Architecture Commons^™

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 …

Emergency Homes, Denise A. Lee

Architecture Senior Theses

“Designers cannot just stand by and watch as the refugee crisis unfolds,” and although architects and designers can’t save the world, through design, we can alleviate consequences of scarcity. It’s not about creating a structure that will withstand the ends of time or endure the most extreme climate, it’s about how to respond in an emergency with the most geographically intelligent prototype that utilizes the utmost importance of on site materials so the bare minimum of an instruction manual or few key tools to offset distribution obstacles. This thesis is aimed to design for the 99 in disaster relief.

The Discursive Construction Of Learning Opportunities, Thomas Fowler, Iv, Ethny Stewart

Architecture

Researchers entering new learning environments or disciplines, ones outside their own disciplines, are often required to follow the roots and routes of observed processes to gain anemic (insider) understanding of the work of local actors, artifacts, and language-in-use.Through exploration of everyday patterns of participants, ethnographers begin to uncover what actors are required to know, understand, and construct to engage socially, professionally, and academically (Heath, 1982). For this poster, I present subset of analyses used in gaining an emic understanding of critique practices and processes in a 24/7 access third year undergraduate architecture studio at public regional university site in California.

Perceptions On The Status Of Lean-Manufacturing In Thermoplastics-Manufacturing Industry, Ning Jin

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current study gathers thermoplastics professionals’ perceptions on the implementation of lean-manufacturing in the Thermoplastics-manufacturing industry through Qualtrics, which is a survey website. From the professionals’ perceptions, the current study infers the current status of lean-manufacturing implementation in the thermoplastic-manufacturing industry and identifies the best lean theories and tools for the industry. However, the results of the current study are not generalizable to the entire thermoplastic-manufacturing industry.

The current study reviews thermoplastic-manufacturing processes from the house of lean’s perspective. The foundations of the house are stability and standardization, the pillars are Just-In-Time (JIT) and Jidoka, the roof is customer focus, …

Wall Panel Optimization For Refugee Shelters In Germany: An Ahp Study, Zhu Jiadong

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The German government is experiencing difficulties housing and assimilating Syrian refugees in its borders. Erecting temporary shelters on location is one way to deal with the current crises. This thesis attempts to use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the optimum combination of materials and construction methods to be used in the shelter’s walls in order to improve the living conditions of the refugees and to ensure that the cost is acceptable to the German government. This thesis compares six existing wall panel products from China, which have the lowest cost on the worldwide market. The R-value, strength, price, weight, …

The Moving Image, Eujean Cheong, Andrew Kim, Sol Yoon

Architecture Senior Theses

Form in architecture has become synonymous with geometries as opposed to the philosophical Aristotelian notion of form. This thesis rests on two beliefs: space and form are co-present, as space without form is nothing and likewise form without space leaves no room to materialize itself. An object results when space and form are co-present; architecture as an object then subsequently reveals itself when a third element of human movement is introduced.

This thesis contends that if architecture is perceived through the introduction of human movement, then it is peculiar that architectural representation has historically been represented through means of …

Rethinking "Stuff", Jonathan Anthony

Architecture Senior Theses

As our methods of storing grow, our storage environments tend to not adapt. Rethinking "Stuff" contends that our established storage environments have the potential to be more closely correlated to the complex nature of our stuff today. This thesis attempts to leverage the effects of stuff in storage by capitalizing on three notions that stuff is increasingly challenging: ritual, temporality, and ownership.

Library To Nowhere, Anna Sernicki

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis explores the idea of the architectural paradox, which questions the ability of experiencing exterior (pyramid) and interior (labyrinth) spatial conditions simultaneously. The pyramid makes places of architecture, while the labyrinth respectively displaces architecture. New York City, as the site of the project, is an example of how the architectural paradox works on an urban scale, whereas the Library to Nowhere condenses these ideas consciously into a local scale. Besides the physical layer of architecture as a labyrinth, the Library to Nowhere enters a psychological realm that forces visitors to transcend reality into the sublime …

Materializing Light, Lirong Tan

Architecture Senior Theses

Artificial light, especially volumetric light, can be materialized and transform the existing ruin. Specifically, I would choreograph the interaction between people and light to exaggerate, or dramatize, the tragic feeling of Hiroshima Memorial Dome.

Dinner Parti, Evangeline Soileau

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis is a body of work that investigates the architectural relationships among event, documentation, material production, and user interaction through the lens of social dining. A Picnic, Thanksgiving, and Solo Dining are the three dining scenarios that are the subject of these analytical and design investigations. Architecture is treated as a form of creative nonfiction through the design of artifacts that perform as the events’ material and spatial analogs. These artifacts aim to create new readings of the social dining event as it is understood, misunderstood, and taken for granted in the contemporary context.

