities which surrounded them.

Endless interiors and “cities-within-cities” meant the possibility of a lifestyle where people could choose to never again interact with the undesirables of the true city. The built environment actively resisted the collective. A trend of self-interested architectures affected …

The Collective Object: Realizing Collective Space In An Era Of Bigness, Laura M. Sherman

KSU Journey Honors College Capstones and Theses

Architecture reacted to the Technological Revolution of the late 19th century with inspired proposals of optimistic expectation for the new era. The advancements of elevators, escalators and air conditioning meant almost limitless potential for the scale and scope of the built environment. However, society quickly realized the advantageous reality of this technology: Their buildings no longer needed the cities which surrounded them.

Endless interiors and “cities-within-cities” meant the possibility of a lifestyle where people could choose to never again interact with the undesirables of the true city. The built environment actively resisted the collective. A trend of self-interested architectures affected …

Architecture Amidst Smog, Hui Sheng

Architecture Thesis Prep

This thesis is an investigation on smog and architecture.

Urban Archtifice: Regenerating Residential Facades Through Acupuncture, Ran Mei

Architecture Thesis Prep

To legitimize and make use of weirdness in the Chinese cultural fascination of symbolism and objectified architecture, I decide to put it in the most function-oriented program in the city _ collective housing, or more specifically, the transformation and regeneration of existing housing types in Chinese megacities. To inject iconicity into the most banal and repetitive structures of Chinese cities, the residential high-rises, I aim to create a human layer that parasites the faceless facades of housing blocks; to take advantage of the novelty value of collectively generated iconicity to legitimize the personal appropriation of “public” space; to bring back …

Configuring Narrowness: Formulating Vertical Vernaculars In The Forgotten, Teriya Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

The thesis is convinced that a memorable narrowness can be achieved in an urban void if the architect shifts focus from the horizontal plane to the vertical plane. Indeed, a large portion of what can be seen when approaching a narrow street is not "the front," but "the sides." By using the current vernacular palette to develop vertically-oriented shacks, the thesis proposes two alternative designs to reimage these cracks in the city, in order to fill these cracks in memory.

Optimized Density: Rehabilitating The Tower In The Park For The 21st Century, Emmett Walker

Architecture Senior Theses

Optimized densification is the exploitation of under utilized space to create a more dynamic cooperative based density often times adding onto what is already exists. The pursuit of maximizing intelligently can help to relieve socioeconomic exclusivity, create a more ecologically sustainable lifestyle and influence social mixing. Though architecture can only have a limited influence on the social climate of a place like New York City, re-envisioning and optimizing the density of the tower in the park typology can lead to a more harmonious engagement between buildings and their surrounding context or population. Optimizing density could be the modern day American …

Gold: Stories Of A City, Vivek Vijayan Njanappilly

Architecture Senior Theses

The thesis explores the latent influences of gold and its value systems on the urban geo-politics of a South Indian city. It is an anthology of sporadic narrations recording the growth and transformation of a city over time. These narrative compositions contain traces of the past, the city of the present and speculative futures. They indicate change without erasure. Their values are embodied in gold; malleable, ductile and fungible in its different forms.

The intention of the thesis is not to merely speak of a specific commodity nor is it to narrate the history of a city. It is an …

Reconnect: Amplifying Circulation Typologies To Radically Rethink Urban-Aqueous Relationships, Tiffany Pau

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a radical rethinking of city-water relationships to leverage existing infrastructural and architectural divides; because it holds great architectural and social value to work within and challenge existing systems, and because access to the waterfront– for sustenance, transportation, commercial, or leisure purposes– is a core human need. The project questions what happens when connections are scaled extra-large, yet aim to maintain the qualities that are imbued within them at the micro scale to generate increased public activity at the water’s edge. It looks to create a new type of urbanism, one that prioritizes the very act of circulation …

Rural Retreat | Urban Myth, Celeste Pomputius

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a destination for recreation and retreat on Plum Island, New York that references the model of the National and State Park Services and whose intended audience is primarily residents of New York City who are without the means or methods of easily seeking other experiences of nature outside the realm of city limits. The first step of this design process involves reexamining the traditional definition of “urban” to shorten the leap from the comforts of the city to the unknowns of nature. From there, the project identifies and resolves three challenges that stand between urban residents and …

Technology And Urban Planning: Conditions, Market, And Guidelines, Carter Sandzimier

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.

First Street Corridor Plan And Development Code-- Gilroy, Ca, Michael Gibbons

City and Regional Planning

No abstract provided.