Architecture Commons^™

Contextualize, Jiaai He

Masters Theses

Museums, as a continuation of the urban environment, enrich people's recreational life and also carry the mission of education. Museums protect culture outside a textbook and make history closer to people’s lives. However, the present museum has not reached an ideal state for the expression and embodiment of cultural objects.

Time and history shape the objects, and the objects inside a museum record and memorialize the period of their creation. Stories and contest behind cultural objects’ creation are integral to knowledge and understanding. What do we remember after a museum visit? Displaying the full range of historical content to the …

Exploration And Autonomy : Wild Children In The City, Xiaojie Li

Masters Theses

From 1980 to 2000, China adopted a teacher-centered kindergarten model with the main purpose of imparting knowledge, leaving children in a passive learning environment. Since 2001, this system’s adverse impact on child development has become clear to preschool educators. As a result, teachers have begun to consider kid friendly environments and games. However, even these games were arranged with a top-down, teacher-centered structure.

An education revolution has emerged that aims to release the freedom of children by prioritizing their needs, paying respect and trust to exploration, as well as giving children choice. One pioneering philosophy applying this principle is Anji …

Ciudad Informal : A New Model For Urban Living, Rebeca Isabel Peña Reinoza

Masters Theses

Why should the poor be forced to live in slums on the periphery of the city when there are empty high-rises in the center? Housing scarcity and densification are increasing challenges in cities as a consequence of urbanization and displacement of communities. By performing a study on informal settlements in the city of Caracas, acknowledging both their strengths and weaknesses, this thesis explores vertical communities and the potential to convert unused high-rise buildings into accessible housing solutions. The Tower of David is both a precedent and the host structure for this thesis, which aims to analyze how collective effort and …

Discovering The Potential Of The Public Realm : Revitalizing Dead Zones In Fall River, Massachusetts, Rui Xie

Masters Theses

Specifically, this thesis asks can the superimposition of opposites—applying the conditions of a small community to the conditions and scale of a large city—be a solution to examine public spaces, revitalize dead zones, and strengthen community?

Behind Appearance : Hidden Dimensions In The Work Of Wassily Kandinsky And Paul Klee, Ning Ding

Masters Theses

What is the feel like to be a successful artist?

Works being appreciated,being valuable,become famous all over the world?

But what is under? What is behind? The audience seems never to know the story as well as the artworks.

Take an example. When you look at The Scream of Edward Munch, what do you see?

A melting image, a disgusting face, or the derived emoji, which is so popular on the SNS?

What's really behind the painting is Edward Munch's illness, and decades of struggling under sickness, madness, and death.

Most times, when the audience enjoys painting, the imagination can …

Occupying The Public : Humans, Space & Identity, Brittany Knowlton

Masters Theses

My thesis is understanding spectacle and the spatial organization of human society. What is the role of architecture to create performance?

Reality Behind Beauty : Hayao Miyazaki's Perspective Of Human And Nature, Tianyang Wu

Masters Theses

When people look at beautiful artworks, they tend to ignore and forget the ugly truth that inspired the creation. Hayao Miyazaki is an artist who grew aware of an “ugly truth” and has been trying to propose beautiful possibilities. Economic pressures lead to environmental destruction, which breaks the relationship between humankind and nature. He argues that humankind is the product of nature, and must always depend on nature. This is a fact that no power, including modern science and technology, can change. This has long been the main subject of Miyazaki’s unique perspective in his animated films.

This thesis proposes …

Landscapes Of Exposure: Reframing The Connection Between Body + Environment, Kayla Murgo

Masters Theses

This project explores new relationships of the body to the landscape through understanding how the environment imprints, molecularly, on the body and how that information is stored and inherited. In this age of postgenomics, a time that is defined by big-data and technology driven approaches to medicine and public health, it is imperative that we work interdisciplinarily to address mounting health and ecological concerns.

As shapers of natural and social systems, I believe that landscape architects can bridge scales, from the molecular to the ecological, to draw new conclusions about how humans impact ecological systems and how these impacts are …

What Is Rural Design? Decentralized & Community-Driven Approaches For The Green New Deal That Value Existing Rural Land And Community, Cornelia Overton

Masters Theses

In contemporary design conversations, rural areas are discussed less than urban ones, and yet rural communities are in need of good design, and a new rural pattern language could hold the keys to a healthier human relationship with our environment. If the United States were to enact a Federal Green New Deal, rural landscapes stand to see big changes. Not only would landscape architects have new funded opportunities to design in rural places, but bolstered support of ecological urbanism would have broader repercussions in the rural landscape.