Reconstruct The Missing Narrative: Rethinking Contemporary Chinese Architecture Through Ancient Landscape Paintings, Taiming Chen, Yiwei Wu

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the issue of lacking self-identity and missing narrative under contemporary Chinese architecture discipline. Using ancient landscape paintings as design source, this project aims to create an environment that provides personal experience and exclusive meaning from a participant’s point of view instead of an omniscient view.

Paintings are selected from different dynasties and artists, but all based on one important cultural theme: Reclusion. Thus, the reconstructed narrative would provide a tranquil environment for inhabitant to have a temporary retreatment from the city life through making, seeking and thinking.

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 …

Food Form Function, Travis Telemaque

Architecture Senior Theses

By 2050, the global population will have grown to over 9.7 Billion people. Traditional farming practices will no longer be able to sustain food production for the increasing population. This thesis demonstrates how architecture and urban food production can be used to educate and reconnect our cities with locally sourced food. Integrating food production into dense urban settings will create a more efficient and resilient city.

@The_New_House: An Online-Offline Manifesto, Ana Paola Hernandez Derbez, Domenica Velasco

Architecture Senior Theses

The house, is one of the most fundamental architectural archetypes, has long been used as unbuilt or built manifestos to declare the avant-garde of the discipline. As designers, we need to re-visualize design concepts to create architecture that integrates and corresponds to the way we dwell. Innovating design in the same way technology and digitalization have been innovating production and the way we live. This thesis investigates a return to the design of a house as a manifesto, focusing on today’s advanced modes of fabrication and evolving ways of living to challenge the current design mindset.

As Above, So Below: Tapping Into The Latent Energy Of Abandoned Underground Infrastructure, Alexandra N. Ramirez

Architecture Senior Theses

How can architects formalize the use of surplus energy to reach more people in a more systematic way? Abandoned underground infrastructure is an example of an untapped surplus in energy that the architect has the opportunity to repurpose. Tunnels in particular, can be used as systems to heat or cool a network of buildings above ground to create more sustainable urban environments. In addition the system could also have beneficial social implications within segregated cities by providing fluid connections between divided neighborhoods.

This thesis will establish a framework for repurposing underground infrastructures. The strategy operates under an umbrella of sustainability …

The Graduate School Collaborative, Jake Copich, Stanislav Nedzelskyi

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a solution to the disconnect between today’s designers and makers. Specifically geared towards the profession of architecture, these discussions should be applied in any process of making. After providing a historical reading of the crafted object and the people involved in making it, the paper proposes a new way to perceive craft in today’s world. When defined as an indexical quality, both in the mathematical and in the pointing sense described by Charles S. Pierce, the craft of an object becomes an accessible and efficient tool for the analysis and comparison of artifice.

Method Meditation, Armand F. Damari

Architecture Senior Theses

The place of psychology in architecture has always been a contentious topic. Though the physical environment influences how occupants feel and behave, neither architects nor psychologists have been able to produce environments that can consistently create a desired effect. In this thesis, I have continued to test the legitimacy of systemization in architectural design by using a rigorous survey of potential users. My system is informed by previous experiments, yet also employs the critiques of these systems to inform the rules. It’s theorized the byproduct of this unlikely system should be the “perfect” space for calmness and relaxation.

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 …

[Ar] You Ready?, Trang Tran

Architecture Senior Theses

This project challenges the obsolete existence of signage and billboards and seeks to explore how augmented reality (AR) advertisements change the relationship between signage and buildings.

Iiid: A Detailed Look Into System Integration Of Material Types Through The Use Of 3d Printing, Johnathon E. Phillips

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis wishes to pursue the potential of 3D printing ornamented designs with the use of shale/clay powder. This material compound, through this research, had been shown to be compliable with 3D printing technology so that it can be sculpted by the tools of the architect into complex geometric “blocks.” These can then be printed and red allowing them to become the tectonic building bricks for a new way of building. Through researching this material, I will demonstrate the usefulness and possibilities of this time-tested substance in the creation of new architectural spaces.

