Architectural History and Criticism Commons^™

Unpacking Architectural Drawing Literacy: A Critical Pedagogy Approach To Architecture Collections, Shima Hosseininasab, Virginia Ferris, Burak Erdim

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This paper explores using architectural drawings as primary sources in instruction sessions at the North Carolina State University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) with a critical pedagogy approach. Architectural collections are among the SCRC’s most frequently used materials, yet effective engagement with these unique resources requires specialized knowledge that is often lacking among teaching librarians and faculty, who excel in artifactual literacy and archival practices. The research addresses this gap by arguing that additional guidance in architectural history and technical details is necessary to improve teaching methods and enhance student interpretation of architectural drawings. Using a 200-level architecture class …

Objects In The Sunset, Iskander Guetta

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

This research explores everyday design practices in the Maghreb shaped by economic, political, and ecological struggles amid transnational debates on decolonizing design. To do so, it looks at objects in, through and with the sunset. Taking المغرب — the place where the sun sets — as a conceptual lens, Objects in the Sunset illuminates the savoir-faire born from dispossession, scarcity, and epistemic violence. Working across different scales of the built environment — infrastructures, spaces, objects, and materials — it shifts design away from Eurocentric conceptions: from rationalization to resourcefulness, homogeneity to heterogeneity, optimization to adaptation, disposability to repair, and universal …

Demonstration Dwellings: Building Racial Capitalism And Economic Cooperation In New Deal Housing, 1933–1942, Austin Ehrhardt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Beginning in 1933, the United States federal government initiated a series of historic investments in the nation’s housing infrastructure. Propelled by the convergence of the Great Depression and the Great Migration, New Deal administrators commissioned a network of segregated residential prototypes to operate as replicable models for private industry. At the core of the discriminatory program was the creation and circulation of federally-insured debt. Reading across federal records, correspondence circuits, and contemporaneous Black journals and newspapers, this thesis revisits struggles for land, property, and Black participation in the emergent housing-based economy. It explores the distributed networks within which the Black …

The Myth Of Solidarity: The Formalization Of Segregation And Externalization Of Class Through The Estate System In Cali, Colombia, Juanita Castaneda Norena

Library Map Prize

No abstract provided.

Beside Yingzao: An Index Of Chinese Building Traditions, Tianyi Hang

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Yingzao referred to the Chinese architectural practice prior to the nineteenth-century introduction of the term jianzhu, the translation of “architecture.” The earliest preserved illustrated government-issued building standard was titled Yingzao fashi. Published by the Southern Song government in 1103, Yingzao fashi defined and regulated technical terms used to describe imperial construction as well as specified the labor costs of certain building techniques. These terms inform our understanding of the traditional Chinese way of categorization and knowledge system of architecture and architectural elements.

Titled “Beside Yingzao,” this study takes the technical terms from Yingzao fashi to guide the reader in investigating …

Constructing Colma, Ethan Treiman

Library Map Prize

The American Cemetery Movement tells the story of American cemeteries in roughly four chapters, demarcated by the emergence of new cemetery forms: the rural cemetery, the memorial park, and so on. This paper identifies the salient features associated with each epoch of cemetery development and locates them within the city-cemetery of Colma, California — America’s only official necropolis — to demonstrate how Colma extends America’s cemetery tradition in familiar ways. In Colma, the trends of cemetery growth and ‘flattening’ reached their natural conclusions, throwing the uncertain future of earthen burial in America into the spotlight. This paper analyzes the societal, …

Continuous Extremes: Architecture Of Uncertainty In Poland, 1945—, Cayce Davis

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

In this thesis, architecture situates between extremes. The dichotomies of destruction and construction, mobility and fixity, performance and reality, inside and outside, and form and time frame architecture and the processes through which it is made. The context is Poland in the fallout of the year 1945, when Warsaw’s unique, nearly total destruction and the ascendance of a new communist regime raised the political stakes of architecture. The thesis focuses on a cast of characters in architecture and related artistic disciplines—individuals haunted by the traumas of their own pasts, negotiating a Polish state that created oppressive limitations through artistic mandates …

Space-Praxis: Towards A Feminist Politics Of Design, Mary C. Overholt

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Outside of the academy and professionalized practice, design has long been central to the production of feminist, political projects. Taking what I have termed space-praxis as its central analytic, this project explores a suite of feminist interventions into the built environment—ranging from the late 1960s to present day.

Formulated in response to Michel de Certeau’s theory of spatial practices, space-praxis collapses formerly bifurcated definitions of ‘tactic’/‘strategy’ and ‘theory’/‘practice.’ It gestures towards those unruly, situated undertakings that are embedded in an ever-evolving, liberative politics. In turning outwards, away from the so-called masters of architecture, this thesis orients itself toward everyday practitioners …

Saving Software And Using Emulation To Reproduce Computationally Dependent Research Results, Euan Cochrane, Limor Peer, Ethan Gates, Seth Anderson

Yale Day of Data

Using digital data necessarily involves software. How do institutions think about software in the context of the long-term usability of their data assets? How do they address usability challenges uniquely posed by software such as, license restrictions, legacy software, code rot, and dependencies? These questions are germane to the agenda set forth by the FAIR principles. At Yale University, a team in the Library is looking into the application of a novel approach to emulation as a potential solution. In this presentation, we will outline the work of the Emulation as a Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) program, discuss our plans for …