By exploring the changing meaning of rurality, translating urban design theory for rural …

Practicing A Senior Living, Siyu Shuai

Masters Theses

Implementation of China’s family planning policy fundamentally changed the traditional core family structure. The family size has become ever smaller, breaking the traditional family model in which three-generation or even four-generation cohabitate. The 4-2-1 family structure (4 grandparents, 2 parents, and 1 child) has become mainstream. This has caused an explosion of senior family and elderly living alone, which now represents a significant social issue in China.

The Chinese government has recognized and responded to the lonely elder problem by creating the so-called Senior Citizen University. The SCU serves as a welcome place in the community, for elder entertainment, study …

Getting Closer : Exploring Re-Contextualization In Exhibition, Yiran Mu

Masters Theses

Due to the rise of globalization, the circulation of exhibits born in different cultural backgrounds to alien places all over the world has dramatically increased. Cultural contents are re-contextualized and shaped in a way to adapt to new environments where they lose their essence of place and risk stereotypes of distant cultures. The looming question over every exhibition is how, and to what extent, the original context of the objects on display will be acknowledged or reproduced. Should an effort be made to place pieces in a convincing approximation of their culture of origin? Or should objects be returned to …

Transform Through Architecture : A Journey Of Discovery At The Providence Place Mall, Haoning Li

Masters Theses

Changes can be subtle, but nevertheless they are ever lasting. When one encounters the other, the experience of the encountering changes us. It not only happens with people but also with spaces. Each space tells a story of it’s own, and when we encounter each space we are changed by it. Each space carries with it different imprint and shows different personalities. Therefore, when we encounter them, we are all listeners and transmitters to carry those stories onwards.

Seeing architecture as fertile and breeding ground to welcome, transmit and exchange ideas, the hidden potentials in common building types and structures …

The Ultimate Task Of Public Libraries : Introducing Architecture As Pedestal, Elaine Wu

Masters Theses

Most cultural institutions are housed in one of two kinds of architecture: either to show off the structure or building style or to appreciate the preciousness and identity of the object(s) it contains. The first kind focuses more on the architecture itself, and its function is not defined by the outside appearance. For the second kind, the architecture aims to serve as a support or pedestal, where the form is a result of needs based on different objects contained.

For libraries, architecture should never be the protagonist. Libraries should champion the aura of books, just as museums exhibit their collections. …

Reactivating Street Life : Fostering More Communal Interaction In Longtang, Ziyang Qiu

Masters Theses

The public life that develops between buildings in neighborhoods is undergoing a significant change in the process of growth and modernization, which reflects shifts in residents’ social behaviors and community structure. Traditionally, the presence of people, activities and events define the life of neighborhoods, constituting one of the essential qualities of public space; the mix of outdoor activities is influenced by many conditions, including the architectural framework. When those activities are missing, is it an inevitable result of the reliance on electronic products for entertainment, or unreasonable urban planning under insufficient public policy?

The Longtang, as a unique community form …

Project Fusion, Tianbao Hu

Masters Theses

This thesis shows how architecture can arise the reflection on dialectically perceiving the relationship between artificial and natural.

Realistic Utopia : Utopian Architecture Exhibition At Arcosanti, Xiao Fang

Masters Theses

Many people believe that only when a design is built can it be called architecture. Architecture, however, was never solely about built form. And unlike other types of design, architecture depends on imagination and visualization: only the architect knows how the space works before it has actually been built. Thus, it is necessary to test the design on paper before it has been realized and many times architectural designs are heavily modified or abandoned for economic, political or environmental reasons.

Meanwhile, architects also design spaces knowing they will never be built, to exercise ideas or push toward new realities. From …

Water Ceremony, Adriana Alva

Masters Theses

My thesis uses water – a medium – : as a way to follow an intuitive force to create space, as a tool to visualize larger systemic problems (climate crisis + water mismanagement) and for cultural expressions of healing ceremony.

Field Notes On Seeing: An Archive Of Color, Mirrors, And Light, T. Deutch

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates memory through photographs, lights and mirrors.

Acoustic Signatures: Their Study, Representation, And Agency In The Experience Of Architectural Spaces, Nathalie D'Hennezel

Masters Theses

I am proposing to engage sound in the design of space through the representation, study, and creation of acoustic signatures.

Tolerance : Material Conversations On Life & Architecture, Keyan Hansen

Masters Theses

Tolerance is an investigation of the phenomenological aspects and latency of material in architecture through physical manipulation and sensory interaction. It is an investigation into the space between society and material, in which one can find new insight and appreciation for architecture at all scales. The word tolerance holds multiple definitions that wonderfully encapsulate the elements of this work:

• The ability or willingness to tolerate something, in particular, the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.

