Architectural Technology Commons^™

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 …

Where Wellness Begins, Chelsea M. Wheeler

Architecture Senior Theses

A public need for improved health has called into question the manner in which one's built environment has the ability to affect a person's health and well-being. Recent studies have revealed a correlation between health and residence, suggesting that the built environment has a significant influence on occupant health and well-being. As a result of such studies, Delos Living, a well-building consulting firm, has proposed a set of deign standards that can be used to promote occupant health. The problem with such methods is that there are processes of certification relying primarily on post-deign evaluations. This thesis seeks to align …

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 …

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 …

The Synchronous City, Patricia Olivera

Architecture Senior Theses

Architects’ conceptualizations of cities reference and reflect trends in contemporary culture. During the early 1900's, architects such as Ebenezer Howard, and Tony Garnier speculated on modernist visions of cities, while in the mid-late 1900's radical visions of cities by Archigram, and Archizoom emerged. This project will operate along the framework of previous visions of cities by architects and envision a city rooted on the use of digital information and communication technologies (ICTs).

In order to best engage the provocation of a city based on ICTs as the primary means of exchange and interaction between citizens (as opposed to cars, pedestrians, …

Ambient Intelligence | Cognizant Architecture For The Restless, Anne Judkis

Architecture Senior Theses

In recent decades, technology has proliferated throughout our architectural spaces, from personalized handheld gadgetry to smart systems and appliances. This constant barrage of screens and interfaces that humans interact with for large portions of our day has grown to define our very living conditions, particularly by disrupting our circadian rhythms. It is well documented that lack of sleep can lead to numerous long and short term health problems such as weight gain, irritability, to more sever acute conditions like hallucinations and organ failure. This thesis will address architecture's potential to interact with individuals utilizing smart environments that drive kinetic architecture. …

An Escape | Threshold Space Design In Bath, Xihao Chen

Architecture Senior Theses

Threshold, conventionally referring to the line of the door jamb, serves to mark the transition between exterior and interior, or between two separate spaces. Contemporary thresholds are most often underplayed, being deployed as a thin surface, or intentionally minimized in terms of thickness. This thesis argues that the term threshold should be applied to a broader sense of architectural space. When a threshold is stretched and thickened conceptually from a surface to a volume, it can become a threshold space.

This thesis argues that threshold space is simultaneously a place, a puncture in an architectural boundary, and as the in …

Performative Architecture | A Measurable Means Of Evaluating Formal Systems, Garrett Marini

Architecture Senior Theses

The Gothic, Baroque, and Rococo architectural styles relied on perception and an underlying adherence to classical formulas to provide merit and deem an architecture valid. Up through the 19th century before the emergence of modernism these established canons would reemerge both in isolation and as an amalgam of styles. Henry Russell Hitchcock describes this latter episodic phase of building as exhibiting an eclecticism of style, where features of different styles are used together on a single building like those in the Beaux- Arts tradition. In the early 20th century, Louis Sullivan’s modernist dictum of “Form Follows Function,” while seemingly providing …

The Internet Of Things User Interface | Navigating Physical And Virtual Information Spaces, Nhan Bui

Architecture Senior Theses

It is projected that the boundary between our physical and virtual environments will be further blurred through the emergence of the "internet of things" (IoT). The IoT is a network of physical objects embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity that enables its objects to collect and exchange information on the internet. The most prevalent example of IoT today is your mobile phone. The mobile phone is an electronic device with software that tracks your location via GPS and your preferences based on your interactions on the internet. The collecting and exchanging of information in today' centralized internet infrastructure …

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 …

Analog:Digital, The Digital Spine: A 1 X 1 Strategy For Integrating Digital Tools In Foundation Design Studios, Ting Chin, Claudia E. Hernandez Feiks

Publications and Research

Architectural education today needs to foster the inherent conceptual and creative thought processes the profession demands but also knowledge of all of the tools that allow architects to create and produce their work. Over the last 25 years the number of digital tools used in the practice of architecture has increased exponentially. Incorporating these digital tools, together with analog ones still being taught in most undergraduate programs today, is overstretching already overloaded architectural curricula. This leaves us to consider how we maintain the quality of teaching as the quantity of content increases and the amount of time with students remains …

The Image Machine, Jeremy Min Burns

Architecture Senior Theses

Architecture has always been an image machine. From the Lascaux cave paintings to the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to the multimedia installations of the Eameses to the early projects of Diller Scofidio, images and architecture have cohabited persistently and productively for centuries. However, since the dawn of the digital age, the ontological status of images has changed; and in turn so has the relationship between images and architecture. Rather than being anchored to a specific material support, images exist as manipulable data. While some have viewed the digital turns as the transcendence of information beyond the human subject, an era of …

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, …

The Question Of Slim | A Critical Look At Manhattan's Recent Trend Towards Slenderness, Raymond Sova

Architecture Senior Theses

Manhattan’s real estate market since the turn of the 20th century to present day can be characterized as an extreme optimization of the economical elements of architecture. Most of the buildings in Manhattan’s diverse and complex skyline share a tenacious desire to maximize the profitability and feasibility of a site while minimizing overall building expenditure. This concept is defined in Koolhaas’s ‘Delirious New York,’ as the relationship between “the Needle” and “the Globe.” Seemingly immeasurable wealth and investment have given rise to a new sub-typology of super-tall strikingly skinny (Slim) residential skyscrapers that may very well result in the demise …

Sustainable Design Strategies For Sport Stadia, Ileana Aquino, Nawari O. Nawari

Suburban Sustainability

The need to establish a more sustainable design for everyday items and for people to live a more sustainably led lifestyle is evident around the world. As office and residential building, schools, and infrastructure become more sustainably built, there is no doubt that other fields will soon follow. The sporting domain needs to be the next step in sustainable design. Sport stadia can and will play a vital role in increasing sustainability awareness across the world. There is an enormous opportunity to have stadia serve as trendsetters in innovative thinking for sustainable design.

