Architectural Engineering Commons^™

A Stereotomic Struggle, Jim Roche

Articles

Stone in architecture has “territorial and political implications” as its use and designation impact the human rights of the indigenous population. The craft of stereotomy is not just bequeathed from the Crusaders or more recent imperial colonists but has a diverse blended history that is deeply ingrained in Palestinian built culture. Such theses inform the experimental work of Elial and Yusef Anastas, two brother architects who operate from Bethlehem what they term a counter hegemonic practice with the stated aim of “decolonising architecture”.

Adaptive Airport Architecture, Yash Mehta

Masters Theses

The architecture of Airport terminals is unique in nature as it is linked with a wide range of concerns that go hand in hand to demonstrate the efficient functioning of the building. From an inconvenient mode of travel to the city center to the congestions in the security screening, concerns varying from urban design to systems engineering have an impact on the user experience. Along with these concerns, the spatial organization of the airport terminals accommodates various commercial, leisure, retail, and service-based spaces in addition to the core function of aviation. Where the guiding parameters for determining the spatial requirements …

Interdisciplinary Studio Pavilion [Isp] 2019, Albert J. Gutierrez

Construction Management

Historically Cal Poly’s motto has been ‘Learn by Doing’ and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design (CAED) is one of the leading examples of this. Many students gain valuable hands-on and real-world experience through collaborative projects and assignments. Through this learn by doing philosophy and collaborative learning approach Cal Poly construction management, architecture and architectural engineering students worked together in 8 separate studio teams to design and construct a portable pavilion for the Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County. Acting as a client they requested that we design a portable pavilion space that will be used to …

Transfused Architecture: Ascent Of A Developing World, Sandy Ferrier

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Because there is a lack of adequate health care facilities in developing countries, there is a substantial amount of unrealized, optimal health gains and effective, architectural interventions which are not fully realized. With 80% of its population living below the world poverty line, Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. The United Nations Development Program’s 2014 report shows the extents of poverty at 75% mainly in the rural areas of Haiti. Only 25% of households benefit from adequate sanitation, thus people become more susceptible to infections and diseases. Reoccurring natural catastrophes have also dented the country's …

Center For Farm And Food System Entrepreneurship, Community Design Center

Project Reports

The average age of the American farmer is 58. Since communities are not reproducing the next generation of farmers, universities are establishing training centers to model new concepts and technologies in farming. The Farmers Training Center is both an immersive program in the rhythms of farm life and a public facility for hosting gatherings that celebrate value-added food products. Part of the University of Arkansas’ farm operations near campus, the center is the public face of agriculture where farmers and the public meet. Student farmers learn by farming, from organic vegetable production in fields and greenhouses, to machine repair, marketing, …

Clothedral, Jacob T. Holmes, Andres Munoz, Sam Tenreiro Theis, Marta Blachowicz

Architectural Engineering

No abstract provided.

Bau, January 17-21, Munich, Jim Roche

Other resources

This bi-annual five-day event is one of the

leading and biggest trade fares of architecture,

materials, building systems and craft skills in

the world. Held in the huge Messe München

Trade Fair Center in eastern Munich and

stretching over 17 gigantic halls each the size

of a football pitch, it offers a truly rich display of

the latest innovations in building technology.

Free Encounters | Giving Form To The Informal Workplace, Ryan Williams

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that the "office" as a solely economic construct is no more: Its utility as an engine driving productivity and the accumulation of capital has stalled in our present age of information where value is constructed through knowledge exchange and interaction.

Via the use of new technologies, millennial workers' transition from the college campus to the office has become more seamless and, this thesis argues, it is in this paradigm shift that it is possible to identify a blurring of the public and private spheres. The millennial worker-turned-freelancer's life exists forever suspended between work and play, place and …

Multidimensional Dialogue Through Architecture | An Exploration Of The Possible Dialogue Between Humans And Walls, Fengqi Li

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis proposes that architectural design no longer has to be primarily static, but rather it can be dynamically responsive to multiple information streams and conditions.