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 …

Numerical Simulations Of Intrusive Gravity Currents Interacting With A Bottom-Mounted Obstacle In A Continuously Stratified Ambient, Jian Zhou, Subhas K. Venayagamoorthy

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this study, the flow dynamics of intrusive gravity currents past a bottom-mounted obstacle were investigated using highly resolved numerical simulations. The propagation dynamics of a classic intrusive gravity current was first simulated in order to validate the numerical model with previous laboratory experiments. A bottom-mounted obstacle with a varying non-dimensional height of D~ = D/ H, where D is the obstacle height and H is the total flow depth, was then added to the problem in order to study the downstream flow pattern of the intrusive gravity current. For short obstacles, the intrusion re-established itself downstream without much distortion. …

I Want This! I Want That!: A Speculation On The Future Context Of Architecture, Olivia Flores-Siller, Steven Worthington

Architecture Senior Theses

We are hypothesizing a potential future reality where architecture is in the hands of the common person, projecting the idea of mass customization and the expanding scope of DIY into the larger scale of ‘building.’ Hyper-individualism, experimentation, and expressionism characterize this ‘world’ because increases in technology have led to there being little commitment and consequence attached to actions and ‘building’. Technology works harder for us; and as we work less, we play more.

Our values and lifestyles are echoed in our architecture; what, then, is the condition an urban landscape focusing on individualism and mass customization? In this story, architecture …

Layered Scamming: Exposing How The Desires Reflect In The Architecture Design, Alejandra Charrabe

Architecture Senior Theses

Based on the essay “Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Forms” by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour the terms “decorated shed” and “duck” take on a different meaning when speaking of architecture. These terms specifically described a relationship between the program and the façade of a building. By taking such terms an applying them to an analysis of brothel facades, an interesting relationship can be created between the marketing strategy desired for such brothel and the way in which the façade represents such strategy. I will be analyzing the relationship between public/private, commercial/cultural, container/content …

For The Love Of Concrete: Embracing The Ugly Duckling, Not The Decorated Shed, Steven Carlson

Architecture Senior Theses

For the Love of Concrete is at its heart an homage to concrete, advocating beauty, versatility and durability; celebrating concrete's ability to create spatial experiences that are compelling, varied, acoustically attuned and thermally tempered. In the face of increasing superficiality, in architecture and the world at large, this thesis celebrates the authenticity and substantiality of concrete.

Axon-Orama: A New System Of Architectural Representation, Fei Wang

Architecture Senior Theses

A codified architectural representation, the axonometric drawing is objective, yet an audience's reception of a building is perspectival and constructed through a spatial narrative over time. In response to this paradox, Axon-orama is proposed as a new representational technique - a set of variational drawings with pliable arrangement and hybrid expression - explored through the use of the British board game, Myriorama. The work blurs the boundary between objective and subjective representation and perception, offering a new system of architectural inquiry.

Details Matter: A Pavilion For India In Venice, Rajkumar Kadam

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes a national pavilion for India at the Venetian Arsenal, one of the sites for the Venice Biennale. The design of a pavilion for India at the Venice Biennale is an opportunity to understand architecture as a vehicle that illustrates values that are simultaneously universal, and culturally specific. While the proposed Indian pavilion incorporates the details that define Indian architecture, they are appropriated to the highly articulate Venetian context because principally, Indian architecture is malleable and fits within its local environment. This cross-cultural representation is accomplished through symbolic relationships to natural elements and site, abstract architectonic form and …

Blur Out, Hye Rim Shin

Architecture Senior Theses

Blur Out explores ideas about architecture that seeks ephemerality rather than legibility, eidetic affects rather than demand of focused attention and atmospheric or emotional spaces rather than conventional spaces.

The exploration of Blur Out is situated within the research topic of different states of snow that are generated from avalanche phenomena of Iceland, which develops site specific understandings of the phenomena and effects. The project aims to build a blurred boundary both literally and experientially between the built and natural environment to challenge representing and re-presenting the spectrum of tangibility to intangibility. By exploring the dichotomy between the built and …

The Oppelaland: An Underground Refugee Theme Park In Aleppo, Rui Bao

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis operates on the perception of Syrian refugees as a threat and a burden to European countries by architectural means.

In emergency situations, architecture tends to act only after the conflict by providing temporary aid, such as refugee camps. This kind of emergency remedy displaces a large number of refugees to countries all over the world. Refugees may be discriminated and treated as second class citizens in the host countries. They may be restricted in small areas like prisoners rather than citizens with equal rights.

This thesis propose a hyper-real project in the form of "Refugeeland" to call attention …

Y'All Come Back Now, Ya Hear: A Reflection On Nashville's History And The Carnivalesque, Kolby Forbes

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to utilize the technique of allegorical image in understanding both the past and present histories of Nashville. By collaging aspects of past and present, the images produced seek to present the emerging alternative. This otherness constructs an in between in which the narratives of both instances begin to merge and mutate. These collages establish a landscape of Nashville which is no longer constricted temporally or spatially, remaining open to interpretations and resisting a clear sense of closure. The designs that I propose are meant to clarify the neglected traumas and occurrences of the past to demonstrate that …