This research shows that there are numerous …

Portland State University School Of Business Administration (Sba) Renovation + Personal Comfort Investigation, Abolfazl Mekanik, Corey Griffin, Louise Foster

Student Research Symposium

This poster discusses the results of a field study about indoor thermal comfort, based on investigations in Portland State University`s School of Business (SBA) classrooms. The field study was conducted by physical parameter monitoring and questionnaires. Both field monitoring and occupant surveys were performed at the same time during the regular class period.The measurement campaign consisted of measuring the environmental parameters such as temperature (Ta), relative humidity (RH), CO₂, and sound levels. The outdoor air temperature, humidity, and sound were registered every 2 hour period during class time. The intention for this project is to investigate thermal comfort …

Moor Movement: Automated Docking On Drought-Stricken Reservoirs, Daniel Beck

Landscape Architecture

Moor Movement establishes a mechanized docking system for unpredictable shoreline fluctuations on inland lakes and reservoirs. Due to climate change and warmer global temperatures, the threat of ocean level rise has initiated massive proposals to address the interface between ocean and man-made infrastructure. While this is a monumental problem, ocean level rise is not the only immediate threat. The recently declared emergency drought conditions in California are finally bringing attention to inland lakes and reservoirs. While ocean levels might rise 2-7 feet in 100 years, a lake could drop 100 feet in 5 years. What happens to access roads, marinas, …

Speed And Resolution In The Age Of Technological Reproducibility, Shawn Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

The rate of acceleration of the biologic and synthetic world has for a while now, been in the process of exponentially speeding up, maxing out servers and landfills, merging with each other, destroying each other. The last prehistoric relics on Earth are absorbing the same oxygen, carbon dioxide and electronic waves in our biosphere as us. A degraded .jpeg enlarged to full screen on a Samsung 4K UHD HU8550 Series Smart TV - 85” Class (84.5” diag.). Within this composite ecology, the ancient limestone of the grand canyon competes with the iMax movie of itself, the production of Mac pros, …

A Transient Community For A Transient Lifestyle, Sameh Mohamed Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

The project suggests an alternative means for living in Qatar. It proposes the development of a transient, floating community a man-made, transitory archipelago of floating housing units located at the ‘soon to be abandoned’ docks a short distance from the Museum of Islamic Art and the Doha Corniche. The design, through a variety of bespoke dwelling options, can provide both more and less nomadic housing to accommodate a variety of dif- ferent lifestyles and social units. Clustered around three permanent islands (containing a cultural/activity center, three adaptable ‘work-unit’ towers, and a park/commercial area), the design provides a wide set of …

Factors Related To Women's Undergraduate Success, Tanya Michelle Baker

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Predicting Building Energy Performance: Leveraging Bim Content For Energy Efficient Buildings, Eddie Villanueva Aquino

Master's Theses

Reducing and managing the environmental impacts of building structures has become a priority of building stakeholders and within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) community; although, conflicting approaches and methods to combat the issues are present. For example, green building standards are widespread throughout the world; however each one has its own characteristics and consequently its own specific requirements. While all have proven to be effective rating systems and have similar requirements, the distinguishing characteristic that separates them is their treatment of performance and prescriptive metrics. The feature they all severely lack or currently limit is the inclusion of strict …

Hemp Lime Bio-Composite As A Building Material In Irish Construction, Patrick Daly, Paolo Ronchetti, Tom Woolley Dr

Articles

This report presents the findings of scoping study into the potential application of hemp lime biocomposite as a construction material in Irish context. The research was carried out under STRIVE funding administered under the Irish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) examining the state of play of hemp lime in construction toward assessing its potential application in Ireland.

The research involved a range of methods, mainly qualitative, including significant literature review and extensive collation of data on hemp lime performance and testing data, semi structured interviews and field work / review of key case studies in Ireland, UK and Europe.

The study …

Formerly Urban: Projecting Rust Belt Futures, Mark Robbins, Stephanie Miner, Nancy Cantor, Julia Czerniak, Darren Petrucci, Jane Wolff, Mclain Clutter, Hunter Morrison, Damon Rich, Toni L. Griffin, Don Mitchell

School of Architecture - All Scholarship

A two-day conference on the benefits of creating urbanity in weak-market cities gathers twenty-one international experts in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design, as well as planning, policy, finance, economics, and real estate development. Participants share strategies for cities whose urban character has devolved radically due to economic, demographic, and physical change - cities that are now considered "formerly urban."

Urban Fabrication: The Architectural Heightening Of The Urban Tactile Sensibility A Fiber Arts Fabrication & Exhibition Center In Dublin, Ireland, Elizabeth Fallon

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The discipline of fiber arts has been in existence since the beginning of civilization to produce both functional equipment as well as aesthetically driven art pieces. The craft, at times highly specialized, often produces elements at the scale of the human body, due to the personal level by which fiber artifacts are produced. The making of artifacts and implementation of fiber art strategies have simultaneous cultural, environmental, formal, and gender-related relationships and implications. The design, construction and experience of buildings and inhabitable space at all scales can benefit from these relationships.

It is the contention of this thesis to merge …

The Terre Haute General Strike, Donald L. Bush

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Terre Haute Milk--From Producer To Consumer, Paul K. Turner

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.