Multidimensional Dialogue Through Architecture is developed from the understanding of human factors and ergonomics. The dispersed works on research and inference are different ways to explore the interaction between the discipline of architecture and the other fields, such as psychology, engineering, bio-mechanics, physiology, cognitive science, and anthropomorphic. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is not to design a specific building that works perfectly in particular conditions but rather to use architectural elements to mediate …

Private Room Of The Wheel | A New Form Of Transient Dwelling, Kathy Teng

Architecture Senior Theses

The cross-country highway and road trip are deeply rooted in the American psyche, supported by the rapid growth in ownership of automobiles by American families since the 1940s, establishing a sense of freedom and leisure in their mobile lifestyles. However, other highway users have less control and freedom over their daily routine. These users are part of a vast network of international commerce reliant on the long haul.

The time long-haul truck drivers are away from home is prolonged, with the end of each day spent sleeping in fixed truck cabins and eating at banal truck stops. “ ‘I can …

Innie/Outie | Renegotiating Figure And Structure, Maxwell Rosner

Architecture Senior Theses

This thesis contends that in order to sustain its claim to be socially progressive and accessible enterprise, the discipline of architecture must resist the divorce of figure and structure.

Innie/Outie considers Architecture as a simultaneously typological and teleological proposition. Architects exploit typology as a means of classifying, diagramming, and ultimately flattening and iconicizing ideas about Architecture so as to place them within a broader cultural context, thereby making them intellectually accessible to their audiences. By contrast, architects from the advent of Modernism onwards have displayed a critical preoccupation with the discipline’s teleological potential, the creation of form that follows function …

Subtraction | Construction In Reverse, Sherina S. Zhang

Architecture Senior Theses

The life of a building does not begin at the creation of the new; it starts with the subtraction of the old. As the pace of technological development accelerates, buildings are erected and demolished at an unprecedented rate. Cities use their urban artifacts like skyscrapers, to portray economic and political prowess. For example, the ghost cities of China are relics of a burst financial bubble while Venezuelan ruling party elites name business towers after themselves as a show of power and prosperity. Many parts of the world today are now overbuilt with artifacts that decline into obsolescence. Demolition procedures erase …

Parity, Hamza Hasan

Architecture Senior Theses

Digital data contributes to an increasingly alienated aspect of our infrastructure. The complex practices of the Internet produce highly specified, engineered objects. Though their forms are ‘optimized,’ their intentions are not: the two primary considerations for the development of the infrastructure of the Internet are energy and security. Each category presents its own deliberations, but both often produce non-architectural, infrastructural elements beyond public visibility. The hidden infrastructure of data storage and mining (the indexing and analysis of data and traffic) produces spaces outside the agency of normative architectural discourse.

The key consideration for the design of the Internet is redundancy, …

Green School, Designing For Comfort And Beyond…, Andrea S. Wheeler, Naghmeh Pak, Evan Jeanblanc

Andrea S. Wheeler

Comfort is defined through human senses; sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Each sense can lead to a greater or lesser degree of comfort. However, children experience comfort differently than adults. They experience spaces differently and have different knowledge about the performance of a building than adult users; they can also have a perspective on design quality unlike that of the architect. School is a designed environment that a child lives in for over 6 hours a day; it is it is thus argued simply a matter of a child’s right to be consulted about his or her day-to-day environment. …

Aspen Art Museum, Rumiko Handa

Architecture Program: Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity

'I hope when people come to the New Aspen Art Museum they will sense that this building is very much at home in Aspen and could only live here', Shigeru Ban states in a short essay to visitors included in the museum brochure. Indeed, the way in which Ban's design fits uniquely within its context is nothing less than extraordinary. A full appreciation of his accomplishment, however, requires a study of Aspen's history.