• An allowable amount of variation of a specified quantity, especially in the dimensions of a machine or …

Un-Black Boxing Mitigation Infrastructures : Proposing Alternative Imaginaries For Mono-Functional And Under-Utilized Urban Backstages, Min Jin Kook

Masters Theses

Cities are full of risk-mitigation infrastructure to protect ourselves from floods, erosion and threatening natural disasters. These infrastructures include underground retention tanks, dams and channelized river. They are purposefully hidden away because they are under highways or underground. Most of risk-mitigation infrastructures are under-utilized ninety- five percent of the time. They only serve one function for two weeks every year. They are empty most of the year. Is there an alternative project to consider these risk-mitigation infrastructures while they are completely mono-functional and under-utilized?

Along with my inquiry to utilize risk-mitigation infrastructures, I am critiquing the “blackboxing” and “under-utilization” of …

Living Together : Revisiting The Sro + New Forms Of Collectivity, Elizabeth Parker

Masters Theses

The current affordable housing crisis has reached a boiling point. Home prices are increasing at double the rate of wage gains, and almost half of all renters in the United States are considered costburdened (spending 30% or more of their income on rent). There simply isn’t enough affordable housing available to meet the growing demand and people are being priced out. The housing market, as it stands, is in desperate need of re-examination.

Options that better reflect the demographics of growing cities and promote inclusion are of vital importance for a sustainable future.

This directed research project responds to the …

The Story Of Market House, Patrick Spence

Masters Theses

Our encounters of space are charged with narratives of the past. These narratives help us define who we are, speaking to our values and providing us with our identity.

The Story of Market House is an exploration into the narratives of the 245-year-old Market House of Providence, Rhode Island. Like the additions and alterations to its form, Market House is layered with generations of unique Providence history.

This project aims to remember and tell an unbiased and empathetic narrative, true to the comprehensive histories of this unique place; and from this present an architectural proposal that projects a new chapter …

Two-Gather / Collective Living : Housing And Recreational Facilities In Suburban Mumbai, Rashi Harshil Lalaji

Masters Theses

Collective form of living is a relevant framework to reconsider way of living in contemporary Mumbai. The thesis explores shared communal architecture elements in a specific housing typology called chawls. These elements are analyzed through its programmatic use of space and scale. Understanding the chawls as a module for communal living situated within a larger city context of Mumbai. The thesis further argues that collective forms of living are possible and should be a precedent for developing the present affordable housing typologies in the urban city.

Intimacy In Infrastructure, Andrew Sponseller

Masters Theses

This thesis employs public transit to establish regional reclamations of infrastructure, empowering cultural identities through a vernacular that is realized and matured into the capacity of today. The decaying state of our mass transit infrastructure is due to a decline of community ownership and regional identity represented in their architecture.

“Communities” can be considered cities, neighborhoods, towns, or entire regions of States depending on the scale of the infrastructure. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania clearly exhibits the range of this decline. A city that went from being the center of the Pennsylvania Railroad, now is sprinkled with infrastructural shells of the past. These …

Digital Duck, Zach Schumacher

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to further define “digital” for architecture in the 2020’s, by looking outside the discipline to expand upon the post-digital conversation.

Adapting Home : Residential Development And Domestic Comfort In Vermont, Mikéla Sumner

Masters Theses

Vermont is experiencing a loss of “ruralness” as social insulation replaces physical comfort as the driver of residential design. Furthermore, the pre-packaged comfort often associated with social insulation requires an upfront cost. The variety of Vermont’s housing stock is limited, as most homes are single-family and 36% of Vermonters are currently cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing. Ultimately, there is a shortage of housing that can affordably meet diverse comfort needs. Without the ability to adapt the home over time, in the tradition of the local Vermont home, the house is only compatible with specific …

Architecture Of Dreams, Alex Jing-Seng Wong

Masters Theses

Architecture, both of reality and of dreams, is constructed to serve the needs of its world. The environments of dreams are akin to movie sets in that they correspond to a particular story. Recognizing (“remembering” unconscious knowledge) the significance of objects and forms to the story of a dream reveals the essence of these things as perceived by the self. Those understandings not resulting from individual life experiences may be identified as inherited and universal.

Urban Village Compound : New Collectives In Shenzhen, Lu Yu

Masters Theses

This thesis proposes a new type of public space in Shenzhen's urban villages, in order to offer various community activities and evoke people's memory of collective life. This collective life of the urban village's residents has been ignored during the rapid urbanization process of Shenzhen.

Melting Away - Ilha Formosa, Hao-Chun Chang

Masters Theses

Taiwan lies in warm, tropical water, and fishing has long been an important part of its economy. Both the Han Chinese from the coast of China and the Westerners in Europe brought commercial trade and cultural exchange between the East and the West through navigation over the past 500 years. For most of this period, people have assumed that our vast ocean was limitless and immune to human impact. It’s only recently through the struggles of fishermen that we come to realize the devastating effects we have already had on the sea: global warming, plastic pollution, and overfishing. As Callum …