What strategies are available to the architect who intends to design a museum that fits well for a community with keen interests in arts but lacking in …

Divergence: Creating A Closed-Loop Mobile Seaworthy Civilization, Marcus Lafond

Marcus Lafond

Today there are more cities localized on our coastlines than ever before. Unfortunately, this fact poses an immediate danger due to the rising tides of our oceans. Together with the increase in global population and coastal erosion, the world will increasingly become a more difficult place to live. With our overcrowding cities, mercurial changes in weather and over three quarters of the earth's surface being uninhabited oceans; we need cities that are mobile, seaworthy and capable of avoiding natural disasters. Thus, by creating these types of cities, architects will lead the way to ensure the safety of the public and …

Interactive Music Experience, Gaetan Jacques

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

In February of 2012, alternative rock band OK Go released a music video for their song “Needing/Getting”. The video explores a creative way of playing music, by driving a car through a constructed, choreographed environment. A driving track was set up as a large musical instrument which was “played” by a car. Architects, musicians, and artist are looking for innovative ways to develop active relationships between people, music, and architecture. The traditional passive relationship of these three is static, a design that does not promote interaction or participation. If we consider, behind a performance, there is a great deal of …

Perform + Function: A Proposal For A Healthy Public Housing Community, Brandon M. Harvey

Masters Theses

PERFORM+FUNCTION: Proposal for A Healthy Public Housing Community

Architecture exists in Place, the integrated context of both the built and natural environments, including socio-economic, cultural, and political climates that influence our growth, development, and survival. As architecture necessitates around human purposes, it is important that architecture is built for and sited in an environment compatible for human well-being. My thesis focuses on human habitation and its immediate relationship with human health, assessing the performance and functionality of Place that have an impact on human health. Using public housing as the vehicle of my investigation, I will seek the appropriate application …

Inhabiting The Periphery: A Dialogue Between Individual And Site, Robert Oliver Kown

Masters Theses

What is a periphery? We can think about this word in more than one way. First off, peripheries are places that exist as spatial conditions in cities, They indicate edges and places that have been left behind. Spaces that have lost their meaning. But in this thesis I will use the word in another way as well. What does the periphery mean for us today? What are those parts of our lives that have been marginalized, and how can we begin to reclaim what has been lost? It is the aim of this thesis to address these issues of the …

Ralph Bunche Agape Neighborhood Vision Plan, Community Design Center

Project Reports

The Ralphe Bunche Neighborhood Vision Plan provides a general design framework to spur reinvestment in this 100-year old historic African-American neighborhood in Benton, AR. The plan aggregates attainable housing (under $100,000/unit) around two neighborhood parks―one existing, and one proposed. Since the city cannot afford comprehensive street and drainage improvements to accommodate redevelopment, the proposal retrofits streets and open space with Low Impact Development (LID) landscapes to remediate urban stormwater runoff. Housing unit types between 1,000 and 1,750 square feet are amassed around these LID landscapes and amenitized with screened rooms, balconies, terraces, and multiple-height living spaces.

The Thinking Hand: Book Review, Jim Roche

Articles

In this new book Juhani Pallasmaa continues his phenomenological exploration begun in ‘The Eyes of the Skin (2005)’, with the ‘Thinking Hand’ here proffered as a metaphor for his contention that all our senses, have innate imbedded crucial skills which help us perform the most basic daily tasks – and to create inspired works of art and architecture.

Porchscapes: Between Neighborhood Watershed And Home, Community Design Center

Project Reports

Located on the Ozark Plateau, this 43-unit housing development is a LEED-ND (Neighborhood Development) pilot project to be built for $60/sf plus $2.3 million in infrastructure costs. The studio objective is to design a demonstration project that combines affordability with best environmental practices as designated by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). Porchscapes is a pioneering Low Impact Development (LID) project funded under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Section 319 Program for Nonpoint Source Pollution. LID manages stormwater runoff through ecological engineering technologies. A contiguous network of rainwater gardens, bioswales, infiltration trenches, sediment filter strips, green streets, and wet meadows …

The Maine Competition: Architectural Design For Low-Cost Housing, Maine State Planning Office

Maine Collection

The Maine Competition: Architectural Design for Low-Cost Housing - Submissions - October 1976.

Sponsoring Agencies: Allen Pease, Director, State Planning Office; Genevieve Gelder, Director, State Housing Authority; Evan Richert, Sam Ely Community Services Corp.

"The Competition was funded in part by grants from the Maine State Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a HUD Comprehensive Planning and Assistance Grant."